All women I know are in my situation

[growli]

Pretty useless DH. They're left to look after the kids. Called nags if they complain.

It mostly falls on them. The marriages are pretty rubbish.

I've posted here so many times about my issues with my H and my lifestyle with small kids.

I always get told I need to divorce. I get told that there are other men out there who aren't as useless with their children.

In real life, every woman I know, faces something similar. Mainly responsible for everything to do with kids and house, works full time most of the time too.

Husband works hard, but doesn't contribute to looking after the kids or household. Complains of not enough sex.

The women I know are highly educated and in successful careers. We all feel stitched up. We were told if we study hard and are in successful careers, we wouldn't end up being slaves to our husbands and children.

What happened to the men our parents raised ? For them to expect women to still be like their mothers ? Doing everything for kids and family.

Mothers and mothers in law in general ( even though they raised us to be successful career women with choices ) don't have a whole lot of sympathy as it seems a raise to the bottom and ' how much harder ' it was for them.

I realise I'm generalising

Yanbu

From my observations, there are some decent men, but mostly they are useless! Either when it comes to sharing the load or in marriage.

Yeah I agree with you OP

In my close friendship group there are 6 equal partnerships and 2 where the man is an extra child. Of course this is a thing OP, it has been the norm for 100s of years 'men go out to provide, woman does stuff at home' and that culture has trickled down. We see it daily where men get praised for doing the simplest thing like changing a nappy.

However, I am so anti this idea that women have no responsibility in their own decision making and life. If you had told us of a friendship with a female friend and she was being horrible to you. None of us would blame you for her horrible actions, but we would ask 'why do you keep hanging out with her?'

You chose someone and he ended up not being an equal partner (maybe there were signs, maybe there weren't). You can nag, you can mother or you can leave. As you can see from this thread, there are heaps of men who are not like this, so if you HAVE to be in a relationship, there is a chance of finding someone better suited to you. What is not going to happen is a miraculous change from your husband. If you want something to change, you have to make something change. You are in charge of your own life.

This isn't to blame you in any way (as implied by PP).... I got a bad one too and chose him at age 18 where I just didn't have enough life experience to be making good choices. He was making me unhappy, I told him, he didn't change. So it was then on me to be responsible for my own happiness and I got a new one who is much better suited to me.

My husband is pretty good and I’d say it’s the same for most people I know, including both my brothers who are at least 50% - if not more - in their respective relationships. Agree we’re usually the ones carrying the mental load though. But I don’t work FT so I guess that’s fair.

Are women anymore wired to it, or is it more about socialization?
Women’s worth, even today, is strongly tied to having a man and kids.
Just look and read how horribly childfree women are talked about!
People act like they have zero worth.

Yep your bang on the money here. My hubby works and that's pretty much it.

Here's the big taboo though.
The kind of men that'd be happy to go go 50/50. I just don't find them attractive. I find them to feminine and eastrogenic. I like a useless neanditol caveman. And I like to do everything so I can be martyr and moan.

she was telling my how sad she was that this lady (partner at a city law firm) was crying to her that her husband who had insisted that he give up work to become a SAHP and now wants her to get a nanny to look after baby along side their cleaner so he can write his book… she just wants to stay at home with her baby- but they can’t afford that- and he has gone from contributing very little financially to nothing as well as now doing nothing round the house.

Sounds like a near identical situation to a friend of mine. She's a partner in a law firm and he's allegedly a sahp, but somehow she still seems to end up doing most of the actual parenting. Luckily for her she never married him though.

I’d say in my friendship group it’s 50/50 with equal partners/useless husbands. Bizarrely, the ones with useless husband are usually the ones who choose to have more than two kids; blows my mind as I find my two (absolutely lovely but) hard work even with a completely equal partner.

I see a whole range within my friendship group from the deadbeat useless dad (I don't know why she stays) to an equal 50/50 split. However it's overwhelmingly mums that sort out school related stuff.

Im in my 40s and have lots of married friends that have opted to remain child free by choice. I'd say it's maybe two thirds with children and a third without.

@ILikeToSleepALot I think it's fairly common. A lot of men would say oh no no no, I love my children just as much as my x. But they walk away and stay away because of........ awkwardness? I think a lot of men can only be Dads if it's like a side order to the relationship they're in. They won't go out of their way. At one point, my controlling lunatic x tried to order me back to the uk after I'd escaped. I was so stressed, my plan was to go back to the UK but not to anywhere near him. Luckily the judge allowed me to stay in my own country but he just accepted that. He went from ''the children must be ordered to return to me'' to......''well it's not convenient to fly to the netherlands once every three weeks''. That kind of attitude. I used to fly to take the children to see him, but after a while, it dwindled because HE wasn't that nice to them while they were there and they stopped wanting to go. He literally couldn't handle them for one week, couldn't pretend to be a half decent man for ONE week! If the result had been the other way around, I would have revolved my whole life around staying near enough by to be an emotional support to them.

ps, I know that there are exceptions to this attitude, but it's not rare.

It really, truly isn't my reality, OP.

But the older I get, the more common a reality I realise it is. I think our marriage may be unusual.

I've also been told many times over my life how difficult and dreadful and amoral I am. There might be a connection.

DH os constantly asking me to remind him about stuff. 'Oh, remind me about XYZ', 'Oh, you need to remind me about getting that fixed'.

Why?!? Why should I need to?? Why can't you remember?! It immediately puts the responsibility on me

One son is currently cooking dinner and another has cleaned two rooms in the house and put up a rota for the others. If we train them, they will do it.

DD and friends all expect their BF’s to cook and clean

explain next time there is a complaint about lack of sex - treat me like your mother and sex is unappealing - treat me like a lover and see what happens

Regarding “weaponised incompetence,” which I think very much does exist, I do also know an awful lot of women who use weaponised “competence.” You only have to look on Mumsnet to see plenty of deeply judgemental threads about whether a house can be messy but clean; whether you should be changing bedsheets daily, weekly, fortnightly or monthly; whether or not it is your fault if you are unable to get time off to see your child in a school performance in the middle of the day; whether or not your child or school should dare to expect it, etc. I do sometimes wonder how much of the issue is weaponised incompetence and how much is actually intolerant, judgemental nastiness; unkindness and self-centred behaviour; or being obsessive about pointless, unnecessary work that it became traditional to do in a particular way at particular times , rather than being genuinely necessary. With no clearly defined and delineated roles or standards for anybody, you also lose any kind of set standard to live up to, so it does actually just come down to whatever is going on in your own head. And, imvho, some women are phenomenally intolerant of anyone’s standards but their own, however miserable these are making them and everyone else around them..

Genuinely this isn't representative of my friendship group.

Friends of friends, cousins, Mumsnet (!) - yeah plenty.

I don’t buy for a moment that all men are distant from their dc. I think, just like women, some men welcome the prospect of babies and others don’t. It’s not a one size fits all.

My dh was a deeply involved father from the beginning, getting up in the night, and holding down a tough job. I’d go as far as saying he was a much more patient parent than me.

He didn’t feel guilty though about doing it his way, he would sit the babies on his lap while watching cricket whereas I would be compelled to take them out and that was my issue really! He would always be there when they were throwing up, attend parents evenings, take them to extra curricular stuff, advise on boyfriends, pick them up from friends houses.

He may not be outwardly good at showing emotion but he is deeply, deeply attached to his dds. In fact I have the opposite problem that now they are adults, he loves them so much they have him wrapped around their little fingers 😂

^ Sorry hope that doesn’t come across as smug-boasty but felt compelled to put the case that all blokes aren’t the same. Don’t get me wrong, no one is perfect, and we’ve had our issues and arguments and still do several decades later.

This is something I saw growing up so marriage never appealed. That said I didn’t want children so the decision was much easier for me. No regrets as I watch my friends divorcing…

I have every understanding of how the world works. Which is why I'm aware accepting the ultimate share of domestic labour and childcare isn't an inevitable consequence of having been born female. That is the myopic view, not the knowledge that things don't have to remain the same because that's how they have always been.

This isn't my experience at all.

I spent the morning out with a friend - meeting her new puppy and going for brunch, and since coming home all I've done is sat on my arse on sofa and watched re-runs of Gladiators.

DH did have a lie-in but since then he's mown the lawn, walked the dog, gone food shopping, tidied up in the bedroom and organised the "crap drawer" in the living room.

The problem is that too many women put up with useless men and moan about it. Too many women marry useless men and hope they'll change later. Too many women are scared to be single and desperate to have kids before it's too late.

The problem is that often when you have a useless DH - you do end up nagging. So they then have that as their defence.

The trick is to only take on half the load and ignore their half and ignore if it's not done.

Write a list of chores.

Decide who does what.

Do your chores. If his aren't done then when you go to supermarket you don't buy his snacks, alcohol etc. just family food and your treats.

When you wash/iron you only do yours and kids.

You start a family Google calendar or similar. Add anything you are both doing or for kids to it.

At the weekend you get up and say "I'm off out. I'll be back at 4" if he hasn't added anything to calendar for him. (Even if you know he's going out).

If he won't take half responsibility and you asking is nagging - then you meet him where he thinks it's ok to be.

If nothing still changes then you leave. Then he can take 50% of it anyway but your life becomes easier without a max child tagging along for the ride.

At least your honest.

I don't think many women would admit that they like to be a martyr but it's definitely a thing too.