So angry at all these threads on useless and selfish men

[Winterday1991]

Off the back of the thread where the H refuses to care for his sick child so the OP can get some much needed rest as he is on annual leave from work 😡. I am seriously fed up of reading threads like this, why are so many men so selfish?

Why is it always women who have to do the lions share of caring, pulling themselves in all direction whilst their male counterparts glide through life uninterrupted? Why is it always women who carry the mental load for family life and the men just show up. Why is always women responsible for maintaining the household?

Even in the 21st century, why do so many men get such a bloody easy ride, whilst often their poor wives/partners are running around like headless chickens keeping on top of everything.

The patriarchy. Women are told we can do it all - more like we are expected to do it all.

Down to us mothers to break the cycle for the next generation.

It’s so true. I posted only yesterday how my ex left me and our newborn and toddler. He has minimal contact. He goes to work without having to worry about childcare. Childcare is down to me to arrange when I go to work. He doesn’t provide financially. He doesn’t have them overnight so I’m up with newborn doing all night feeds. He has them once a week for a few hours, usually Saturday, takes them to the park and McDonald’s then hands them back. When I ask for more help, he says I can’t force him, and apparently parenting is “easy” so I should stop complaining. Of course it’s easy for him he only does the fun part and hands them back. Life isn’t fair.

Yes maybe ten years stale but nothing seems to change. Yes it's worth posting a thread about as this a forum for women, where you know women's issues are discussed...

They get easy ride because everyone let's them do nothing.
Simple as that. Being very truthful, if I didn't have to and had a partner who takes care of everything, I do nothing as well🤷🏻 I am secretly a lazy bastard but also an adult with equal partnership because I can't tolerate lazy bastards who embrace uselessness😂 But if someone let me... Hmmm

Fathers are also responsible for breaking the cycle. It's not entirely up to women to solve this

I find it quite saddening but also makes me really mad that many of the threads are in “Aibu”
like you want to know if it’s unreasonable to ask your partner to turn his PlayStation off to help you? Or that your partner is texting some chick from work and you want to know if you should say anything?
its like “I’m pregnant with dc3 (4and 1 year old) and my partner is refusing to get a job and doesn’t want me to take the max maternity. Am I unreasonable to ask him to look for work?”

why are you with this person? They’re more hindrance than help

Unlikely that the useless ones will and from my experience they are the majority.

Yeah I’ve been thinking this recently. How easily men seem to disrespect their partners and how many women are putting up with some truly ridiculous bullshit.

I was no different when I was with my ex, I look back and I want to shake myself. I sincerely believe I’ll never date again because way too many men seem to just want to be babied, and that’s just gross to me.

I really hope that all women who are putting up with man babies get the clarity and the ability to leave. Being single is not as scary as I thought it was for so many years, I actually love it.

Agree with PP. This board is packed with stories of feckless men, but very few of these men have suddenly become feckless after the birth of children.

Women choose to procreate with unreliable men who show no signs of ‘stepping up’ to fatherhood. Many people should be more discerning before committing to family life, rather than waiting until the second or even third DC to actually figure it out.

Well only the ones with crap useless men post about it. When I was out of action with covid for 2 weeks Dh quietly stepped up and just did everything. He also does Christmas. Didn’t need to start a thread about it though.

I would love to know what the evidence is on whether men are becoming less fucking useless on average i.e. doing more domestic labour and childcare. The couples I know in their thirties and forties have a very different domestic setup to older couples I know, with loads more men working part time or compressed hours with small children and doing more around the house (especially cooking) and having more of a "we're all in this together" approach as a family. But I obviously only knew a few dozen families and would love to know if things have changed at all overall or if my friends are just outliers.

Ok, sweet, let's all just suck it up then shall we.

I do think it’s about setting appropriate boundaries so you don’t end up as default parent/ cleaner/ chef / family admin. We are roughly 50/50 but only because we’ve had clear discussions on it and he knows I wouldn’t tolerate doing everything. He’d be very happy with me doing everything if he could get away with it. We have our own clear areas of responsibility which helps. I appreciate not all men are the same though and I’m sympathetic to those who have partners who change when you have kids or who walk away without a backward glance.

And that is exactly where I went wrong. I saw how useless ex was with first child, and I carelessly fell pregnant again. I should have been more careful. Now I have two kids with this useless arsehole whose turned his back on the lot of us

@Youraccountisnolongervalid I get that. I had one of those too. My current husband is an adult as capable of adulting as I am. This include parenting.

I believe most humans (men included) are not useless and we all need to stop this narrative that 50% of the human race is incapable to love, respect, responsibility, reflection, insight... all of the things required to parent well. Men can do it. Some chose not to. But men need to hold other men to a higher standard as well, in my opinion

@shropshire11 women also procreate with men who are very good at future faking that they will be awesome at stepping up to fatherhood and then the truth reveals itself after the baby is born.

I would say one underlying factor behind the useless men who do exist though (however many of them there are) - everyone from their mums and dads to society constantly think they should be given an easy ride, spared doing things, anything they do do should be wildly congratulated.

I think there's honestly more of a hardcore approach to raising girls where if we don't do everything (helping at home, doing well at school, looking after our appearances, having a good social life) we get loads of shit for it.

Boys are comparatively coddled and it's the opposite thing for them where if they take the hoover round as a teenager or dress well everyone is falling over themselves to praise.

More to the point, why do so many women marry/have children with these men?

They don't just become useless, selfish arseholes overnight.

I have a couple of friends married to awful men. Men that are useless with the kids, hopeless cooks, incapable of doing cleaning/washing/ironing, not considerate or romantic... The women have enabled their behaviour for years and are totally miserable as a result. They say to me things like 'oh you're so lucky...'. No, I am not. I just married a decent, fully-formed adult.

Posted too soon. My point is that when you get to the daily grind of adulthood, laundry, childcare etc, where thanks is in very short supply, many of these coddled men then seem to think it's beneath them.

Posts on AIBU are not exactly a representative sample though, as women with a DP or DH who does 50 % of childcare/life admin (or even more) have no reason to write a post, unless they want to be accused of being "goady".

For example, my DH took care of most of the night wakings when our combi fed child was a newborn, because I had pre-existing mental health issues (PMDD) which put me at a high risk of developing postnatal depression.

When I returned from maternity leave, to a new, more demanding job, he took on more of the nursery pickups and childcare so that I could make a good impression during my probation period. This is all while he also works full time and earns a fair bit more than I do.

I don't post about it (except today, to offer a counter example to the type of male partner who inspires aibu threads), because why would I need to?

@sub (Can't quote) It's Mumsnet... the clue is in the name. Or are you going to argue that Mumsnet is not a platform primarily for women?