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 just think it’s quite mean of other women to tell women who have had the bad luck to have a rubbish husband that they

• should have spotted the signs
• are enablers
• want Neanderthal men
• it’s easy you just stop all housework/childcare/finances
• it’s all their mothers fault (and somehow not the fathers… never mentioned… or indeed their own fault).

So men can be rubbish and they are not blamed at all! It’s ‘just the way they are’ and they will get sympathy from women as ‘they probably didn’t want kids anyway’.

I did marry my husband, he wasn’t a Neanderthal, he was very soppy and loving, really helpful, had been living on his own for years doing his own dishes and made great meals, fairly tidy. He was dying to have kids.

When I got pregnant he started to freak out, I think it was the stress and weight of the responsibility. He was self employed, and work got a bit harder in the recession for a while. So I became the main earner. But he just got very gung ho about looking after the baby, he’d be on his phone constantly, missed the babies feeding times, all over the place. When he was out at work, he’d not come back until very late, deciding to ‘go to the shop’ or whatever. I was literally going out of my mind juggling absolutely everything, bills, finances, baby, job.

So I did leave. But that’s not the magic answer. It’s all really very sad and tragic really. He spent most of my son’s life being a resentful Ex, sporadic child maintenance, hardly there in our son’s life but blaming me for it.

He’s now married to a woman half his age but he does realise I think that he isn’t really up for having more kids. So at least he’s able to ‘own’ that he just doesn’t cope well. This is not an uncommon scenario.

There were no ‘signs’. I was not an enabler. He had a great mum and it wasn’t her ‘fault’. He just didn’t cope with the extra ‘load’ of a child.

Yeah, it's just another example of people blaming women for men's behaviour.

And also give women some bloody credit. Yeah DH is a bit rubbish at loading the dishwasher and remembering to empty bins. But maybe I've decided I can live with it.

It was, and the literature written by women going screaming mad living by the mid century middle class rules of a woman's place in the home was influential way before shoulder pads appeared.

(They looked so awful, I literally cut them out of every item I bought).

Having it all was just one superwoman book by Shirley Conran which the BBC news men would report on regularly as if it was the behaviour of an interesting species. Their superciliousness was interesting but having it all as a New Idea for women? It didn't mean anything to me. Working wasn't a choice, kids are easier to have than not have in an animal species and life comes at you 100 miles an hour.

I'm quite nosy so I know my friends and their partners pretty well. They're not like this. Most my female friends do not do the cooking. Their husband does it and they can go on holidays with friends and leave their husband to hold the fort for a week just fine. Please don't presume that just because you surround yourself with like minded people everyone else is the same.

The most interesting part for me is the capitalist devaluation of child rearing. There's plenty of documentary evidence, from Homeric epic via Aristotelian philosophy through Mediaeval manuals to Tudor wills all the way thru to Jacobean political pamphlets, which show that child birthing and rearing was for a long time respected as a full time and crucial job within itself, deserving of great respect. The main 'goddess' symbol of the dominant Western monotheistic religion was a mother, ffs.

But more recently motherhood has become devalued. It's something you do on the side. Oh, and you're probably doing it all wrong too, because if the kid goes bad, it'll be your fault.

In fact motherhood is now so far devalued that we read about mentally ill men who believe they can breastfeed babies, or wealthy couples buying babies to order from women in the Global South. It's really fascinating to watch and I wonder where it will all end.

Whenever my husband is off work he does everything, the childcare, household chores etc. and he is a partner that bills himself out for £1.2k an hour. He also rearranges his day so he can drop off my daughter at nursery and come back to put her down to bed before resuming working. I work full time and I've never had to ask him to do of this. If he can do it with such a stressful job I don't think other men have a leg to stand on.

It's women with bad taste or who are very desperate who are just trying to cope by convincing themselves that everyone else is in the same position.

But I think these many women on this thread are using the excuse that all men are like this to not hold the line on these demands or do anything about their situation. I don't mean to be mean but there are things you can't control and there are things that you can. You can only focus on the things you can do.

The most interesting part for me is the capitalist devaluation of child rearing. There's plenty of documentary evidence, from Homeric epic via Aristotelian philosophy through Mediaeval manuals to Tudor wills all the way thru to Jacobean political pamphlets, which show that child birthing and rearing was for a long time respected as a full time and crucial job within itself, deserving of great respect. The main 'goddess' symbol of the dominant Western monotheistic religion was a mother, ffs
Women are the creators, we are the source of everything, we are the first sex, men are the second sex, their dominance over us rests on their ability to obscure this fundamental truth.

I work part time *

Wow.

Men are not a hive mind all plotting the fate of women.

The most interesting part for me is the capitalist devaluation of child rearing. There's plenty of documentary evidence, from Homeric epic via Aristotelian philosophy through Mediaeval manuals to Tudor wills all the way thru to Jacobean political pamphlets, which show that child birthing and rearing was for a long time respected as a full time and crucial job within itself, deserving of great respect. The main 'goddess' symbol of the dominant Western monotheistic religion was a mother, ffs.

But more recently motherhood has become devalued. It's something you do on the side. Oh, and you're probably doing it all wrong too, because if the kid goes bad, it'll be your fault.

Remind me of when that golden age in Medieval times when motherhood was soooo valued that women got to do it full time and never had to work or do anything else other than be mothers?

Plenty of us leave (and don't regret it) but there is criticism for that too.

Before kids, I could have related to the post about plumping up cushions. My x was not a slob but he did nothing for the children and because he earned more, "it made sense" for me to look after kids.

I am not moaning. I ended up in a shit situation and I took action and left. But the situation is a little more nuanced than I picked a great man because im sensible and you picked a shit man because you're stupid.

If I picked a man who took advantage, it's because my mother raised me to have no needs. That's another story. My life is sorted out now, but give women a bit of space to figure things out.

Nobody leaves the very first moment they realise they're doing too much childcare. First, they try to be heard.
It can take a while to realise and accept that you're not going to be heard.

Majority of couples I know. I appreciate it may not be like that in general

Wrt to the "capitalist devaluation of motherhood" it is a relief to me that the number of years I was out of the workplace with my children (7) will be deducted from the number of years used to calculate my average contribution per year for pension purposes. This is really good news.
I will not be penalised for having had children I my old age. Hope it's the same in UK

This!!! The women on this thread turning on other women is properly shit. And then it's all 'LTB' when the split at home is more 70/30 than 50/50. Like the PP I've decided I can live with it. Yes, I'm resentful and it pisses me off but I've no intention of putting a bomb under my children's home and family and blowing it up. I am however allowed to moan about it on an anonymous forum when it's the subject of the OP, FFS.

Hmmm, depends what class you were, really. If nobility, you rarely got to see your kids once you'd birthed them - they'd be looked after by others whilst you got on with the formidable task of running an enormous household, which often employed hundreds of people, making alliances with other nobility for your daughters, governing the duchy whilst your husband was away on crusade, even leading armies yourself (eg Eleanor of Aquitaine, Isabella of Castile).

If peasant, you'd be working the homestead and bringing up kids with your extended fam.

if merchant class, you'd probably have a nurse and unmarried sisters / mother to help out whilst you did the accounts and book keeping for the business, made deals and contracts, went on pilgrimage, etc.

The idea that mediaeval women were stuck at home and had no influence rests on a very flawed idea of what economic and social conditions were actually like in the middle ages. They had a fair amount of power. Often in a different sphere from men but more often it overlapped. And yes, motherhood was respected. In a world where 3 in 10 kids didn't make it to seven years of age, being able to have kids and crucially, keep them alive was a skill. And in the European population collapse post first bout of Black Death, that skill was sorely needed.

It's probably worth throwing in that children grew up faster in those days. as soon as a boy was breeched (ie between ages of 5 - 7) he was expected to be out working with dad if peasant class, or learning to hunt, ride and warcraft if noble. Girls could be married as young as 12 although it was well known that pregnancy and childbirth were better put off until 14 / 15 if at all possible.

These days, young people are infantilised for longer, which potentially puts more pressure on women, I guess.

I couldn't agree more.

The joking too. Like a pp saying that my husband might bath the baby but I bet he doesn't clean the bath, buy the shampoo etc amiright insert laughing emoji.

Of course, it was incorrect but even if it was correct. That isn't funny, it isn't a joke. It's enraging that some men act like that.

Still sounds shit. I'll stick with the 21st century, motherhood and a nice job that pays 40% more than DH earns, thanks.

You are reasonable to complain. You are unreasonable to expect me to applaud you for your poor decisions.

When did she ask you to applaud?

Sounds awful to me too.

It was an exaggeration, but the point is, if posters can moan about their husbands, repliers can moan about their message.

@SouthLondonMum22 The response/assumption that you still had to have some input in bathing said child was sad IMO.

The men should be ashamed of themselves.

Out of interest (and apols if you e already said), was your dad/ your partners dad functional in the home?

Mine was. He still cannot cook but works around it, my mum is currently on hol so on the day they normally have my DC while we work, my dad sorted an M&S picnic for the playground.
Better than the beans on toast/cheesy pasta he’d always serve me and sib🤣🤣.

Yes, sadly my case too. However, I am divorcing him. I have enough of being available at all times. He is actually getting much worst. My house is always untidy because of him. He is entitled and a manchild. I do not think I would bother again. My house will be finally clean and happy without the pig.