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

Single parent. Do most of everything (financial, childcare, all housework). Don't miss having a man around the place. If they went, would we miss them?

The only man I know who carries the load more than his partner took shared parental leave. He also was orphaned by 16 and left with severely disabled younger sibling.
My friends often resent or hate their partners and just stay for the children. I want my son to be cherished by his partner, he is still little but is taking responsibility for household tasks and remembering things.

Yabu. It's not all the woman I know. Some have shit husbands, yes. Many don't. Hope things improve for you.

@Seddon I totally agree -

Stayathomer, I would never list any of those things for my dh I'd leave him to sort it out for himself, he's a grown man

Oh OP I was really sad to read tonight you are so unhappy.
I go on strike if my husband is being difficult. We had our children after 12 years of marriage. They are now 20/24.
We genuinely do about 50% each. He does washing, ironing, hoovering, shopping. I cook. If I get fed up with it he buys ding!
I am the higher earner but I am poorly at the moment so not working.
We don't have a joint bank account and tbh when I did have a career break I resented it. I like the French way, all professional women go back to work. Their education shouldn't be wasted.
I did have a time when the children were small I didn't think I liked him very much (my friends love him). I threatened him with being a McDonald's dad. He changed his ways.
If you don't want to do something around the house leave it. I did the same at uni with lazy arses. No clean shirts? not your problem, ditto food for him.
Both my DH and I come from four sibling families. Our mothers worked. We had chores. Our children had the same. If he won't do more hire it in.
My worry is you are unhappy. Give him a year to improve and get a counsellor to talk to once a week. Respect needs to be mutual. And as for sex tbh if you were saying yes every day he would soon get knacked (I suggested this to a friend who had a lusty husband, he soon said give it a rest love). My mother was an expert on men. She was third time lucky with my dad. He did the lions share of bringing us up. Good luck and big girl pants on or I might be saying the famous acyrnom.

When people talk about “sharing” the mental load, what do they mean?

Example, DH has the mental load for DS's sport. This means: he signs him up and renews the membership and knows when and where this should happen. He is in whatsapp group, knows when and where their practices and games are and who is driving. He organises and washes kits, he checks when DS is growing out of clothes/shoes and buys new, knows when the year end events are and helps to organise. He lets me know when any of the matches are in our village so I might want to go - that's the extent of my involvement.

There was a thread where one DH said he will be responsible for DS's sport, by this he meant he will drive DS when the wife had done all the rest. And he thought this meant he was doing all of it..

If someone can function at work, especially at a high level like many men are they really don't need to be told how to water plants or the fact that the cleaner needs to be paid.

Talk about having low standards.

@Offwegotosleep you make a pertinent point in your first line- a lot of these blokes are not what you would call arseholes- they just are not remotely interested in domesticity - I think it's getting better but it's still very noticeable in the over50s - not all I know but far more than it seems on here

Yanbu. Most of the husbands I know are crap. They work but then do some hoovering and think they are amazing. Take the kids to a birthday party and think they are even better.

Women work full time, do most of the child rearing and housework and get no kudos.

It's a crap society we live in.

Yeah OP, men eh?
They really ought to be rounded up and poked with sharp sticks until they improve. Bastards.

I think women often end up in a trap of either staying at home and being dissatisfied but knowing their children are well cared for or going out to work but doing everything they can themselves because their husbands can’t be trusted.

I went out to work and didn't do that. I did trust him. He did it. Yes I washed and dried the clothes at the weekend for Monday but actually that's all really and I enjoyed that task for my little ones, even the giant box of odd socks and underpants.

He moaned about feeling like a single parent ironically which is why he disappeared out to the pub with his mates at the weekend!

We should recruit co parenting partners like a job application process!

Have sex and fun with the lazy but interesting ones but when it's time to breed, we need to interview properly for the child rearing job.

I'm not sure I'm joking!

There was a thread on here last week about a mum being excluded from a holiday by her female friends who didn’t want to organise a 1-2-1 rota of babysitting her son. The dad never looked after him, but nobody on the thread cared about that. It was all laying into the women for not wanting to essentially parent a child they had no relationship with.

The low expectations many women have of men as parents is made even more obvious by the fact that many women have extraordinary expectations of their women who have no actual parental responsibility whatsoever.

See also: the experience of being a woman without kids at work and trying to get any time off in school holidays. Fathers can apparently never get any time off to look after their kids, but god forbid Rebecca from Accounting want Christmas off, the selfish cow.

I just don't see this. I only know 3 couples where the woman genuinely does more, and that's because they are SAHMs and have time. Even then their DHs do a fair share considering they work 50+ hours a week and their wives don't.
My DH does at least 50% of everything, probably more if I'm honest. That includes the mental load.

We just do bits and bobs when needed.

But to be honest, we lead really simple lives, we have three children at home from age 2 - 20 and I’ve never felt that overwhelmed with organising in two decades. Obviously, it helps that I’m a SAHM, so we’ve never had the juggle or child care (I have worked at times but it’s been nightshifts to avoid that).

I see other people talk about mental loads and it loses me a bit to be honest. Lunch boxes are just lunch boxes, PE kits are just on certain days, when an appointment or an event comes in (not many), it just goes in the calendar. We don’t have all that much organising to be done. Either we are very organised or too laid back to notice it all and get stressed.

women need to realise that most men, from the get go will be manipulating and maneuvering to get everything on their terms and in their favour
she may see it as a partnership but in his mind 'fair' = 60/40 in his favour, or worse
you have to get in control as quickly as you can otherwise HE will dominate, sadly it's very difficult to prevent him from dominating if you have children together

Yes. Because we've internalised all the societal messages since birth? Guess that would be slow to change

This exactly it.
I'm supposed to be "lucky" with my husband bc he does jobs in the house and look after the DC as much as I do. But the mental load is all mine.
Everything would fall apart if I left it to him (school, doctors appointment, organise activities, birthdays etc).

Sorry I was replying a poster saying that even in marriages with both partners working full time and sharing the workload of the house and kids, SHE is always the one to carry the mental load. I agree with this 100%.

I don't understand how women find themselves in this position.
Do they not discuss such things with their husbands before starting a family? Or are all men going back on their word? Are all women letting them?

It carries on generation after generation cos its what kids learn from their own parents growing up. I agree OP, I am constantly told how lucky I am because my OH is a doer. We both just crack on. Most of the couples around me, the women work part/full time and do everything else while their OH's live their best lives. My OH was raised by a kick arse single mother. She raised 5 kick arse kids (2 boys & 3 girls) who all get on with whatever needs doing. Only one of them fell into the trap of working her arse off and doing everything in the home and she's recently seen the light and has separated from her useless OH. She didn't want her kids repeating the cycle.

I agree with you that most of the women I know are in the same or similar situation to more or less degrees. I don’t know a single man (other than my own dad, who was in a unique situation in that my mum was severely disabled) who carries half or more than half of the mental load. I think most women I know feel like they’ve been stitched up by getting married… I’m not sure I’d ever say irl but if I had my time again I don’t think id have gotten married or gotten married to the person I did. i don’t think it’s an understatement to say most women are just used by men through their lives. x

Also they are constantly lauded for taking out the bins!

Not my experience at all. I always wonder why women have babies with these losers.
TBH DH does more than I do. I’m currently MNing and he’s making DS tea

And it doesn't end after marriage.
Any woman who has then tried online dating will know this. Mediocre men are EVERYWHERE!