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.

It's not "blaming" women. There's no doubt that feckless men are to blame when they're feckless. The point is that, perhaps, women could reduce the risk of ending up with a feckless man. Note, I said, "reduce" not eliminate.

Of course, a seemingly "decent" bloke can turn out feckless. Simple probability theory proves that you can't 100% eliminate risk.

My point is that seemingly a lot of women don't put themselves in the best position to REDUCE risk and plough on with clearly "doubtful" men when the signs are there. None of that is to say that every "bad" man had visible signs earlier on. But in a lot of cases, the signs would have been there.

Compare it with a house burglary. You can install good locks on doors and windows, install an alarm, have security lighting, etc etc., but still get burgled if you're unlucky. But if you don't install those precautions or you go out and leave your front door unlocked, your "chances" of being burgled are a lot higher!

Are you honestly saying you think the vast majority of women were tricked into this by men who pretended to be great until kids arrived? And then left?

Is anyone saying women are tricked?
IME having children changed my priority, but not exH’s. He didn’t trick me, he subtly became resentful that children were taking up my time - even though creating them was equally decided and carried out. First child we pretty much carried on as normal, everything ok, tiny signs that I was carrying the load, but he worked more hours, so all fair.

By child 3 his attitude had slowly changed to the point where he opted out of much of the parenting, particularly when one was discovered to be autistic, and one of us had no option but to stop work (of course that was me, because by that point I’d already missed chunks of work because of mat leave and ex was earning more).

Several years on I have managed to leave him. The toll of being a single mother within a relationship has been huge.

It’s so easy to blame women for putting up with crap men, but in reality I know no one who chose to have babies with such a man, and I know many whose husbands changed having had children.

Please stop blaming women for men’s behaviour.

@NocturnalClocks

I think given the fact that the vast majority of these posts are from women still in these relationships is enough to suggest that women need to take an equal amount of the blame

It comes back to sexist attitudes and what we teach girls to accept.

I really don't think it's that far out of the realms of possibility given what we know about how women and men are socialised and attitudes to parenting and relationships to theorise that lots of women enable the behaviours

@MiaMoor

Im not.

Men are responsible for men's behaviour. Women are responsible for theirs.

Society as a whole is responsible for repeating sexist attitudes around parenting

The only way many of us single mothers could have reduced the chances of being with such a man would have been to plan not to marry or have children.

Lots of men pull back after children are born.
Lots resent their wives having mat leave, even though shared leave is now a thing men rarely take it - why?

Lots of decent men become good fathers in that they play, do the Disney dad stuff - oh he’s so good with them!, but rarely do they do the many dreary tasks that are so vital. Why?

@Badbadbunny I completely agree with all of your last post. And shall make sure I educate my daughter as such. I suspect she'll be inclined to be very aware of this, anyway, having been abandoned by her own father, but I shall be hammering that nail, so to speak.

There are certainly women who put up with ridiculous things from men, and shouldn't. And anything we can do to educate women not to put up with that I am 100% in support of.

My posts were more a reaction to the many posts on this thread making huge generalisations implying that the reason women end up in awful situations/ as single parents is usually because of having low standards. This assertion/ implication I don't believe is supported by evidence. And having it bandied around even on this forum further stigmatises badly treated/ abused women and single mothers who in many cases could not have foreseen what would happen to them.

@MiaMoor

Because they don't have to?

Because society tells them it's not their job?

Most women are horrified by the idea of shared leave.

@MiaMoor

Please stop blaming women for men’s behaviour.

No one is doing that. What people are saying is that women perhaps need to do more to protect themselves from feckless men. We have to accept that we'll never change the behaviour of feckless men. Once you've accepted that, then the next stage becomes obvious, which is to avoid them as much as possible.

We shouldn't have burglars or bad drivers or fraudsters, but we have to be realistic and pragmatic in that there will always be such people, so we have to protect ourselves as far as possible, by taking precautions, secure your house, be wary and observant on the roads, try to learn about and recognise scams etc.

Obviously, there will be some men who show no signs, behave impeccably, but "change" once they're married and/or have children. You can't really guard against that. But what you can guard against are the ones who DO show poor attitude/poor behaviour etc, maybe not to you (at first), but to others, and we need to learn to recognise the signs and not be conned (and that's what is happening) into thinking they're decent blokes when under the surface they're not! As I say, a lot of the time, the signs are there, we need to look for them and act on them.

None of that is "blaming women for men's behaviour" - it's about women protecting themselves as far as possible from it!

I think given the fact that the vast majority of these posts are from women still in these relationships is enough to suggest that women need to take an equal amount of the blame

It comes back to sexist attitudes and what we teach girls to accept.

Wow. So again, a huge, sexist generalisation (that because some women say something it "blame" should apply to all women in that situation) without any evidence to support it, and then you say we should avoid sexism. Ironic.

@NocturnalClocks

Do you have evidence to support your insistence that women are always completed blindsided by these behaviours?

I disagree that the signs are always completely obvious. As other APPs have said, sometimes the load is just so much smaller pre-kids you just don't notice. In most cases, I find it's only when it's 2 or 3 kids down that the woman really starts to realise how much she's taken on. It just sort of creeps up otherwise. Pre-kids, she's doing cooking and more cleaning but she likes cooking and has high standards and she still has plenty of down time, so it's all good. Then first kid, she's doing night wakings and has accepted the housekeeping role, but he's earning well and working long hours so she might feel a bit upset, but if he takes the child for a few hours on a saturday, she thinks it's okay. But then she has a second child or a third and her life just continues to get harder and harder while his stays largely the same. And suddenly one day she wakes up and realises what has happened.

And yes, as a few PP have pointed out, there are times when there are huge red flags and other times less so.

But overall, what's true is that our society has programmed women to not pay as much attention to these flags as perhaps we should. Even on here.... I've lost track of the number of times a woman will post about her useless "D"H and along comes yet another poster suggesting how the WOMAN should make it easier for her H to help or offering excuses for his behaviour or whatever. And this is on Mumsnet - a site that's pretty well known for being pro-women!

So in real life, it's 100000x worse.

Obviously, there will be some men who show no signs, behave impeccably, but "change" once they're married and/or have children. You can't really guard against that.

And my point is should those women and the children of those men be stigmatised for their behaviour, financially disadvantaged because even other women are quite happy to accept a not fit for purpose CMS system that isn't enforced, a tax system that disadvantages those women and their children (charging them more tax than a two parent household with the same income, even though the lone parent is doing twice the work) etc? Or should we - while educating girls not to marry obviously useless men and have children with them as you have said - ALSO be supporting women who end up being a lone parent when this was simply terrible luck? And why is it that so many posters are happy to make generalisation stigmatising such women and never pressure their MPs or campaign to equalise the tax system, enforce proper CMS etc, which would also massively reduce child poverty? It's a very one-sided view to just focus on how to avoid a situation that you've admitted is not completely avoidable no matter how careful you are. So where it the support for women who were the unlucky ones - who got "burgled" anyway to use your analogy - rather than increasing the stigma?

@MiaMoor

Saying women just like cooking and have higher standards so they ignore the signs so that makes it OK is just reinforcing the sexist expectations

those are the signs

Boiling a frog still results in a boiled frog. You can't say there was no boiling water once the frog is boiled

We also appear to be saying the same thing

Stop teaching girls to accept it from the very start

Stop teaching them and boys that girls are naturally inclined to like cooking and have higher standards

It's bullshit

I'd fully support change tax and CMS systems

Im fully in favour of shared care, 50/50

But to get to that point parents have to share care pre split.

And they don't

I think sometimes women make a pact with the devil when it comes to parenthood. If they're driving the decision to have kids, they often feel they then have to shield their DP from the full extent of the work involved.

Both my closest friends are in this situation. Kind, loving partners but pretty clueless about the nuts and bolts of parenting. They've allowed this because he 'allowed' them to have kids.

If men yearned for fatherhood and were truly driving the decision it would be different.

I did not make any such claim.

Read my posts.

I said that clearly some women make very poor choices and we should educate girls as much as we can to avoid this, as I'll be doing with my own daughter. I said in some cases it was not foreseeable at all that the men women marry/ have children with would later behave in this way. I said I do not know what the proportions are and therefore we shouldn't be making generalisations about it unless anybody has any data to verify that statistically generalisations are justified. And i said that since most posters seem to be accepting my point that it is not always avoidable, there should also be political pressure from women to make sure that women and children are not disadvantaged as they are now when they end up in a situation that - at least in some cases - they are not remotely to blame for.

To blame women is such a typical misogynist victim-blaming approach. It's like blaming someone for getting drunk and therefore it's there's no sympathy when something bad happens. Possibly, I am less likely to be date-raped if I am completely sober. But if I am drunk, that does not make the man's behaviour okay.

Similarly, if I am drunk and fall over and hurt myself, of course that's my fault. Doesn't mean I don't deserve sympathy and support or that now I can't access medical care.

The standards to which we hold men are waaaayyy too low. Single men who see their children only occasionally are not, in my experience, shunned by society or judged. A friend of my brother's left his wife after he had an affair. She had quite bad mental health problems which he blamed for the breakdown of their marriage. Interestingly, he made no attempt to get custody of the children and he moved to a completely different COUNTRY less than a year later. From my perspective, I have no interest in being friendly with that man or having anything to do with him ever again even though we were quite friendly when younger and all hanging out together. But I've been told multiple times that I am not sympathetic enough or that I don't understand the details etc.

@NocturnalClocks

I don't think anyone has said some women had no clue/s.

I do think there is enough evidence to suggest its rare. Enough to allow generalisations.

But my point is that many men are not feckless until they have children, and by then it’s far more difficult to get yourself out of that situation. So how do you protect yourself from that?

For me the main thing is to bring our daughters up to be financially independent, but even then sometimes it’s not possible.

If men yearned for fatherhood and were truly driving the decision it would be different.

Again maybe I'm the anomaly in this situation but while I always wanted children, I was very hesitant to do it because my own childhood was so sad. It was my ex-H who was very keen and persuaded me it would be ok, with repeated assurances about all parenting and responsibility being 50/50 and that they would never have a broken home...

Again, you can't generalise.

I do think there is enough evidence to suggest its rare. Enough to allow generalisations.

What evidence?

But my point is that many men are not feckless until they have children, and by then it’s far more difficult to get yourself out of that situation. So how do you protect yourself from that?

Exactly.

For me the main thing is to bring our daughters up to be financially independent, but even then sometimes it’s not possible.

Completely agree. Luckily for my children I did this myself, so I can provide for them now their father has run off. And I'll raise both of my children to ensure they don't entangle finances with anybody or have children unless they know they can provide for themselves and their children without the other parent: all parents should be doing that.

@NocturnalClocks

Ive said a couple of times already.

Where's yours?

If we accept that saying women have no agency or are never at fault (other wise we are mysoginist) then how do we change things?

Do you think men will change?

Bringing girls up to be financially independent is a big change in women's current behaviour

Do you think parents (women) who don't do this are at fault?

Saying that as a society we need to teach women to spot these flags and/or expect more is very different to blaming women for not doing so.
You can't expect things to change in a vacuum. Denying the reality of how people are brought up, societal expectations etc is completely unhelpful.