Women basically doing everything on family trip

[oha]

We are on a family holiday at the moment. Several families with children, babies and toddlers.

The men are pretty much sat outside drinking beer, whilst the women do everything. Cooking, clearing up and tending to the children.

The dynamic has always been like this in my family and I'm so resentful.

Do anyone else's trips end up like that ?

They'll just phone whichever grandmother isn't attending then leave a shithole house for the women to clean up on their return by the sounds of things

But how can absent fathers be any influence over how their children behave...? By the very nature of the fact they are not there (either physically or just by their lack of involvement), means they cannot have any influence, good OR bad. You cannot say that a son will learn to be lazy or disrespectful if the only influence is the mother telling the son that that is not acceptable...

This is what makes me depressed. It's utterly crap if the father is absent (in any sense of the word) but surely that means we, as the remaining influence have all the power ensuring it does not continue to the next generation?

I remember being on holiday and the apartment the other side of the pool one day was like that - three men outside getting beers handed to them. Couldn't speak the language but I didn't see the wives at all from one end of the day to the next. All you could hear was them setting up for meals, cooking, clearing away and in-between, sorting out the kids who would run past their respective dads to get mum to sort out their armbands, hand them their drinks, get suncream on. And I just remember saying to then DP - "see that? when we do have our own kids, just so you know, I will NEVER have that kind of 'holiday'.

So we do self catering but the extent of my 'cooking' is pouring a bowl of cereal for DS or making a coffee. Am I fuck going to do all the cooking a couple of times a day in hotter weather with a shittier potato peeler and two small pots and cleaning it all up afterwards.

Though, while I've got that bit sorted, the last holiday pissed me off that my beach bag became the beach bag. Nobody else "needed" a bag, but could I just put their towel/change of clothes/flippers in my bag? So there I am huffing and puffing like a donkey while those two swanned down ahead of me carrying nothing. The final straw was from DH "didn't you pack my snorkel" when we were in the middle of the Aegean sea. He's still recovering from the death glare he got for that.

I came home and ordered them both their own beach bags for next year. This donkey is retired.

That's sounds shit. But yes I agree it often ends up like that. We went to Florida with a (female) friend and her son. Guess which 2 ended up making the lunch every morning who sat on the sofa and read their book while we did so?

Boys learn from absent fathers that they can walk away from their responsibilities.

And the person who is actually IN their life and is around them 24/7 teaches them you can't. Realistically, who would have the most influence, the person who walked away, or the person who stayed?!

No

Because thankfully in my family women were raised to not put up with such bullshit

And thus standards were high when we were young and dating.

@TheOriginalClownfish, your post made me laugh. Totally hear you on the bag scenario. Oh, no, they don’t need a bag because they’re only bringing a couple of things. Luckily Mum has a bag so everyone’s shit can go in there. 🙄

I’m going on a holiday from even booking holidays after I book one /make dp book one for Jan 2024 ; I have done this before and it worked, I think it’s been slipping and it’s time for another hard reset! If holidays aren’t booked, well they are not a human right. We go on holiday next week and we are packing this weekend, I will be grumpy while Dh does as he’s told, which he will think very unfair but it’s not the same as applying his own brain and having two adults organising the packing.

Exactly. But women are faultless on here

I don't disagree that an absent father has an impact, but if thrt son refuses to do X because their Dad left whilst the daughter has to do it, then that's on the Mom. You can't just throw your hands up and say well he has an absent father, i can do nothing. Of course he shouldn't be expected to participate like an equal in family life.

@ParsleySageRosemary you don't understand. What @Goldbar says is a fantastic explanation.

What DP was complaining about was that I was delaying us going out. He didn't like waiting for me so I asked him to help with the baby care instead of just sit and watch me do it.

So what does your DH do at home? Does he normally equal parent and pull his weight? If so why aren't you challenging him on being lazy now? If DH lost the use of any cleaning or parenting skills on holiday id be asking him whats wrong with him.

This happens at DH’s family Christmases, the men sit around drinking/chatting and the women cook/serve/clean up. Makes my blood boil, even DH (not normally a lazy oik) falls into the behaviour until I call him out on it.

Problem is, no one else asks their DHs or adult sons to help. I wish DH would (covid etc has meant it hasn’t happened for a few years - maybe he would next time). It sets an awful example for the female kids, and really spoils my Xmas day.

At my family Christmas whoever cooks (we take it in turns) doesn’t clean up, and anyone who hadn’t cooked is on cleaning up duty.

Of course mums can and do teach their boys to help at home, but that's not nearly such a powerful message for teenage boys as men as partners and fathers pulling their weight so boys grow up to think that this is the norm. If the only adults doing anything are women, it's unrealistic to think children aren't going to notice and be influenced by this.

This isn’t case with us - DP genuinely steps up and all chores and childcare are split 50:50 (actually he probably does a bit more as he does the bulk of the cooking). But with most other families we know with DC yes, it’s definitely the women doing most of the donkey work, and no one seems to complain about it. DP knows I wouldn’t put up with this!

Even with our 50:50 split though I still find self-catering holidays quite tedious and stressful (all that loading and unloading of the dishwasher!) so we’ve decided hotels are the way forward for us at the moment!

Choosing not to marry them and have children with them would seem to be a good starting point.

Marrying someone useless and thinking he’ll change seems sadly to be quite common.

A few years ago I went on a 5 day SC holiday with my DP, his 8 year old DS, our 2 year old and 1 year old.

I cooked and packed up dinner beforehand so that when we arrived after a 4 hour drive (I drove as well), we could just heat it up.

Also did a Tesco shop to take with us, so car was full to the brim. I'd planned and organised activities for each day, meals and ran around doing everything for everyone.

By lunchtime on Day 4 when it rained unexpectedly, I was knackered effectively cooking and cleaning after 5 people, so asked DP to boil some pasta for lunch (I'd already made the bolognese sauce) for the 3 DC, and went to lie down. An hour later, DSS came in to wake me up saying he was hungry. I got up to find DP sleeping on the sofa and all DC on iPads. DP woke up and said he'd fallen asleep as he was tired I was raging and let DP have it with both barrels, and vowed never to go in a SC holiday again.

He's been EXDP for a year or so now for a myriad of other reasons, though this was a very low point in the relationship.

Seems like many men think women are there simply to serve them.

Absolutely not.

I don’t cook on holiday. It’s a holiday so we go out for food.

50/50 on who watches the kids.

People have mentioned Xmas on this thread too.

I don’t cook Christmas diner either.. My partner cooked it last year while I watched the kids and set the table, drank Prosecco.

This year we are away with friends and it’s already been decided the Men are cooking and the women are drinking.

I don’t know why people put up with such crap from partners.

Strike! Strike! Strike!

All the women need a revolution and turn around and say ‘I’m on holiday too, so fuck off!’

Yes, although the dads do at least seem to manage to play with/vaguely amuse children and help them avoid certain death situations. Other than that, yes in the last family “holiday” I must have loaded/unloaded the dishwasher 11 billion times versus everyone else doing it not at all. We’re off on another next year, only this time there will be another baby added to the mix (not mine!) and I’ve already told Dh that I’m not running round like a blue arse fly again looking after everyone.

Me too. Hotels or cruise ships for me now. And my DH does a lot of the cooking normally- I just want a break from washing up and cleaning.

No because I either holiday with other mums and their kids or with my DP who wouldn't do that.

Obviously you shouldn't put up with that but it's trickier if the families you are holidaying with normalise this shit and the wives are used to doing everything.

Zombie ish thread everyone