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

said he'd contact secondary schools about application processes as I am working and going through a stressful time and he isn't...then asked me to send him a list of all the possible local schools and what we need to know for each
@Apricotflanday
Isnt it just jaw dropping, notice that he wont take ownership of the task, he has to use 'we' to make sure you know it your problem too, despite the fact he agreed to do it. And of course that his idea of getting something done is to try & delegate the actual work to you!?
He's betting on his calculation that you will be more upset than he is if your childs education is disrupted, so he can just keep turning the screw & putting it off because he thinks you'll cave in and do it, that you wont take it up to the wire with your childs education.
And of course if you did he'd make sure everyone knew it was your fault, or generally use it against you.
He cant lose & you cant win

@Apricotflanday A friend kept a weeks diary of who had done what and stuck it on the fridge.

His side was bare. The following row led to them splitting but I guess that could work alongside a chores list.

We have (unassigned) chores/to do lists and diarise appointments etc.
When we were moving last year we divvied up a list. I focused on sale, him on purchase.

And talk about what’s happening, school applications don’t magically get submitted we do it together.

Im in a mums what’sapp, a few weeks ago someone had an emergency asked DH to collect the kids. He calls an hour later to ask what school they go to. Clearly they don’t discuss ‘stuff’.
How can anyone live like that?

Some suggestions.

• Make a list TOGETHER to share things out more evenly.
• Get a large calendar which is in view and list any important upcoming events TOGETHER.
• Both parents to have any apps related to school/nursery communication and updates installed.
• Don’t take responsibility for buying DH’s Aunt Bertha’s birthday card, if Aunt Bertha doesn’t get one? Oh well, that’s on DH.
• Leave DH with the children regularly.
• If Dh does something in a slightly different way, if it isn’t dangerous, let it go.
• As a last resort, make sure the children are cared for but don’t cook for him, do his washing, pack his lunch etc

This isn't my reality and nor would I accept it as my reality. How did it get to this stage? It makes for depressing reading how many women are in this situation.

My personal (unevidenced) theory is this has a great deal to do with the home in which you were raised. I don't believe there's such a thing as a 50/50 split but there are certainly homes in which equal contributions are made - this was prioritised in my parents' marriage Likewise, DH and previous DP didn't grow up watching their fathers be waited on hand and foot. Those expectations are set early on.

Re. the mental load, I would say I carry most of it. However, there are other things which DH does, e.g. the totality of the driving, much more paid work than me, maintenance / repairs. There are other things I am responsible for (e.g. finances, laundry) and others which we divide (cooking, washing up, getting up with the kids) depending on who has the most capacity to take them on. The system works for us. We have roughly equal downtime. A man who contributed nothing beyond his wage and presence in the home would be a no from me.

I have loads if friends in London all have 2/3 kids and work FT with 50/50 husbands

Where are you located. Are the men not very bright ?

Yep.

the few bits of mental load he’ll do, that he insistes on doing, he does it wrong. Then guess who has to fix it.

We had a mental load conversation at some point and DH was embarrassed to realise he hadn’t been doing these things. But we were a million conversations in by this point. We had most of these conversations before having kids. We literally discussed it.
Q to those with useless dhs, did you ever discuss childcare, work, housework, finances etc. before you were married/kids?

@SarahSmith24

I have loads if friends in London all have 2/3 kids and work FT with 50/50 husbands

Where are you located. Are the men not very bright?

Was 2 kids, in London. I have 2 degrees and a diploma and had a husband with a degree and masters; he was also exceptionally bright. As well as also exceptionally resistant to sharing the mental / domestic / caring load.Our split was about 95/5

@Twocrabs20 how disappointing

What was his own parents relationship like? Does he not respect women? Good to know what to tell my DDs to avoid.

@yipeeyiyay

Who is doing the tax returns, paying council tax, monitoring car, house, health insurance and moving to different providers when better. Ditto phone contracts. Deals with utilities, paying nursery fees, dealing with car issues. I often find that the man is doing this sort of thing but not being credited and just being told they don't carry any mental load

Me too. Every single bit of that.

If I asked him to do any sort of those tasks you listed, he performed weaponised incompetence; or I would be told it would be done in the coming week / fortnight - and 3-6 months would go past. Or we would receive creditor letters for unpaid bills or be on expensive insurance / internet providers etc.

I would have loved to have had a husband who could have been credited with exactly that type of thing. My ex did absolutely nothing - but then would also tell me he never asked me to do all this stuff.

@SarahSmith24

Prior to marriage he was supportive, proactive , endearing, jumping up to do things, to contribute. His parents lived abroad and so I didn’t meet them properly till shortly before the wedding.

I do think and appreciate now in a very clear way his particular cultural background has very extreme inequality compared to my societal norms growing up; but then it’s clear to me that this issue is global, amongst almost all nations, just with varying differences in how significant the inequality is.

I now know his parents are exceptionally traditional. As were mine.

Despite my traditional familial role modelling, from my education and generational expectations, I expected equality, rallied without success against it and did not find it. It was like smashing my head against a brick wall.

In my primary and secondary schooling years when as women we were told we could be anything and to expect equality going forward, I feel from my lives experience we were peddled a falsehood and lie.

I advise your daughters to live with their partners for a long time before marriage to test their partner’s domestic attitudes and willingness. I would support your daughters to be financially independent women, and then I think they must need some luck to see if post-children their partners hold up

I'm sorry to hear this. This isn't something you should put up with. I assure you there are many men out there who don't do this. My husband does the same amount of childcare as me and over 50% of housework and mental load because of my chronic condition. As does the rest of his family. I think you're getting a lot of advice to leave your husband because finding someone better is easier than changing a person.

Honestly if you are in a great partnership where there is equality and harmony - just count yourself lucky! It’s not something you did, it’s your circumstances, and your environment. Having a husband who is really supportive is not something you created out of thin air, you just lucked out.

Plenty of us strong women did not luck out. We chose nice men who were just like most of the other men we knew or had a chance to date.

Then when they don’t pick up the slack when life gets more serious, with mortgages, bills, kids, more demanding jobs we as woman are really left in the shit to be honest. There is no easy way out of it and no magic fixes. You try to even things out, to say ‘no do your share’ and on top of caring for the baby you have masses of arguments. We are tired, worn out, juggling everything and feeling let down. Leaving the father is a massive trauma and not done lightly. It means not having our kids all the time, juggling contact, upset kids, massive upheavals.

So it’s pretty uncaring to say the least for another woman in a pretty smug marriage where she has never had to deal with that, to say it’s the woman’s fault. If you don’t understand, just count yourself lucky that you have never had to.

My husband in no more or less perfect than me, we both have our moments both good or bad, I get sick of this women are saints and men are terrible cliche

London too.. highly educated couples.

also none of that is as relentless as meal planning, shopping, cooking, laundry, school runs and so on.

The fact that the once a year task of renewing the car insurance is listed as if it’s a significant aspect of the mental load is interesting.

Also interesting that these are in the ‘blue job’ category. I’ve always done all of the above (bar health insurance because I’ve never had that).

I had a friend once who called me in a panic asking me to collect her 2 year old from nursery as she had ended up in A&E.

I did, but I asked her where her husband was. “He doesn’t know where it is and you do, it would be less stress for me if I told them you were collecting her rather than explain to him where it is and what to do with her when he collects her”.

He came to pick her up from my house a few hours later. She did a poo in her nappy as they were leaving. He handed her to me and said, “ohh, she’s done a poo, can you change her”. He was horrified when I handed her back saying, “you can change her upstairs, she’s your baby”.

He refused to do it. Point blank refused and told me to do it. I said no, she’s your child and you are here. He took her home and my friend was angry at ME the next day as he’d left her in the shitty nappy for hours until she got home from hospital to change her, they both blamed me for not changing her for him.

Useless prick and she enabled it.

@newwnamme and what would happen if he started doing less and less? After you've talked to him and yet nothing changes. Would you leave? Would that feel like a simple decision?

My DH actually does the cooking, the food shop. But he doesn't do any cleaning or any of the mental load.

I had a showdown with him about it and he said he couldn't believe I had become some boring/pedestrian that I was going to nag him about things like the electricity bill.

Not my experience in my social circle. Occasionally maybe. One acquaintance turned up to a bbq once in an absolute state because she'd left her husband alone to "babysit" their kids for the first time and she wasn't sure he could manage. They were 4 and 5! She stayed about half an hour and the conversation afterwards, among both men and women, was how strange that was.

But the essentialist "women are domestic, men are selfish" trope is also bizarre. In my relationship I'm the lazy husband. I drop my clothes on the floor, I don't spend much time thinking about domestic stuff, I don't care about mess, I'm horrifically disorganised. (Also have no interest in becoming a parent, but unlike many men who share this view, I found a partner who also had no interest in this.) Meanwhile DP, a man, is the neat freak constantly trying to put the household into order. My study, which is my domain, gives him the shivers. But over the years we've met each other halfway and divvying up the chores according to our strengths is an absolute non-issue. He does A and B, I do C and D and if something isn't kept on top of, well, the world keeps turning.

A few scattered thoughts.

It's not blaming women to tell them that they, and only they, are responsible for their happiness in the one life they have to leave. What makes them happy may differ from what makes other women happy, and no life will be perfect and no partner flawless. But you have so much more power to control the essence of your life than you might think. You don't have to be miserable and you owe it to yourself to work towards your version of happiness.

A poster upthread said it was taboo, but she was attracted to neanderthal types and not 50-50 types. I have noticed on MN dating threads how many posters insist they only want "traditional" men. Men who paid for dates, big strong tall men, men who played a set gender role in terms of courting them. Men who don't fulfil very rigid masculine stereotypes get threads about how they give posters the ick. Mummy's boy, tight, soft, wet... those insults are all over dating threads here. Thing is, if you want a traditional man, and if the dating scene encourages straight men to fulfil a traditional role, well then you get the whole caboodle and once you have kids, guess what? You're in the traditional roles you said you wanted.

I also wonder about just how much drudgery there actually needs to be. I'm child-free so I realise - thank God! - I don't have the same experience as parents. But I read posters talking about daily vacuuming? Scrubbing the floors? Those are weekly jobs at best and if that timeframe slips a bit who cares. I've also never scrubbed a floor in my life. Mopping takes 20 minutes tops. Someone upthread complained that her husband had the temerity to be tired after working an actual job while she'd been PLUMPING THE CUSHIONS. There's definitely a subset of MN that seems to believe that full-time employment to earn money is somehow life on easy street compared with the entirely unnecessary effort involved in maintaing a pristine show home.

Yes I would. I'm only thirty. I'm hopefully only less than half of the way through my life. I'm not spending the rest of it with a man who is useless who I can't respect.

I love everything about this post.

@putthatdownsteve I would say that that beggars belief but I believe you. It is her decision to enable that, why should other people be drafted in to that dysfunction!!!? The delusion and the denial. People's expectations are weird.

When I was a single parent to two babies, (still am, but they are teens) a married friend asked for my help when she got norovirus. I said no because of her being married, asked about her h, he couldn't help because his job was too big and important! But my parents could look after my kids while I looked after hers 😐

Taking on the entire mental load of the home and childcare was a key part of the end of my relationship. More so when he started scoffing and eye rolling anytime I mentioned the mental load put upon me. He was getting us into debt from not taking responsibility, I walked before being dragged into an abyss.

The signs are there if you look for them. I was in two long term relationships both of which I ended as both men would have been the type to leave me with all the work and expect me to act like their mam and look after them.
It isnt a case of being lucky it is being observant to how he manages his own life before you are married eg does he do the dishes in his parent's house or expect his mam to do it, does his mam do his laundry, how do he manage his life admin, etc. The signs are there.

There is no way I would put up with a lazy man who expected me to do all the work. I have a few good friends whose husbands are amazing and do 50/50 or more but also know women whose husbands are useless, I dont know how they stick it. You must get so resentful.