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

Men are still judged on what they do / achieve at work. Anything ‘extra’ they do at home / for their kids is AMAZING

vice versa, doesn’t matter how professionally successfully a woman is, and people will still say ‘but she doesn’t have children’ if she doesn’t.

in my marriage, it maybe could have gone this way. Hasn’t thought isn’t totally 50/50. Hovers around 70/30 but as I’m confident I’m the better parent, I’m prepared to wear that.

How? DH watched his mum do everything and saw what it cost her. Made him intellectually on board if not pro-active.

i am economically independent. High paying career, still own my own flat I could move to with the kids at short notice. It’s been this way since before DC1.

ive been ruthless in insisting on him stepping up. Made it clear Id leave if he didn’t and as above he knows I could.

Have to review things for myself regularly and make sure I’m getting my needs met.

i regularly go out / away without the kids and leave him to it, which reminds him without having to talk just how much I do.

I actually had a recent conversation about this with a male friend who is very much the prototype of the useless husband even though he has progressive views politically and he agrees with me about feminism, etc. I asked him bluntly why doesn't he do more around the house, why is he such an ass to his wife and why is he always looking for an excuse to not be at home (work trips, trips for his hobbies etc).

His answer was that the marriage and kids thing was his wife's desire and she insisted to have it, her biological clock was ticking etc. He would've been happy to stay childfree and doesn't really see the point of reproducing. And as he sees it, if you want kids, then, once you have them, it's not fair to nag for help with them. He sees the kids as his wife's responsibility pretty much entirely, although he agrees he has a financial duty towards them. He finds them cute and funny sometimes and he would reckon he loves them but he doesn't feel strongly or fiercely towards them, and if they disappeared overnight he would be mostly fine. He thinks many of his mates feel the same.

I was pretty flabbergasted at this and now I wonder if it's true that this is a widespread POV amongst men. I wouldn't know directly as I am single and childless.

It does seem to be common. I saw my mum and lots of friends mums be treated this way. I met my partner when we were late teens and his mum was treated like a cook and cleaner by his brothers and dad too. His dad was proud that he’d never even made toast for himself. Weirdly his mum took pride in it. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Reading things on here makes me feel both angry and sad, there seems to be so many shit men and so many women that put up with it.

My partner isn’t like it, never has been and he wouldn’t have lasted 5 minutes with me if he was. One of my friends had one of these men but divorced him in the end. No one in our group of friends would put up with it.

My son thinks these men are pathetic and doesn’t understand how they’re not embarrassed to not be able to look after themselves, never mind their kids. I can’t see my daughter putting up with this behaviour either, she has zero tolerance for the condition that is being a man child. Hopefully with having a good role model in their dad, they won’t change.

It really isn't as simple as putting rules in place to make things change - if only life were that easy.

One of my DD's in her mid 30s is married with children and it seems like the vast majority of the men her friends are married to are useless around the house and with the children.

Some men are just completely self centred and unreachable.

I was married to an incredibly selfish man who, after we were married, continued to live his life like a single man - apart from other women, as far as I'm aware.

I did everything in my power to get him to understand that I needed more input from him and his children needed a relationship with him; he just continued on his merry way.

He clearly thought that if he provided a reasonable standard of living then I should be happy with that.

We eventually went to counselling, oddly enough at his instigation, I think he really thought a counsellor would be able to make me understand that I was being completely unreasonable to expect more from him; obviously that didn't happen.

In the end I told him I couldn't live with him any more and he moved out. We ended up divorcing.

After he moved out, I was the one who pushed for him to see his children, otherwise I honestly think that he would have just have ignored them.

Not my experience or that of most of my friends. My DH does all shopping and cooking and DCs went to the school he teaches at whereas I was commuting to work so he did mornings/ packed lunches etc. We share stuff and always have - two of the DCs are from previous marriage also.

I do t think my H has ever put a load of washing on or folded a pile out the drier or mopped a floor. His big contribution is he does make Sunday dinner and he drives and I don't- so does a weekly shop with me

He does however work much longer hours than me and works far harder.

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.

This stuck out to me because the fact you are continuing the cycle seems to be lost on you.

I'm not British and the concepts of "nagging woman" and "lazy man with no sense of being houseproud" arent something I was brought up around.

I have always absolutely refused to do any thinking for my DH. He sometimes tries, because I'm a very sharp minded person and he is a bit on the scatty side/prone to panic, but it's pretty rare these days because the answer from day 1 of us getting together is "I don't know" or "what would you do if I was on a long haul flight? Do that". I just absolutely refuse to do any thinking for another capable adult. Same for tidying, cooking, meal planning, finances. I'm nobody's skivvy because I want brought up to be. My parents had an equal partnership and brought us all up to expect that in a spouse.

Conversations do not work. If words and explanations of how you feel were enough you wouldn't be in this situation at all. I posted the other stay about how I took myself off for a weekend because he was taking the piss when the DC were small and that's all it took (though his piss taking was minor)

I think this is partly why I'm still single
Grew up with my dad doing everything. Even though I was BF, my dad would get up, change me and give me to mum and then put me back to sleep
He did all the cooking, cleaning, laundry, everything around the house and my mum did nothing

Certainly not true for me, or for my family/ group of friends. DP does all our laundry, cleaning, shopping and half the cooking. Also broadly equal childcare. Most men I know are good partners who take an equal role in the household. I dislike these threads that suggest all men are crap!

Gosh. Only on page one and already women are being blamed for the fact their husbands are lazy fuck arses. Must be great being a man. Even when you are objectively being shit, you don’t have to take the blame. Everyone will blame the woman instead.

Also love the fact that the ‘just get him told’ brigade think that only clever them have thought of that. The women with shut husbands won’t have thought of it, obviously.

Does it not occur to these women that chronically shit husbands are like that because they just don’t do stuff not matter how much you go on at them. I mean, OP outlined pretty clearly that she and others do repeatedly ‘ just get them told’ but get name called as ‘nags ’ rather than the H going. ‘Gosh, I never thought of it like that before. I’ll immediately make a list of all the tasks I need to do and make sure it’s at least 50 percent of all possible tasks!’

For every person saying 'just don't put up with it' - firstly, women don't put up with it- but it grinds you down after a while, and when you have to leave the house in 5 minutes to get to nursery/train/work and you realise that your darling DH hasn't packed the school bag - what you going to do?

And about leaving. Yes, well, we all know why women stay. Because they don't want their kids to be carted about from house to house, only seeing them half the time, spending the next 15 years arguing with the tosser ex about who has christmas this year, probably seeing some other woman bring your kids up, with less money, during an economic crisis, all the while you're still doing all the fucking washing up by yourself.

Stop telling women it's fear, when sometimes it's just pragmatism. Not tolerating stuff is easy to type, especially when it's not your reality, but it's very very hard to do - women come on to MN trying to work their way out. But the last person we should be blaming is them

@ILikeToSleepALot I don't think its universal as some men really proactively want to be fathers (even if they don't really want to do the childrearing and domestic work when the reality its). However, I think you might be right for a fair few men- they are just ambivalent about parenthood and are cajoled into it then really can't be arsed with the domestic when it ramps up.

We're baby boomers and DH has always done his fair share, certainly with child rearing. (When we both worked we had a twice weekly cleaner.)
Now he has retired and DC fled the nest he does a lot of the housework and his own washing. (Doesn't like fab cond which I always use. Also he doesn't 'do' delicates or wool cycles. It all goes on the automatic setting. Fair enough, for his own stuff).
I cook but he cleans up, tidies the kitchen and loads/unloads the dishwasher. He gardens, does DIY, dusts and de-cobwebs. He cleans the hard floors. I hoover and polish as and when, do general tidying and the online shop.
I have to say he's not at all unusual in our circle -- MC, professional, getting on a bit. Most of the men do their share especially with regards to grandkids these days. DH grew up with a mum that always went out to work so was used to helping out at home. She did a good job.

I agree.

i divorced mine when dc was 5 (now 15) and all of relationships I’ve had since then have been the same.

I earn 6 figures, I’ve raised a family whist working, I’ve done ok, I’d just like someone similar to share life with

I sometimes wonder whether my standards are too low, maybe they are, but then I really do think if I raised them I’d be single forever. I’m only 39. Maybe that’s better than be saddled with a useless lazy waste of skin.

how did this happen?

I'm going through a divorce in my 60s, to my shame I put up with the situation that the OP describes for 30 odd years but I had financial reasons and at the time they seemed sensible. I was also scared to make changes of course. But that aside, most of my friends are in what they describe as great marriages and they seem very happy indeed. Their main concern is financial, does he provide enough money, and if so then everything else is secondary. Sometimes it seems like they are quite proud of what they have to do, like being a servant is a badge of honour. I've just come out of hospital, H picked me up which was very helpful. So he feels he has demonstrated a commitment to "helping" over and above what any normal man would do. But he hasn't done any housework, nor does he intend to (we are still living in the house whilst trying to sell it).

Has anyone seen that new comedy The Change where a 50 year old wife goes off on a trip alone after years of being taken for granted, and her sister rings her up and says you're just moaning because you had to do a bit of ironing?! That's what I get from a lot of my friends - they've always felt sorry for my STBexH as I always insisted he did the gardening and load the dishwasher for example. It's like I am not the "proper" wife. I can never get over the number of them doing all the decorating and DIY too, so childcare cooking cleaning AND all the physical jobs and working as well.

I recently asked a friend what her plans were for the summer and she replied "being a wife to my husband". This is one of the strongest people I've ever known. I was floored. But I'm heartened to hear that many of you think you aren't in relationships like that.

No it doesn’t. What exactly does it tell you?

‘Dad mornings’ are when the dads go in for a coffee, meet each other and watch the kids play in nursery. There are an equal number of ‘mum mornings’.

But I do criticize them, because that's how this shit is perpetuated and why we have so many kids who are mentally fucked due to poor starts in life with parents who had no business having children together.

The old "she had no choice because her biological clock was ticking" excuse is getting really, really tiresome. There are worse things than living life without reproducing. One of which is reproducing in mediocre, or worse, circumstances.

Hold out for decent men, ladies, or if you won't, don't complain to me about how crappy your life turns out.

I think a lot of men have that view @ILikeToSleepALot. The decision to have children seems to be driven by the woman more often than not and there s an element of “I didn’t ask for or want this”.

Ladies,
I understand however cannot relate- i would never settle for a DH who does any less than WORSHIP me, I have 3 men on the side just waiting for a chance from me to keep my DH on his toes (men are easy dont forget) We do an equal 50/50 split with chores and childcare and i cant understand how thats so hard to achieve. maybe you ladies picked the wrong hubbies .... never too late to start again though xoxo

I was in your situation with some extra abuse thrown in. I got divorced 5 years ago and I’m (in the main — I’m not delusional) blissfully happy to be a single mother.

I would imagine that the secret of my happiness is genuinely not wanting more actively looking for another partner.

not wanting nor* actively looking

I do have some friends with useless husbands, but the vast, vast majority of my friends have great marriages with men who share the load. I read mumsnet and it seems like a generation or 2 ago.

I will say that the 2 or 3 friends I have with useless husbands, have enabled their behaviour from day 1, so I have no sympathy.

It’s not all men, in my experience. I grew up with both parents working (that was quite unusual in the late 60s/70s) and saw my dad and brother doing their fair share of all household chores. As that was my lived experience, I expected the same when I married. It was. My sons grew up seeing this and are now replicating it with their own wives/partners. Sharing the cooking/cleaning/childcare and general running of the household.

It’s really disappointing to read that so many women have to put up with such an unequal share of the load and with such poor excuses for husbands/partners. I don’t know what the solution is though.

This has been my observation over 60 years of life, too.

And frankly the men who do "want" children seem often to do so as proof of their virility, or to please their own parents, or for other reasons that have nothing to do with wanting to actively be a parent for the next 20+ years.

This.

I honestly despair for the next generation of women. My worst nightmare is that my DD and my nieces would end up in this situation however my family always subscribed to the "strong women - raise them, be them, marry them". Thank GOD we are keeping this aspect of our culture.