AIBU - motherhood has ruined men for me

[Bettercallsaul2024]

I expect I am being unreasonable but since becoming a mum I have gone off men.

I had always adored men but now I see an incompetence I can’t get past. My husband is an ICU consultant - can handle huge pressure and stress but can’t be trusted to pack a fucking bag for a day to the zoo. He can handle the resuscitation of a child but can’t cope when OUR child has a tantrum. (I too am a hospital doctor so feel like I can make the comparison, and I do appreciate the workload of his job). He would never cope being up all night with our ill child yet can do nightshifts in ICU - I don’t get it?!

and it’s not ‘just’ him. I now see it everywhere. All the men in my family, though lovely, have so much less expected of them. Seen as great dads when they take the kids swimming despite the women doing all the parenting the rest of the week plus having a job/career.

sometimes I say to my mum - how are men able to organise complex things like war when they can’t do the sainsburys food shop without ringing their partner at least twice. She reasons that it’s because men usually only have one task to focus on at a time and so can do it well - behind the scenes women are doing EVERYTHING else.

I find myself unattracted to my husband but also all men really. At the park I see dads standing on their phones, getting cross and stressed when their kids are upset after a grazed knee. It’s so ugly to me!

I KNOW I am being unreasonable. But do others feel this way? I know not ALL men. It just so happens it’s ALL men I’ve ever interacted with

YABU: this is a DH thing. Men are just as wonderful as women

YANBU: men wouldn’t last one day as mothers

They just don’t want to do it.

Menial work, mundane work, repetitive domestic work, cheap work, invisible work isn’t valued in the west. It’s not contributing to building or maintaining the male ego, which is paramount in our society (does anyone ever even hear about the female ego?).

They can outsource it all, ideally to a woman (because they’re cheaper, and immigrant women are the cheapest). Or, if they can find a low-enough maintenance gf or wife, they can get sex and companionship thrown in for free too. Failing that, they will lower their standards. Or they will resort to mothers and sisters. Anything, but lowering themselves to mundanities that don’t move them ahead. It’s all about the male ego. Theres no room for domestic labour and child-rearing in the male ego. It’s pointless to them.

More fool women for staying with these men.

How do you think women who live alone manage those tasks?

I do all the things you listed and I don't think it's "backbreaking" work. It certainly requires physical effort but no more than other domestic chores. IMO mowing the lawn is easier than mopping the kitchen floor and pressure washing is easier than hoovering. And none of the garden tasks are year round.

...mowing, raking, repainting the fences, pressure washing everything thats gone green over a really crappy winter, scraping weeds, repairing our BBQ, taking stuff to the tip, unpacking our garden furniture, planting flowers, putting up a new washing line, resealing some windows etc etc.

All of these things can be easily and fairly inexpensively outsourced to someone unrelated to the family, without any negative consequences (other than financial).

Some things that can't be outsourced (at least not without chipping away at family relationships or health):

Brushing your reluctant children's teeth twice a day
Reading them bedtime stories and convincing them to go to sleep every night when they just WANT TO PYAY
Comforting them after yet another grazed knee
Negotiating dropping them off at nursery when they don't always want to go and need reassurance that you do love them and aren't just trying to get rid of them

These are constant, several-times-a-day jobs that are Mummy's jobs in my house. Luckily my dh knows these are not remotely comparable to mowing the lawn or taking out the bins, all of which I can (and sometimes do) easily pay someone to do.

You pay someone to take out the bins?

I have a weekly cleaner, it's not ground breaking. We take out our food waste and nappies daily but she takes out the general waste (nothing gross in there) and recycling.

If we needed to we could have her twice a week without breaking the bank.

And yes, I absolutely could pay a gardener to do most of the jobs on that list above, in fact I have done in the past.

I’ve also been hoping DD will turn out to be a Lesbian. Not saying relationships are easier but men are just so often utterly entitled . I think I know one dad who I would say genuinely does a fair split in a dual income household.

DH is a decent parent and happy to do his share and does chores (I’m a SAHM), organises appointments, buys Dd clothes, did do a lot of nights though whilst working full time (I had severe PND), organises holidays etc etc. On the whole we have a good split.

I do suspect though that if I went back to work we would have to have a chat about sharing mental load and he’s definitely one of the good ones.

The number of women I’ve spoken to who seem to need to organise their husbands all the time is extraordinary. I think I’ve actually lost the opportunity to make friends because a lot of women where I live seem to start with “my husband is fucking useless, they are like extra kids aren’t they” and I sort of say “that sounds hard but no not really, mines fine” and then they stop talking to me.

I think a lot of household tasks that men like to take on are very often performative. So cooking very elaborate meals. This isn't to help...it's because it's fun and gets them praise. Same with BBQs. DIY and doing the garden...the results are usually very visual and result in much praise. The boring stuff is usually the stuff that no one notices until it's not done..

But those are the interesting and novel jobs (bar the bins which is a once a week five minute effort). They are the ‘hero’ tasks. The ‘look at what I’ve done’ tasks. It’s the invisible daily grind that EVERYONE needs to do but grown ass men seem to think is beneath them. The things that don’t get acknowledged.

E.g. Xmas. DH cooked dinner. I planned the meal, decorated the table, got the food, cleaned the house, cleaned up afterwards. Guess who got all the thank you’d and praise? I don’t want thank yous and praise but it’s a good example of all the invisible, behind the scenes stuff that they won’t do. It’s been devalued by society.

E.g. program on TV. Building bridge to island. Two teams. Stack of money on island for winners. Female player injured herself so can’t build so says I’ll do all the cooking and cleaning up so you all can focus on building. She got voted off for not doing anything. But they had to eat to have the energy to build. The cleaning up afterwards had to be done or they’d have got food poisoning and nit be able to build.

My DH knows it’s important now, sees it as his job, has learned how to do it, but doesn’t want to. His ego sees it as beneath him. He can’t talk to his mates about how well he washed up today. He can talk to them about painting the shed.

Just posted similar before I read this. You are damn right.

YADNBU. And yes, it is REALLY unattractive

can't stand men full stop

@FOJN

Agreed, lifting a binbag into a bin, power washing the patio (this is my job as I absolutely love it!!), doing a bit of gardening and going to the tip isn’t exactly backbreaking work!!

Maybe this is another reason why our relationship doesn’t feel like anything people are describing here. As well as sharing housework and childcare, we also both take the bins out if we see it’s full, both do DIY, and both do gardening (mostly me with the gardening as I enjoy it and gives me a good excuse to be outside).

Not many people live like that.

Oh. Believe me I’m not unconditionally staying. It’s changing at the moment and I have a clear agreement with him that it’s his role and he’s doing more now. Yesterday he didn’t and I’m baffled as to why but I’ll see what the week brings. But he is now doing the mental load and I tell you what I’m so much less stressed. It’s taken 11 years of difficult conversations and me breaking down in tears and telling him that I’m not staying if it doesn’t change though.

You are so right and look at what we are already achieving now just having a teensy bit of a chance!! May be that’s why we are struggling to get true equality - because deep down they know we could do it all and do it better?

I had an argument with my DH recently because I looked after DC while he went abroad for the week. He didn’t understand why I expected him to be grateful - after all they’re my own children so why shouldn’t I look after them? He just couldn’t see that I was doing him a favour, because parenting is 50/50 so I was doing his share as well as my own, and if I didn’t do his share then he wouldn’t have been able to go.

I'm not blaming women for the awful.behaviour of many men

But women have to take some responsibility for their choices.

If the men talked about on this thread are as catastrophically inept as is being claimed (and I'm perfectly prepared to believe they are) there would have been signs before marrying him and having children.

Oh yes!! This too. I ignore it now. I have developed selective deafness.

I know lots of quite good and involved dads, but they are nearly all a bit shit in some ways, especially mental load stuff

Completly this. Most of the “hands on” dads I know have their “area of competence” in the home. There is their “dad thing”, whether it’s taking the kids swimming or getting school bags ready or whatever it may be. What most of them, even the very “progressive” ones (Look at me! I’m a hands on dad!) is to embed the idea that the whole holistic job of childcare is as much their problem as the woman’s.

My ex prided himself on being an “involved dad” and he was indeed very involved with the specific little niches he carved out for himself which included preparing baby food and buying clothes. Everything else fell to me including the identification of all the needs and the prompt to him to do them. He never expected to have to think and anticipate for himself. So if he took her to the playground and forgot to pack water for her it would be my fault for not reminding him, even if I was miles away at work.

And almost every sentence he uttered to began with the phrase: “You need to….”. Followed by another perceived childcare shortcoming he had identified.

For some men being a “hands on dad” is just another opportunity to control and order around their partner and create more work for her.

Great post it’s spot on … my husband tried this nonsense when we had our first child but I pushed back and told him I wasn’t his mother . I just leave him to do the same things I do and over the years he’s pretty much equal to me in terms of what we do in the house , we both work similar shift patterns so things are ALMOST equal , I still take on more of the mental energy tasks but like you say women tend to do that .

I think it’s weaponised incompetence from a lot of men and a lot of women martyr themselves and act like no one can cope without them , when they need to step away and let things go to chaos and the man pick it up sometimes .

Most of them can't multitask and most women can. In our office the men could never find anything, in the stationery cupboard or if a filed item needed to be dug out, but the box would be clearly marked with it contents listed. We used to send them back in, with the instruction, stop having a 'man's look'.

It generally worked.

I think it's because they don't organise it they just give the orders sort to speak e.g. the crash trolly is stocked for him or the general says attack X which just happens. I love my DH to bits and he does a lot with DS but things like packing is left to me or we will get there without something........which wouldn't bother him!

He also doesn't cope with tantrums as they don't bother him as much so he just lets it run its course. He also has more of a level head in a crisis I need to try and fix it he can see it play out a lot further ahead.

Slight derail...... I've just purchased the karcher patio cleaner attachment and it eliminates all of the splash back mess which usually accompanies pressure washing the patio. As a bonus there are two extension pieces which means you don't have to bend over either.

I honestly don't get this. DH does all this stuff too and yes, I am super grateful as I don't want to do it, nor do I have time to do it. But at the end of the day, he does all this and I feel no guilt because this is a few weeks a year and needs to be done and I am busy doing the 50000 other tasks that need doing regularly.

this "oh, he pressure washed the patio so he's totally equal" thing is such BS. It's good he's doing it, but 9/10 he's doing it while the woman is cooking dinner when on the other 364 days of the year he's watching football while she's cooking dinner.

We get our behaviour policed by the public in a way they never do though. Men don't get unsolicited comments telling them what they're doing wrong

One thng I'll say about this - DH was a SAHD 15 years ago and my god, the poor man had the full gamut from gushing, "oh, your wife is so lucky and you're so amazing" which just made him roll his eyes and mutter about whether anyone had said the same to the 50 women he could see at any given moment with similarly small babies to endless interfering to tell him DS was cold/hungry/tired or he was doing the bottle wrong or offering tips for nappy changes - none of which I got.