To wonder why so many women put up with this shit

[Stylishkidintheriot]

www.theguardian.com/money/2022/aug/15/how-to-achieve-an-equal-split-of-household-chores-kate-mangino#comment-158160830

I don’t get it: I really don’t. Not in this day and age.

if a man isn’t pulling his weight, why the fuck would you stay in a relationship or have children with him?

Indeed, the overselling is not directly from men, it's the patriarchy as a whole.

Alongside of our culture pushing relationships / marriage / motherhood as the pinnacle of achievement for women, we also see a lot of indirect propaganda portraying men as hopeless, well-meaning doofuses who need amazing women to run their lives for them. It's a double whammy - the idea that it's completely normal for men to behave like children into adulthood, and that women are to be admired for taking them on and looking after them.

It's the old lie that women are simply angels and men are beasts. It all benefits men. Women's egos are massaged by making them out to be angels, but men get all the fun and leisure of being beasts. Betty Friedan recognised it in The Feminine Mystique. Tale as old as time.

We look at these gender roles as old-fashioned, but I think they're reinforced by our current culture, because we have a couple of generations of men now who grew up in an environment where doing things like playing computer games and reading comic books into adulthood is normal. Before the late Boomers / Gen X, men were expected to grow up at some point, start wearing suits to work and learn how to fix the car.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing to break away from those stifling roles, and there's nothing wrong with computer games and comic books, but the upshot for women is that they are still expected to grow up, whereas men aren't. Look at all the "DH has a time-consuming hobby" threads on here.

Furthermore, the men who grew up in that culture are now the ones making today's films and TV. Funnily enough, these are riddled with feckless man-child characters who are meant to be adorable doofuses, when in reality they'd probably be total nightmares to live with.

See it's my husband that wants a baby, yet he is honestly not capable of having them. He thinks he is, but he's not even capable at doing housework without being told to. He knows that I won't have kids until he proves to me he can step up and help me without being asked. I am happy enough to do most of the chores myself, he does a couple of jobs and most diy, but I am not adding a baby to the mix that I don't even want and will end up with the majority of the work. I will not do it all and he knows it. It's in his court to step up. We shall see but I know I'll win this battle. 😂Plus realistically we can't afford one without giving up hobbies and I'm not prepared to do that.

Different for women that do want children though. I am firmly against having children ever.

Wow this whole thread is so bigoted towards SAHW&Ms. What, we are backwards and have low self esteem because we would rather cook/clean/raise children than have a job working for a different man at a company and then maybe paying someone else to be mum/cleaner?

If you both want to/have to work and you decide to have a roughly even split of household chores then that's up to you and your partner. But I'm happily married, "unemployed" (housewife), expecting our first baby next year and taking on the majority of the household cleaning.

My husband will do heavy lifting in the garden, help me with major clean outs, wash pots and pans roughly half the time (most of our other stuff goes in the dishwasher) and does a fair amount of cooking because he is Italian and frankly loves it. However, I do all the laundry (my husband literally couldn't), vacuuming, dusting, cleaning, scrubbing, baking bread, organising, tidying, bedding, food shopping, etc etc etc... and honestly I think that my husband does too much because he already works all day! His "job" is that he goes to work, works very hard, and earns the money to pay for us to live. My "job" is looking after the house and will eventually also be raising the kids - that's a more than agreeable trade for me, and if any of you think that's to be looked down upon and judged then I honestly don't even know what to say.

If anyone reads this and thinks I'm being too harsh then either I'm not talking to you or you need to really have a look at the kind of things you're saying and assuming about the women in these relationships and situations and see how judgemental your language is.

P.S. there are valid situations where a woman is unhappy and the man is not pulling his weight - I just think that simplifying this down to "who does the chores" is an inadequate way to analyse this. A healthy relationship should have a balance but that won't always mean 50/50 splits. 50/50 can be (but are not necessarily) unhealthy because it encourages score keeping and unhealthy competition and grudges in some couples: "I did x so you have to do y otherwise it's not fair".

Final thoughts: focus on your own relationships and making them happy and healthy (however that looks for you) and don't try to sneer at someone else's just because you wouldn't like it. I have immense respect for a woman who works and has a 50/50 relationship with her husband, so long as they are both happy and consenting to that style of relationship. In return, I don't expect judgement from that woman just because I'm not living the way she would live herself.

I think the answer to your question can be found on the pages of MN. How often do you read a post from a woman saying my DP isn't good with money / is selfish with his time / stays out to 4 am drinking/taking drugs / is a perv around other women / lets me do all the chores but I don't want to leave because I'm in my thirties and want a family?
I'm afraid some women still have an ideal in their heads of the nuclear family and don't want to be a single DM so past a certain age they turn blind to a man's faults if they can have the DC they want. It's once the babies here that the dust settles and they start to take a long, hard look at the DF

THANK YOU! Proud housewife and expectant SAHM here. It's so rude/ignorant for so many people to be making so many assumptions based on whether there's a 50/50 split on chores - how shallow!

In my case I was completely in love so also completely blinded until it came to going back to work after mat leave. Only then did I realise what's entitled arse he is. By then I was pregnant with my second. So not much option than to try and make the best of it for all concerned. It worked for a few years.

THANK YOU! Proud housewife and expectant SAHM here. It's so rude/ignorant for so many people to be making so many assumptions based on whether there's a 50/50 split on chores - how shallow!

You are describing a completely different situation, i.e. one where two people have decided and agreed between them that they are happy with their respective roles in a relationship; rather than a miserable relationship filled with resentment because the male partner treats the female partner as a skivvy and thinks his role is done at 6pm in the evening when he plonks his ass down on the sofa after getting in from work whilst she carries on cooking, cleaning, tidying, mopping up sick and putting children to bed despite having been doing childcare and chores all day as well.

I can’t think of anything worse than being a housewife and SAHM personally, but the broader dynamic of two equal people putting in similar hours of labour a day just in different capacities is not what’s being discussed here.

You have misread the thread Pewter. No one is judging SAHMS based on being sahm after it being agreed by all parties and everyone is happy

Everything isn't black and white though is it? I got into a relationship when I was 20 I didn't give much thought to how we would split the mundane household chores. My bad, I do most of them. However my partner works 12+ hours a day, hard physical and mentally tiring work which has a determintal affect on his health. I work equally as hard raising our 3 children and running a business ...I'm more SAHM than anything but with a certain amount of work I have to do. Maybe if everyone works 9-5 then they should and could split housework in half, I don't see how it work for us, he'd have to do it when he should probably be eating, bathing, or relaxing after work? I make sure I do all these things! I'm not a martyr. House could be tidier etc. I'd rather one of us looked after kids than sent them to someone else.

If I've misunderstood the conversation then I apologise, but from where I'm sat a lot of the comments are judgemental towards women who want it by essentially assuming that they mustn't actually want to live that way. If they had caveated by specifically excluding women who want to be SAHMs from their "analysis" then I wouldn't have a problem... it just didn't appear that way to me from most of what I'm reading (in my other comment I also said that if it feels like I'm being too harsh in my response then I'm probably not talking to you specifically)

Thank you for clarifying. I think it could be clearer as many people have not been specific in their observations and it would've been helpful if they had.

The language on these threads really grates on me. What's so hard to 'get'?
Haven't you lived? Met and learnt from being around a wide variety of women? Listened to the stories women share about their lives?
The smuggery is strong with this one.
Someone actually in real life posted upthread "Could it be a class thing?" So unbelievably trite.

@PewterHeart

I judge men and women who whole heartedly embrace a sexist lifestyle

I'm sure there's loads you judge too.

Yeah the class thing comment was utter bollocks, assuming they had some idea of unreconstructed working class men or something.

my working class grandparents shared household tasks very equally, with my grandad doing most of the cleaning. I know several middle class man-children, and look at Boris Johnson…

My H probably did more housework than me before we had kids. After we had kids he has carried on doing as he did, but I do all the kid related chores. I've tried endlessly to redress this to share the work more fairly, but he absolutely refuses even to discuss it. In his mind he does loads and is great. His home life workload has not changed, mine has and the resentment is huge. I have come to realise, after having children, that he is an extreme rigid and inflexible thinker. Nothing I say or do ever alters his position or understanding at all.

Its destroyed our marriage.

I don’t agree with this. It would be my preference if I had kids (but I don’t want them. The only way I’d ever even remotely consider them is if the other partner was the SAHP). I know several other women who feel similarly. We might be in the minority but we exist

Your radical feminism is a cancer in women's rights. We are allowed to choose. That means there are things to choose between, does it not? It is not sexist, especially not if you have agreed to it and it is your preferred way of living. Do you under that people have different preferences and personalities? Not everyone is the same as you? I try not to judge people I don't know (though I will always fail at some points i know). What really baffles me is how proud you are of being judgemental of others.

The class comment was a stupid one, but yes, it is worth asking why women continue to put up with it even once they’ve reached the realisation that it’s wrong.

I think most if not all of us who date men have put up with unfairness and disrespect if not outright abuse in our first and early relationships, but then you get wiser and stronger and realise you don’t have to. Except some women realise this yet continue to put up with it. That’s what’s baffling. As someone said upthread it’s not women’s job to police men’s behaviour but it is entirely within our ability to choose what we will and won’t tolerate and who we date. Unless women en masse demand more and make different choices what incentive do men have to better themselves?

It is sexist. Choices aren’t made in a vacuum. Come back when there are as many SAHDs as women then maybe you’ll have a point.

@PewterHeart

You can choose.

I'm not stopping you.

I can choose to judge you for being sexist

On a societal level men working and women doing all the housework and childcare is absolutely sexist

Its bound by sexist ideals and gendered stereotypes which hamper everyone

But yeah, you as an individual can choose what you like.

I think many are just blinded by love and can’t see the faults. They are mostly all evident before marriage as most people live together for some time before getting married nowadays. Despite how shit some of these men are, the women still marry them and have kids with them.

I think it is a class thing.

If you are poor you often have more pressure to move in together quickly to save money.

Or one of you is coming to the end of a private rental. Or one of you still officially lives with DPs and just moves in gradually rather than with intent.

Under these circumstances there is less room to lay down ground rules. So wifework lands on the woman.

I find gen z women much less liberated than gen xers. By a long way...

I agree with @ComtesseDeSpair that before having children, it's easy enough to move on if you get stuck with someone who won't do their share of the chores. Before DC, you can earn enough to support yourself and avoid being dependent on another salary.

Once DC are added into the mix, it's just not so simple. It's fair enough to say 'it's your turn' for eg waking in the night but if one of you are on maternity leave and the other is working it can seem to make sense for the SAHP (even just for maternity leave) picks up more household chores.

No suggestion that that is correct, but it does seem to be when things start to change. Granted, NAMALT My lovely DSS positively delights in getting home and doing things for and with his DTs. But if your partner does start to let things slide, I understand that it might seem easier to just do it yourself as quicker than using up your energy in pushing for things to be more equal.

It's also not really possible to just leave a crying child til 'he' notices it the way it is possible if you really want to, to ignore washing up left in sink or washing festering in a machine.

Then you find your earning power is impacted so for a quiet life (and reflecting what many others do) you just get in and pick up the slack.

Growing up at the end of the '70's I genuinely thought we had cracked this equality thing. My mostly child free friends would agree. I'm so sorry to discover on MN just how many women have one way or another found themselves carrying more of the grunt household activities.

Yeah, and lots of social conditioning encourages women to consider romance / relationship the key focus of their lives, so they suck up the less attractive elements such as being expected to carry more than their share of chores while men are conditioned to expect to earn more and feel somehow entitled to a free ride on the chores front in return.

Without children, just ditch him. Once you have responsibilities, it gets trickier.

I can’t see at all why this scenario should naturally lead to the domestic drudgery landing on the woman. Or what class has to with it. Very few young people can afford to live alone.

@Topgub you're choosing to view it as sexist because you have a narrow world view. Never mind that scientifically speaking most women and men have different temperaments and gravitate towards certain roles, which is also reflected in the type of work men and women tend to go into, it must be sexism. If that were true, the more egalitarian a society is, the more similar men and women would be in terms of life choices. Actually its the opposite. Men and women become even more different in an equal society, women fall naturally into more traditionally feminine roles, and men to the masculine. That's not 100% of people of course, there will be outliers and exceptions - I imagine you would consider yourself one of them.
However if it is just the natural way of things that most women tend to be more nurturing and like to be around people in their jobs, more so than the majority of their male counterparts, then how is that sexist? Sexism implies oppression, whereas for many it is a choice or a natural tendency. My sister for example is the breadwinner in her house, and her husband takes more time off with the kids and does more traditionally feminine chores around the house... my sister would rather it were the other way around, she would love to be a SAHM but it's not financially feasible for them. It's not because she has some internalised sexism - it's because she values time raising her children more than having a career. Many many women feel this way. Your dismissal of that as purely a symptom of societal sexism is just simply wrong.