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 think that the most healthy thing you can do is not put pressure on your children to have grandchildren and marry like some older generations do. I think that the birth rate falling is because of stuff like this and it’s easier not to have kids than risk being stuck in a situation like yours.
To a certain extent you choose to do it all and let your h get away with being your third child- a good guy wouldn’t act like his higher wage made him exempt from domestic stuff.

I won’t judge how little your husband is doing, but I do judge you for allowing him to get away with doing so little and ‘showing’ your daughters that that is what marriage is like. It isn’t.

Stop playing the martyr. Divvy up the chores. Be a good role model.

That's why I found it better to be a sahm. Since I will be doing everything atleast I don't have to work as well. One DC autistic so it would have been very complicated anyway.

Do your dds currently do chores OP? Will you expect them to do more chores as they grown up?

What will you say when your daughters complain about having to tidy when their dad does nothing ?

Yes I now sort house insurance as last year he forgot until the renewal date and I had to fork out £3k that day (listed house so expensive sadly), so now I do the renewal comparisons. I sort my own car insurance/MOT/tax/repairs, DH's is through work else I would sort his too. As I would hope most couples do, all financial planning/life insurance/mortgage renewal is done jointly. DH sorts council tax, I pay all bills as I am the main earner.

DH programmes Alexa but that's because he enjoys that sort of thing. I'm not sure that's a chore! He also does all DIY because he enjoys it, but if we need contractors in I sort them unless they are his friends, and I sort any resulting issues e.g. poor quality work.

Oh and I put the bins out! The gardener mows the lawns (that sounds very middle class )

We split these things 50:50 as we did pre-kids, but post-kids the child related split is unequal.

I think there is a point to make about the mental load of the household including not just day to day things, but come on, paying for insurance is a once a year thing, mortgage renewal once every few years, it's not the same as ordering school dinners/wraparound care every week, knowing exactly what kit is required daily, paying for clubs monthly, knowing instantly whose socks are whose in the laundry...

People frequently accept you based on your self image & the boundaries you put in place .
It is only an ‘unrealistic feminist utopia ‘ to expect male partners to do stereotypically female chores if you let them get away with being lazy . I wouldn’t ( and haven’t ) dream of spending my life with a man who had so little regard for me once I’d explained the situation to him . Men who are properly confident in themselves & a sense of fairness seem to have least problem with this it has seemed to me

This.

I gestated, gave birth to and breastfed two babies. That was a sex based role.

Everything else was shared and we played to our personal strengths.

Not exactly. You get time off when the DC are with your ex if that’s the set up. It’s well needed and often I need to totally crash…but in the past I would not get that time at all. Fundamentally, you remove the frustration of living with a partner like that, which removes a lot of the exhaustion generated by frustration imho. It’s difficult to respect and fancy someone who is content to let you take the load and look on as you buckle… often while telling you how tired and busy they are! For me the situation developed over time, and my ex was much more competent at sharing the load with young DC than doing so once they were at school or became teens. As the higher earner myself, this meant I was not only bringing in more to the household but doing more domestically and administratively. I’m not alone in this. (One of my friend’s DH told me smugly how his wife ‘loved’ sorting everyone’s calendars and keeping on top of house admin. I’ve thought of several one liners since… )

The question to me is more 'are we role modelling to our daughters'?

Well perhaps @Granville1 youre lying to your daughters but I’m not lying to mine. My kids see me hold my husband to account and do his fair share.

You need to have this chat with DH

My DH cooks breakfast - he WFH so before he disappears into the work abyss he contributes.

He is in charge of dishwashers, bins, cars, DIY, certain clubs, Ubering 50%
I am in charge food , catering except breakfast, laundry, banking, certain clubs, ubering 50%,

we have a help: cleaner, gardener, windows, ironing.

If my DH tried the incompetence method, I’d sack him.

And of course socialisation can effect social roles but the idea that it will eradicate sex based difference in roles so men and women's roles become indistinguishable is utopian nonsense.

Where earth does sex based differences come in to play when it comes to coming home from work and sticking on a wash, cooking dinner or doing the school lunches??

OP I think you've identified a really important issue - by compensating for what your DH doesn't do and providing a good home and life for your DDs, you might be doing them more harm in the long term due to what this teaches them. Many homes DO have more equitable division of labour (mine included) but I think it can be hard for women to shift to this due to the subtle social pressures that become clearer if we think about differences in what men and women are more likely to feel guilty about.

You sound kind and thoughtful and you say your DH is. If you want to model a good future for your daughters I would suggest some serious soul searching and discussion:

• why do you feel you should mask feeling burnt out from your DH?
• how and why did you 'fall' into this role? How and why did he 'fall' into his role? You both did and thought things to make this happen and the way into it tells you something about the path out
• does he just find it easier to leave it all to you?
• do you ever behave in a way that diminishes your DH's domestic work?
• could the standards you set for domestic work be lowered?
• does either of you really believe this is women's work? If so, why? How defensible is this?
• does either of you feel some tasks are more feminine / masculine and feel uncomfortable about either of you stepping out of this? (will never forget my neighbour laughing at my DH putting out washing, then moaning her husband left everything to her)
• what do you both want your DDs' relationships to look like?

The above assumes you're correct that your DH is basically kind and decent, though his behaviour does raise questions about this. Talking honestly might mean acknowledging you both want some gendered differentiation in your roles, but means you can still divide equitably based on this (in theory!).

Re. Other ways to influence your daughters - my mum introduced me to feminist thinking by talking to me about the equal pay act in the late 70s and the inequalities we saw around us. It was also reflected in her relationship with my dad and influenced my choice of partner, who I'm still with 40 years later.

This is part of the problem.

There are clearly women who see running the house as 'women's work' and believe that the only households where men take equal responsibility are ones where those men have been socialised or trained by a woman to do so.

Which is why it sounds like a feminist utopia to them when, for many of us, it's just every day life.

My DH forgot the bins 2 weeks on the trot. I can assure you he found a way of never forgetting again. If he hadn’t it would have been the beginning of the end! Honestly, my DD’s see me play hardball and know, I’d rather be single than with a idiot who can’t find a method to remember the god damn bins

Lots of what women should do posts - choose the man better, make him change, leave him if he doesn’t do a fair share. Tell DDs to do these things.

And don’t’s: be a martyr, be a perfectionist, overcomplicate motherhood, work FT/PT/SAH.

Love your tips!
I have a similar strategy and it works. I don’t mind the mental load as it means I can decide how things are done and I can choose what to delegate 😈

It seems quite sad that yourself and all your friends sound unhappy? Isn’t it all about communicating and slowly making permanent changes to make things better. This period where the children are small is so short.

My DH does a huge amount of financial stuff, house renovation, fixing things etc and I do alot more of the childcare related things but that’s just how we split it. Occasionally I get cross with the mental load (pre holiday or something) and we write down everything we do for the household to run as it does and then I realise that he does his fair share. 99% of the time we are extremely happy but I also know most of my friends are too.

DH teaches the children how to use tools, my 5 year old can hang a picture frame by herself and use a saw! And he teaches them about cars and things like that - maybe your DH could teach them about the things he maybe does that aren’t as obvious as washing etc? But he should also do some washing…

The very best thing that I can do for my dd, in my opinion, is to model an approach to family life which will enable her to confidently dismiss this kind of comment as the mindless, uninformed nonsense that it is.

I don't have a dd so I am not teaching her anything, what I do have is a ds who has grow up seeing his dad do his fair share and at 21 now is left to organise his own washing, cleaning, finances, working, car, holidays etc. If he doesn't do it, it doesn't get done.

When dh and I first got together we had both come from traditional families where dad worked and mum kept home, I made it clear from day one that was not happening. It wasn't plain sailing as he naturally feel into what he was modelled from his own home, where I was determined that wouldn't happen to me and to start as I meant to go on. There were some impressive arguments in the early days of living together.

I guess what you need to do is tell your dd is not to fall into the role you did and tell her how unhappy it made you. It also means telling her your relationship and also your dh, her dad, behaviour are not role models or something to aspire to.

OP, rather than wondering how you can teach your daughters to break the cycle, break it yourself. Then they won't have to because it will be normal and what they expect going forwards.

What an unkind response.