AIBU or does anyone else thinks that most (not all) men are inherently lazy?

[SunnyPinkMouse]

as I get older I am becoming more intolerable to men. I think they’re lazy. I think they are mummy’s boys. They get out of helping. They get out of doing a lot of things. They just do what they want to do. Why? Is it because their mums let them get away with this growing up and so they continue this way and then expect their wives to replace their mum?

My mum asked me once if when dh comes home do I make sure the kids are out of the way so he can relax after a hard days work!

I'm hoping with each generation we will shift equality.

My dh isn't lazy but he struggles to share the load. I definitely do more particularly of the mental load. I'm trying to teach my dd to expect better.

It’s extreme, but I think the point stands. Presumably the op’s partner is a fully grown man. The idea of my 40 year old husband still being influenced by outdated views from him mother, is a laughable and ridiculous as him being influenced by the prisoners he spends 40+ hours a week with.

I'm the same, OP.
In fact, far worse. 😁
Something switched over at around age 42 and that was it.
Long term married to a decent man, but don't need to ever look at another.
They are nothing short of infuriating and unnecessary to live with.

I think humans as a species are inherently ‘lazy’. i.e I don’t think it comes naturally to us to work 8 hour days, commute, do the school run, go to the gym etc and squeeze all of our down time/hobbies/chores/medical care etc into a small amount of legally allotted AL.

side note: I read a wonderful short story recently, that dealt with a similar theme. I can’t remember what is was called but it was byMargaret Atwood and it was about a woman who was turning into a snail.

Any way, the problem (apart from the insane requirements for endless productivity that we all live under) is that in our society, one sex is allowed to indulge their ‘laziness’ more than the other. Men seem to feel entitled to put their leisure, rest, comfort and ‘needs’ ahead of other concerns (such as the needs of the household/children/elderly relatives. ) in a way that women don’t. I don’t know if it’s because women are, from an incredibly early age, taught to make others comfortable and consider others need (groomed into putting their need last) and men aren’t or because of heirarchy and the type of contributions we put value on as a society (e.g men’s work and physical Labour being seen as superior or harder) or for some other reason. Whatever it is, we definitely have a culture of men getting to relax and put their feet up while women run around, doing more than their share, enabling men’s leisure at their own expense.

I think this is the issue at the root of the 4b movement. It may also be one of the issues fueling the male loneliness epidemic (I.e men refusing to do the emotional Labour/kin-keeping to keep up relationships and then dealing with the consequences of this). I’ve heard the phrase recently that ‘the male loneliness epidemic is a Labour dispute’ and this rings so true! I also believe that the rise of incel culture is linked to this. As women move into an economic position where they don’t necessarily need men to
provide for them, they will only chose men who add value to their lives e.g through being a good companion. Men, who have never valued the skills needed for emotional connection and relationship building, are refusing to adapt and gain these skills, leaving them ‘involuntary celibate’ and harking back to a time when they could force women to rely on them for provisions, without doing anything hard like self growth or being nice to people. Hence also the rise of the alt right/the attempt to push women back into the kitchen (either through the glorification of the trad lifestyle or the removal of contraception, as proposed by project 25).

Men need to evolve.

I disagree. My husband has always worked far harder than I do. If our cleaner is away, he will just get on and clean, whilst I do everything I can to avoid it! Let's not stereotype men and women - we are all individuals, and different from each other.

In my personal experience - no. I'd say that I'm lazier than DH (I'm not lazy but he's even less lazy iyswim!), my mum is lazier than my dad and my SIL is lazier than my brother.

Absolutely the opposite. Every one of my male family members is/was hard working, including my teen sons.

I do know lazy men and equally women. I simply wouldn’t be in a relationship with a lazy person. Laziness is so incredibly unattractive to me.

My gran always used to say “Men are selfish”. My grandad was the sweetest man, but not practical in any way - so it wasn’t about being married to someone unpleasant. But I think she had a point - men are very good, in my experience, at ringfencing time for themselves to relax, to spend time on their hobbies and with their friends, and ignoring/remaining blissfully ignorant of what needs to be done at home.

Edited to add that I wouldn’t describe it as laziness. I think it’s more complex but is often a mixture of selfishness, not being bothered by household duties not being done, not seeing they have responsibility for said household chores and/or a willingness to prioritise self above communal efforts and needs.

No, I'm the lazy one. DH is a human dynamo (just as well!)

True. We need to change the way we raise our sons or nothing will change, even then, I just feel it’s hopeless with our porn culture

No. I don't think men are inherently lazy. What a ridiculous thing to say.

My DH isn't lazy and does loads of housework, but excels at strategic incompetence to get out of any mental load at all.

YABU to make a sweeping generalisation about all men. Some are some aren't just like lazy women.

Oh and my STBXH at 57 is very far from lazy. I on the other hand am a lazy cow I love nothing more than doing jack shit.

Not lazy, but very selfish.

Have all the energy in the world for the things they want to do mind you.

This dynamic seems most common when there is also children in the mix.

Not all fathers (I know there are some shit mothers too) but asking for experience than this is when I have seen previously all right men turn beyond selfish.

Totally agree with this.

I just wouldn't have lived with a man who expected me to do everything. And if I found myself in that position, I certainly wouldn't have married or had children with him.

I've dated many men and even married one who were flawed in many ways but not a single one of them shirked their domestic responsibilities or expected me to 'look after' them because I was a woman. I now have a partner who does the lions share of the domestic chores.

But I've also never given anyone even the slightest hint that I was there to do it for them either.

My son is 26 and has a male flatmate. Their flat is absolutely immaculate. He's never once brought his washing home for me to do and neither expect a woman to look after them.

Men aren't naturally lazy, no.

Edited to add: on reflection, I can think of a couple of men I met/went on a date or two with and I did get lazy/incompetent vibes from them but that probably fed into an overall feeling of - nope, not for me - and so it never went any further.

No. There has been construction work on my building for months, men working in the freezing wind and rain the past few weeks. Had a woman come into my flat once but she stood with a clipboard watching the men work.

My ex was a nurse and whenever a patient needed lifting it was up to him to, whenever there was an aggressive patient it was up to him.

Men do the work that keeps society running but some of them leave their socks on the floor or don’t care about elf on the shelf.

Most men will have grown up observing their mothers doing the bulk if not all of the domestic work. That is their mental “template” for division of labour in a household.

They may not actively think this is a “woman’s job”, but they will subconsciously expect it to fall into the woman’s scope of work, so they don’t proactively initiate it until asked to do it.

Increasingly younger men are happy to do their share when it’s pointed out to them. Very few men under the age of 40 would actually say “I am not doing that, it’s her job.” It just doesn’t occur to them to do it themselves.

My DP, who is generally happy to pull his weight at home and does a lot of cleaning / shopping etc wasn’t so hot on the mental planning aspect. He got into a bad habit of saying: “Have you done x/you need to do x”. It was just his default setting. I sat him down and said “stop assuming that all of this is my wheelhouse. You are perfectly capable of doing this/booking it yourself.”

He was completely nonplussed by this: he said he thought I preferred to do it. I I told him I was tired of having to project manage everything in the home and he needed to step up and do a bit more anticipating and take responsibility for the output: ie if you can tell me the cats need worming you are capable of going into the vet and getting the treatment. I work full time and It’s not always up to me to direct what you do.

To his credit he has stepped up. But it was a real eye opener for me. I think a lot of these men (not the total cavemen but the slightly less proactive ones) have internalized the idea that while they have a duty to “help”, it’s still up to the woman to direct all of this.

Hopefully the new generation will be a bit better.

I don't see men being selfish either.

I been in the unfortunate situation of getting caught in an environmental disaster and I saw men and women, although men in particular, put themselves at great risk to help complete strangers while I was entirely focused on getting my own particular children through it without them coming to any harm.

My dh is far from lazy. Of the two of us if I can get out of doing something I will. But he is no good at making appts or ordering stuff so I am happy to do all that because he does all the physical shit I can't be bothered with. He's one of those people who will carry on until it's finished whereas I get bored and would happily leave things until another day.
The only thing that grates is if I'm trying to sort something and it's not going well he'll try and tell me how it should be done like telling me what to say when I'm ringing someone, I've started telling him he can sort it if he knows better (he doesn't) and he's getting better.

It’s nice that there are so many women on here that have male family members that sit outside of the statistical norm and do their share. It really shows that if we change our expectations of men, the balance of labour can actually change! I’m interested in what these men have in common. What is it that has led these rare men, who do pull their weight, to go against the general trend? Do you have any advice for the rest of us?

I’ve seen statistics on domestic labour and childcare and how it is is still unevenly shared between men and women (at a population level, obviously, not in ALL individual relationships) even when the woman in a relationship works equal or more hours than a man. I’ve seen statistics on the gap in leisure time between men and women and how this started very early (I think around age 12?), with girls expected to help more with domestic labour as children. I’ve seen statistics on how girls become less involved in sports and other hobbies after the age of 12, in part due to this. How women have less interrupted sleep than men, for many years after a child is born, despite physiologically needing slightly more we’ll. I’ve seen statistics, during Covid, on how many times mums working at home got interrupted by children/had to do childcare AND work compared to dads. I’ve seen case studies on how women who leave and become single parents suddenly have more free time than they did when they were in a relationship, yet suddenly the newly single men are doing more parenting and sharing more of the load. The same stories born out statistically, again and again. Matching generally with my own experience, the experience of women in my family - of this generation and the generations before - and the experiences of most other women I know in my personal life 🤷‍♀️ Yet a surprising amount of women on mumsnet are in equal relationships 🫤 I wonder if this disparity is more pronounced in a certain socio-economic group i.e high earning families, highly educated women 🤔

Same here: I think the mental load thing is the new frontline in the war on male laziness.

My OH does a ton of housework, almost all of the shopping and a fair bit of cooking completely unprompted but he will still regularly say to me: "have you booked the babysitter?/what time is parents' evening?/how much veg do we have in the fridge?"

He seems to subconsciously feel that the doing aspect of running a household (pushing a hoover around/cleaning the bath/putting wash on) is very much fair game for him but at some level he still thinks the "planning" aspect is my job.

I think it depends what you mean by lazy. In the last couple of days on here I’ve seen it be called ‘lazy’ to order a takeaway or to contact people by text/phone to say happy Christmas instead of buying, writing and posting cards. ‘Lazy’ to many mumsnetters seems to mean not doing things the absolutely most labour intensive way. Maybe men (and some women - I know the MN massive would call me lazy because of my cleaning and towel washing regime for a start) have just worked out what’s actually necessary while many women still buy into the superwoman myth 🤷‍♀️

Tbf my male DP isn’t lazy at all. I bloody am though! Not at work but I really can’t be arsed by the time I get home.

@Icannoteven

What is it that has led these rare men, who do pull their weight, to go against the general trend? Do you have any advice for the rest of us?

I think a lot of it is age. I'm in my early 50s so the majority of men of my generation were raised by SAHMs or at least by mums who did almost all of the domestic work on top of a job, so while plenty of my male contemporaries are pulling their weight there are still a lot of residual assumptions that this is the woman's job or mostly the woman's job. A 20 or 30 something man is much more likely to have been raised in a household where the woman was working and where she was far less likely to buy into the idea that it was "her" job.

It is slowly changing, I think. It's very rare (certainly in my social circle) to hear of blokes explicitly refusing to do anything. The kind of 1970s template of bloke going into the office and coming back expecting dinner on the table or going straight to the pub after work is thankfully a bit of a relic and very few women tolerate this any more.

What's still a big problem is the sub-conscious assumption that by "helping" his partner a man is discharging all of his duties and he doesn't have to proactively engage with the broader strategic planning involved in running the home.