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.

I’ve maybe got a slightly unusual perspective here as a partner of a (previously) SAHD.

My partner was a very hands on SAHD, he did almost all the housework, took our dd to classes, swimming, days out etc during the day. Everything a SAHM would do, no complaints. I never needed to lift a finger to housework, but obviously I spent time with my daughter after work/at weekends.

Except from the mental load. That still fell almost exclusively on me.

I think there needs to be a distinction between equality and equity. I’m happy to take on the mental load, but I’m not happy to take it on as well as sharing everything else equally.

We now both work and we treat mental load tasks as we do other housework tasks. The mental load does fall exclusively on me, but as a trade off I don’t need to wash dishes, ever.

@WineDup

I would rather wash dishes than have 100% of the mental load

It's not an equitable exchange

But in that case, both partners need to be satisfied with blue collar reward for all their white collar efforts in the home.

Hence the need for consensus by both parties for what constitutes "enough".

I'm off to watch some YouTube videos. Wham's "Everything she wants" seems relevant.

The dishes was just one example. I do basically no housework, except laundry, which is almost exclusively my role.

But I do meal plan, do shopping lists, know what clubs/activities both kids do, know who’s growing out what clothes and who needs what replaced, and so on.

The time and effort spent by both adults on “maintaining the home” - be that mental tasks or physical tasks - is equal. But the division of all tasks is not 50:50 within that.

Each partner is allowed to play into their strengths. I’m crap at hoovering. I dislike doing dishes. I am good at being organised and I like doing meal plans.

@Mark19735

Well yes.

It is generally accepted that both people in a partnership having shared values and goals is a good starting point.

Maybe you should try some Independent Woman instead?

Yes true but again if you assume this is the most efficient model, how do you propose we restructure the domestic “workforce” to implement it?

In practice this division of labour would require roughly half of every couple to be largely working outside the home with the other largely at home and caring for domestic and child related work.

To make that work you would have to unwind decades of change in the labour market and it would require most households to be based on a one person working model.

There’s all sorts of economic reasons why this wouldn’t work (for a start very few people in major cities would be able to afford housing). It would also necessitate forcing people (mainly women) who have been in control of their finances to willingly give that up in the name of better household efficiency (and good luck with that).

And finally it would require men (let’s call a spade a spade because it is usually men) to actually step up in being the “managers” of the domestic sphere. Something which most of them are currently incredibly reluctant to do.

@WineDup

Ah the old play to your strength trope.

Cause of course women are just biologically more suited to laundry, meal planning, shopping, cooking and sorting out everything for the kids.

Whereas men are obviously more naturally suited to doing a 10th of the work and fooling women into thinking they're doing half

This simply isn't true and smacks of victim blaming. Many, many men change after having children and show no signs of such lazy, selfish behaviour beforehand.

Dsis is the only person I know who doesn't have a useless husband. Mine were useless and all my friends husbands are useless.
Its tragic in this day and age and it's terrible for both men and women.
I prefer to live alone because I'm fed up of "looking after" some useless fool.
We are all professional women with good jobs yet the husbands if they work at all after marriage thinks work stops when the day job ends.
They are arrogant, lazy, useless and demanding.
I don't need that in my life.

This is not all men we surely know but why do sime men behave like this? Because of their mothers who had probably seen brothers treated differently, and because we let them. Simple

And the tax system massively penalising single adult households, almost all of which that also contain children are headed by single mothers. Blatantly, deliberate sex-discrimination, which also accounts for a large proportion of our high child poverty rates.

I think the attitudes about stereotypical men are so deeply entrenched it is really like pushing water uphill trying to get many men and women to accept that marriage and parenthood are partnerships and should be equal. My DP is father to my DD and he does as much grunt work as I do around the house. Right from the get go he did feeding and nappies through the night (though I did more) when he was at work.

My family and a number of friends all thought he was amazing and how “lucky” I was. I was aghast that a man doing his fair share was considered something incredible. These are the attitudes women and men are fighting against right at this moment.

I’d like to say younger women are forcing the changes but I work with several women in their early 30s who have split from their husbands and are dealing with all sorts of nonsense. I despair along with the OP.

It sounds like you are bitter about the fact that the men in your life do nothing?

Ive not lifted a hoover, duster or mop in … gosh, at least a year. I’ve never washed the windows, or the car. The last time I cleaned the bathroom was about 6 months ago. I’ve never cleaned the oven, I’ve wiped the hob down a few times but never deep cleaned it.

I’ve not cooked a meal in … maybe a week? I did wash some baby bottles yesterday, but the other dishes were all washed and put away by someone - presumably my partner, but in your view it must have been the housework fairies.

If your man only does 10% of the housework then you need to ditch him, that’s your problem, not mine.

Yep, boys without decent father figures get a warped sense of how masculinity should be.

Even in stable marriages, decent father figures are in short supply.

It takes a decent father figure and a decent mother figure to teach a boy how to be a decent man. You can substitute male role model and female role model, not everyone has access to a mum and a dad . Without both, all you can do is muddle through and hope.

Right. So for all of us single mothers with sons, we should expect them to grow up with a warped sense of masculinity and mot to be a decent man?

The three men I know who were raised by single mothers seem to be some of the most feminist, kind and respectful to women that I've ever met. But that's just my experience. So do you have any proper evidence to support your assertions?

@WineDup

I haven't mentioned a single thing about my own life. If you need to bring in personal remarks you're losing the argument

Did you have to tell your oh to do all those things? You say you do 100% of the mental load so you must do.

As long as we keep up the pretence that men have to be micromanaged then nothing will change

1 person doing all the mental load plus a lot of the actual work isn't equal or equitable

Ugh I HATE the “he’s such a good dad, taking his kids to the park” comments.

yes, he is a good dad, but taking the kids to the swing park for an hour does not make him a good dad. No mum gets praise for doing any of these “good dad” things.

I think it’s maybe an age thing - most of those who praise men for doing basic stuff are older. I’m in my early-mid thirties.

Society is set up to let men away with it - one example is that the baby change table is often in the woman’s toilet.

@NocturnalClocks

The three men I know who were raised by single mothers seem to be some of the most feminist, kind and respectful to women that I've ever met. But that's just my experience. So do you have any proper evidence to support your assertions?

Thank you.

I would go further than this (without evidence) and argue that being raised exclusively by women gives the best chance possible to boys for growing into progressive men who understand women’s needs.

Male role models are overrated.

I totally agree, women are raising their sons to be like this, my mum was a SAHM and she raised my brother to not be able to do basic tasks like operate a washing machine or cook a simple meal, his wife had to teach him. Whereas she taught and made me do housework and cooking from a young age, my wife and her brother were raised the same.

We can’t ignore our role in this as women, we are raising men to be like this due to our own internalised sexism and we need to break the cycle.

The vilification again on this thread of single mothers is disgusting. They are the ones who stick around and actually raise the children, do the work of two parents.

And yet many seem to want to blame them for their situation. Apparently it's the result of our own stupidity.

I married a man I had known and lived with for many years. Who used to do more than half of the housework, behaved kindly, thoughtfully. We also waited some years after marriage before starting a family. Then when my children were babies he walked out and now has no contact.

But according to many posters here our situation is due to my own bad choices, and if only I'd used my crystal ball and seen that he'd have a personality transplant after having children all of this could have been avoided and I could make smug comments to people about how it has nothing to do with luck.

Disgusting that women can't stand side by side with women who are in difficult circumstances and campaign for better protections for them: a functioning CMS system with appropriate contribution levels to the actual cost of raising children, refusing to have anything to do with family members or friends or potential new partners who are irresponsible fathers, campaigning to end the penalisation of single parents through every level of the tax system.

But no, you vilify and blame us for men's behaviour.

No, I don’t ask him to do anything. He’s a grown adult and if he doesn’t see these things then he will be respectfully shown the door. These things all happen when I’m at work.

Where did the 10% statistic you quoted come from if not from your own life? It’s certainly not mine.

At no point do I micromanage anyone. I’m happy to update the family calendar, and write a shopping list, but it’s up to the others to check them.

I don’t do a lot of the actual work - I stick the washing machine on and fold some clothes. Nothing else.

It’s a million times better to be a single parent than it is to carry the weight of a useless partner.

@NocturnalClocks

I blame society, men and women

For everyone like you who didn't see any warning signs at all there will be 10 who see the warning signs and continue to not only enable but encourage

Our society remains deeply sexist and attitudes around motherhood haven't really changed.

Which is why your ex could walk away but you never would

@WineDup

It came from your description.
And the reality of most relationships.

Perhaps you werent clear enough because now you're saying you don't have 100% of the mental load after all.

In fact now you're saying it's you doing the 10%

Oh, and I was absolutely clear I'd only accept 50:50 parenting, shared drop offs and pickups etc. How we would raise children was discussed extensively and agreed prior to having them. I also returned to work full time after short maternity leaves both times and was the higher earner.

So please, lovely smug posters, do advise me of exactly where I went wrong and justify your victim blaming for him walking out in us when they were tiny. I'm all ears.

I absolutely agree the men are rubbish but what about women who accept this as the norm and allow their-selves to be martyrs? Some of the threads I read on here are unbelievable!

Sometimes when I read these threads I genuinely can't understand why anyone would accept that kind of treatment from their so called "dear husbands".

I know myself and I would never put up with such shite and my husband knows
what I expect from him.

Most times these threads are from women with little to no income and can't just "leave" because they'll have nothing so they put up with it. It's sad and more reason why I cringe when I see women just giving up everything to become the primary care giver and supporting a man who can't so much change a nappy if needed. Sigh.