To ask how we stop women ending up with bullshitter/shirker/less than mediocre men?

[BigOldBlobber]

Okay, so I'm not wanting to start a fight, or a finger pointing exercise. And I am most certainly not talking about women who find themselves in abusive or violent homes. I am well aware of the vulnerability some women have, and cycles of abuse.

But, how do we stop future women putting up with mediocrity or really, less than mediocrity from men?! Is it changing expectations of men? Culture change? Gender/sex based role shift?

I have a toddler DD and it really worries me to think that in the future she may end up trapped with a shitty partner.

(This is based off the many threads where women have had children with men, to find out that they have actually become tethered to a man-child, shirker etc)

In my opinion, it's low self-esteem and/or ignoring red flags.

@Theblacksheepandme
well yes, learning to look for the red flags is the key. But you also have to allow enough time to do that and enough stresses on the relationship. Having a baby too soon doesn’t give you that chance. It doesn’t have to be engagement and marriage. You could just as easily spend several years living together, deal with the stress of an illness, and get a puppy. The point is to test-drive the relationship and make sure that it can survive some actual living before having a baby. As a middle-aged person, we tend to automatically understand that the dating-engagement-marriage paradigm is symbolic of that.

I think gender stereotypes and that whole gender roles crap still has a lot to answer for.

especially as we seem to be moving away from equality and towards a very binary society, back to pink brain/blue brain, women are good carers and like glitter, men earn money and like sports stuff.

it’s a society wide issue. Why is it always women that go part time/sahm? If it’s because men are paid more why is that? Are women socialised into being less ambitious? So women are at home more and then pick up the wifework. The men are working full time and haves wives at home picking up the slack.

for many working men too there isn’t the flexibility or acceptance of childcare that women are allowed- the amount of times dh got asked “can’t your wife do it” when he left early for nursery run or took a day off for sick kids. I never got asked that.

so we’re still in this model where housework and childcare is womens work, earning money is mens.

then you have all the shit people come out with like “men don’t see dirt”. Of course they fucking do. They just don’t think it’s their job to clean it.

plus the social judgement- if a house is less than clean or the kids less than immaculate whose fault is it? Always the woman. So a man can leave his house a shit tip and it’ll be his wife that is blamed.

so while I fully support the choice to sah or not, i don’t think we’ll get real change until women and men share that burden equally.

As a society, we have to stop excusing poor behaviour. Stop saying things like, "I'm sure he just didn't think" or "he probably didn't mean it that way" when a man does something wrong. Stop laughing or looking away when men make inappropriate statements or jokes.

I remember the old, "if he pulls your hair at school it's because he likes you" bullshit. That mindset continues and needs to stop.

But in light of the fact that even on a women-dominated forum like MN, there are always loads of posters who tell an OP to stop overreacting or to be more understanding, I'm not hugely confident.

My biggest fear for DD is not that she'll be in a shitty relationship - it's that she won't have an opportunity for a relationship because we're encouraging her to have high standards while the rest of the world is keeping the bar low for men.

As pp say, lead by example

Some of it is to do with people moving in together in less than a year of knowing each other. Once the twat is in your home they are more difficult to get rid of. whereas if you realise he's a twat and you don't live together it's much easier to ghost/dump them politely.
There's thread at the moment where the OP wants the guy to leave, it's her home but he has his stuff there. If she had not let him move in she wouldn't have this problem.

In my experience, the women I know who have chosen to be SAHM in a genuine, "I don't want to work and this works more for me" kind of way, are actually pretty happy, as are their partners.

I’m glad you said that. I’m a SAHM by choice. DH never stops telling me how much more important my job is than his. He’s also made sure that I have a lot of independent savings solely in my name.
SAHM doesn’t mean financial control by the husband.

Cost of living has a lot to do with it, in a lot of areas it's almost impossible to have a nice home on a single income unless you're a high earner.

I also think that we need to elevate being single as a woman to something that's not pitiful. I get a lot of judgement for having chosen to be single and not want a man to live with. The spinster / ugly stepsister who can't find a man is still a thing we teach to young women.

Building self-esteem and self-worth.

The amount of shitty treatment I put up with from men because I thought I just had to tolerate it and that I wasn’t worth any better.

It needs to be more acceptable to shame shit men. Women need to me more conscious about their relationship choices.

I think women are socially conditioned to believe that their boundaries are unreasonable. To refuse a request or put herself first is regarded as selfish. Sadly men are happy to participate in perpetuating this socialisation because it serves them well. What's harder to understand is the number of women who share this view. I can think of at least 3 threads I've read in the last week where OP's have been berated by male and
(mostly) female posters for having boundaries.

1. Woman's partner wanted to take the family car for a stag weekend leaving OP stranded in a village without transport. She had offered to hire a car but her partner wouldn't accept it. The family car was set up for their heavy child seat. Plenty of posters said they would be fine with that.

1. OP became frightened in a unisex changing room after swimming because of the behaviour of the person in the cubicle next door. Posters suggested she needed to see her GP to get her anxiety treated, she should have worried about embarrassing the man in the cubicle next door and her response was a massive overreaction. Almost as if sexual offences are never committed in unisex changing rooms.

1. Man agrees to have his children on an unscheduled night and assumes step mum will do the school run. You can imagine the responses when OP said she couldn't because she was tired and felt unwell and was annoyed she hadn't been asked.

Women don't start relationships with abusers but they end up in them anyway and leaving is difficult for a range of complex reasons, not least the effect being in an abusive relationship has on someone, until we stop telling women that their boundaries are making a fuss, being selfish etc it will continue. A very astute poster wrote a few days ago that boundaries are ours to maintain and enforce rather than assuming or expecting others will respect them. Perhaps more women would run at the sight of the first red flag if other women stopped telling them to accept shitty behaviour.

My relationship habits of ending up with angry men stem from my mum not my dad. My dad was a gentle giant and a great dad when I was young. He wasn't great at the teenage years but my early imprint would not be of a shit dad/husband who didn't pull his weight.

I think it's the entitlement and I think it's getting worse. My ds is 14 and does not get why it's not fair that he can't hit a girl back. My dd will argue the case that he is allowed too. That he's bigger and stronger and has more power has no bearing on whether it's fair or not in their minds. It fustrates me that they don't understand the power dynamics, that my dd doesn't. I do talk about healthy relationships, I do explain why things aren't ok but it doesn't sink in. I don't know what else I can do apart from continue to talk to them and explain power dynamics. Any tips would be most welcome.

Not calling men out on it and still being publicly acceptable to shirk responsibility. Someone posted on that other thread I managed bedtime on my own as my husband worked until 8pm and I thought of men in old law firm who ‘worked late’ avoiding bedtime. I was young and culture wasn’t to say actually Dave don’t you think that’s shitty leaving everything to Diane or why did you have kids to never see them. That’s years ago but I don’t think things have changed eg woman at a work conference is asked where are the children, men not. Men spending hours at work or on hobbies isn’t seen as unacceptable as he’s not default parent.

Theyre happy enough to rely on them so they dont have to work

The idea that raising small children is not work is responsible for a lot of what men get away with.

Like the poster above who talks about her mother saying her DH should be offered a cup of tea and a sit down when he gets into the house - presumably because he was working. But isn't what she was doing work? Where's her cup of tea and sit down?

Or women who are told their DH cannot do night wakings because he has to go to work next day whereas she will "just be at home." FFS she's looking after a small dependent human all day - HIS child - does he not want that done well and safely? Does he not care if it is? If she was a nanny for pay she'd have to be well rested too, because kids are demanding and have to be kept safe, but when it's their own child it doesn't matter how tired she is.

A lot of men have no context for what it's like to be at home with babies and toddlers so they equate it with their days off because they apparently have no imagination. What gets me, again and again, is seeing women say this stuff on MN. That being home with kids is easier than the easiest paid job and women should be grateful their "lifestyle is funded. " Not my experience. Not my DH's opinion either, thank God. Or being told women - who are on maternity leave to care for a baby - should be getting through all the housework during the day because they're not working. (Even if they're still drawing maternity pay!) I can only think these women had very easy babies.

Don't even get me started on the women whose husbands apparently consider everything to do with a baby the woman's responsibility - so she has to pay for everything out of her maternity pay AND do all the care while he carries on as normal. I cannot fathom the minds of these men.

I could as easily say "these men, happy to rely on the free childcare from their wives so they can carry on their own careers, do fuck all at home, and don't even have to look for a nursery." But you know, her work doesn't count as work, cos it doesn't involve someone outside the home paying her, so it's just nothing.

We need to teach our sons to be better and our girls to expect better.

Its pretty hard to model good behaviour if you don’t know what it is as well.

It’s a mammoth task.

"I married beneath me. All women do." - Nancy Astor.

For me -

1. Emphasise the sunk cost fallacy to friends in shit relationships. Just because you've been with Deadbeat Darren for 8 years and you've got a mortgage together, or even got married, it doesn't mean you have to have his babies.

1. Stop all the hashtag bekind bollocks. As on the thread about the woman approached in the park. Women telling other women they are "rude". So what? Why is it so bad to be "rude" when that actually just means standing up for yourself? Goes within a relationship as well as in public/at work.

I have to say, this sounds delightful!

I have a 3 month old daughter and as soon as she is old enough I will give her life advice on how to avoid bad men and leave bad relationships. I will let her know what abuse is and what kind of red flags she should be looking out for.

I also have a son, who is 21 months old.

I will teach him to be respectful to women and be a good man. Of course I will also advise him how to avoid absolute nutters.

Don't even get me started on the women whose husbands apparently consider everything to do with a baby the woman's responsibility - so she has to pay for everything out of her maternity pay AND do all the care while he carries on as normal. I cannot fathom the minds of these men.

Oh yes. And the assumption that childcare costs come from a woman's salary. WTAF is that about? I had a friend who paid for all her own FERTILITY treatment out of her (much lower) salary.

Bring up our sons better.

I'm a single parent with a DS. I don't want a man living in my home. I do everything myself and hopefully I'm modelling to DS that I chose to be single rather than settle just because I wanted a man around. As he gets older I'll do my best to teach him about respect. And he will bloody well do things around the house.

@Triffid1

And you think the first example is a good example to be setting kids?

Girls or boys?

That women should be happy 'insulating' men from home life so they can spend his money?

Fuck that

Well my dad was an awesome dad. Always doing stuff with us but my mum was a housewife until I was 12 and so I have to say there was a lot of him asking her to get him a cup of tea, get his dinner on table and so I was determined that was not going to be me.

I wish there was a Red Flag database of men where you can do a background check for things like marital status, number of children, whether he pays CM or avoids it, whether he has contact, crim record, level of debt etc. with Yelp-like reviews from former partners.

DH was a SAHD for a while - it never even occurred to me that this wasn't a hugely important job with its own challenges. Our money was shared completely, all large financial decisions were joint.

When I hear a SAHM suggesting she can't do or buy things for herself because she doesn't think it's "fair" to her DH who works, it makes me want to SCREAM.