To feel really sad that

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So many women on here have been raised or gaslit into believing that they are worth so little. They seem to think that they have to do all the housework and childcare and accept no help from their so-called partners, often while paying halves for everything and never being treated. It’s 2024. How are women not getting a better deal in relationships than back in the 70s?

I’m quite new to MN and it’s shocking how many women don’t have the confidence that their position is reasonable even in quite extreme circumstances.

i feel more sad that their children grow up thinking that a father behaves like this is normal and a mother who is a put upon martyr is normal

Agreed. I’ve found Facebook groups even worse. And accepting “men are just different”.

I grew up with that (lower working class background) as did dh and although dh is great at doing housework there is still a sense of it's my domain and I do all the mental load. Particularly from extended family.

I remember my mum asking if when he gets in from work do I keep the kids away to give him time to unwind!! I worked full time too??

I don't think lack of support for working mothers and lack of pay equality helps. Often the man is the higher earner and there's a sense of his job is the more important.

It is 2024 and women have to stop blaming men for their thoughts ans feelings sometime, it is incredibly lazy

They have brains so use them and stop using a man as a plan

The idea that women sole purpose in life is breeding and living through their children is old fashioned and up to women to change and show the next generation there is about wide world out there

And stop blaming men everytime they breathe or get out of bed in the morning make decisions and own them

Men need ro take responsibility for their thoughts and actions so why not women?

this

it’s all getting a bit “woe me”

i say that as a single working mother

What I’ve seen is women unsure whether their partner’s behaviour is actually unreasonable or if they are unreasonable to object to it. That’s what I find sad, and actually I know how it can come about because I have been in an abusive relationship where I was gaslit to the point of depression, I was a shell by the time things ended between us. But it seems so widespread!

I don’t see women not taking responsibility for their choices so much as men (aided by wider society) managing to make them doubt their own rights to self expression, free time and so on.

I agree to a point. What is actually happening is that women are leaving men much quicker, even older generations of women are more willing to divorce the type of men in the OP. Younger women are openly saying ‘actually the thought of having children really doesn’t appeal to me, and a man not pulling his weight after they’re born is a big part of that’. Women are allowed to openly say that men not pulling their weight is going to have a severe effect on future traditional family set ups, otherwise women will are are getting blamed for not playing ball on marriage and babies anymore.

But men (as a group) aren’t seeing this shift, they seem to be doubling down. ‘I’m a nice guy why won’t women give me what I want’, ‘I don’t know what it means to be a man anymore and that gives me sad feelings’, the Andrew Tate/TradWives emergence. They’re ‘whinging’ as well.

I agree with you, OP.

There was a long thread recently where women posted saying how little their partners did and they were all comforting each other that it was shit but all men are the same

I only know two couples in real life who are like this. One is on the verge of splitting up and the other, the woman ended up having a breakdown and was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. And my friends/acquaintances are in their 50s and 60s.

My exh was a bit of a dick and yet still did equal shares of housework, all the present buying and the majority of picking the children up from school when they were ill because his work allowed for it more easily than his and whenever he went for a new job/promotion, he made it clear thats how it was. It was never a problem.

When my son was in 6th form, he came home one day to tell me they'd all been taking the piss out of one lad who was complaining because they were all going out that night and his mum hadn't washed his favourite shirt. The other lads mocked him for the fact he still relied on his mum to do all his laundry and didn't he even know how to use a washing machine? At 18.

Of all the complaints my female friends might have of their male partners, shirking on household responsibilities isn't one of them.

My partner does the majority of the household tasks, including cleaning and cooking, researches and books the holidays, does his own gift shopping, shops for his mum weekly, does his own laundry (to the extent of having his own laundry basket - I'm not even 'allowed' to touch it because he has never expected a woman to door his laundry and isn't going to start now).

I've only rarely met and never dated a man who doesn't pull his own weight in the house. And I've dated a fair few middle aged men who kept tidy homes and had no expectation of finding a woman to do it for them. Why would they? They were more than capable themselves.

I know one couple where she is 12 yrs older and retired and he still works full time. She does the housework because that's her job whilst he's out at work so that they can spend their free time together doing fun stuff.

I simply don't recognise these lazy, incompetent, seemingly incapable men from my own life. And, whilst I have no doubt that they exist, I just can't believe they are in the majority.

My mother was one of the martyr women. Completely infantilised every man she dated. All of them lived on their own and were quite capable of doing domestic chores but she'd insist they'd bring their laundry round so she could do it for them 'properly' (silly men), took responsibility for managing their finances, cooking for them and buying their mums and sisters birthay gifts and then compained about how everything was her responsibility.

It really grinds my gears tbh with you.

Abuse aside, where someone is an equal partner until children come along, there are many women who invite these men into their lives assuming/hoping they'll change.

Where women need to take responsibility is in not continuing to date, not marrying and not having children with these men in the first place.

Who cares if those men end up posting into the void of the Internet about how nice they are and its all women's fault that they're single? Leave them to it.

There are plenty of men who are capable of being equal partners out there.

I think it is improving. I know lots of women who have divorced their husbands and/or have decided to stay single. Certainly now we’re a bit older they are choosing to live separately which solves quite a lot of the wife work drudgery.

i read the christmas threads and i often find myself thinking… no one is making you do this, your husband doesn’t care if there’s table favours for example. There’s a lot of martyrdom on mumsnet around christmas, which i imagine makes for pretty depressing christmases for the family with mum huffing and puffing in the kitchen

I simply don't recognise these lazy, incompetent, seemingly incapable men from my own life. And, whilst I have no doubt that they exist, I just can't believe they are in the majority.

me too

often it’s a woman not liking how something is done
rather than it not being done

Yes, I don't see this either. I agree that weeding these types out at the dating stage and not assuming they'll change after marriage/children is the answer.

I once had an interesting conversation with a woman my mother's age where she was giving me advice about how to change a man. I just said I'd look for someone I didn't need to change in the first place and she thought I was on a fool's errands and would never meet anyone because my expectations were unrealistic.

I think there some truth in this, but as long as there is respectful communication that works both ways I think it's OK. What I've seen more is a man "doing the job" poorly and being given/expecting praise for it, and women having to re-do the job or do it better next time with no acknowledgement.
Not every couple etc. But it has surprised me how prevalent it is, and women can be complicit in it if they don't say anything/praise lots

I think men get much more defensive when being corrected, because they are not used to criticism and don't like it. E.g. "you didn't make the packed lunches right" "well they had lunches, didn't they? Stop being a control freak" "x chuld doesn't eat y though and z child doesn't eat ... so they didn't have packed lunches they could eat" "FINE, YOU do it next time then" etc.

What a load of crap. Using a man as a plan? You could equally say lazy men who marry a woman and then stop doing any housework or childcare are using women as a plan.

Most women work these days but there are also many women who also do all the childcare and housework and they didn't go into having children with that as the plan. Many, many men pretend to be supportive and believe in equality until marriage and children come along.

Being a good parent does not mean you live through your children. Women do know there's a world out there. There are women in sports, politics, business, science, the media, medicine, entertainment, the military. Many of them are also mothers. Your misogyny is shining through.

And stop blaming men everytime they breathe or get out of bed in the morning make decisions and own them. I don't even understand this sentence, it doesn't make any sense at all. Women don't blame men for breathing or getting out of bed in the morning. Women do make decisions and own them. They do take responsibility for their thoughts and actions every bit as much as men do. That doesn't mean feckless men who don't take responsibility for their lives and their children should have a free pass.

I am really glad to read this post, because it gives me hope that things are changing. My own experience is the opposite. I have no experience of men who take on half of the household tasks and emotional load. I know loads of men who think they do their fair share because they do the washing up and put the bins out, or similar.

I particularly like that the poster's son and his mates are on it with this stuff. I have a son the same age and when they come over, they're always ridiculously impressed that DS cooks food and washes up after himself.

I don't see a lot of that either though.

Someone might do something differently to me but that doesn't make my way of doing it better.

Tbh, if everytime I did something, someone else came along and redid it because I hadn't done it the way they wanted it done, I'd get to the point where I'd think, "Fuck it. Do it yourself then!" And I'd leave them to it.

As a pp said, it’s often the case that something is deliberately done wrong or not as it should leading to the age old weaponised incompetence. ‘Well obviously I can’t do it right and you haven’t told me how to cook dinner/put a wash on/clean the kitchen beyond the dishes, so you do it’.

So I would say it's SOME men not liking being corrected or having to acknowledge they are not the experts in something purely by doing it, rather than women not "liking" how it's done. That suggests opinion, rather than fact, and often there are facts involved e.g. if a p.e. kit is not washed and dried ready for x day, child won't have it clean. That's a fact, which gets changed into an opinion by a man saying "they can just wear it dirty, I never had it clean each pe day, they took their pe kit in whats the big deal?" For example.

So I think it often comes down to communication too, taking time as a couple to decide how the pe kits should be and setting that expectation for both parents, but also having humility and openness to be like "you know what, it's OK for them not to be clean each time, you are right, we can claw back chill time if we change this".

In the relationships that don't do this, women (some gladly) do martyr themselves by going "FINE I'll just do it then" but their partners aren't willing to have those chats

I don’t know any men who don’t pull their weight either. Not sure if it’s just my social group, but all the men do an equal share. Most couples work full time, only one couple both work part time.

My mum martyred herself (especially around Christmas). When people offered to help, it was declined as it wasn’t the right sort of help! So we barely saw her Christmas Day, which is something I have been careful to avoid with my family.

i don’t recognize your description OP. I’ve been here about 12 years and what I see are posts from seriously pissed off women who are at their wits ends with repeatedly telling their male partners to pull their weight around their own home and children, but who just don’t.

Given the high cost of housing and living, many women are not in a position to ‘just leave’.

What I also see are a lot of posts, like this one, which put the attention onto women when men behave poorly.

You could have posted about how shit it is that men are raised by their Fathers to be lazy, entitled bastards. But you didn’t.

Yet again, man behaves badly and the conversation is about women, not the man. 🙄

I’m so so fucking sick of that.

My mum would refuse all offers of help on Christmas Day and would then indulge in a (MN favourite) 'little cry' in the kitchen every Christmas Day afternoon/evening became she'd had to do everything again.

You know what, that's going to happen if you won't let anyone else do anything!

My dad would cook dinner at the weekend but my mum did it every weeknight because she insisted we ate at 5pm and he was only just finishing work then. He was home by 5.30. It wouldn't have killed any of us to wait until 6 for dinner. He'd often offer but she'd refuse and put impossible obstacles in the way and then have another 'little cry' about how hard done by she was.

I could see all this growing up, decided it wasn't what I wanted for my own life and my life has never looked like me molly coddling some man.