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

My son views it as completely normal for his dad to cook, clean, shop for food, look after him (his dad went 4 days a week from when my mat leave ended) etc. I hope this means that if he chooses to have a partner/child of his own in the future that he will be similar. He definitely doesn't view housework/looking after children as being a women's job because that's not how it is in our home. You can break the cycle now OP. You're only 40 - is this how you want your life to continue to be? Is this what you want to model to your daughters?

I disagree with this being a DH issue because what’s allowed it be a DH isn’t pulling his weight issue is that you’ve allowed it to be. I say that as someone who 2 years ago had a breakdown over everything you are describing. It took a lot of going over my life to finally understand that I had allowed my husband (and child to some degree) to completely and utterly use me. They didn’t even fucking realise because they were so used to me just doing it without complaining or delegating tasks or simply dictating that I wasn’t the only person responsible for it all. Yes my husband should have realised but in part that was made more difficult because his mother was also the ‘do it all-er’ when he was growing up and so it never ever hit him just exactly how much I was doing. Women have done this to ourselves (in some regards, not all) by allowing it to happen.

I left my husband during this breakdown, it was never supposed to be permanent and it wasn’t. It was to give me time to find out what I wanted, and him time to realise all of which he had left me ‘take on’. It worked and now, two years later, the life work is entirely 50/50 and it’s not down to the threat of him losing his wife entirely it’s because he too has had to shift his mindset and realise that his upbringing and general life experience had allowed him to become lazy and lazy and expectant.

I think we’re having children later when our energy levels aren’t at the capacity to deal with very young children plus our careers which are by then at a stage where there is real effort and responsibility involved. The pressures of parenting are different these days to to when your mum was young. Clean and fed would do back in the day, now we have to be Instagram worthy, high achieving, club and sport attending, organic meal preparing, homework helping etc. Life is different and it’s all got a bit much.

Are you also telling your sons to think carefully about how they would manage work and children? Why would it be different for sons v daughters?
It isn’t a lie that women can have it all. I think I have by having a DH who is equally committed to his home, family and career as I am. In 30 years of marriage I haven’t had to train or manage him with household and childcare tasks. He’s a competent adult and work things out - no differently than me.

I think your daughters will do whatever fits in with their lifestyles at the time, OP. My lovely Dad did all the cooking when I was growing up, but my own DH very rarely cooks - but I don't care, it doesn't bother me at all. I don't work as many hours as him, I stayed at home when my DC were little (and loved every minute of it). People tend to do what works for them at the time. But if you're unhappy with you're own situation OP, then change it, but don't pretend we're all the same. As you can see from the responses here we all have different priorities. I've always been very maternal but I didn't have my DC until my 40s. By that time I'd made my own money and had savings and would not have gone straight back to work for all the money in the world (and lucky for me I didn't have to). Instead of arguing I wish people could just accept that we are not all the same.

Yeah, me caring for my autistic DC is me giving up to the patriarchy 🙄. Ought to have had him adopted at birth so I could have pursued a succesful career.

This is an interesting post, though I disagree with some of your conclusions. Sorry for a lengthy post but there's a lot to unpick.

From being introduced to feminism in the late 70s/ early 80s, I became concerned with challenging social conditioning and the importance of not just assuming everything was about biologically based sex differences, as that seemed to hold the most hope for changing women's lives. That view has been shown to have some value when we look at the significant shifts in expectations of men and women over the past 60 years and the significant changes in their behaviour. Clearly social conditioning has played a profound role or we wouldn't have seen such a shift.

However I'm now more open to the idea that some subtle differences may be biologically based. It makes sense from an evolutionary perspective that our species would survive better if women were more often hard wired to find emotional attunement easier and were likely to be drawn to nurturing and maintaining relationships. It's interesting that what many women find hardest to get their partners to share is the 'mental load'. Part of what they often mean by this is managing relationships and the practicalities of relationships. I think there can be value in recognising that one partner has strengths here (not always the woman) but that is a small part of overall domestic labour and should be compensated for by the other partner taking on other tasks. I think we'd all agree that any sex based differences would be unlikely to make a man ideally equipped to mow a lawn but not push a hoover, or to be able to smooth plaster on a wall but not icing on a cake, and thankfully many men recognize this now. The problem though is men often not recognising what emotional & relationship labour is going on, and accepting they need to either learn how to get more involved in this or do more of the other stuff. Could awareness of this be raised with teens at school?

You seem to be suggesting that women may be more likely to want to stay at home with children and legislation / economic systems should support this? I'd be curious to know what 'organise families differently ' might look like to you. I agree with flexibility around employment to support PT work and that we should be working towards a society which does not require 35+hrs in the workplace for every adult, and that our work ethic is harming women, men and children. However, I think it's vital for women to be present in positions of power in the workplace as that's where many decisions that affect the rest of our lives are made (quite apart from many women preferring this to the domestic sphere). If we go back to just accepting that women should take the brunt of the domestic role because we assume they are naturally equipped for this, then we will undo a lot of beneficial change by removing women from other spheres.

You guys are all amazing. Thanks so much for your comments. I have been out all day but will read through each & every one of them tonight. Really interesting stuff. Thank you

Obviously I’m telling my son too. I mentioned daughters only because that’s what the OP mentioned. Glad you and your DH work well together.

I’m a lone parent too. Not on six figures though and not quite sure why your income is relevant. Do you value your life in monetary worth? You seem very defensive. I don’t find that defensiveness ‘laughable’, I find it sad. Money isn’t the only power and nor does it bring self esteem clearly.

@CantHoldMeDown what do people without that supportive family network do? I have an autistic child but luckily they are able to go to school FT, if they didn’t I would only be able to work PT hours as I have no family around and my partner left.

CantHoldMeDown

Whats with the sneering and aggressive responses to the poster who chooses to be a SAHM? She never made any derogatory comments about parents who work so there was no need to start a bun fight with her. Such a defensive response to a lifestyle choice that’s different to yours suggests that you are more unhappy with your choices and situation than you realise.

I hate it when people try and pit SAHPS and working parents against each other - it serves no one.

I met DH when he was at uni and had a 4 year long distance relationship. I knew how he lived in the house share, could cook and do laundry.

We then moved together and relocated after 3 years and lived together in total for 9 years before we had DD.

Plenty of time to see if he is able to share housework before a child comes along.
if he would have been useless in the first years, i wouldn’t have relocated, married or had a baby with him.

BANG - you get hit by a meteorite. Splat.
DH is going to have to learn quick.

No, I think you’re teaching your children this. Many of us aren’t.

We split everything fairly, we don’t resent each other, we both work, we both have an equal share of household responsibilities and childcare. We can fully function if one of us goes away for a few days. Children call out for us both equally.

I honestly think I have everything I want (which to me is having it all). I enjoy my job, I love and fancy my husband, I adore my children. We spend quality time together, we don’t have any stress or resentment.

I would say that most of my friends have DH's who share more of the load than mine! My DH can't cook and basically needs a list of jobs to do and then will happily get on with them, but relies on me (after 15+years) to write that list and remind him what needs doing. But even though my friends DH's are generally better at cooking / cleaning / picking up after themselves, there is still a lot of other smaller jobs that need doing that generally fall on women - organising play dates / the social diary / birthday presents / food shopping / meal planning / dentist appointments etc... and while it's easy for people to say stop doing those things.. the consequences of not doing those things will be borne by the children because so much of what we do is for them.

I think I will be advising my DD to find a man who can cook competently, and has lived on his own before, preferably in his own house.

But I also think two parents working full time and trying to juggle child care and after school activities and everything else is too much. Something has to give somewhere. I've chosen to work part-time largely because of some of these issues - I know not everyone can afford to do this, and not everyone would want to. But if more men were willing to consider dropping hours and picking up the slack with some of this mental load (where financially feasible), then more women would be able to enjoy a good work-life balance.

Is there a reason why your DH can’t cook or function at home without you providing a list? What happens when you’re away? Does he have a job?

There is another option- modelling a fair split between mum and dad, but you seem to have discounted that for some reason. But that is your problem, i would say, and no amount of trying to generalise it away with references to what 'we' are teaching our daughters disguises it. I am certainly not teaching my daughter anything of the sort.

And we should be modelling the fair aplit for both our sons and our daughters.

This whole OP seems to entrench traditional roles as if they are inevitable.

They are not.

I think you really need to look at what is important and what are you doing just to look like ‘a good mum’ in front of other mums. I have 2 autistic boys and I tied myself in knots trying to be a ‘good mum’. My husband is a lot more laid back - he will make sure they are clean, have clean clothes and bedding but we don’t sweat the small stuff. We tried clubs and activities but they were just a headache so we go out and do things as a family one day a weekend (theme park/water park/ cinema) so no week day schedules. We don’t make play dates with other families as it is too stressful to meet the standards of other mums so I have stopped trying (particularly girl mums - sorry). If you go out and leave your girls with your husband, they won’t die so let go of the vine and try to see how the way he parents is valid too. I think a lot of this ‘mental load’ we impose on ourselves.

I'm retired ... At one point DH said he couldn't wait to retire and sit round doing what he wants... hahaha.... no-no-no-no-no.

I said to him I couldn't wait for him to retire and take on half of what I do.

You could see the realisation dawn and spread to his brain when his mouth dropped "oh"

So remember to get that thought firmly planted.

I know right. My husband can manage a pretend team of footballers on his multiple Fantasy Football teams so he can sure as shit make an appointment over the phone. As I said in my earlier post women are allowing themselves to be put in the position of Chief Sorter.

@BreatheAndFocus your point was women can’t have it all. The point I made about my salary was that we can (either on our own or with decent partners) The issue with having a crap partner like OP is they increase your load (washing, cooking, shopping etc) rather than share it.

You are saying women can’t have it all. I say we can and do.

I think it’s easier actually without a crap man.