To be sick of seeing 'I carry all the load' posts

[ijustdontunderstanditall]

Can't do a poll as on the app

It feels every other post atm is a woman being annoyed because they do everything, and their partner just goes to work, doesn't help with kids/house/life admin etc

Maybe I am just lucky that I don't have this issue, but I just don't understand why people don't just put their foot down and stop doing it all? Surely when the dinner isn't cooked/ hoover put round/ bill paid the other person will man up and help?

I think there is some defensiveness on this thread op. Like you have hit a nerve. My husband does equal amounts, and if he’s occasionally lax I will say your turn for the dishwasher, or can you get the hoovering done now before we sit down. And if required I will keep saying it. It’s seldom required though. I certainly won’t do it. It will keep being said till it’s done. That’s incredibly rare though. He usually just does it.

he’s a grown up and perfectly capable. I’m not his mother. This isn’t the 1950s and we will equally contribute to the upkeep of our home.

I'm lucky that my DH is 50/50 with me, but I did make my boundaries clear early on and do bring up any issues quickly. He is under no illusions that I'll put up with lazy behaviour. The key thing is to teach the next generation what an equal relationship looks like. It's little things like this morning when my DS age 8 put his plate next to the dishwasher...I asked who he thought was going to put it inside? He quickly got the point and did it himself. I'd like to raise boys that will one day be excellent partners and look after their own homes successfully.

I sometimes see references to daily hoovering, dusting, mopping etc and it boggles my mind. Hoovering is my job and I do it once a week at the absolute most and frequently that slips. In between I don't think about it at all. There are definitely some MNers out there who have pristine show home standards. I don't get it; life should be geared towards minimising domestic drudgery for everyone, not creating more than is necessary.

And re: "my job" - as the messy one in the relationship it works out best if DP and I divvy it up and let the other person get on with their allotted chores. We worked that out within days of moving in with each other.

There's research on this.

Those saying, you chose them, often people are equally matched up in terms of contributing to the house until they have children.

After children (not if they don't have them) is where the disparity opens up, possibly due to maternity leave setting the standard of women being responsible for the house and for childcare.

We know it is a gender thing because all the research shows that women consistently do more housework and more childcare/time with children even in very equal countries (like Nordic countries). So, it's not in anyone's imagination and individual women may be very disinterested in housework or cooking or reading bedtime stories to the kids but in general, they still do more of it.

Because it is men whose behaviour that is on the floor.

women are already up.

This is me.
There's some things I've just stopped doing, they get left but other than some irritation it doesn't affect me.
Everything else I'll do but I drew a line and refuse to shift.

I hate those threads too, and there are so many. I'm sick of seeing them, and seeing them play out in real life too.

I'm sick of my DH who pulls his weight with half the childcare, half the housework (but nowhere near half the mental load) and half the salary being declared AMAZING, a god amongst men, told I'm SOOOOOO lucky. Needless to say he's never told he's soooo lucky because his wife does the school run and knows what day PE is.

But I think blaming women for men being awful might be even worse than the ridiculously low bar set for husbands and fathers that so many still fail to clear.

I've tried this, he'll even do it but at a later date will berate me for it.
What really hurts is for years he acted like a clux in the kitchen and I love cooking so I took on all food related jobs but now he's on a serious health kick he's suddenly learned to chop and sauté and cook solely for himself. My heart's in my mouth as I type this because although it's been around 2 months of this sudden change it still upsets me.
I did bring it up but his response was surly and abrupt.
Thankfully my boys are totally different, they have great role models in my brother, my dad and my brother in law.

Those posts can be a bit annoying, I agree, but in 9 out of 10 cases posters ask a few more questions, and suddenly there's a whole lot more problematic or downright abusive behaviour... and THEN the OP starts to get constructive advice.

Don't look at threads you aren't interested in. Simple.

there is an element of martyrdom.

Taking care of children, not optional.

Spring cleaning the house before going away? Not a necessity but a logical choice to make the return home less painful.

The concept of "visitor-ready house"? Never once have I heard it from a man. It's disingenuous to add it to the mental load when it's purely self-inflicted and frankly unnecessary.

How many men are described as "house proud"? you can have lovely men, with a strong preference for a tidy and clean house who do it themselves, or pay a cleaner, but they don't define themselves by it.

The enormous Christmas or people's birthday mental load? Most of it is self-inflicted. If your husband doesn't care about sending a million christmas cards or birthday cards, you are not doing him a favour by doing it for him.

It's like the caricature of a man being obsessed with washing his car every Sunday. If you don't care, would be more than happy to bring it to the car wash yourself once in a blue moon, the car washer is not doing you a favour. If nothing else, he's an irritant.

This.
Dynamics can totally change when a baby is born - l got made redindant when on mat leave so had no job to go back to - apart from losing confidence in my ability to work, l also felt like my contribution was keeping the home nice etc.
I feel like the op is a bit tone deaf - almost like saying l have never lived in a council house/been camping/insert whatever - so why would anyone want to?

This i couldnt be quiet about. It sounds like the beginnings of coercive control. He is making her have significantly less disposable income, which limits her freedom. He has her do all the housework, which limits her free time.

While dynamics can change with circumstances, and we all understand that, there is frustrating number of women who say "well he was always like that since I met him,". That is so incredibly frustrating

Because it's not about tasks, it's about the mental load. Two different things. It doesn't make my life easier by writing down a list of tasks DH needs to do and then spending time following up said tasks. I want to not have to write a list. I want him to remember to make a hair appointment, not wait to get told to make one.
If it was as simple as giving him jobs to do, there would be no issue.

I want him to remember to make a hair appointment, not wait to get told to make one.
Like for HIS haircut?
The only time I say anything about his hair is if he changes barber and they give him too short cut. I cannot imagine life with adult I would have to remind to get haircut.

Is it not just another symptom of female dependence on men?
I will presume the man is working to contribute to their lifestyle, or else the women wouldn't marry them. Why would a woman stick around in this situation? Perhaps she needs to vent about the heavy load to distract from her choice to marry into mortgage security and a lifestyle that financially affords children.
It would make far more sense to be either A) Completely self sufficient, or B) admit to choosing this lifestyle for the financial security.

Perhaps if more women were financially secure they wouldn't end up in situations like this in the first place. Once you have had a child, you are dependent upon either the state or a man, unless your single income is sufficiently high enough to cover it all. This is possible, but less common. I suppose in this sense 'financial security' is a feminist issue.

Many women have children with arseholes. Lucky you, you didn’t. Neither did I. But I would never start such a smug thread blaming women for the fact that so many men are simply SHIT.

Maybe focus your energies into the next generation and if you have daughters teach them not to tolerate entitled male behaviour: if you have sons train them to early with domestic responsibilities and don’t let them become the selfish man babies that so many women find themselves saddled with.

The gender pay gap still exists and life is expensive, women feel trapped financially.

In abusive relationships you either are forced to share your children with your abuser (the court even helps continue the abuse) so you're terrified something will happen to them and you can't protect them.

Most relationships don't start off bad and society continues to the vicious cycle for our children. I got out of one of these relationships and life isn't roses now, although for it's preferable.

Because men change over time. Nobody knowingly marries a selfish or abusive person. They generally wait until the woman is pregnant and trapped. If you do leave, your kids grow up without a dad and you still carry the load but with extra financial worries.

So, a lot of women choose to stay, let the kids have a father and a house and a “normal” childhood then simmer with rage and frustration. Marriage is for life for many. Unfortunately some people use this to leverage the perks for themselves and the burden for their partner.

Why do they choose these men to mate with?

I'm not typical but I had 2 kids with a man who appeared to 'do his bit'
(worked full time, did DIY, cleaned, took care of car etc, whilst I did more cooking & childcare as we played to our strengths). We then had 2 ASD kids.
I became disabled. He did less & less then buggered off. I didn't 'let it happen'.

& everything @Aurasauras said upthread.