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

The answer is simply that you need to stop being a defeatist martyr and get your DH to step up; if he "can't" think, then give him longer manual effort tasks and keep the organisation bits. It isn't "training" to say that all washing-up, garden work, bins, bathroom cleaning and floor cleaning are now solely his job (with some child assistance roped in optionally). You then add child assistance for your laundry and tidying tasks. Or whatever split you like. Shopping and cooking - take turns, get personal items like deodorant on your own shop. Drop-off, pick-up, homework supervision and bed-time - pick regular slots each week that must be swapped if one of you can't do it. Book holidays together e.g. one does accommodation & travel, the other does activities. That split would leave you plenty of time for booking appointments, organising school admin and sorting clothes out.

He isn't learning to do anything because quite simply you don't let him. If he misses butter or milk on his shopping week, then he goes to get them and learns. If the kitchen gets into a state and takes all evening to clean, then he knows it is his responsibility to clean up more regularly and learns. If he has the kid pick-up on Tuesday and there's homework, then he gets onto it because he's right there. If he has drop-off that day but a child is ill, then it's on him to sort the GP and/or childcare.

Me and DH both work 4 days a week and its brilliant, sure on our day off we both do some house and family bits (handy in the holidays too) but we get some time to ourselves which is really important. We did considered all sorts, but aiming for an equal split decided this and it works well for us. I guess what I am saying is its a privilege in this economy to afford for anyone to be part time in the household, but there are models of this beyond the man being full time and the woman being part time. Of course if thats what a family wants its not bad, but its bound to make some things less equal. I also know traditionally men seem to earn more, but this doesnt have to be the case.

Would welcome comments about the future of our daughters not judgement on whether my husband does / doesn’t do enough

Sorry, you can't just say this when it's the crux of the problem. I dont recognise your issues because they are not issues in our house. My husband does a fair share of the workload. I wouldn't have married him or had kids with him if he didn't. I hope my children, not just daughter, have the same values and consideration for what a partnership and marriage is.

mine takes it on - he has to because I won’t do it all. I do more and we do have the argument sometimes that he does feel he does more until I point it out

he can take it on he is absolutely capable

Yeah it sucks.

If you're part time vs stopping work completely, I think it would be easier to go back to full time though?

I am 30 and pregnant with my first, I'd like to do 3 or 4 days if that's affordable at the time. My mom was a miserable SAHM and when they split I took on a lot of housework for my dad, so this probably influences my view you can't change them so have to try make it livable for you.

If your DH holds down a full time job I’m sure he’s capable of also taking on family responsibility. Start by giving him a couple of tasks that are his every week and build up from there. Then on a weekend write a list of jobs and work through them together. I can be a bit of a perfectionist so I wouldn’t let my DH help. But that’s my problem not his. Also look at your lifestyle and see what you can streamline/cut back on. We were running round doing lots of activities I thought were necessary to having a good childhood. In reality my children love playing in mud in the garden every weekend. Lead by example and let your children see you accept help, work as a team and have a life other than just being head of chores.

@ForZanyAquaViewer I think you are an outlier. Your set up sounds great!

I can't be too far off your age and my children are the same ages. DH and I both work similar high stress, full time jobs. I'm probably a bit stricter about enforcing work boundaries (in the main) around the children, but we both accept there are times when we have to work. And perhaps I take on more mental load around presents/celebrations for the family .However, DH fully pills his weight in other areas and shoulders full mental load. He is equally on top of school related things, probably more so with homework. We both do laundry and cooking, whenever needed. This morning I've woken to an empty bed and children being entertained downstairs, presumably because DH knows I've been sleeping badly recently. He spent yesterday deep cleaning the kitchen, and the weekend before sorting and clearing old baby clothes and paraphernalia (he knows it pains me to do so, so sent me away to garden with the kids so I wouldn't get upset).

He is an equal partner, and always has been. I wouldn't have settled for anything less. I suppose though that I had that modelled to an extent by my parents (although their roles were more defined than I, and my DM, would have liked, however it was always evident that both my parents worked in and out of the home, and had equal down time). I think you need to chart out everything you do, present it to your DH and say you need him to start stepping up ASAP before your daughters grow up to think the norm is domestic servitude plus a full time job. If he cannot equally contribute to the household without being managed (which is likely to result in resentment and stress), give him half your mental load as being purely "his" and leave him to it. Let him fail. It won't be the end of the world but he'll learn through natural consequences and you won't be so stressed.

I am married to a man who genuinely does far, far more than the vast majority of men I know. When we both worked full time he really did pull his weight and yet I still found the “default parent” responsibilities kept coming back to me. I think our society is still just structured that way.

Ultimately I got fed up with it and quit my career for an easier part time job which still makes me feel guilty and like a bad feminist but our lives are a hundred times easier now. It is also so much more straightforward to have more clearly defined roles as parents - we were always treading on each other’s toes and/or things would get missed when we both tried to share the admin, now it’s mostly my responsibility and it just tends to work better.

I don’t know what the answer is. I look at countries like Denmark which are often praised for having a better, more equal system but very few people work part time there and being a SAHM is very rare and I think that would be a huge cultural shift for us in the UK (and not necessarily seen as a positive one).

This

This. It’s on you OP. You talk about it as if all families live like this, but I don’t know anyone that does.

Sadly we don’t earn enough for any additional help (aside from a cleaner).

So you DO have additonal help. Most people have to cope with cleaning themselves.

@Anxioustealady yes, agree, working PT is lower risk financially than SAH.

So what did your husband do before he met you?

Did he never look after himself?

I'll be honest, threads like this really irk me.

What's with all the 'we'?

My mum was one of these 'do everything' mums. My dad didn't do 'nothing' but his jobs around the house tended to he mowing the lawn, putting the bins out and decorating type jobs and she did everything else.

I told her and her friend when I was 15 that I wasn't ever getting married because I didn't want my life to look like that. I also grew up in the 80s and saw nothing but misogyny and poor attitudes towards women on TV, in films, in comedy etc. They laughed at me 🙄

I was absolutely flabbergasted that women tolerated this and had no idea why anyone would submit to a life like that.

So, I have never done the 'wife work' or carried the 'mental load'. When I've lived with someone, we've each had our separate jobs in the hosue but they've been equally shared.

Eg.my partner now - the kitchen is his domain. He cleans it and does most of the cooking. I cook a couple of times a week. He does all the gardening and outside jobs, I clean the bathroom and dust and polish the bedrooms, we both do the living room, he does all the vacuuming and we both tidy everywhere and each do our own laundry. I strip and wash the bedlinen. He hangs it out to dry and remakes the bed afterwards.

We didn't raise childen together and our children were already adults when we got together but our children (we each have a son and daughter) have similar set ups in their own homes where relevant.

I've explicitly taught my children to take on equal share of the household responsibilities. My son expects to take on half the chores and doesn't want to settle down with someone who feels its their role to do it all because he wants a partner who is equal, who has their own interests, hobbies and life as well as him. Not for him to have those things at the expense of someone else. My daughter (18) dumped a boyfriend last year because he came from a family where mum did everything and not only did she not want that for herself but she saw him as an incapable child and found it hugely unattractive.

I've been married, dated a fair bit and had a couple of shorter term flings and now live with a partner. I've never met a man who wasn't fully capable of running his own home and I certainly wouldn't take that on any own responsibility. Not that I have ever met one who thought I should.

ETA - he does all the food/supermarket shopping too. Including for Christmas.

Just because it would have been better to plant a tree 10 years ago doesn’t mean you shouldn’t plant one now.

speak to your husband, organise counselling, tell him it’s past time he did more. Show him this post even. You’ve given up on him. If he’s really great then he’ll want to do his share.

I’m in Scandinavia and I would absolutely not want to live like in the UK. No way in hell would we want to go back to SAHM’s. Reading here many of you end up unhappy and lonely with neither money, pension nor confidence.

I do think this is a man problem. If you both work full-time, you should both be doing half the domestic load. If you don't both do half, the husband then becomes additional work for the wife. Nothing kills a relationship more than this. And unfortunately, it seems men would rather lose their wife than do cleaning, chores, childcare and cooking.

This is why I and so many other women are divorced.

I think both parents working full time, often with hours of commuting too, is just really awful for family life. IME the ones who make it work are either affluent (cleaners etc) or have grandparents on hand. One thing I noticed in moving from the South East to an area where house prices were actually sane was that very couples here both worked full time. I'd love to see society be more creative about work & parenting for both genders. But that would entail treating people as something other than interchangeable widgets in a big machine otherwise known as the economy, so probably isn't going to happen.

I guess my advice to DCs of either gender is that there is an element of choice, just inherently. Having it all is mostly the preserve of the affluent, whose voices are artificially amplified in our culture. So start thinking carefully early on. If you feel you want a family in the future, start planning for that (career choice, house prices etc), have those discussions with partners etc. Do NOT automatically assume it'll be the woman who goes PT. Also there's nothing wrong with wanting children more than other things in life, once you are being realistic about long term finances.

In a lot of ways women like yourself have it worse because they are working full time whilst still being expected to take on all the mental load and be the main caretaker of their family. I'm not in the same position as you and wouldn't be happy modelling this to any of my kids.

My own parents had very distinct roles when we were growing up. She was the homemaker and he was the provider. He still did chores like doing the dishes and hoovering, gardening, bins etc. As we grew up and mum got a job he took on more chores and now the roles have reversed as she works full time and he's had to stop due to ill health. He cooks 5 days a week now and does the majority of the cleaning.

Dh works full time but compressed his hours so we didnt need childcare. He cooks 3 days a week to my 4 and household chores are pretty much an even split. Sometimes I do more , sometimes he does. We are both working for the good of our family. Mental load is probably evenly split by thats because I'm self employed and so my work pattern can change from week to week so he needs to be on it to to make sure we are available for the kids.

I'm not trying to insult the way your family works, I don't ever think there is a right or wrong just what suits you and if there is a willingness to adapt and change should the family require it.

‘There are millions of happy wives with husbands that share the load’.

There may be, but I think H’s with DC who do an equal or near-equal share of parenting and domestic work are a small minority.

I'm sure your daughters are observant enough to draw their own conclusions.

https://equalcareday.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/mental-load-home-en.pdf

@Granville1 check out this link and get your husband to do it. Hopefully this will open his eyes a little.

I know how you feel, I’ve been working hard over the years to get more of a balance. There is a difference between doing a task and being the person who HAS to remember and then remind the other person to do it - the mental load.

My husband will do obvious things like change the baby’s nappy when it smells or take the bin out on bin day (I still check with him which I need to stop). But there’s a huge list of things he just wouldn’t do without me reminding him and it’s exhausting. So the less important things I chose to let go of - e.g. when we moved house a couple of years ago I registered myself with a new GP, dentist etc. but he still hasn’t - not my problem really he’s an adult. It’s a work in progress OP but I would advise you to start letting go of the non urgent things and see what happens…

It is so sad to read so many confident and competent women married to men who do not do the bare minimum and yes I would say what you are modelling to your DD is unhealthy. But I do think it's within your remit to change, to have the conversations, expect and hold the boundaries and ultimately to leave if it doesn't change - or stay and accept that this is what you are accepting for yourself and your daughters. Of course this is societally informed but I also think on a micro level we have the capacity to affect change in our own circumstances.

My DH is very much an equal partner in our relationship but we didn't get here magically, we've had to work together through discussions over the years to find a position where we are both comfortable and happy with what we do within the home and also learn to appreciate the 'invisible' roles the other does. It's not perfect because what is, but if it ever starts to feel a little unbalanced we talk about it readjust and work through what we need to do next. My DD is growing up seeing me having a worthwhile career, she can see me taking time for myself and she sees DH take on roles in the home that may traditionally have been considered woman's work.

I was an SAHM when the kids were younger and absolutely loved it. Yes I took a financial hit but I have absolutely zero regrets. I wouldn't trade those memories for the world. Not everything about £££s and climbing a random career ladder

I do see what you mean OP - I mean I can remember my mum saying about my Dad

”He thinks Xmas JUST HAPPENS!!”

But i don’t understand what you mean by 25 years down

So I do understand cos I remember my mum saying similar things but I also agree with this post -

Can’t you set up a rota between you ?