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 agree, mental load is only a thing when only one person in a family carries it all.
It refers to partnerships where one party, typically the man, pretty much lives as if he is a child in the parental home. He goes to work, hands over some money for expenses, and maybe (but by no means always) sorts out things directly related to himself, his car, his clothes etc. Meanwhile the other partner organises and implements everything else to keep the home and family running.
Whether this is hard work or not for person two is debatable and variable. Some people have higher standards and/or more complex lives than others, so naturally will find it more challenging than people with more time and smaller lives.
But easy or hard, it's work that person one never has to think about, and that's the source of the resentment.

Same here, but it works out at 75% for half the hours worked.

The hours are just treated as hours, because this is fair - although there are some extra allowances made when the job requires it

So in marks world of financial supremacy a nurse who works full time should do all the housework and parenting because they earn less than their oh who is an IT cons who sits on their arse all day?

😂😂

It just doesn't make any sense. Yes if one of the couple earns much more money both partners might choose to prioritise it (would be nuts not to), but past a certain point a difference in wages would lock you at 0% of the housework for life...how convenient.

There's one situation where 0% housework would be justified, that's where there no/adult kids and DP is working 0 hours a week. Other than that, nope

Had a bit of a row this morning over the is. My DH said he has done the washing and drying of the clothes this week twice. I said so fucking what you live here.

Yep. And once you're stuck in that cycle, you are trapped.

Fortunately (?) my husband left before we got into that, so I've always had to cope with it all on my own and giving up work was not an option. Hello £3.5k childcare bill per month for specialist childcare for disabled children. Plus the mortgage. And what did he contribute, any childcare or money? Nope. So either way, you cannot win and these useless men do need holding to account, forcing to do their share by the tax and CMS system being fix, by people becoming as disgusted with a man for leaving his children as they would be for a woman and shunning them, by fixing employment policies and childcare so that fewer women ever become financially dependent on men, by us all raising our sons and daughters to know better.

But arguing that the status quo is ok, women's fault, or even desirable (!?) is beyond mind numbingly stupid, and it's sad there have been so many posters doing so.

🤣🤣🤣 Jesus Christ. What a hero. 🎻

But easy or hard, it's work that person one never has to think about, and that's the source of the resentment.

This is it in a nutshell.

Mental load applies when one person knows it doesn’t really matter if they drop a ball (or several), because the other person will catch it.

It’s the domestic equivalent of thinking “I can bunk off at 3 and go to the pub because I know someone will cover”.

by people becoming as disgusted with a man for leaving his children as they would be for a woman and shunning them

Exactly! Women are held to much higher standards across the board, and some of the worst criticism comes from other women!
Have some solidarity, smash the patriarchy instead of propping it up!

Exactly!

I've made some very practical suggestions in this thread of policies people could lobby their MPs to include in their next manifestos to start that process.

I wonder how many will do so...

Oh and @Badbadbunny then, if there is anything left at the end, can leave their DC only half as much without paying inheritance tax. So it's even compounded on an inter-genenerational level.

In fairness, we absolutely should be held to higher standards than men because we are better than them in practically every conceivable matter. The only things they excel in over us is matters of violence and depravity.

Rubbish. Men are perfectly capable of being decent human beings. We as a society need to make it clear that this is what is expected, and that nobody will be interested in being their friend/ family/ partner unless they do.

I'm not gonna disagree that by treating people as individuals, free to go it alone or couple up (or even live communally in social groups of three or more) that the tax system has systemic properties as you described. (Although really, they aren't five different examples, they are variations of the same one, which is that multiple people co-habiting get to pool multiple tax allowances and thresholds. You are wrong on the Council tax, by the way ... the 25% discount is based on an assessment that half the council tax is for costs on a per/household basis regardless of occupancy, and half is based on costs on a per adult occupant basis and assumed two adults per property. Hence a 25% discount for single occupancy is fair.)

But the abolition of the regime that treated households as the single taxable entity was one of the first goals of feminism. Many women consider having their own tax allowances a massive win. It's a cornerstone of financial independence. It's also a benefit that anyone can chose to enjoy - you simply have to chose to co-habit with someone. The sex of that person, or whether you are romantically involved or not, is inconsequential. So it's not a disadvantage if all people could have it, but where some make life choices like eschewing living with a partner that mean they don't ...

Surely you'd have a reasonable idea of how things would be before you married.

Men have low expectations of them, but they shouldn’t. So many household jobs don’t require a vagina to complete them, so why should women be the default parent, the default cleaner?
Men absolutely should be expected to do better.
As much as plenty of us fantasise about life without men, this is only because they are, on the whole, so lacking. We should really aspire to more from them.

So many people rear their sons well, to consider women and girls, but sadly something happens - maybe some hive mind thing - and too many leave these valuable lessons behind them.

Not sure if this was aimed at me, but no, no idea. H was an equal in every way. It was after 3 dc that things changed. Maternity leave had changed from 12 weeks (dc1) to 12 months (dc3) and he resented it, called it a holiday (because being home with 3 under 4 was such fun!).
Things went slowly downhill from there. Once disabilities were diagnosed it all collapsed, whilst he felt he was being ultra supportive.

There were no clues, even with hindsight.

Yes men should do better, but they’ll never be able to be on par with us as a class. To expect them to be our equals would be akin to expecting a dog to learn how to use a knife and fork.

You are of course entitled to you view, but I'd counter with anyone who gets mad at a dog for not eating with a knife and fork is the crazy one. The dog will just look at you incomprehensibly, then go and lick its balls. And then you'll go and hug it later anyway. Or if you don't, it will sulk for a bit until someone else gives it a hug.

I think I can probably guess what we would think of anyone who advocates kicking the dog (or abandoning it) ...

I don’t quite agree with you, yet, but I’m definitely getting there!

The dog will just look at you incomprehensibly, then go and lick its balls.

If men were more bendy I bet this would apply to them too, they certainly do the incomprehensible look!

Aaaaaand... we're back at the start of the thread. 🙄

And when you need rescued from the top floor of your burning house, or need emergency brain surgery, or need cutting out of a crashed car, or rescued from a knife wielding maniac....chances are it'll be a woman that comes to your rescue, right?

Yep. No point blaming anyone else if you married a dick.
You married a man who is a dick, well thats down to you. Lots of us chose to marry someone who shares the load.