Are we lying to our daughters?

[Granville1]

I would like to start by saying that my husband is a really good guy. A lovely, kind person & a doting dad. Yet here I am, a burnt out millennial 40 year old mum of two girls (age 4 & 6) feeling utterly overwhelmed & exhausted by life. My head is barely ever above water

My mum is one of those superwomen. Always has seamlessly held the family together by doing everything. The full mental load is on her, but she never complains. In fact she seems to thrive on it. She always worked but perhaps not in the same “career” sense that our generation do, so perhaps didn’t quite have that additional pressure

I have now fallen into the same role as her. Although both my husband & I work full time so no reason I should take it all on. He does earn more but I also have a decent, fairly well paid & highly stressful job. Sadly we don’t earn enough for any additional help (aside from a cleaner). Yet I have become so accustomed to doing everything, I’m now stuck in a trap where my husband is -25 years of practice down & no amount of explaining or “training” 😂 would get him even close to taking on what I do

But I can’t help thinking that we are teaching our daughters that taking on everything is the norm. And even more cynically, that marriage & kids is great. It’s not. There might be a handful of exceptions but most of my friend’s (admitting it to varying levels) are miserable as sin. And most of it comes down to utter resentment of them having to balance full time careers & pick up the vast majority of the mental load (as well as physically carrying it all out too)

What do we do? Show bad role modelling by continuing to do almost everything & them thinking that’s normal? Also do we lie & say marriage & having kids is great? Or (if asked) do we generally encourage open conversations that alternatives do exist. I would never go on an aggressive tirade telling them that all women take on too much & will end up even more miserable if they get married & have kids, but at the same time, they are learning from me that masking the misery of working full time / having a career & taking on everything is normal

Has anyone else had similar thoughts? What do we do about it? How do we break the cycle? Would welcome comments about the future of our daughters not judgement on whether my husband does / doesn’t do enough

Thanks for reading

I don’t think this is a parent daughter dynamic as much as it is a parent society/government dynamic in which unsustainable parenting through lack of early years support, job security and materinity and paternity support is the problem.

that said - my mother was the opposite of you, distant and didn’t really “parent”. That fell to my dad. Now my mum is in fits about me not having children. I don’t want to have kids because I don’t want to parent like her, and I don’t feel like I’ve the support system around me to parent well and kindly.

So maybe your only sin is being a good parent who, through your love and competence, gives your daughters the courage and role model to have kids themselves.

If Dh was a really good guy, a lovely kind person he would do a fairer share of the load off his own back

Stop doing everything. Work on making yourself happier, by giving yourself the time to do so.

Your husband is presumably smart, if he has a good job. He'll learn. That's what he'd have to do if divorced or you died. I believe in him, he can do it.

But this is absolutely a husband not doing enough issue. You could talk around it all day but you'd be totally ignoring your main problem.

There are millions of happy wives with husbands that share the load, it just sounds like you're not one of them

No, not collectively.

I had to scroll back to see how old you are because I don’t recognise a lot of what you’ve said, and I was going to say that perhaps you’re the last generation that feels like this. My friends are happy 99% of the time, only one has any marriage issues and they’re still strong, just in a LOT of debt which brings a lot of issues. The dads are active participants in life. They cook and clean and remember things and look after their kids. The burden is a lot more shared. But you’re only a couple of years older than us.

So although you don’t want to believe it, I think this is a husband problem, and perhaps you need to make that clear to your daughters. Teach them not to settle; and to expect more, and I guess if your husband can’t step up, he’ll have to accept that you’re going to have to show that he could do more and they shouldn't accept anyone who won’t. Your regret that you did is quite clear.

They may decide not to marry or have kids anyway, but that’s a decision for them, not because you regret yours. They are in a generation that feels they have far more choice anyway. They may well decide not to have children for societal reasons, or economic ones, or environmental ones…

I am feeling the heavier burden at the moment because I’m breastfeeding and have a toddler but even now, my husband is really keen to help most of the time, and would step in with a bottle the moment that I asked. I’m sorry you didn’t have that and genuinely; I can’t imagine how tough that must have been.

I think the contents of your post OP are a major reason why so many Millennials and Gen Zs are debating whether to have DC or not, and many are deciding not. Because the societal expectations of women haven't changed that much over the past 40 years since your DM was raising you - it's just that women now often work FT in demanding jobs alongside still bearing all the mental and practical load of family life. If a man actually does his share people praise him for it, if a woman does it, no one comments. And if a woman doesn't do all the family stuff then there is judgement, whereas a man can get away with doing fuck all and everyone just shrugs their shoulders, as it was ever thus.

I think it's whatever you choose to do. DH works full time, me part time. I don't do all the mental load. DH does more housework than me. DD11 recently said "I think when I'm an adult, I'll get married. That way I only have to do half the housework". She expects marriage to be 50:50 because that's what she's seen. I refused to be DH's mum and wouldn't have married him if that was his expectation.

Your DH could start taking small tasks off you. He might not even realise how much strain it puts on you doing everything.

Maybe include yourself into the family and give yourself just as much priority as the rest of them. Time for you matters just as much and doing hobbies, things you enjoy matter too. I have daughters, I teach them to be kind to others and be selfish, no one is going to give you time or happiness, you take it for yourself because no one is more important than you. I imagine when they have children they will (rightly) believe their children are more important than themselves and then I suppose the inevitable cycle continues, but as it stands at the moment, neither of my daughters want children.
It is hard, choosing a competent father to your children and good husband who pulls his weight not just financially, has never been more important, which is why there is a male lonely epidemic.

What to do? Stop being a martyr and take back some control - you seem to have written off any hope of breaking the cycle when your kids are still so young.

None of my female friends have partners who genuinely share the load. A couple have DPs who cook well. None have DPs who do the school admin and related weighty business with the DC. I left my ex for precisely this reason as I was buckling under the weight of his incompetence. (When we agreed he would take more on eg sorting the regular payments for a music teacher and sports clubs, there were endless cock ups.) I now still do everything, for the benefit of my DC who would otherwise suffer, but I have less resentment than I did when I was living with their father. I don’t have an answer sadly but I do get why you are asking this.

I didn’t have any problems in DH and I sharing responsibilities as he mirrored how to behave on his parents where both had a careers and jointly and equally contributed to running the home and parenting.

This IS about what your husband does tho. I have three sons. They're learning that blokes pull their weight. Daddy doesn't "help" Mommy, he does his share of the chores and childcare. He cooks and cleans and it might be different to me, but that's fine.

Hopefully I'll raise boys who marry girls who have the same expectations I had.

Get your husband to partake more in running the family and home and that will teach your girls to expect a man to do that stuff.

I don’t know if our genetic make up makes us dig our own graves though op, dh doesn’t get why I didn’t go back to my much better paying 8.30 to 5 job which was over an hour’s commute away as opposed to my supermarket job down the road. He’s no problem (well he does but not with the theory of it!) heading off at 7 and not seeing the kids until 7. I work most weekends which means I’ve more days collecting or dropping the kids, doing homework and being there for them. It Also means I’ve lion’s share of housework, but it’s all because inherently, I want my kids to be with me where possible. He adores them, but doesn’t get it

None of my three sons leave all the work to their wives. They see it all as shared and do their share, always. At least 50%. You need to tell him it’s not the 1950s, it’s not your job, and that it needs to be shared. Tell him.

This is a DH problem, combined with you being a matyr. I know family set ups like yours, but they are in the minority, and rarer where the women works in a career.

This is why I think women with children should work part time (if they'd like to) and men should step up financially. It's not ideal because your career and pension suffers, but I don't think we can fix society so that women don't do more at home than men, and women end up full of resentment. I think if we were honest about it, and took steps to make it fairer, people would be happier.

We break the cycle, by breaking the cycle? Why does it all “fall to you”? That I’m afraid is on you, stop bloody doing it all and get him to pull his weight. My DD grew up watching her Dad pull his weight around the house (why wouldn’t he, we both work full time?) and do an equal share of everything.

My son and daughter are at uni now. They have grown up seeing both of us do school runs, laundry, cooking, childcare and cleaning. They know that both Dad and Mum can work full-time and deal with all the domestic chores and childcare. I have the more challenging professional role, but we both work hard at home and at work. It can be done.

We are a minority amongst our friends though. We know plenty of professional men who still ‘can’t’ use a washing machine 🙄

You husband is in his 40s not his 90s. He absolutely can and should learn how to pull his weight. Give him one job to start with and let him get on with it, do not interfere when it it’s not done to your standard. Then work from there.

I think the question is rather whether we’re letting our daughters down by not modelling the kinds of relationships that will enable them to have equality with their partners.

The easiest way I have found is to simply refuse to fit into the ‘wife work’ model and set clear expectations around mental and physical load. It helps if you don’t view yourself as doing some of those things as intrinsically better than your partner or you set yourself up immediately as the one who does it all. I don’t care if things aren’t done the way I want them to be as long as they’re done.

It’s massively important that we show our daughters that they do not need to martyr themselves by trying to ‘do it all’ if they have a partner. Having been a single parent for some years I can do it all myself, but if I have a partner, why would I?!

However - all of the above does assume your partner isn’t a selfish twat, so you know, that’s a pretty big caveat. But sometimes people are selfish because they’re enabled to be…

This. A frequent claim on here, but it does seem as if the bar is very low for a lot of younger men. I'm a lot older than you, OP but me and my husband have always co-parented and shared the domestic load.
Our adult DC therefore accept this as the norm and our daughter would never put up with the situation you're in, or that of others on here.
You'll need to change things.

Me and my husband were the same! It's funny how some men have that "learned helplessness", isn't it?

We need to change society… but it means government how it treats women….

it’s not changed or helped women much… we need more child care support for working mothers. Women are doing 2 jobs!

You’re doing your daughters a disservice by modelling women doing everything. Your DH needs to step up and take on more of the load.

I think this is a very good point. Show your children what a positive, healthy relationship is like. Don't be a martyr.