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?

What i find interesting is that men /public health campaigns have largely failed to share - up until recently - is that there are also potential risks to the baby from older sperm.

No-one wants to tell these older men that they should have kids earlier - it’s always been out about controlling women’s fertility and choices.

@JHound

The biological clock gives men a lot of power in this regard.
Most women want to experience motherhood. Waiting for a decent partner / equal partner would mean most women’s clock running out while searching.
Also misogynist conditioning reinforces to women that is just “how men are” so they accept it till it becomes too much to bear.

That's true but the trick is not to "wait for a decent partner / equal partner". You may get one, you probably won't. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

A lot of women convince themselves that its about finding "the one" who is house-trained and solvent and loves them and all the rest of it. And that once they've found one and married one, their job is done and they can sit back and enjoy motherhood secure in the knowledge they will be provided for.

In reality there is simply no way of knowing if a man is actually up to the job until he takes the job. However well presented he is, however good a job he does of cleaning up after himself before kids come along.

There is only one real solution to this, and that is to provide for yourself and make sure you can always provide for yourself alone. And then if Mr Domestic who is also well-endowed and has a great job and makes sparkling conversation comes along its all upside but if he doesn't, or if he presents as one but turns out to be a bit of a turd, it's a bummer but its not game over.

The trouble is a lot of women don't really want to be financially self-sufficient. They don't really want to work hard or they tell themselves it's not good for their kids. They convince themselves that its all about reading the runes and finding the right man and then they get married and then spend about 30 years of their lives crossing their fingers.

You can't rely on them to be good enough. A few are but most aren't, so don't be surprised when they're not. And look after yourself.

I think it's mainly because a woman is expected to be a man's PA. She gets the blame if contact isn't kept up or important dates are missed.

Actually, think about the language being used here…..trapped, not natural. This is coming from women who are describing themselves thus. But no one, no rules, not even our UK culture says that women have to live like this. So much of the way women live is about them conforming to how they actually think they should live, rather than how they would really like to live. The true pioneers of breaking free from conformity haven’t come from the 21st century, but back in the 20th C, particularly the 1960’s. Most women nowadays are far too worried about not conforming to the relationship/marriage, have children, raise children, try and hold down a job mindset to truly be free thinking.

Definitely adding this to the pact - teach them to put all their family birthdays and anniversaries into their own diaries with reminders.

And teach them to ask, listen and observe what their loved ones would like.

So they're used to thinking of mum and siblings when they're kids (HOW many sad 'nothing in MY stocking AGAIN' posts have I seen this year?!), and girlfriend / wife / kids / parents etc get the benefit of that thinking when they're older.

Stop. Doing. It. For. Them.

No more 'what are we getting my parents for Christmas?' conversations.

Or worse ... 'what did we get my parents for Christmas?'

She’s only his PA if she’s daft enough to agree to it. I heard of a family where the father couldn’t even work out how to take his DC’s for new school shoes! He’d never bought any of their clothes or shoes and hadn’t a clue what size they were.

Doubt it's a conscious decision for many but something they naturally took on.

I need my own PA, I certainly wouldn't be very good at being someone else's.

Beware rigid demarcation of roles.

The widow who didn't realise water isn't free because he always paid the bills.

The widower who can't make himself a meal because she always did the cooking.

Don't let those be you or your kids.

(I will finally learn this year how to programme the TV and recorder. It IS like piloting the fecking Starship Enterprise.)

Bdsm is not a new thing. It might not be to your taste but it’s part of what makes people human. Men AND women freely enjoy it.

Yeah I don’t get this. One of my best friends is a married man with two kids.

He sends me invites to things and Christmas cards etc and I know from spending time at his house and around his family it’s also him who keeps in touch with his own family (siblings, mum etc) and organises video calls etc - not his wife.

None of my female friends do this PA stuff for their husbands that I’m aware of. I think it’s just not the norm in my social circle for this to happen.

Haha this is one of the best posts I've read on MN.

Neither me nor my DH are 'interested' in house work - is anyone?! It's super boring and annoying. But still sadly needs to be done to a minimum standard for hygiene and comfort.

Driving - I can't drive, but that's to do with disability not my sex, so it's true DH does the driving.

Pinterest - no thank you. Never used it, same for DH.

Shelves - again yes DH but again I'm impacted by disability.

Baby - both of us! I wouldn't have had kids with a man who wouldn't coo over his own baby!

I'm not sure blanket statements are particularly helpful. I've had a partner who was really neat and tidy at home, another who left everything at his arse but was obsessed with cleaning the bathroom.

Recently, I met a man who talked repeatedly about how broke he was and how he hardly ever goes out due to the cost. Then, he revealed that he has a cleaner because he can't do housework. I was a little surprised that someone who was struggling financially and had plenty of spare time prioritised paying for a cleaner. But, at least his place is always clean! (We aren't dating, just friends)

It's nothing to do with BDSM.

The vast vast majority of porn shows WOMEN, not men, being physically hurt, tortured and degraded during sex.

Porn doesn't show loving kind respectful sex.

It shows : women being pushed into sex. Women being degraded. In so many ways.

If it is about BDSM, why is there barely any porn showing men being physically hurt and degraded?

Porn shows women being physically hurt, choked, and viciously abuses.

It definitely does have a psychological affect on men.

I remember the first poronographic photo that I was ever shown. A young man in my college class showed me a pornagraphic photo in class to upset me. The photo showed a man ramming a kitchen utensil up a naked womans vagina. She was wincing in pain.

There have been a lot of rape cases lately where the men have not just raped the women, but the have forcefully inserted objects into the womans vagina. That idea has definitely come from watching porn.

Case of note: in france , rugby players raped a woman with a crutch.

I don’t think it’s 100% genetics, though - it’s largely cultural and how children are socialised. Human society has been patriarchal/misogynistic for millennia, even though it hurts men at the same time as benefiting them and giving them unfair advantages over women.

I think it's mainly because a woman is expected to be a man's PA. She gets the blame if contact isn't kept up or important dates are missed.

This isn't the case in my family or what I witness with my social group.

I think a lot of men are perfectly able to carry out domestic chores, basically having no choice from living on their own. But as soon as they move in with a partner or get married,they suddenly lose the ability. Once they know that there's someone else there to do them,they become helpless.

Yes men won't give up the power. Why would they really.
Women also keep other women down by being cruel to each other. That keeps women as a whole weak.
To make change, women need to value women more.

I read a really good spiritual book recently. The woman author wrote that "what will really make change in the future is when women love and support each other more. That will make women stronger as a whole"

Visualisation is also important.

Let's all visualise a society where women are treated equally to men. Where women are respected. What does it look like in your mind?

I don't think you have quite nailed it here. The differences between men and women and how we view the roles of both genders come from eons ago and the collective survival instinct (of tribes/civilisations).

If you think about what it takes to build and maintain a population, you have to appreciate the difference between the reproducing capabilities of men and women. Men can theoretically father thousands of children in their lives, and the men historically who went out and conquered civilisations and paved their way across the world did just that. We are descended genetically from about twice as many women as men, those men being the ones who were strong and intelligent enough to conquer and defeat, they got the full pick of the women. Men who achieved little in their lives failed to attract women and became genetic dead ends. Women take nine months to carry a child and are reproductive for only about 35 years, hence they tend to have single digit numbers of children, and it is very rare for a woman to have 10 or more children in her life. What this means is if a civilisation loses most of its people in a bloody war, you only need a few penises to rebuild it but you need as many wombs as possible. This means that men's lives are less important than women's lives and so for optimal population growth and maintenance, you keep the women at home nurturing the children and send the men out to do the dangerous jobs and fight on the front line in wars, they are expendable. This is why the "women and children first" thing existed on sinking ships, because women are seen as more valuable than men.

This article goes into more detail and is an interesting read:

https://medium.com/cregox/is-there-anything-good-about-men-by-roy-f-baumeister-d111ba407de3

I don't think we realise just how recent women's rights were won. My grandmother couldn't buy get a mortgage on her own or get a credit card card. She never worked. My mother wasn't allowed to go to university as her parents said it was a waste of time because she'd just become a mother.

To gain independence many women worked AND did the household chores because that's the only way they could do it. Men (even young ones) still witness their mums do this.

It'll take time but we need to raise our sons to be better and our daughters to not put up with any shit.

How are women genetically at hoovering exactly? They are different, particularly when it comes to childbirth and raising children. But it's absolute bollocks that this difference means men can't do household chores.

More women are definitely seeing that they don't have to get married or have children.

We can have our own lives by ourselves If we want.

I'm 40 not married and happy. My mum was married, she told me that after she got divorced, she was the happiest that she ever was.

Neither me nor my DH are 'interested' in house work - is anyone?! It's super boring and annoying. But still sadly needs to be done to a minimum standard for hygiene and comfort.

Almost no one is "interested" in housework, with the exception being those daft influencers who make money out of it or people with OCD. No one is particularly good or bad at it either: it's not like playing concert-level piano or building a nuclear rocket. It's a menial task.

Women tend to be better at it because they've had more practice. Simple as that. Men can get good if they do the same. Ain't no biology to this.

Indeed. I read a book by Anita Moorjani , an Indian woman, recently.

She said that she grew up seeing both her parents work full time. But she also saw her mother doing every single chore in the house. Her father did none.

She said that she questioned her father on why her mother did everything. Her father told her "if you ask questions like that, you'll never get a good husband. They will say you're unmarriageable."

Women are not genetically better at chores than men.

It suits some men to gave a servant wife. To do everything for them

Agree. It’s conforming women who enable this kind of behaviour. When we got together (40+ years and counting) we had an adult discussion around the starting of a family (a consensual no thank you) and as we both had good high paid careers we loved, we share most of the household chores, the cooking, the cleaning, and because I love gardening, and he loves cars, this is just about the only area where there is not full sharing, but we help each other out. My OH comes from a background of spic and span tidiness, I come from a world of creativity, and we meet happily in the middle. The only thing I don’t do, is iron, except on very special occasions. OH likes his T shirts super smooth, so he irons them (and usually something for me🤣)

I think it’s the raising of children that can make or break a lot of marriages/relationships. I don’t think many men, and not even enough women give any sort of real deep thought into what really really is required in raising a child successfully, and maintaining a loving shared partnership. I knew I put my OH before any child I would want, so quite happy not to have any, and not once have either of us regretted it.

It's not a lie. Unfortunately those women are very much exceptions to the rule. Most IVF clinics won't try own-egg IVF after age 43 because the chances are just too low to take their money. For the vast majority of women, their fertility is over at 43 and for very many, a few years before that. And you have no idea where you'll fall on the egg spectrum, that's the problem. Bear in mind that some of the people you know having babies well into their forties may be using donor eggs and not saying.