Please don't give my husband more paternity leave.

[Hedgehogbrown]

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/please-dont-give-my-husband-longer-paternity-leave/#comments-container

Till Macdonald wrote this is the Spectator. Is she mad?! Who is this woman? Just because she procreated with a massive dickhead doesn't mean the rest of us should have absent husbands. Anyone who has a 'pile of ironing' in 2025 is just asking to be a wifey martyr. Ridiculous.

Never had a pile of ironing. Don’t own an iron. Problem solved in that regard. Maybe they should be better problem solvers, so less angst?

What is this ironing obsession?. I use the ironing board to stack clean clothes and the iron as a door stop.

So none of you iron? Shirts, dresses - you all just get them out of the dryer and what? hang them in the closet and go out in them?

Exactly that in our household! I only have an iron for crafts and weddings.

Ok fair enough! I couldn’t cope. But more power to you I say!

WTF have I just read?

I guess when your husband is THAT useless and selfish, you have to tell yourself that they're ALL like that, right?

"I have accepted and let my husband become so useless that I can't stand him being around, so please don't give him more time off"

could sum that up.

I mean, there is somewhat of a point there, paternity leave + useless husband = not good.

But she is just trying to fix the wrong side part of the problem.

I agree with her 🤣

my husband was constantly “tidying” things around me - things I needed around me. And then the fancy dinners while I was trying to loose weight…..6 weeks would be plenty IMO. He might disagree…..

I don’t own a dryer

Life is too short for ironing everything!

Just hang your clothes up - only iron shirts or something that wrinkles in the wash like linen.

Tilly has outed her DH as a lazy CF. If he was a lazy CF before the children came along then maybe she should not have had them. Or married him. He sounds awful.

I love ironing 😀
But dh does all the cleaning and hoovering. And works full time.

“A man on paternity leave should be a good guest” noticed she didn’t say father. Both sound vile. What a pity for the child

He granted me six weeks of celibacy leave…

Yep. Get them out while they’re still warm and it’s no problem.

This. Plus over time you learn to spot clothes that will need ironing and don't buy them.

I got rid of my iron and ironing board during the first lockdown. Just suddenly thought, I don't want to be ironing anymore and haven't since then! My husband mostly wears T-shirts and they dry hung up, so don't crease. Everything else doesn't seem to crease that much and is dried in a way that it won't.
I'm very happy I made that decision - life is too short to iron!

It reads like satire, either that or ai feel truely sorry for her, her husband sounds like an awful mysogynist arse. Makes my DH who can be a mysogynist arse at times (according to my standards) sound like a saint.

Poor Tilly, ahe needs to get out of there asap. The answer is not less paternity leave for her DH, its to leave this dispicable man.

I don't generally buy clothes made of fabrics that look crumpled when unironed. Thin cotton shirts do look terrible without ironing but life is too short - there's loads of fabric types out there that look fine without ironing.

I do own an iron. 90% of its use is for iron-on nametags and craft projects. It has an occasional few minutes use on cloth as I do have one item of clothing (that I only wear very occasionally because it's too much faff) that looks better after ironing.

DH chooses to wear unironed shirts when he needs to wear a shirt. His choice, and he's in charge of all laundry in the house (he hates it when I put a batch on as he plans for when there will be room for the next batch on the airers and if I do anything it messes up his system) so he hangs the shirts on hangers when damp so they don't look too bad. He does 50% of the housework overall because he's not a misogynistic arsehole. He took 3 months of paternity leave when I went back to work and it was hugely beneficial to both him and to DC.

I really wish women would stop having sex with misogynistic arseholes. The laws of evolution ought to have made them extinct by now, but somehow women keep choosing to procreate with them.

Her husband is clearly useless.
BUT do women want men to have more maternity leave? Is it a priority for us really? Personally I’d rather have better paid maternity leave, longer maternity leave options, more childcare funding, complete reform of the CMS. I think there’s many other things that could be improved around young families before this.

I wonder if giving dads more maternity leave is really about trying to look like they’re supporting women but actually it’s probably not that helpful for many women and obviously zero help for the ones who are doing it alone. Is it to attempt to support marriage? Bond men and their kids to reduce family conflict? Make it look like men and women have equality from the start of life? Again how much is that really a benefit for women.

My partner irons his shirts on the rare occasion he needs one (usually for a choir concert). Most of my dresses don't need to be ironed but if they ever do (extremely rare!) it will be for an occasion that also requires an ironed shirt so my partner will iron both. I'm definitely not ironing anything only to hang it in the wardrobe for another 15 months!

Not the point of the article I know but I was offended by the pile of ironing comment in the OP 😅: I do agree with this PP about not ironing everything. I try to keep it to an absolute minimum, using a dry cleaner for DH’s big shirts and just have a few bits to do each week, exactly like shirt dresses or linen stuff this time of year. In my experience though, people I know who brag they never iron - and say they only buy stuff that don’t need ironing - often wear extremely creased clothes and so do their kids actually. I like not wearing creased clothes so I don’t mind ironing a bit but more power to you all who don’t give a shit. Genuinely. 😂

As for the paternity, DH got 12 weeks which was amazing but he’s very hands on. The longer the better, I say. It helps with not establishing or reinforcing this kind of relationship where the baby is only really settled by their mother, who also happens to be the one who deals with the domestic side of things. The only ‘advantage’ I had with settling our DC was with breastfeeding but there was no excuse otherwise. We decided to bottle feed alongside it from early so my DH did his fair share with feeds.

I sort of agree. For me the first 6 months was learning to be a mother, learning a new rhythm after years of working, making friends and connections - some that stayed with me for years, having new mums over etc etc etc. I didnneed a husband in the mix. We both found that first year quite stressful. The house was tiny so there was no getting away from each other to reset etc.

When my husband started working full time from home about 5 years later, we had another period of adjustment while we both got used to it and the difference of him being home all day every day.

To have done both together wouldn't have worked for us.

However, better family benefits when the kids were a bit older would be welcomed - so its easier for him to be able to take time to go into school/nursery for the nativity, parents sessions, to see a sports match or a choir event....without having to use days leave and then leave us short in the school holidays.

My husband isn't useless. But I didn't need him those first 6 months. Baby 2 and 3 slotted into our life and rhythm. Having him home then would have disrupted all our routines. Any child of mine that found pre-school a bit tough would find going even tougher if Daddy was at home.

6 months paternity to follow mums maternity - yes yes yes.

The reason we found it beneficial to split maternity leave (I had 9 months then he had 3) was that it broke the "mum as default parent" trope - I wasn't his boss in a childcare heirarchy. He was making the decisions and doing all the mental load. It made it easier to then resettle into an actually 50:50 balance once he returned to work. Obviously the equality we have now isn't solely due to that decision 15 years ago, but I think it set us on the right path.

I don't have a dryer, so they either come off the washing line straight and can be hung in the wardrobe straight, or I hang them up for the creases to drop out.

I have a couple of dresses that need ironing but I rarely wear them because of this. My partner irons his shirts for work.

Anyway, back to the article. I wouldn't want Tilly's husband around either as he sounds like a massive twat, but more fool her for having a baby with him.