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

Is it the case that he wouldn’t pack a bag for the zoo exactly as you would?

This sort of comment can be so irritating. It is true that sometimes women, especially if they've been doing it all, get frustrated when it's not done their way. But much more often, the reality is that the man's way is not okay. And while I'm more than happy to let him learn from his mistakes, (as I did), there comes a point at which that is too much.

You're right, if he chooses to mix a pink tshirt with a pair of yellow trousers, that's not big deal. But that's not normally what happens and usually, there's more upset and chaos for the chidren. They don't get the snacks they like so they're upset and crying (and if mum is on this outing, she's the one who has to deal with the fallout). Or in my case, DD was late for school at least 50% of the time DH was in charge because his way just didn't work so even though he was annoyed when I stepped in, I had to point out that if I didn't, it didn't get bloody done. I'm still actually quite irritated about that because I NEVER get a morning where I'm not doing at least SOMETHING for the DC in the morning/

I am wondering how many have spoken to their partners about this unfair division of labour and I mean really sat down and talked to them? What example are we all setting for children by allowing someone not to pull their weight and how angry do you have to be before you snap? I am not lucky to have a DH that does more than his share, but feel very happy that he is a real partner and I do think our approaches to our daily lives stem from mums that really refused to carry a household on their shoulders whilst holding down full time jobs and I think they knew you couldn't have it all, but also knew when to let things go (no one is perfect and I think that there was less pressure at one time to be a superwoman). Just where did these chaps learn their behaviours from in the first place and allowing it to continue is condoning it, isn't it?

You can communicate all you want but if your up agains a bloke (and they aren’t uncommon) who smile and nod and then do nothing then there’s not much you can do.

If you’re really unlucky they make the effort in the beginning then just down tools when kids come along.

That said I agree with pp who said that if a bloke packs a bag for the zoo differently to how you would then he hadn’t necessarily done it wrong. Some women do try to micro manage things (and then complain about the mental load)

I felt like this before I had kids - repulsed by the majority of men I knew for the exact same reasons. However I grew up with a very capable father and have older brothers who are very good dads - by that I mean if my SILs suddenly disappeared from the Earth they could cope, both brothers travel abroad alone to visit our parents with their small kids regularly without needing help packing etc., not 'good dads' in that all they do is to take them to the park and swimming. Therefore I knew what I was looking for in a husband if I was going to have a family.

I strongly think growing up with very capable and involved men around me meant I was able to identify another good candidate to have mine with. Lots of women say there was no sign their husband would be like this before kids came along but many of them I've known long term and could see it myself. I think if you grew up with your mum just doing more without complaint it is normalised and you don't notice how much more admin you do than your DH (for example running the household and organising holidays) before kids come along and the lack of teamwork is so much more obvious.

My ex DH was like that. He has improved as a dad somewhat, but still feels that cleaning is beneath him and has a (female) cleaner despite living on his own most of the time. And rarely cooks, prefers takeaway/eating out/making the children cook for him because 'They need to learn these skills.' Yes, and you need to learn not to be such a lazy shit.

https://english.emmaclit.com/2017/05/20/you-shouldve-asked/

Made me think of this.

My dh is alright, but even he has admitted that there are certain things he doesn't want to learn to do, so he can avoid doing them (and some of them are utterly ridiculous like learning how to use the rice cooker - really simple).

I think there is possibly some confirmation bias going on here.

Some women like to award themselves martyr status and this requires them to view their partner as incompetent when they are not.

Some women set unnecessarily high standards that some men are not dumb enough to adhere to.

Some women make very poor choices when it comes to who they have children with.

Some men are shit.

My DH was always lazy on the housework front before we had children - I should have put my foot down then, but didn't. When our first came along, he was decent on the parenting side of things, but continued to be useless on the housework side- it didn't matter too much as DS was the most chilled baby ever and I was briefly a SAHM so I could do pretty much all of it myself. Then our second came along. She was not a good sleeper and would not have a bottle. I think DH became depressed and his brain reverted back to factory settings - ie he modelled what he saw with his own parents which was his 'don't mind me' mother running around being a martyr while his dad sat on his arse and barked MIL's name every now and again like she was a dog. He just checked out of anything to do with the kids or home. I was severely depressed but I couldn't check out of course - for women parenting just isn't optional. After about 18 months of this shit I said it was time for a divorce.

Thankfully (after some time) DH got his shit together and I would say now, 10 years later, he's the 'mum' of the family. I'm the one asking when scouts is on and fucking up timings and such. That's arisen largely due to the fact that I've ended up in a more stressful and demanding job, so he's picked up the slack. I will say that while I don't measure up to the traditional mum stereotype I am still better than most of the dads I know - plenty of my friend's DHs essentially do nothing with their kids, which is definitely not the bar I'm currently squatting on.

In some ways not being the default parent is great but I often I hate being so clueless and my attempts to get up to speed don't always work - I'm so out of the loop that it's hard to get back in IYSWIM. So I do have a tiny bit of sympathy for dads who go back work after two weeks and then struggle to hit their stride - if things are going quite smoothly without you it can take a lot of effort to insert yourself, especially if your efforts are fairly shoddy and lead to mistakes.

One interesting thing is that DH has commented that he is really grateful I made him change and that he is far, far happier as an involved dad than as a carbon copy of his detached, lazy father. He has said that unknown to him, his upbringing (both within his family and generally as a man) had taught him that child related stuff wasn't for him and so he resisted really getting stuck in - but that resistance was actually stressful and not being involved had a negative effect on him. He is genuinely a wonderful parent - a total natural - and it makes me sad to think that because of how society trained him he could have missed out.

I don't know how to vote because I don't think it's all men - there are competent men who can do all the childcare stuff just as well, don't let their emotions rule and don't need to phone during a supermarket shop. I am married to one - he is probably more competent at life stuff than me overall as I have ADHD.

I do think this is unfortunately a minority of men. So many of them are so casually dependent on female labour, in the background exactly as you say. And it becomes extremely visible after motherhood, which is why I think MN is a fairly feminist space overall.

I only met DH after having DC1 and I don't think I could have identified these traits in him before having had a child. You just don't know what to look for until then, then you see it absolutely everywhere and it's astounding.

I don’t recognise this in my husband, but we also did shared parental leave so he had a few months of sole responsibility.

Yes! A wife would be great.

I shared parental leave for DC1 and it made a big difference. But I also had a DH who likes to be competent, almost in a slightly competitive way. He's quite sneery of blokes who are a bit shit.

I have had to be fine with not being In Charge Of Absolutely Everything, and let the odd ball get dropped. But I suspect the biggest advantage DH had was a father who was a good role model. Not only did both of his parents work, DH's dad had to cope for periods when his mum was unwell and unable to deal with everything.

I'm wary of this notion that you fix it by giving men more leave and more family time. They take the time but they don't necessarily multitask like the women do on maternity leave so you just end up with women going back to work when the baby is in a routine, communicative, happy and settled and then doing a WOH job and housework around a man who just takes the baby to the park every day and thinks he is a hero.

When my first was a baby, and we were on "holiday" (hollow laughter) we changed the baby head to toe one day out of the changing bag when she had a poonami. The next day, I said "Can you check / fill the changing bag?" before we went out because I was indoctrinated (probably on here) into thinking that you get the guy to take responsibility by offering it to him. he was there the day before, he knew what can happen, he knew what the spare clothes in the changing bag were for, he knew that they had been used. I left him to it and when we were out, a poonami happened again and there were no spare clothes. To this day he tells this hilarious story through the lens of: I (me specifically) forgot to pack spare clothes. I didn't forget. I had it in my mind when I said "do the changing bag". I was doing what they tell you do - leaving the space for man to step up into. He didn't step up. he was never, ever, ever going to step up.
there was no gatekeeping from me. There are only so many times you can keep allowing shit (ha ha) situations to arise that you will have to deal with. you stop letting it happen

We are separated. he is still lazy. I still do everything, and pay for everything. But I don't have to live with him

Interesting use of language on this thread. Lots of women coming on to say that their male partner is a wonderful father, very hands on. This is curious to me because I don't really read or see the phrase 'She is a wonderful mother. She is very hands on'. Is that because it's a given that mothers will be hands on? Like a pp said is this an indicator of differing levels of expectation?

I often get 'You have a wonderful DH because he cooks and sews' - because it's seen as an extra, a bonus, extraordinary that my DH does this. Would my DH get someone saying to him 'You have a wonderful wife because she cooks and sews'? Use of language is a great barometer of the way we view things on a social level.

Totally agreed

It's just they don't see it as that important. That's the bottom line.

I agree that Shared Parental Leave really helps in setting out equal parenting. DH is a very hands-on dad (more so than most other dads I know) and is perfectly competent to look after DD on his own including doing all the ‘behind the scenes’ stuff. He took two months SPL when my maternity leave finished, and although he was very hands-on before, I think that was when he really got what it was like to look after a baby without any ‘back-up’.

However, it’s not possible for everyone to take SPL (finances etc) and I agree that some women often ‘gatekeep’ child-related things. When I mentioned that DH was taking SPL to other mums I met on maternity leave, a couple of them said that they wouldn’t want to give up any of ‘their’ maternity leave.

I’m guilty of some gate keeping myself - DH took DD to visit his parents over Easter and I volunteered to help DD (age 9) to pack her things because I wasn’t sure he’d think of everything or be aware of what DD wants - he sometimes assumes stuff without checking with her. I’m also the one who books the childcare because I don’t quite trust him to get forms submitted on time, which I know is unfair!

I'm not convinced shared leave would always help. Xh was the 'main' parent when our dc were small and I worked 2 jobs.

He still left when he found it too difficult/stressful. The biggest influence on him was his father's behaviour - even though he had witnessed being abandoned from the child's point of view! He hated his father but the imprint of "how to be as a man" had gone in deep.

Dh is not like this but depressingly he is generally seen by our friends as an anomaly and very unusual.

When I had dd1 he was behaving in my view normally but most of the medical staff made a point of commenting on his amazing ness so god knows what most men are like.

I agree in general OP - obviously there are always exceptions - and its put me right off men as well. Which is sad because I have teenage boys and I try to teach them to contribute to the household, but what they have always witnessed is me doing literally everything. And I just know they have learnt from what they see and not what I tell them. There's this innate selfishness in men in general.

It's tricky because given reality, I would love to see more support for women to compensate for the extra (on average) mental load, in policies etc. But doing that would just reinforce the current situation.

It's so rare to have a forum in which we can even discuss this.

I'm deeply pissed off about being left to do everything while xh has had no comeuppance. But no one wants to hear about that.

I might be your friend. I frequently say this.

This thread really resonates for me. Not because my partner is useless - he's not, he's very capable compared to most men - but I am fully aware that my life would be easier if I lived with another woman instead. I find the things he doesn't do well really weird, as they're not difficult and he's a very intelligent man. He basically throws clothes at the washing line rather than pegging them out so they'll dry quickly. He cannot work out what DS should wear based on the weather. He cooks most of our dinners, but gets very cross when he has to parent too.

I have massively gone off men since I became a mother. Most of my friends' husbands are useless, to varying degrees. Many of them don't seem to be able to cope with looking after children at all. If my partner left I would have zero interest in finding another man.

Some men become useless because they are allowed to be.
Child won't settle - mum takes over
Bag not packed - mum does it (rather than let him do it wrong and learn from having to do an outing without the essentials)
Disorganised around drop offs/pick ups - mum steps in (rather than let him be embarrassed about getting it wrong)
Won't/can0t change a nappy - mum does it (rather than make him sort it out)

If these men are allowed to make mistakes they will soon learn. It may be an uncomfortable learning curve but it's the only way.

Yep my husband who is a lawyer rang me twice from Sainsburys on Saturday to discuss what pizzas he should get for us all to eat that evening. I hung up the second time. Fucking ridiculous. Also he never ever ever remembers to bring water bottles when he takes the kids out. They are now 13 and 7. So for 13 years. Every time. I think he does it on purpose to wind me up. It definitely makes me fancy him a lot less this incompetency.

The fact is that men truly believe they are better than us. They inherently believe they are the superior and more important sex. Even the "nice" ones that genuinely love all the females in their family, believe their status as a male exceeds the status of both females and children. This is what everything on this thread boils down to, no matter how much we deny and dance around the fact. All the "but why / how could an intelligent man act this way" questions in this thread, on the wider board, and throughout our society easily and simply fall into place once this basic fact is understood.

I agree with the above - I would love a wife! I saw on Twitter/X the other day a woman say that they know sexuality is NOT a choice because what sane woman would choose to be attracted to heterosexual men 🤣