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

How long did you know him, live with him, before you became pregnant?

I find it extremely farfetched that so many men are Jekyll and Hyde, cleverly concealing their low character for years and years until children are on the scene.

This.

My dh does most of the pick ups and drop offs as his work is more flexible than mine, plus he attends school events so people think he’s a hero.

He actually is a truly great dad. He totally steps up for the kids. He did bath and bedtimes when they were small (if he was home in time), always finds time for them and doesn’t miss an event. He would do anything for them but he’s not so great around the house.

He does very little housework. He does load the dishwasher once most days (it needs doing at least twice a day) but never manages to unload it and put things away, he puts the bins out, feeds the dogs, mows the lawn and he will ring most days on his way home to see if I need anything picking up from the supermarket. That’s pretty much it.

I do everything else including manage our finances. We don’t have a cleaner as they are like gold dust around here but I do send the ironing out (he will sometimes drop that off too!). I have to clean the entire house, vacuum daily, mop floors, change beds, plump cushions and clear up the family’s clutter (the kids aren’t great with the housework either).

Even with all that, I don’t think I could find anyone better (not that I’m looking!). Dh is useless around the house but the kids couldn’t wish for a better dad. He is a high earner, very thoughtful in other ways (he brings me coffee in bed on the mornings he is up first, has given me some of the most amazing surprises over the years and often tells me to sleep in at the weekend or when he is taking dc to school) and while he doesn’t pull his weight with the house, neither do most of the other men that we know (and these are all professional men with professional partners). Funnily enough I have one sahm friend who’s dh does all of the cooking for the family as he loves it and she’s not so keen. I also know one couple who do split everything 50/50 but she works away a lot.

I do sometimes feel resentful that I am left doing everything but I’m not prepared to argue about it at this stage and as dh quite rightly points out - he does more than most men and has a very busy working life (all true, he is certainly not lazy, absorbed in a man hobby or idling around at the pub). I may or may not decide to stay around when the kids are grown up but I’m not under any illusions that there are loads of men out there who are different because I just don’t see it.

Sorry OP, my situation isn’t anything like yours but then I didn’t meet DP until we were each late 30s and children weren’t on the card for either of us. However we do have one DC and I work PT. However, DP does 50/50 childcare and his fair share around the house inc most of the cooking.

We work as a team. When DC was tiny DP thought he could carry on his life without making changes but we spoke and he knew I would leave and childcare would be 50/50. He decided he would adapt because he wanted us all to be a family.

Right from the start I made it clear what I would and would not tolerate. This is what women need to do (ideally before DC come along).

At the moment I know of 3 women who have left their husbands and refuse to put up with this shit. I don’t know any women who put up with crap relationships - I think the tide is turning. Thank god!

I guess it depends on what your ex is like.

My colleague split up with her DH and he has their (very challenging) son every weekend, he collects him from school on Friday and drops him to school on Monday.

They go half each on holidays.

She is absolutely loving it.
She said she’s never had so much freedom and she has so much more energy when she has her son and she feels a better parent for it.

If you have an ex that you were doing it all anyway and then they don’t do anything after you split up then you haven’t lost anything by not being with them.

Its the ones who did fuck all when you were together and then kick up a fuss to see their kids after you’ve separated and then not bother turning up to see them and letting them down every time.

Long enough to observe the rapid about turn.

In fact, we got married and very shortly afterwards I got a ‘you’re my wife so you must…’ speech.

People can and do play a part until they think your stick with them.

Mine does 🤷🏻‍♀️ He does more drop offs than me, goes to all the parent meetings because I work late hours, and organised/booked our summer holiday this year.
He doesn’t do 50% of the household cooking. More like 30% I reckon. But he does (probably more than) 70% of the clothes washing because I hate it. I don’t think people are implying they do 50% of each task, but 50% of the total workload including invisible tasks. At least that’s what I meant when I said it.

Aww well then to put in in Mumsnet talk you have ‘a DH problem’ sounds like you are generally under appreciated by him and that’s a shame. You deserve to be appreciated💖

i think I probably felt like this when ours were little but now dh does more than me because he works from home and I don’t, and he also does most of the sports fixtures, Scouts stuff etc. Things change.

Sorry, and as for why I don’t divorce him.

I want kids and I know he will be a completely dedicated father devoted to his kids, as was my father who was also perfectly useless around the house. Countless studies have shown that kids need their dads and kids without good father figures suffer. So divorcing him to teach him a lesson would actively harm the kids.

And he is aware of the emotional labour and that I do the majority of it, and recognises the same dynamics in his parents and siblings and their partners. Our compromise is that I do the mental load while he takes on the bulk of the physical load (he cooks, washes up, does shopping, cleans out cat litter etc).

I’d be taking on 100% of the mental load with or without him (I do it at work too with my current male boss), but with him I can at least offload the vast majority of the physical load.

My (now ex) male friend regularly cheated on his DP and would talk bad about her saying she doesn’t have sex regularly etc and just be disrespectful.

I asked him why he was on dating sites saying he’s single when he could actually just separate and be single and then he wouldn’t have to sneak around and worry about getting caught.

He said that his gf was like his PA.
He said he gets to go and do whatever he wants knowing he’ll come home and everything has been sorted for him.
He said he doesn’t even check his personal email because she does it and she’ll reply and sort anything out that needs doing.

I haven’t spoke to him in a long while but I know he’s still doing similar things.

But it’s always stuck with me because I do actually think many men see their DWs as substitutes for their mum and many men get into a relationship for sex and to be taken care of.
I guess it’s built in them as historically this has always been the case.

I don't think your marriage sounds at all unusual for 2023. For my mother's generation it was a different story; perhaps it was witnessing my father's behaviour to her which made me determined never to put up with the same should I ever become someone's life partner. And if that was an attitude that kept me single in perpetuity, so be it.

As to your final paragraph, if you don't use typical defensive language, or apologise all the time, or bow down to the old mantras that a woman's place is to be kind, or in the wrong, or in the kitchen; if you know your boundaries and stick to them: then if you're female you might quite well find yourself being accused of being difficult, or dreadful, or immoral. Such behaviour would likely pass unnoticed in a male. In women, unfortunately, it doesn't always make for popularity.

Interesting, OP.

I think there's variability, of course - as evidenced on this thread.
But on average, if we were to tot up all the stuff done by men and women, factoring in hours of paid work outside the house, I agree that women would be doing way, WAY more.

I think we've been sold a dud. We've all fought to "have it all", and have ended up (on average) "doing it all". Unpopular as this is as a view, I think men really might be less suited (in general - with usual disclaimer about variability) to household/child mental load stuff than we are. So we work for our financial emancipation, and also end up doing more than our share of other stuff.

The solution might be to value (financially and otherwise) "house"/"family" stuff more, rather than to force an "equality" across house/paid-outside-house tasks which will inevitably leave women short changed.

@Rottenapples

Sorry but I think you’re deluding yourself a bit.

If your DP can’t look after cats without your input, then how is he going to step up to look after kids without your input.

Most men love their kids.
But love isn’t enough to raise them.

I think once you have kids and you’re the one taking on 90% of the workload you will have a very different opinion.

It isn't how it always is at all.

Thankfully.

Agree, this is also my experience. I can't see a single man pulling his weight in all circles, neighbours, school parents, social circles, work colleagues, sporting activities etc. All of the men suck.

His answer was that the marriage and kids thing was his wife's desire and she insisted to have it, her biological clock was ticking etc. He would've been happy to stay childfree and doesn't really see the point of reproducing. And as he sees it, if you want kids, then, once you have them, it's not fair to nag for help with them. He sees the kids as his wife's responsibility pretty much entirely, although he agrees he has a financial duty towards them

As long as men are upfront with their partners when discussing and planning children so that the women can make an informed decision then not really an issue as much as those who play along and say they want children too because they're too afraid of the woman walking away only to not be arsed when they're born.

The solution might be to value (financially and otherwise) "house"/"family" stuff more, rather than to force an "equality" across house/paid-outside-house tasks which will inevitably leave women short changed.

Yeah of course. The problem is, women themselves are the first to devalue stay at home mums.

This is a recipe for disaster. I wish you well, but you'll be here in a few years complaining about your worthless POS of a husband, and how you do it all.

*all grocery shopping
all cooking
all laundry
shopping for kids’ clothes
Making kids’ lunchboxes
organising extra curricular activities
Organising childcare

he does:
all driving
all financial and legal admin
putting out rubbish
recycling
mowing the lawn*

So that is about 98-2% split? Why is putting out rubbish even listed, it takes what, 30 seconds per week?

can say hand on heart that I’ve never encountered a man who hasn’t disappointed me

That’s really resonated with me

I am now a single parent. When I was with my ex I’d argue that we were 50/50 as he did loads around the house and was a very hands on parent. And still is tbf. However, since divorcing I’ve realised he is still leaning on me for stupid things regarding our daughter. Like inane questions about what she’d prefer for dinner, or would like to do at the weekend, that he could work out himself.

my life is so much simpler now.

It's far more tricky to deal with a lazy partner than some suggest. My DH is a good man in most ways but has an aversion to housework and seems to park his intelligent brain somewhere else whenever a domestic matter needs dealing with. Yes, sometimes I suspect strategic incompetence but other times I feel I'm battling centuries of ingrained social engineering.

I'm no pushover so hostility can develop. Should I need to keep reminding a grown ass man how things work in our home? He's abdicating responsibility. Sometimes he just doesn't see it, or sees it but doesn't care, his preoccupations are always more important or more pressing and "You're so much better at it", ha ha. All too often it's a case of if I don't do it, it doesn't get done.

I haven't enabled it, I haven't tolerated it but still it persists and it wears me down and eats away at the respect. It's an insidious tiresome attitude to deal with and you end up asking yourself how much do the good times make up for the daily drudgery? And no, making me a cup of tea in the morning is not going to cut it.

But some men do that and without expecting applause for it, granted I expect lots don't but I don't really get why there's this view that if they do they expect to be told how amazing they are.

In the few couples I know where the man is useless at home, the woman is also the higher earner. Lazy at home, lazy at work.

OP I don't think it's that.

I thinks it more that women can see how SAHMs get fucked over if the marriage breaks down.

And then need to return to work on the back foot, having spent years out of the workforce.

While he's built his career and pension.

They leave themselves very vulnerable.

I think it’s possible that we don’t hear an awful lot about bad marriages if we’re in a circle of people in seemingly happy marriages. People in happy marriages tend to socialise with other happy couples and there’s a natural ousting of people once they divorce. I did find that once I’d taken the decision to separate lots of women in the circle who i’d assumed had amazing relationships were tripping over themselves to confide in me that not all was as it seemed in their relationships either. And I have to say a few years later , as the children grew, many also divorced.