To feel that many men are totally unprepared and unsuited to domesticity?

[JFDIYOLO]

So many instances shared on Mumsnet of grown men behaving like adolescents.

Spending hours gaming, incapable of regulating their emotions, violent outbursts, dick-led decisions, expecting Mummy 2.0 from their wives, utterly lacking in empathy and care during pregnancy, labour, newborn baby & toddler years, father fails ...

But why is this?

Was it always so, or do we just hear way more now from women who are no longer prepared to put up with it and ready to discuss and share advice?

Should there be some kind of exam, a screening process before they can proceed to the next level of In A Relationship?

I think in general men are more selfish than women . They are good at gaslighting and denial. Easily swayed by pretty face . They are not sentimental and get over things and put it behind them quicker . For example look how quickly they get into another relationship after their wife or long term partner dies .

The wife doesn't have to play along, women have brains. Maybe they could use them once in a while

If they want to play the martyr that is up to them

I'm the opposite, my dad did everything and my mum did nothing
He did the laundry, cleaning, cooking etc etc so I wouldn't date anyone that thinks they're not capable of doing that

Exactly what I said too. When they get married or have a partner, they revert to what thwy she growing up they feel a woman is created to serve them. My experience of Nigerian is that they actually get married to have someone to cater to them not for "love"

@Sosayallofus above…
This part of your post resonated with me.
It’s a sweeping generalisation you’ve articulated it better than I could have done.

“Men, as a sex, are dangerous, lazy and selfish and women, as a sex, keep trying to make progress and keep being beaten and raped and tortured back into the cages men make for us.”

My dad wasn't like that at all and was born in 1937. He had to help around the house a fair bit though being the eldest and his mum was ill, then died when he was in his teens. He always did housework and looking after me 50/50 with my mum, and they also both worked apart from when I was very small.

DH on the other hand came from a household where both parents worked in professional jobs but his mum ran herself ragged doing everything and his dad even now is almost helpless and can't fend for himself. They are younger than my parents too. DH isn't bad but has to be told to do a lot of things. He does actually do it though at least, and when DDs were little he was very much 50/50 on picking them up/dropping off at childcare etc.And he isn't helpless like his dad.

I would say what we can do if we are mothers of sons not to allow them to fall into weaponised incompetence at least while we have them at home. And demonstrate to our daughters what is acceptable.

@SharpOpalNewt my dad always did fair share of housework and nearly all the cooking as well as working full time. These man bashing threads are so boring. Yes there are plenty of useless men about but they are not all like that.

It's definitely not all men. My dad was a better cook and parent, and tidier, than my mum. DH had an immaculate home when I met him and still pulls his weight, and he's a better cook than me.

Most people, when let away with everything, pandered to, and reared lazy, won't turn out well.

As a woman

I prefer cutting the grass to hoovering, because you can see an immediate impact when cutting the grass

I have a robot hoover

I think in a lot of cases women who post along those lines are in denial. They saw what they wanted to see because they had their baby goggles on.

Or when they post it’s easier to say he was fine beforehand otherwise they get a massive pile on telling them they ignored the red flags and bang goes the thread.

Most people don’t change their behaviour overnight it’s a gradual thing. I agree that there will be the odd case

i agree entirely with your second paragraph

Yes, it has to be a generalisation, but it's also true. It's not all men, but it's a lot of them. The decent ones are often silent, out of fear for themselves, disinterest or just plain lack of understanding.

Day in, day out, we - as a society - accommodate fear, a constant background hum that’s simply normalised to us. We, both women and men, live our lives at the mercy of the most aggressive, least empathetic and most selfish men. We have adjusted our entire societies to cope with men's bad behaviour. Women and children are by far the most at risk, but men have to face other men's violence, selfishness, unkindness, laziness and aggressiveness too. Citation - all of all human history.

The thing is, if women suddenly became just as strong and capable of killing men as men are, if all of a sudden, overnight, the sexes were physically equal in strength and speed, I do wonder if we'd be just as bad.

I believe we are a failed species, and unfixable. Sorry, bit grim for this thread/site perhaps. Anyway, I have no answers.

Surely not many women are interested in housework either. It is just dull unpaid drudgery. There is nothing interesting about it at all.

Who tends to have Pinterest boards of home decor? Who tends to be putting up shelves? Who tends to be cooing over the new baby?

I have fuck all interest in babies or pinterest boards, and am perfectly capable of putting up a shelf. DH tends to have stronger opinions on decor than me.

Yep, I know zero women who actually want to do housework. I hate it. I mean, I really, really hate it. But I am not selfish and lazy, so I do my share, always have, and often far more. It's a boring, shit awful job and I was just saying the other day if they bring out an actual functional chores robot I will get one immediately.

Same. I absolutely cannot stand housework/cleaning/ironing. Such a waste of time. Were it left to me, I’d pay someone else to do it; apart from ironing as I’m quite happy to wear unironed clothes.

My DH is retired and very domesticated and does over 90% of the housework. He doesn’t want a cleaner as he thinks they’d look through our stuff 🙄😂.

Christ, how I loathe bloody Pinterest. Whenever I do a web search I exclude that boring, tragic site by typing -pinterest - and yep I definitely know how to put up shelves and do a bit of DIY, though my husband being physically stronger than me and taller does more DIY than I do. I mow the lawns, so does he, both of us do yard work and housework, not because we want to but because it needs to be done. It's 50/50 on home decor here, he has strong notions of what he wants and so do I, luckily we mostly converge, but I wouldn't dream of painting or decorating without his input, he'd be really put out.

I am lying in bed with a cup of tea brought to me by my husband. He is now downstairs sorting laundry, emptying the dishwasher etc. 🤷‍♀️

Same.
Also, DS had a friend sleepover last night and DH got up with them and made breakfast.

Yes men and women are biologically different but those biological differences do not extend to the ability to do housework or care for children.

Christ. As long as women like you exist there’s no hope of men as a class improving. That said, every single man I’ve dated has done more housework than me and thinking of my friends’ heterosexual relationships, chores are shared evenly. I can only assume the men in your life are absolute neanderthals.

It's not about ability. It's about motivation. Any able-bodied adult can do housework.

It's not about ability. It's about motivation. Any able-bodied adult can do housework.

Exactly....🤷🏼‍♀️

Same. Hell will freeze over before I coo over a baby. They all look like Phil Mitchell imprinted on a potato.

Thankyou everyone, just checked back into the thread!

I do agree Mumsnet tends to be a place where women come for help, so perhaps it's quite a skewed view of the world to start with.

NAMALT indeed, but sadly SMALT - so many accounts here. Men who are having affairs while wife is pregnant. Boys treating girls like things because of what they've devoured online. Men refusing to equally participate in family and home, wielding weoponised incompetence like a flag.

Our world has changed - they don't toil in the fields or down the pit twelve hours a day while Mum is raising ten children and scrubbing the front doorstep every morning.

But expectations have solidified and women are still habitually left doing all the athomework often as well as working. Men are more likely to leave very sick wives and women more likely to stay and nurse very sick husbands.

Children are still primarily raised by mothers. So how do both boys and girls arrive at relationship age with these outdated attitudes? Some of the ghastly MIL/DM stories here suggest it's not just men. Women can be toxic, controlling and mad.

I don't know anything about schools now - do children actually get training in how to adult?

@JFDIYOLO interestingly, my PIL division of labour is pretty traditional/old-fashioned. They did both work but she did the cooking and cleaning side of things, and he the DIY and garden.

However all three of their children were expected to complete chores, and DH didn't get a free pass for being the only boy. So it's perhaps due to that, that pulling his weight comes naturally to him.
Also it's not like he ever really saw his dad sitting idle being waited on - that man keeps himself constantly busy.

As a society, how do we empower women to not accept the default role of domestic slave?

I have asked in the past why women accept lazy men as partners (lazy as in not doing any housework, child related duties etc) and the answers were basically that they want children/a partner so better a lazy one than nothing. Or that they are reproducing what they have witnessed from their parents.

Personally this is hard to understand as - being naturally lazy myself - when I met my now-DH at 25 it never occurred to me that I was supposed to do everything. Instead I would ask if he preferred to cook or do the laundry, or ask at what time he wanted us to clean the flat.
I just don’t get why women shoot themselves in the foot like to begin with.

A lot of mothers do everything for their sons but not their daughters and act like they're incapable. It's insulting tbh. I remember my MIL questioning how my partner would possibly cope with his laundry when we first moved in together. Funnily enough he coped fine because he's not an idiot and I certainly wasn't planning on doing it.