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

Yes totally and utterly 100 percent agree !

Do you think women intrinsically “care” about housework? No of course they do not. Outside of influencers and people with nothing else to do no one is “interested” in housework for its own sake.

It needs to be done to a reasonable standard to allow people to maintain a healthy and efficient lifestyle. How would you do your job if you could never find clothes to wear because things are not organised properly? How can your children have food to eat which is nutritious and safe? Has none of this ever occurred to you?

Your post is so respresentative of the arrogance of privilege. You assume that keeping the house in an adequately clean and organised state that you and your family can function happens by osmosis because a woman is doing it for you. You presumably need this work to be done and would complain if you couldn’t find shirts for work or a clean plate to eat off or if your toilet bowl hadn’t been cleaned for months. But you “don’t care”. Good for you, how freewheeling and liberated you are. Just leave it to the woman in your life to have to do the caring.

This is why women leave.

I'm not so sure. I think a lot of it is women assume they know best and it's their way only. I've known men to kniw nothing about babies and small children but left to their own devices they're fine, having fun with their dc.
Step back OP, let him deal with your poorly dc next time, as yoy say he's a Dr!

I know! Right? These poor men. Bless ‘em. We should give them a break. Like those poor poor slave owners having to give up their slaves and employ people. It’s such a hard adaptation. Women should be grateful they aren’t fighting this terrible situation harder and getting us back at home, waiting for them, with a full face of make up and a hot dinner.

👏👏👏👏

The problem is that some women just like to complain and aren't happy if their partner isn't following their expectations for managing the household and children.

Are you serious?

Men organise and plan at their jobs! To build, grow, and run a successful business/company involves organising and planning. Very few careers don’t involve these things. Heck, everyday life for almost everyone on the planet involves organising and planning of some kind regardless of gender. How do you get yourself up? How do you get to work? How about meeting up with friends? Going to events? Does a woman organise and plan such things for you or are you an adult and get yourself there?

Even children/ teens organise and plan, especially if they come from families where both parents work long hours.

Organising and planning are skills the majority of people have to learn or use so no, women aren’t naturally better.

Are you a Russian bot or just trying to sound like one?

A Russian bot?
No i have a differing opinion to the one on this thread which is populated by the usual windbags.😂

True as do some men, but there are some things that there are a right way to do. Anyone with a job knows that. If you do something the wrong way or it makes someone have to fix what you’ve done because you chose to half-arse it because you either think it doesn’t matter and the consequences are not worth it or just want to get it done, you would likely be demoted or fired.

Lol. Place marking for a proper read later

But that’s just the point isn’t it. They CAN do it but don’t want to. Have been raised to believe it’s all beneath them.

And mostly it is don’t want to, rather than can’t.

My DH has now nailed keeping track of what DC need for school each day because I stepped back and let him fail. It meant a few missed things for the kids (one left him crying with guilt, and I felt awful about it all too (DC fine with it all)) but now it hardly ever happens. He’s applying himself to it.

But it’s like this because I hit rock bottom. I burnt out trying to hold down a ‘very important’ job and keep everything else going after mat leave. It took years of me crying, talking it through, educating him about the ‘mental load’ (thank you Eve Rodesky), and eventually saying I needed us to separate, for him to truly step up.

And having now dropped lots of the mental load, the view from the other side is bloody amazing!! My head is free to be creative. I have energy for hobbies. I’m so much more relaxed.

But I still have the ‘I have cleaned the kitchen’ when there are still dirty things in the sink, and the ‘I am doing this for you because I don’t care’ when we have mutually agreed minimum standards.

Why? Because he really doesn’t want to do it. He doesn’t want to use up his mental and physical energy on the daily grind. Not many people do!

Indeed. If you are washing up and there is still dried soap suds mingled with tomato sauce on the plate, that’s below the minimum standard most people would accept.

I was recommended (and now should really get commission as I recommend it all the time) Eve Rodesky’s fair play on a thread I started a few years ago. It’s on audible and you can get the jist just from the website and videos. She suggests having mutually agreed standards. I did similar with DH before I read her book and was amazed that despite his protestations of ‘I don’t care’ we actually, mostly, agreed on how frequently certain tasks needed doing.

Windbags? Wow.

OK. As you were.

‘Tell him his penis shouldn’t get in the way of him learning and a uterus and breasts aren’t neural organs in charge of certain knowledge.’

I agree that the ‘patriarchy’ is largely to blame, in that society and more importantly, the early years’ upbringing fix the attitudes which are underlying the ‘weaponised incompetence. ‘

OTOH I have lived with the same man for forty years, before we got together he had been to University and then had a flat on his own for seven years ( it was staggeringly untidy though fairly clean). He now does clean the kitchen to a high standard , quite often unprompted, he does ‘ his jobs’ ditto. He does all the finances and utilities, I was perfectly competent at it but I find it mind -numbingly boring except when things go wrong and then it’s distressing. However, he still needs a list of shopping and reminding about non routine tasks. His room is not as clean / tidy as the rest of the house. He just doesn’t see it or doesn’t care. I do believe this is innate.

I wonder though whether there is some hormonal difference relative to our functions and roles at the base biological level. With recent developments, it might be possible to examine this? How do trans men ( natal females who take testosterone) who are in relationships with women behave re the mental load ? Do estrogen taking transwomen start to ‘see mess’ and assume more domestic responsibility?

YANBU. Your post sums up one of the reasons why I divorced my exh. He really saw us having DC as his chance to gain an unpaid maid. Several of my friends have also found similar once they have had children. I think in most cases these men are perfectly capable of caring for their children, as you say your DH is a ICU consultant, and my exh also had a very high pressured job (as do I), however certainly in my case he seemed to feel that caring for his child was beneath him.

Of course transwomen don’t start to ‘see mess’ and assume domestic responsibility!

Amazingly, when I became a full-time single father I discovered that I could do all the organising, planning, and running of the household without needing ovaries. Who knew!?

It's not that women are naturally better at it. It's that society tells us that it's women's work. None of it is massively difficult. There's just lots of little things that need to be done and that takes planning which requires you to give a shit.

The one thing I would say is that it also entails making mistakes and learning from them. If you've never had to pack a bag for a day out with the kids then the first time you do it you might overlook the need for water and a snack. Spend a day out with the kids where you discover just how miserable it can get when they're hungry and thirsty, and you learn to pack better next time. Women aren't born knowing this and neither are men. It has to be learned.

That is definitely a problem, but it's not the problem. The problem is that childcare, housework etc is seen by society as women's work. So the men can slack off and know that the women will pick up after us because that's what they're there for.

This is not dissimilar to us. The only time we have ever, even in the heat of a major argument, even vaguelly mentioned the word divorce was after an epic meltdown when, having ignored the vacuuming that he'd promised me would be HIS job for weeks, DH then did a particularly half assed job AND took 4 hours to do it. 4 hours and clearly expected me to drop to my knees in gratitude once it was complete* *I was furious. He was furious with me and how I was "controlling" him etc. This had all been building up over months, of course, at a tough time - Covid etc.

It took a lot of work and effort for us to get past that ridiculous moment but the result is a much happier and less overwhelmed me. Sometimes I amost feel bad for DH because there's absolutely no doubt that his life is notably harder now than it was before while mine is notably easier. But that's because he's actually (mostly) doing his share now AND has taken on at least some of the mental load. On the plus side, I don't have any of the passive aggressive comments you're getting. That would drive me mad.

I dont think i have ever read anything more true.

I agree. And as a mother I didn’t intrinsically know what to do. I put the first nappy on back to front. You learn. Like with anything. But to learn, you have to apply yourself and it’s that attitude of seeing it as unworthy of effort that gets in the way. My DH used to ask my why I was so tired when I’d had two days off (working part time) and I used to question myself. Until I realised I never had a day off. I’d be lucky to get an hour. But the crucial bit here is that he didn’t see it as work. And that’s why his efforts were always half arsed - he was relaxing and ‘pottering’ not applying himself to the invisible, unpaid, undervalued daily grind that keeps the world ticking along, because he’d been unconsciously socialised to see it as lesser as it had historically been ‘just women’s work’.

There are posters on this thread blaming men or the patriarchy. Yet the logical conclusion if women are doing the majority of the family work. It's women who have brought up these boys and led them to be the men that are being complained about.

What is a half-assed job? It's just controlling to demand others mirror your actions. It's odd.

Yes. Very similar. You are right re how long it takes and the need for gratitude. I take literally a quarter of the time to do household chores to a good standard. And then I feel bad that he’s still working at these things when I’ve done my bits and am sat down. But I crack on, focus and have put effort into doing it efficiently. He potters, listening to something or watching something. Stands staring into space. So now if I find myself with the urge to help I don’t. He could do it quicker and then sit down but he prefers to do it laconically. His choice. Mine is to put effort into doing it all quickly so I can then chill.

A half assessed job is;

Youve washed up there is still gunk on the crocs.

You’ve wiped down the surfaces but left dirty pots in the sink and call it ‘cleaning the kitchen’

Its paying half attention to what the kids need for school so you miss several things meaning they miss out on things.

It’s not doing the second dose of nit mousse so the nits return and reinfect the whole class.

I could go on. This isn’t about fussiness. This is about a lack of application and effort because they see it as of little value because society has previously taught us it is ‘just women’s work’.