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

Definitely don’t think answer is for women to give up work and stay home

Honestly, you HAVE to delegate and give up some control. My husband is a messier cook than me, which winds me up. However, I force myself to have him cook half the nights in the week. Also, I made myself express milk for our baby so that he can look after the baby for hours without me needing to be around. We did this pretty much from the baby being a newborn, and it means I still have time to myself. Find ways to delegate certain tasks and trust that he can do it. It could be as simple as saying he is responsible for making sure the kids have clean school uniforms ready each day. Tell him how it needs to be done and when, and if he is as kind and wonderful as you say, he will do it.

Exactly, sure as shit these ‘high flying’ men could mange almost anything if their boss had asked them to do it…. some people on here should reflect on that FACT.

I'm quite phobic about the dentist, so dh was responsible for arranging all of dad's dental appointments and taking her etc. Curiously, the fact that he was a man didn't seem to impact on his ability to do this.

Well, I agree with your last sentence there! 😀 But, with your mention of your salary, it sounds like you’re implying that you use that money to buy in help. That’s fine but I wouldn’t call that ‘having it all’. Unless you’re earning all that money in a P/T job, you’re not spending all the time you could with your DC. I’m not saying you should BTW, as that’s your choice, but I take ‘having it all’ to mean looking after the home and children and having a career/FT job.

IMO, you can’t have both properly, so you can’t ‘have it all’.

“My dp can’t cook” pisses me off so much. As does “He needs a list” Of COURSE he can fucking cook. He just doesn’t want to. And it is conceivable that he needed a list once. More than once, he’s taking the piss.

How nice for your sister to have a large family that can help her care for her autistic kid so that she can work.
How unreasonable of you to think that this is the norm- it isn't. And use that to tell how worthless mothers who care for their disabled children are instead of working.

Weaponised incompetence.

Oh god some of these posts make me want to scream to the fucking Sistine chapel.

How can ‘men’ be so incompetent, yet run the world? Some people are crap at organisation, some aren’t. Even the people that are crap at it learn to do it. Learning difficulties aside, there’s no excuse if two people are working full time, then they are competent adults who can deal with general daily tasks.

If you can’t trust your partner to carry out basic tasks why the hell are you with them, let alone aiding their genes to carry on?

You say you can’t let them deal with things or your children will suffer. Have you tried it? If they would genuinely let their child suffer through neglect, then why would you want them around your children?

Hear hear

Of course. But not booking a dentist appt and assuming your DH will book it, or telling him to book it, doesn't mean it will happen. Yes, of course you can allocate tasks.. but the allocation of tasks and the knowing what tasks to allocate invariably falls on women. I only know of one couple where the DH is the 'chief sorter'.

Make changes then. It’s not rocket science. I flat out don’t recognise this whole “taking the entire mental load” thing. If anything I probably rely on DH too much for things.

You can actually talk to each other and work it out. Doesn’t need one person to be the sorter. We would have a weekly review of diaries - I’m working away M-W so DH will supervise music practice after the after school club and take DS to cricket practice on Tuesday. DD is at a friends for tea on Tuesday but they will drop her back home at 7.30 etc

Why would you need a "chief sorter"? DH and I both identify stuff that needs doing and then we work out who is best placed to do it. Or sometimes, if there is no danger of duplication, we just get on and do it.

It’s like you have no understanding of the patriarchy

Out of interest, how many women on here have male partners who buy birthday presents for kids parties, arrange dental appointments and nit comb on at least half the occasions these things are needed?

My mum did everything but I absolutely won't so wouldn't worry about that. I highly doubt gen z will pick up that role and certainly not your daughters generation. I'm a millenial and my son will be taught to pull his weight.

I made it clear to my husband that when we both work full time, we share jobs. When I was on mat leave I was happy to do more etc

Don't be afraid to defend yourself and tell him what you need.

Mine does all these things

How many women don't want to give up total control and pass these things over to a man?

Mine does, is it really a big deal? Pretty sad if so! Except haven't had to use a nit comb yet, but he is better at the stuff that requires a lot of patience so he spent an hour or so untangling DDs hair when it got stuck in a remote control car wheel so I don't imagine hed have an issue with it. The only thing its always me doing is booking her hair cuts as we have ours done at the the same time, pretty pointless for him to phone for the sake of it when I phone and book for both of us on the same call!

DH did almost all of the dental appointments throughout dd's childhood. I think I only went with her twice. We always booked the next appointment while we were there, so inevitably, he did most of the appointnent booking as well.

I did most of the present buying. DH comes from a culture where birthdays and presents aren't really a thing, so it was easier for me to do it. He occasionally got them if I didn't have time.

Nit comb... half and half, I think. DD preferred him doing it as he was apparently more gentle. Luckily, she didn't get nits that often!

You wrote earlier that she had family who helped out and now she's paying for help. And you're insinuating that I'm disabled as well because I can't make sense of your incongrous posts.
I think you lack empathy and I'm sorry for you.

DH does all the dental appointments for both kids, I don’t get involved at all and haven’t ever brought them or booked an appointment. we’ve only had nits once and DH was away so I did it, although Dh styles her hair in the morning a lot of the time, I tend to buy things like presents because I have a job that allows for more personal admin during the day.
We don’t split individual tasks 50/50, we split overall workload as close to fair as we can. So one person might do all of X, Y and Z jobs, and the other does all of A, B and C and then 1,2 & 3 are split.

I find it crazy that some women find this so alien. But then I would never by the sort of woman to say “oh he can’t ever change” and just put up with being treated like shit for the rest of my life.