To think most men wouldn’t survive a year living the life of an average woman?

[ThatRealLimeBee]

The daily grind of sexism, safety worries, juggling expectations, emotional labour… Most men have no idea. AIBU to think they’d crumble under the load if they had to swap lives with us for a year?

Because I am sick of people lying and saying I do that! I do everything you do! No you do not.

When was the last time you personally emptied every single kitchen cupboard and properly disinfected them? Steam cleaned your microwave? Disinfected the inside of your fridge? Took down every intricate light shade and cleaned them? Cleaned every curtain and blind? Dusted inside your radiators? Cleaned your air vents? Cleaned all your electronic products? Washed down your front and back door? Washed your wheelie bins? Swept, scrubbed and re-painted your fences? Replaced all bedding, towels and tea towels? Seasonally rotated all your home furnishings and accessories? Rotated and deep cleaned your mattresses? Binned every outdated medicine/beauty product in the house? Washed all your make up brushes? Emptied your loft and decluttered? Emptied out and reorganised your whole shed? Washed and hoovered your own car? Wrote personal thank you cards and helped your DCs make and write them?

This is my full-time job. I do it properly, all the time.

I think most mums feel guilty about some things. The fact that this thread has 18 pages and many of the posts are working parents absolutely slamming the ‘choices’ of other women would strongly suggest otherwise imo 😂 why else would there be such extreme reaction do you think? I can’t really fathom why because if you genuinely were at ease with the way your life is lived I don’t think there would be such an extreme and defensive response.

The way it's descended into a bun fight over how often women seasonally rotate all the home furnishings and accessories is classic MN.

That aside, I still can't get over the voting. No wonder some men think women are a joke.

I’ve only just voted, forgot that bit - and the results are ridiculous!

Because I am sick of people lying and saying I do that! I do everything you do! No you do not.

Yes we do!
When was the last time you personally emptied every single kitchen cupboard and properly disinfected them? Steam cleaned your microwave? Disinfected the inside of your fridge? Took down every intricate light shade and cleaned them? Cleaned every curtain and blind? Dusted inside your radiators? Cleaned your air vents? Cleaned all your electronic products? Washed down your front and back door?
This weekend.
Washed your wheelie bins?
DH and DS did that a couple of weeks ago while cleaning the cars.
Swept, scrubbed and re-painted your fences?
Don’t have a fence. DH does the garden regularly though.

Replaced all bedding, towels and tea towels
Bedding gets washed weekly. Towels and Tea towels are washed regularly/replaced regularly- we share that job.

Seasonally rotated all your home furnishings and accessories? Rotated and deep cleaned your mattresses?
When required, yes.

Binned every outdated medicine/beauty product in the house? Washed all your make up brushes?
Again, regularly.
Emptied your loft and decluttered?
only just moved in the the decluttering happened then.

Emptied out and reorganised your whole shed?
Don’t have a shed but DH does the garage.

Washed and hoovered your own car?
Regularly, when the weather is good enough (DH and DS do this)

Wrote personal thank you cards and helped your DCs make and write them?
We’re a crafty family so do this type of thing all the time.

The difference is that I share household tasks with DH. That’s how working parents manage to do everything you do on your own.

You seem to be under the impression that working parents live in squalor. Stop being so fucking judgemental. Own your choices and stop trying to make yourself feel better by putting other women down.

@ThankYouNigel

I think people feel everything necessary gets done, but not that they personally do it..so if you and a partner share everything, you are doing 50%, then if you out source something, you might only personally do 20%. But its still done.

If you are a single parent you might focus on necessary over nice to have. So clean sheets done, rotated accessories - not this year.

I also think people have different standards which doesn't relate to thier sahm/employed status. So you are just as likely to find a sahm who hasn't sorted a loft and make up brushes as a working one. You might also find someone who isn't fussed about rotating photos so wouldn't consider that a thing. So in your head its part of work, in thier head its a hobby and they would put it in the same category as watching stranger things.

I dont do everything you do. I do different things. Im ok with that. I dont clean bins, I type minutes up and pay a bin cleaning company. You seem happy, im happy. Win win

So you don’t do everything personally I do, stop lying. Other families don’t want to share, they split tasks and work to their strengths. We certainly don’t waste our evenings and weekends doing them, either of us. Oh and it’s pretty tragic to swear to make your point.

I respect you not lying about it, or laughing at people who do things themselves. Makes a change on here.

Don’t police my language.
Especially when your comments are some of the most judgemental comments towards working mothers I’ve ever seen.
The point is that it gets done. Our families aren’t living in squalor, our children arrive at school on time (with cut nails!), we’re invested in our children’s education and we’re not ‘distracted’ by work. Despite what you seem to think happens in these families.
You want people to respect your choices- well it works both ways.

I frequently wonder when I read some threads if the average man would be worried or bothered about the issue in question.
About half the time the answer is no. I think we are conditioned to care about a lot of imo stupid stuff. Examples being (recent) shops asking if you want a receipt and staff in Lidl smiling because your card is cancelled.
This is the absolute minutae of life, and is unimportant.

I’m totally with you.

Some of the stuff people on here seem to get themselves worked up about is insane to me.

I mentioned this upthread. Men simply do not care about many of inane things that bother women. When I think about some of the reasons my female friends have fallen out…it’s mind boggling. I read a thread on here about a woman who was distraught because she had a hair cut and no-one mentioned it during a girls night out with her friends. She was ‘devastated’ and told her DH who said she was over reacting.

People replied saying her DH was awful, borderline abusive for not recognising her feelings, her friends were probably jealous of her hair, OP you need to consider new friends…oh my goodness it was insane.

Yep, and then there's all the threads about shop assistants being too friendly, or not being friendly enough. People not sending cards to newborn babies. People not sending thank you cards. People not taking in parcels. People parking outside their houses. It's absolutely batshit.

Someone actually rang a company the other week for parking somewhere illegal and then complained about being shouted at. No man gives a shit about anything like that.

Well given the amount of threads of here with grown adults proudly declaring that they never make their beds, dust or constantly complaining about how they never have time to clean or declutter or complaining about how stressed they are or complaining about all of their neighbours’ overgrown garden , I don’t believe everyone is managing their homes well.

We refuse to more than 1 full time job per adult. A paid job covers that for one, as does running a home/children for the other.

Sadly nowadays many couples decide to both do paid work and both try and run the house/children. So they could be trying to achieve 3-4 FT jobs between them. We refuse to buy into this excessive business or put our marriage and family life under that kind of strain. Plenty of people on this site are struggling- do not do it! Push back! Get rid of something!

If people want to run themselves into the ground working 60+ hour weeks and heaping unnecessary stress onto their family that’s up to them, but UK mental health and well being is telling another story. Life does not need to have every second accounted for and be at a hectic pace 7 days a week to be happy or fulfilling, far from it,

Does your husband not have any housework strengths then?

He can’t clean bins, wipe walls, wash cupboards?

My partner for some reason loves laundry, so that’s a job he can happily keep, but he can do all of them. I wouldn’t assume he was incapable of wiping a surface, he’s a capable adult with arms.

You’re probably not going to like this.

I’m not doing 2, 3 or 4 full time jobs. I have one full time job, and some adult responsibilities. None of which equate to a full time job.

Keeping on top of our house, and the demands of the people who live in it, is not a full time job. It’s just life, and some people dress that up to be more than it is.

Let’s agree to disagree. We won’t agree on this or alter what either of us is doing- that’s fine!

I know most of my “load” is myself putting it on myself!
Holidays - I have to book and pay for them a year in advance, my husband would probably just book on the day.

I refuse to host Christmas because it’s too much, but you can bet our kids wouldn’t see anyone over the Christmas period because it’s too much on DH, so I doubt he would take them anywhere.
Food shopping never crosses his mind, much less what to cook, so you can guarantee not a single piece of fruit or vegetable would cross the threshold - they would survive on super noodles and beans on toast. The occasional hickory chicken dish and a lot of tinned tuna.
My husband tends to be a solitary thinker - he considers 1 task at a time, tackles it and moves on. I think about 4 tasks at a time, tackle all of them and then move onto the next 4. I think that’s the biggest issue with MY relationship, my husband can’t see a pile of washing to be done, or that we need food for later, just whatever’s directly in front of him. And that’s why I think he would struggle.
Mind you, if men had to deal with what I am putting up with my body doing currently, I think there would be a definite increase in hysterectomies given at the first request

This won't be popular but I think a lot of women can be quite controlling about things like how children are looked after, how the house is cleaned and how the shopping is done - they have this belief that their way is the only way and that is what creates loads of extra work.

A lot of people have paid help to do some of the stuff you mention. I work FT as does DP and we have 2 DC. Life is certainly busy but I don’t feel like we do multiple jobs tbh. We have a cleaner and a gardener. I don’t touch the ironing but DP finds it therapeutic so he pops his earbuds in and does a load every week. I do a big declutter 3/4 times a year.

DC are 12 and almost 10, becoming increasingly independent so it gets easier with time. The Summer holidays used to be a bit of a juggle with work but today the younger child got up early and went off to football camp which he’ll be doing all week. The 12 year old is hanging out with her friends, sorts out her own lunch and only bugs me when she wants money.

I think it’s a bit of a stretch to assume that all FT working parents are under huge mental stress and leading excessively busy lives. It may be true for some but not all. I think it really depends on your income level, how much you can outsource and the ages of your DC.

You’re making so many assumptions here.
You also need to realise that people tend to post the negative things. It rare for people to start a thread talking about how wonderful their life is.

You are painting a worst case scenario and assuming all working families live like that. It’s such a narrow minded view.
Some people like to have busy lives. It doesn’t always mean stress and mental health issues.

what you call "life" most of us pay someone else to do though. Because time is a luxury and we haven't got it.

You can even employ private PA companies, who do everything from dealing with tradesmen to tidy up your photos to decorate your christmas tree - just google them , there are loads in London.

You wrote yourself a job description!? For being a functioning adult with children and a house to keep?!

Good grief!

@ToffeePennie so you currently do all the food shopping and cooking and you think that if your DH had to take over tomorrow he'd do a poor job of it. If he's not been the one doing those things you're probably right.

But do you think that he'd never improve with practise? If your arms fell off and he had to do the food shopping and cooking from now on, do you think he'd be completely incapable of learning and getting better at it? Are those both skills that you possessed from birth, or did you have to learn them too?

Nope. Zero guilt. I am incredibly proud of both my scientific achievements and my mothering and the live I provide my daughter. I am also incredibly proud of being an equal contributor in my marriage.

The response is extreme because I can't quite believe the absolute bullshit I am reading from Nigel. She actually thinks she's a better mother than everyone else for living in subservience to a man AND wants affordable child care to be taken away from families so that other women are forced to do the same. She literally wants to drag us all back to the 50s with her. What the actual fuck!?