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?

@ThejoyofNC

He wouldn't have the quality of life he does now. The fact you see a man who provides for his family as useless is completely bizzare to me.

LOLZ. I provide for my family (I generate three quarters of the household income) and manage to cook, clean, do life admin, support my child with homework, all that good stuff. My partner also contributes on the home front: probably more than I do on balance, but if he wasn't around I would (and previously was before I met him) perfectly capable of being the sole provider and doing all those things.

Women who buy into this "division of labour" rhetoric are very quick to tell the rest of us that their domestic sacrifice has enabled their husbands to progress with their careers. You keep telling yourself this if it makes it easier for you to live with the choices you have made but it simply isn't true. Men are perfectly capable of being successful and doing domestic stuff, because a lot of women do it. Some men choose not to but there's nothing automatic about it.

It's perfectly possible for a person of either sex to be a "provider" and to also be an adult who maintains their home to a decent standard, cooks high quality meals and keeps their life ticking over. Some men and some women choose to limit themselves to one or the other and then overlay some cod biology to justify this but there's no science to this whatsoever.

And yeah no of course it’s not genetics. What a nonsense, backwards and inane thing to say.

I was the youngest of 3, my siblings were boys and my mum was a single parent who loathed lazy men (having got rid of her ex/my dad who was one)

She made sure my brothers who were tweens/teens in the early 90s could cook, clean, iron etc. I was a daydreamer (later diagnosed as ND) and the youngest by 4 years so despite me being a girl, it was obvious to everyone my brothers were more capable with domestic chores and as a result they done the bulk of it and to this day are much cleaner and tidier than me.

I learned eventually in my late teens, but they were doing much more than me at a younger age. I know other examples where this has been the case too. It’s definitely nurture over nature.

It’s why men would claim a women’s place is in the kitchen but when it comes to getting paid to be a Chef, men would suddenly realise they can cook after all. Convenient isn’t it? And I’m sure the financial incentive and status you get from being a chef vs cooking for your family has nowt to do with it 🙄

@CantHoldMeDown yes women need to challenge men and raise girls and boys that do better. But if men are lazy/useless/abusive that's on them, women are not responsible for men behaviour.

Most men don't actually want to be dads. They agree to it because they like sex and they want to shut their partner/mother up and they don't realise what they're getting themselves into. There are some men who genuinely want to be dads, but not that many, and usually there are big chunks of fatherhood they dislike, like the baby stage. Even men who want to have kids and have had a happy family for years describe having kids as "getting it out of the way" and putting their foot down about too much grandchild interaction.

My partner and I don't want kids. He'd be a good dad, but he doesn't want to be a dad. As such he's great domestically because he has the time and energy to put into things he enjoys about it, like cooking, and has the patience to split the things with me that neither of us particularly loves, like putting the bin out. Plus, we only have to do a minimal amount of things and at most once a day or once a week because it's much easier not having kids doing things like throwing toys or cereal around on repeat. And he also has time for the hobbies and things he loves, so it's very balanced. As I do the same we're both equal and neither is resentful.

It's not more complicated than taking responsibility for your choices.

Women are a huge part of the problem.

Many women treat their sons like babies. And set them up to be like that.

My mum used to tell me stories of her mother expecting her daughters to do every chore around the house.

My mum said that she used to ask my gran why the girls were doing every chore in the house, and the boys were doing nothing. My gran replied to her "that's women's work". The boys weren't expected to lift a finger. My mum could see the unfairness of this.

However, now my mum is the exact same!
I have one sibling , a brother.

We both went to my mums house at christmas. My mum waited on my brother hand and foot. He was rude to her the whole time. She kept making excuses for him "ah well he's not really able to cook, clean, put a bedsheet on, be polite"
I was expected to do everything for myself.

I've seen this behaviour so many times.

I know a family with two adult siblings. The brother is 42. He lives alone. His mother does his food shopping for him and his laundry for him. She drives his shopping down to him every week.
The mother does nothing to help her daughter.

@devilspawn

Most men don't actually want to be dads. They agree to it because they like sex and they want to shut their partner/mother up and they don't realise what they're getting themselves into. There are some men who genuinely want to be dads, but not that many, and usually there are big chunks of fatherhood they dislike, like the baby stage. Even men who want to have kids and have had a happy family for years describe having kids as "getting it out of the way" and putting their foot down about too much grandchild interaction.

I think this is true, sadly. Very few men naturally want to be a hands-on parent and really be good at it. The good ones will over time come to appreciate their kids and rise to it, another fairly sizeable chunk never really love it but crack on with it because they understand that its their responsibility. And then there's another large proportion who are just unremittingly bad at it and try to dodge responsibility at every turn or run away from it.

I think most men come to recognise, when their kids are grown, what a huge sacrifice their wives/partners have put in but I think very few naturally love it.

That's not to say, though, that we need to accept suboptimal parenting and domestic life from men. They've signed up to it for whatever reason, they shape up or ship out. Doesn't matter how much money they earn, it isn't a get out of jail free card to avoid life with children and the domestic life that goes with it.

But again, this is why it's a bad idea to rely on one for money. If the money is the only thing they bring to the table then they will always be suboptimal and you're always better off on your own.

This is what put me off marriage and dating tbh.

It just seems like the expectation is to make my life harder carrying the burden of another adult for no good reason that I can see.

And any expectation of them of being an equal partner is unrealistic because “biology has not made the that way”.

I pass.

Yes I agree. The men I feel genuinely sorry for are the ones who had kids because they genuinely wanted to make their partner happy and didn't realise they were giving up the life they wanted instead. Especially the ones who had kids young before they did what they really wanted to do in life and now will never get the chance.

^^ See

”Men are biologically programmed to be useless partners!”

😂

Plenty of men are great husbands but you dont come on parenting forums to moan about the good ones. Anyway we as women need to be more discerning, they are only husbands and fathers because we didn't get rid

Given that throughout history male house servants / slaves existed it’s clearly inaccurate to state “everybody thought men genetically incapable of housework”.

It by also conveniently ignores the existence of house proud men. How can they exist if men are genetically incapable of doing housework.

I never wanted to get married.

The idea of being trapped with one man for years always filled me with dread.

I'm 40. Never married. And I'm really happy. I go out on dates with different men when I feel like dating. There's still plenty of men in their forties who enjoy casual dating.

I'm fairly sure that men invented "marriage" to get a woman servant for life.

It's not natural. To sign a contract to agree to be in a relationship forever

I watched in delight via the camera notifications (installed for ex being on bail for DA, and new bf can disarm them but he prefers to talk to me through them when I'm at work, like today) made the bed properly, cleared up our kitchen party for 2 that looked like I'd had 20 people round. Mopped the kitchen and put the dishwasher on! He can stay again......

Agreed. My brothers contribute equally to their households (one is also the primary carer for his kids and does 100% of the cooking) because that’s how my mom raised us.

Probably why my standards for an equal partner are so high.

This!!! This is the absolute truth, end of.

It’s hardly surprising. Women have only had rights for about a century. That’s not long in terms of generations and genes. Men were originally hunter gatherers, women were the carers and nurturers. Society is still adapting to these fast changes.

Personally as an autistic woman none of this comes naturally to me either. The judgement from other women is what keeps me in line. My mother’s scorn was very powerful on its own. If the world was just me and men I certainly wouldn’t be tidying up and cleaning.

I wonder if for many women brought up in the patriarchy themselves, shall we say, it's the only form of control they have?

Not teaching sons essential life skills because those are her domain?

And creating a permanently dependent son (either unskilled in doing things or skilled in pretending he can't) who'll always need her, always need looking after, always be connected?

While the grandchild incubators will need to be taught, knowing a daughter / DIL is more likely to care for home and children than a son is?

When men complain their wives are longer interested in sex, they should first look in the mirror, then look at their own behaviour.

Have they cast themselves as mummy's biggest boy? Not surprising the ick kicks in. If we're continuing the wiring metaphor, we're (most of us) wired to recoil from anything resembling incest. And a manchild in a baseball cap glued to his screen and incapable of adulting says 'I'm your teenage son'. 🤢

I'll admit to rather liking Instagram reels by men with dogs and enormous knives constructing fancy shelters in a forest, chopping logs then whizzing up a fantastic meal over an open fire with what he's hunted and foraged and - I'm sorry, drifted away there. I'd be mega useless in THAT situation! ☺️

A lot of it is men's fault.

But some of it is women's fault

I see so many women treating their adult sons like babies

I have a lot of cousins. I have 15. Every one of my female cousins moved out of home in their early twenties. I have 8 male cousins. 6 of my male cousins are still living at hone with mummy. All of my male cousins are in their mid to late thirties. Their mums wait on them hand and foot.

It's kind of a disturbing relationship. And it's the mothers fault as much as the sons. The mothers seem to treat their sons as substitute husbands. They want love from a male, so they treat their son like a Prince and wait on him hand and foot.

This then leads the man - to treat his future wife like a total servant aswell.

Not all men exhibit these traits, many like mine are deeply empathetic, emotionally mature, and active partners. Negative experiences may simply be more memorable and could be creating a skewed perception.

@HardenYourHeart

So if a men leaves you to do it all, it's because he looks down on you.

I would go further and say he probably hates you. If a man can watch his female partner run ragged while he continues to take it easy, enjoy his hobbies and his leisure time he genuinely cannot value her that much.

My step-dad is naturally a slob yet he pulls his weight around the house. He does that because he loves my mom and does not want to see her stressed and exhausted. It’s not 50/50 but he does significantly more around the house than he would if he was single (when he lived in filth.)

There are a lot of historical myths on this thread too. Poorer women have always worked on farms, factories, mining, textiles. It was a mark of Victorian middle class wealth when your wife didn’t need to work.
The idea that women were at home playing house whilst the men toiled to provide is simply not true.

The reality is that women’s labour has been historically undervalued and discounted. The hangover of that is the tens of thousands of women successfully bringing equal pay claims against councils and retailers.

Housework was seen as valueless so some men think they are too important to do it.

Decent men don’t. DH comes from a different (ostensibly more patriarchal culture) yet he has been a very hands on parent and taken an equal or greater share of housework. Our sons have grown up with a father that cooks, cleans, does laundry and irons. He is as competent and capable as I am because these are not gendered skills nor are they driven sex based innate characteristics (women do not have a floor mopping gene!!).