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

I think ultimately you have to be willing to go it alone, rather than thinking of it as potentially just divorcing one underwhelming man for another. If you're highly educated and in a successful career, one of the huge benefits is financially you can manage on your own. Maybe not in as big a house, or with as many holidays, etc, but you can do it.

I know some mediocre women. According to MNrs, I am one.

I mean I’m just doing what is best for my family- and I think a lot of people would be happier this way! DH and I are the happiest couple we know by miles!

I'm MNing and mine has just put baby in the bath. 😂

My husband is absolutely useless.
Never life the fingers. Rubbish are all about wherever he was, doesn't even know how to put them in to the bins.
Doesn't even know how to get washing machine working. Know nothing about the house. I have to do everything for him from buttom to head.
I mean every single things

DH and I are incredibly happy too yet we both work full time.

I'd be miserable as a SAHM, not for me at all.

… I bet you cleaned the bath, bought the baby shampoo and washed the baby towel.. You have also ensured the cot sheets are clean and bought the book he will be reading to your baby tonight.

Am I wrong? 🤣

My ex husband was like this. Wouldn't lift a finger, despite me working longer hours than him, wouldn't mow the lawn, wouldn't take the bins out, wouldn't go to the supermarket, did literally NOTHING other than go to the gym and play on his PS4 that his mother bought HIM for a wedding present WTF?!

I left his lazy arse.

My current husband is wonderful, we do 50/50 housework and parenting, I do carry all the mental load and do all the transportation and waiting around for the children's activities which does take up a lot of my time, but I'm ok with that as he's not lazy at all and he works a lot so I know I've got it right this time around!

I used to be you. I have been with my partner since being a teenager so it was something that wasn’t apparent straight away and probably isn’t for a lot of people.
I noticed he was a little bit lacking in household skills when we first moved in together at 22 but thought that’s fine, he’s learning. We had our first child (unplanned) at 24 and that is when I really noticed how much I actually carried. I had awful pnd and although he was great at spending time with her and they had a great bond, the nitty gritty came down to me, I always got the shit end of the stick. We’d argue, he’d help more but only if I told him what needed doing and I just thought ‘well it’s better than nothing’.
He really came into his own when I had our second and got awful hyperemesis so could do literally nothing, I was bedbound. He had a full time job, 4 year old and house to look after alone. He finally realised what I did, why I was so drained and miserable.
We’ve split everything since. I have stuff I enjoy more/am better at and so does he. He rarely dusts or hoovers (I do it in half the time and am more thorough) and I rarely cook (absolute bane of my life, he finds it relaxing). Works for us and if needs be, we are both capable of doing it all, we just don’t have to.
It definitely doesn’t have to be like this. If you want to stay with him (not sure you do) then perhaps a shock to his system may be necessary. Otherwise yes, you will have to leave and either find someone else more suited to what you’re looking for or be happy single.

Fuck the "The solution might be to value (financially and otherwise) "house"/"family" stuff more". Why should women be tied to their children and home when their husbands are out golfing/cycling and going to the pub. Women are entitled to have some of the life they had before children and family life. For our own sanity.

Men have been conditioned to be shit at family life. My own DM used to say she had to help her only brother out "because men can't do much". She spent her whole life believing that with partners and her brother and she put herself last.

My husband isn't one of the bad ones, will do a school run, make a packed lunch, dinner, bath, brush hair and teeth, etc. and on an equal level or at times more than me with that stuff. When it comes to running a house and organising anything (contractors, bills, school events, buying a house, car, booking and packing for a holiday, seeing where mess needs tidying and doing it, picking up his own mess before it becomes absolutely crucial to) he is terrible at it. I've come to the conclusion it's because his parents didn't cook for him from a young age, he had to sometimes do washing, etc. but when it came to a sticky situation, his DM would come along and fix it. I remember having to sort out a debt when we moved in together as he got threatened with a CCJ and debt collectors. I was so annoyed he would bring that to my door that I sorted it for him. I see now that's a pattern for a lot of men.

Today I asked him if he will do the shopping he said he'd do (and not just small shops of lunch bits for DC, food pouches for the youngest who eats perfectly well, more than an egg and a roll for me to eat for breakfast or lunch - I didn't say that although there was a request to remember vegetables). "I don't know, I can't think about that" is apparently an answer to that whilst he sits on the sofa. It impacts my kids eating so of course I do it. This cycle happens every couple of weeks.

I will be raising my son differently and bracing him for the expectations of family life.

I agree OP. There's a reason why the phrase 'hands on dad' is a thing. We never hear 'hands on mum'

My OH does more of everything than I do. Just the way it is as he works from home and I'm in an office all day. He never moans and just gets on with it.

I've read a lot of posts on here, which are really interesting. My question is, at what point do we actually see women getting to a point where they don't put up with this imbalance? I read all the reasons why women put up with it and whilst that's not me (I'd have a chat and sort it out) appreciate everyone is different. However, if women are recognising there's an issue, at what point in the evolution of the female species are women going to decide to either leave or do nothing at all (like these men).

Actually, yes.

None of those things are just my job.

I don't have a husband or partner and I've been single for 15 years. Better than accepting life with a loser.

No I didn’t discuss it, and in a world where equality is expected I hadn’t thought it necessary. I realize that was naive, but I assumed he and I wanted/understood the same things when we agreed to get married and have a family.

We had quite a wild life before that; both working hard with lots of drinking and partying and then we married and (I stupidly assumed) both of us would slow down when we started a family.

It became apparent when I was pregnant that settling down did not include stopping drinking to excess for my ex. And it was only then that I began to understand he was an abusive drunk as he tended to abuse sober family members, rather than fellow drunks.

We lived for years in a kind of limbo state, where I hoped he would grow up and never did. I probably should have left earlier or put my foot down, but stayed as I wanted the children to have a stable family. I confess I was foolish, but when a psychiatrist asked me a while back whether I had made the best decisions I could with the information and understanding I had at the time, I could easily answer yes. If asserting yourself is natural to you, perhaps you can’t understand those of us who need to learn it from scratch.

i don’t think it’s an understatement to say most women are just used by men through their lives
I agree, by & large women are trained to obey & defer to men, and humans (along with other animals) have deep rooted instincts/impulses to align themselves with/placate/defer to those who are more powerful than them.
Men exploit this because they can, we need to understand the dynamics of these situations, see how it comes about and do all we can to make sure that we get what we are due.
We dont have to go head to head with men, rather we need to nip it in the bud, spot the bad ones early on and teach all this to younger women

I am the breadwinner. The house keeper. The administrator. And the nagger.

He will never change. He can be kind, funny, warm and loving. But he will never have any idea of the plates I'm spinning.

Every man in my family, every man I've slept with...they talk the talk but when it comes down to it they have no fucking idea. Entitlement is entrenched.

Could’ve written this myself. The work hard get a career….Well, I did that and I’m still a fucking skivvy. In fact, if I didn’t have a career I would prob do less!

I know three marriages where the guy does 50/50 and in one case the majority of the childcare and housework.

I do much more housework but I'm a sahm so it's my choice and my job. At weekends and evenings I'd say it's pretty evenly split. Maybe 40/60.

Tbf I also know a LOT of unequal partnerships.

If I could have my time again I'd buy sperm off the Internet and be a single mum from the start.

It became apparent when I was pregnant that settling down did not include stopping drinking to excess for my ex
you might think that he would help & protect his pregnant wife, who is growing his child in her belly, but no he sees that you are now trapped and he can do exactly as he pleases, and he does.
I remember it well, how the drinking and staying out all the time ramped up once I was pregnant, in his mind you have now surrendered everything to him & there is nothing standing in the way of him walking all over you.

But you still do it?

OP I’m passionate about this very subject! I’ve even considered researching it through a PhD. The worst bit is not so much the women that are in your generation but the number of boys coming forward into adulthood that still display that behaviour! My dh is great, but yes I’ve watched many women like yourself. Given how long it’s been since we got the vote…, equal pay…, equality…. Why are women still raising boys to be like this!

Yes, why are women blamed and held responsible for men's behaviour?!

We don't have equal pay or equality, at least not in the UK, where I live.