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

Nope, but I would advise them to do what they could to help themselves- therapy, medication, seeking support if its available and I would help and support them to access that if they were my friend. I wouldnt be just saying oh poor you, yeah it must really and theres nothing you can do to change it, because thats not empowering at all

You can see part of the problem when you read threads on this site where women are thinking of having children through alternative means. A big part of the inequalities in negotiating power come from women’s reduced fertile women and their generally stronger desire to have children (both socially and biologically shaped no doubt ) . Yet any woman who dares to suggest that she might take her own reproductive choices into her own hands is shot down and shamed by so many other women, for being selfish, etc etc etc. so many women put up with useless men because they are desperate to have babies and believe that (staying with said useless man) is the only way they can do it.

Well it would help if the women who do have decent husbands don't despise those with feckless ones and blame them for being with them. There are tons of reasons why women have low bars. They should be encouraged not to put up with it not criticised and put down.

Neither me or any of my friends have useless husbands. In fact, I'd say we all have great husbands who manage a 50/50 split with the house / kids.

But... I still think the women are carrying the mental load and are more likely to miss out on things / put themselves second to be there for their kids.

👏👏👏👏👏

This isn’t my situation, it isn’t true of some of my friends either, but it is true for a few of them.

Well that's absolutely helpful. Telling women it's their fault and they shouldn't have been in that situation in the first place not so much.

This is my experience of British life too, OP. Every single one of my friends from university or high school with children carries the load. The men aren’t all useless, but none of them sacrifice their careers or hobbies in the way the women do. They might do a fair amount of childcare but none of them have gone part time due to childcare and children. They might take their kids to the dentist from time to time, but they won’t know when a regular appointment is due. They might attend birthday parties but they won’t have kept track of what’s happening when or bought the present, etc. And most pick and choose what they want to do, leaving it to the women to fill in the gaps. Several of my British friends would tell you they have equal marriages and their husbands pull their weight domestically, and the husbands would say they think it should be equal and they’re committed to doing their fair share. But it’s not evident in how they live, in particular the career sacrifice.

But I’m in the US now and of my kids’ 20 or so good friends they’ve had over the years here, 4 or 5 have had men as the primary carer in a way I have never experienced in the UK. Setting up play dates, school communication, doing the running around for all clubs, etc. Their wives’ career comes first and they pick up the mental load and do the bulk of the physically being present. All but one of my American friends with kids still have the same gender divide that I knew in the UK so maybe it’s partly down to who I know and associate with. But it’s still heartening that there are actually signs here that there are some men who step up.

This.

I don't believe all the "he changed after we were married/had kids" moaning. The signs are always there if one is open to seeing them.

I feel like I am the only woman I know with a decent husband. Every woman I know my age (40s) with kids and a husband feels like you do OP. It makes me very angry. I admit I wonder regularly why they don't all dump their shit husbands. It feels like the only way to make men change is for every woman in this situation to get a divorce, then men finally learn they can't have a happy family life without stepping up, but I understand why most don't.

then that is a choice and not one they 'had' to make. More fool them

clearly you have no understanding of how the world works.
i brought up earning because it’s important. There used to be a division of labour based on men “providing” financially. That is no longer the case, yet women still do the majority of domestic and childcare tasks.

I've a couple of women I know who are like this but the majority have very equal relationships with decent men. I honestly don't know why people put up with this.

Equally, telling women it sucks but its just life and all men are shit isnt helping either, so......

It's a lie and a trap MORE women need to reject the idea of a (male) partner for life and find alternatives. As a single parent I realised my best "life partner" was a woman housemate. We worked out everything fairly, no being made to feel bad or less than. Unfortunately she moved in with someone and when that fell through she worked miles from me.

We need to normalise finding a lifelong friend and only dating men if or when it suits.

Men and women are not the same. These men are doing what works for them. They do want more sex, so that's what they talk about. They don't care if the kids have play dates, so they don't arrange them. The like socialising with friends so they do it. They don't care about dust so they don't hoover.
In most cases women care much much more about the children and this is biological. In our nearest animal relatives, the males do bugger all with the children. We have not evolved far from this.

My exh didn't expect everything to fall to me- we were 50/50. None of the men I've dated since we split up expected me to do everything either. I've never been concerned about it because the men have all lived alone or had their kids 50/50 and it was obvious that they just got on with stuff.

My partner and his ex wife used to work opposite shifts when their children were little. She did everything that was required from early morning to mid afternoon when he was at work, and he did everything from mid afternoon to bedtime and beyond) when she was at work. She's told me this too so I know it's true. He also does at least 50% of stuff in my house when he's here and we share cooking equally. He does his own laundry etc. to the point where it makes him uncomfortable if I stuck his laundry in with mine because he doesn't expect it.

My friend and her husband work in the same profession but he gets home from work before her so dinner is his responsibility every night. She also spends longer working in the evenings and he works more flexibility than her so he does children's term time appointments etc. Housework and everything else is split evenly.

I know several women in their 70s who seem to think they must do everything or their husband will wilt and die but I can't think of a single couple in my age group (I'm late 40s) where the man does nothing and the woman is expected to do everything.

And that's everyone from Head Teachers and doctors to factory workers.

It has already been pointed out earlier on in the thread but my experience was that since having children things slowly started to change with how much he contributed. And when I say slowly it was so slow I didn’t even notice it. Then about a year after our second child was born it hit me that I was doing everything.

Before kids he was a good life partner, everything was pretty much equal and he looked after me very well through a difficult pregnancy. He was kind to family and friends, a very thoughtful and funny guy but he turned in to a selfish man-child.

I’m trying to say that I didn’t marry / have kids with him knowing that he was useless. It happened slowly over time and I couldn’t have predicted it… if I could have I wouldn’t have married him.

Even in relationships where the dhs I know pull their weight the wives are much more conscious of staying slim, exercising all the time etc.

I'll never love with a man again aside my son. Men are for friendship and fun and sex - not to live with.

In our family it's pretty equal. I think people whinge about their OH but there will be differences in the level of support their DHs give. One woman's insufficient help will be another's dream amount of support.

Even my friends who do the lions share of the childcare and domestic stuff their DH do the lions share of the admin and DIY / outdoor stuff.

My DH is not big on the food shopping or cooking (he has to cook but I buy easy convenience foods for that).

He does plenty of cleaning and tidying and is better at tidying than I am.

He shares dc responsibility equally but I'm do a lot of the music and arts stuff /activities and he does the sports which are quite onerous.

I sort (and pay for) our holidays, activities, calendar, he does insurances, bills, car stuff.

He's never called me a nag.

I work 4 days and earn more.

It's not a race to the bottom and you can arrange your life the way you want. Don't accept shitty treatment because you think it's normal.

But the women picked these guys!

They weren't forced to get involved with losers.

Which is generally down to conditioning you've experienced in childhood. What if you've had crap parents who haven't empowered you but have conditioned you to expect crap treatment.

What if you haven't been taught to see red flags but actually to ignore them.

Of course it would be great if we all had fantastic boundaries and the ability to spot narcissists and bullies but not everyone has been brought up that way.

Women are not responsible for men's shortcomings.

What more need to realise, however, is that they're not compelled to put up with these, and if they continue to pick up the slack of those deficiencies then they are endorsing that and nothing will change. Why would it, when the lazy man has things all his own way and his life structured the way he wants it? Leave this stuff undone and he will have to take care of it himself.

I've come across a situation where a wife even packed her husband's holiday suitcase. It simply would not occur to me to do that. How on earth should I know what he wants to wear on a day-to-day basis? He agrees with this.

If people continue to accept that a man's place is as the 'more important' professional and women are the go-to carers, cooks and cleaners, then they're continuing to accept that this dynamic will revert to type.

I don't. A lot of other woman don't. It doesn't have to be this way.

Of my friends and sisters/cousins, I know only one who carries all the load - and she is the main breadwinner too - by far. The stress of it all is taking a big toll on her.

I think that the nearly year-long maternity leave in UK/Ireland has an effect on all of this. If you have a baby and the woman is home for a year, the couple gets into a way of doing things that makes her the default parent and also responsible for most stuff in the home because she is there anyway. I had 12 weeks leave with each child then went back to work. So 12 weeks in we both had to figure out how to pay for childcare, how to be organised for the week, how to make sure we had food for the week. It was never just my problem because we hadn't had time to make it just my problem. An unexpected benefit of shorter leave.

In the end though, I think it comes down to the personality/character of the person you marry. My parents would be in their 90s if they were alive. My dad worked and my mum had to give up work when she married (civil service). He brought her breakfast in bed every morning, they took every second night with a colicky baby, he brought us to the park every saturday. He wanted to be a dad and he enjoyed it.

Indeed. Complaining about it on the www isn't likely to be productive. If you're pissed off and want to change your life, change it.