To think that your marriage will be as sexist as the man you marry?

[ForBreezySloth]

People talk a lot about how household labour, childcare and emotional labour often fall disproportionately on women. But at the end of the day, isn’t a marriage only as equal as the two people in it? If you marry a man who believes domestic work is “women’s work”, then your marriage will likely reflect that. If you marry a man who sees you as an equal partner, things will likely be more balanced.

Obviously, societal norms play a role but do people sometimes ignore personal responsibility in all this? If someone chooses to have children with a man who never lifted a finger before, can they really be surprised when he doesn’t step up later?

Or is this view too simplistic? AIBU?

It does, but given we're only three generations away from almost every man being brought up in a traditional set up, and living in a society that reinforced the messages in every area, it shows that despite upbringing men (as a collective) do behave in accordance with the circumstances in front of them, and the norms of society, despite role modelling in their families. Otherwise 2020s men would be indistinguishable from their 1950s grandfathers.
Sexism is in men's interests, and they (as a group) are having it prised from them little by little, rather than happily giving it up. How far an individual man gives it up will depend to some extent on what he has to lose (career opportunity, free time, autonomy) balanced against what he has to gain, and this will be different for the child free young man a woman believes is not sexist, from the husband she has in a decades time.

@Neemie

Dogs don’t earn, they smell, they poo, they eat, they don’t do house work, they can’t be left alone, they bark, the have bad habits but people still get them despite the obvious drawbacks.

Women don't marry and bear children with dogs, though: they are never going to become legally bound to a dog. Dogs don't father lots of (human) children then refuse to support them or participate in their upkeep. Apart from a few very aggressive breeds, dogs are highly unlikely to kill you or injure you because you haven't done the housework properly. A dog won't force you to give up work because their job is "more important" and spend most of their free time out on the lash with people at work or from the golf club. They don't drink alcohol or take drugs and aren't going to leave you for another woman. A dog is never going to verbally abuse or "neg" a woman and systematically worry away at her self-esteem.

People aren’t always practical. They don’t want to be lonely and they also want children.They want to love and be loved.

Of course: but anyone who believes "love and being loved" should always over-ride self protection is an idiot. If you think this is enough you have no business going into a marriage and having children.

I think there's certainly truth in what you say but it's also not as simple as that. Biology and societal norms provide a framework for the man to be the provider/leader and the woman to be the nurturer/server. If the couple (but particularly the woman) do not make conscious and persistent efforts for an equal set up it is so easy for those norms to prevail.

I took short maternity leaves and returned FT because I felt strongly that I didn't want a secondary/support role in our marriage. But it's been such a battle and the majority of child related stuff has fallen to me despite my efforts to insist it should be equal. Other stuff (laundry etc) I do what another poster did and 'match the energy' so H notices and picks up his share but it didn't work with the kids stuff. For a while he was in charge of school admin and we ended up with school trips missed, school dinners not booked. I picked this stuff up again because I wont let my kids miss out to make a point. As a result H does more laundry and cooking to balance things out. And yet I get told by others that I'm 'lucky' he does so much. No one tells him he's lucky for all I do nor that he benefits from me being the main breadwinner. (Most people probably just assume he earns more as he's the man!)

There's just so much innate sexism everywhere. I research, book and pay for our holidays but when we check in l, lo and behold, they have made H the lead passenger. When we married I added him to the title of a flat I had solely owned for 7 years. The Land Registry put his name before mine! If you mention this sort of stuff to a man they will claim they never notice it. That's true privilege - you are so used to it that you don't even notice it any more.

And whilst I rail against it from time to time, sometimes I'm just so fed up with being angry that I let it go and accept it. Not simple at all.

It's more complex than that. If you continue to have no kids then it's fairly straightforward. However people often revert back to how their parents parented - which most often reflects traditional gender roles - when their kids are born. A lot of parenting is instinctive and the default is usually how you were raised yourself. So it's perfectly possible to marry a man who does his fair share of the housework, who then refuses to lift a finger with chores or children after a baby because that's what his expectations of a mother are

@5128gap

How far an individual man gives it up will depend to some extent on what he has to lose (career opportunity, free time, autonomy) balanced against what he has to gain, and this will be different for the child free young man a woman believes is not sexist, from the husband she has in a decades time.

Very true. I think also peer environment plays possibly a more important role than upbringing. A man from a very traditional family who is surrounded by progressive peers (and, critically, strong women) is much more likely to adapt to this to fit in and a lot of this will come to seem normal.

Which is one reason why it's prudent to avoid dating men involved in stereotypically "macho" industries (I'm thinking of builders/men working in certain parts of the financial markets). There will be some who buck the trend but the peer pressure will be fairly intense.

This is just my personal experience, but as a child free woman who has been probed a few times about why I dont have kids, I was honestly a bit horrified to discover how little thinking/talking/planning people do before deciding to try and conceive about the detail of parenting and relationships before committing to such a massive responsibility. People might have chats about how the childcare is going to work, and little things like 'we'd try and keep them off screens' but I have had so many people go 'you're overthinking it' or 'well thats just how it is because you do maternity leave' when I've asked if they discussed how they were going to make sure that things didn't end up with mum doing everything before trying for kids! Finding out the accidental pregnancy rate is at 45% made a lot of things make sense for me...

Oh yes this is another thing I'm like a stuck record about on dating threads.

Female friends! A man with plenty of platonic female friends, especially ones he's really close to, will have had a lot of unthinking sexism knocked out of him. Green flag all the way.

(I've found that some of the men who really walk the walk when it comes to equality were the ones raised in households which were traditional to the point of toxic - domineering fathers, downtrodden mothers - and as adults they make a conscious effort to be the exact opposite of that.)

Yes. DH used to work in PL football, and, annoyingly, probably did more to advance certain feminist causes than I ever have with all my campaigning, simply by getting up in overrunning meetings and saying ‘We’ll have to take this up tomorrow — I need to go and pick up my son.’ Virtually everyone else at his level was male and had children with a SAHM. (And he got stick for it, both ‘ribbing’ from colleagues and in a review.)

I found this experience very interesting.

My mum wasn't quite as extreme as this but she practically bullied me to learn to cook because no man would want me if i couldn't. I also went to university and my mum was very keen for me to find my husband. I did get a boyfriend in my final year, we were together 4 years but i ended it due to his gambling addiction.

She then proceeded to complain about all the years wasted in my prime on a man i didn't marry🤦 and how my best years are now over. (I was 24!!!)

Anyway, not long after i met my husband, 11 years on we have a daughter. Everything genuinely is 50:50 and we work on both our strengths.

When I go for my hobby night on a Tuesday i get agro from my mum that I'm leaving him all alone. She never complains to him about his Monday hobby night though where I'm left 'alone'. Don't get me started on the long weekend trips i go on with my friends or even just lunch out at the weekend (he of course is allowed to do these things no questions asked).

I think what i find...typical maybe is that she was never like this to my brother. He didn't find a wife at uni, (less urgency for men apparently), his dating is never successful because with him living at home and having every chore done for him, i feel it sort of drips into other elements of daily life and women want more now as mentally speaking he never surpassed teenage boy stage of maturity and independence.

He also comes out with daft comments like 'English girls are not like they used to be, they go out and party'. He would like a house wife but doesn't have the salary to support one so she'd have to be responsible for the home and income long term.

It does drive me mad because as a direct consequence of my brother still needing help being fed, clothed etc there is no time really for my parents to help me with my child even in emergencies where i have zero childcare back up options.

I have my husband though and he is my rock.

I agree. The narrative that these sexist dynamics only show themselves when people become parents is interesting to me as a child-free woman because they reflect all the reasons I didn't want children in the first place. I didn't want a life that involved extra grunt work and responsibilities, even if I had a partner who shared half of them. I think I always subconsciously felt that the best way of freeing myself from sexism in society was to not play the marriage-and-motherhood game in the first place.

Also, don't underestimate the power of being a chaotic, messy party girl. I didn't realise this at the time but no man I have ever met could have possibly been under the illusion that I would bear any domestic burden on their behalf at all.

I think its interesting to look at why men in certain sectors haven't been forced to let go of sexist attitudes while other men have. Which I think tends to be about the relative lack of power of the women they marry. Your examples, the traditional WC manual worker and the high earning city worker, both tend to have relationships where they hold disproportionate power through higher earnings and the perception their occupation is harder, leaving no time for domestic contribution.
The WC man if he marries within his class will out earn his WC wife. They are less likely to benefit from her continuing in her job after children. His occupation will hold higher status than hers. His work will be seen as physically demanding, requiring that he rest. Hers will be considered lighter. Much also applies to the high earner.
Which brings us back to the usual answer. The solution doesn't lie in hoping men stop being sexist, or keeping our fingers crossed ours won't be that bad, but in removing the underlying inequality that makes it possible for them to be sexist and giving women the tools to manage without them if they are.

@SquaredPaper

Yes. DH used to work in PL football, and, annoyingly, probably did more to advance certain feminist causes than I ever have with all my campaigning, simply by getting up in overrunning meetings and saying ‘We’ll have to take this up tomorrow — I need to go and pick up my son.’ Virtually everyone else at his level was male and had children with a SAHM. (And he got stick for it, both ‘ribbing’ from colleagues and in a review.)

Good for him. My ex-husband is in construction and one of the reasons he steadfastly refused to do any pick-ups and drop-offs was because "no one else does it".

Even though I out-earned him by a factor of three to one, he was determined to keep up the pretence of being a breadwinner with a facilitating wife in front of his peers and was basically worried people would take the piss because he was doing "women's work". It made my job almost untenable for a while because I was having to start late and leave early. It was a very major factor in my decision to divorce him.

There's still a shocking amount of this in the City. People think you're a bit soft if you leave work for reasons associated with childcare. It's changing, but slowly.

Yes to this. DH has both always had good, longtime female friends, two older sisters and a working mother. It’s not even just that he’s had ordinary sexism knocked out of him, just that he never had that ‘women are a different, mysterious species primarily there for sex and ‘women things (like children and housework)’ that seems to be regarded as normal by an alarming minority of Mners.

ETA I would regard a man with no female friends as a walking red flag.

@5128gap

I think its interesting to look at why men in certain sectors haven't been forced to let go of sexist attitudes while other men have. Which I think tends to be about the relative lack of power of the women they marry. Your examples, the traditional WC manual worker and the high earning city worker, both tend to have relationships where they hold disproportionate power through higher earnings and the perception their occupation is harder, leaving no time for domestic contribution.

Absolutely. Which brings us full circle back to the only real structural solution to this for women. Keep your job, do well in your job, earn at least on parity with him if you possibly can for as long as you can and save as much money as you can.

Don't allow yourself to be backed into a corner by his higher salary/higher earning power.

But how woman go on about they get jealous and cant handle it because they are competition and worry he will sleep with them

I come from a patriarchal household My dad is the king.
I try not to do the same in my home, but it’s a pattern…

@GreyCarpet

She didn't think I was pretty enough to be loved so tried to diminish my personality in every way so that I'd be as small and inoffensive as possible in the hope that a man might at least 'settle for' me

This is truly horrendous and I honestly take my hat off to people who have been raised this way and got past it.

My mum had plenty of faults (and wasn’t a great feminist role model) but thank God she never indoctrinated me in this way.

EXACTLY THIS.

It’s tragic we can’t see how children will alter the men we get with. Most do change, even if it’s temporarily through the ‘difficult’ years of childhood. But a lot of men would argue women change too.

Our priorities change. The focus isn’t solely on them any more, it’s naturally on the baby/child. Looking as glamorous and fit every day isn’t as much a priority when you’re running on lack of sleep, chasing a toddler and managing the abundant load of physical, mental and emotional responsibilities children bring with them.

Both parents generally change and aren’t the same ppl that began the relationship together. If you can work as a team you can work and grow together, but sometimes the differences and resentments only come to the surface in this situation and for many people they don’t like who the other person has turned into. It’s pretty sad all round.

The ability to do or not do something has nothing to do with sexism. In fact that's kind of the point.

Sexism is about being denied the opportunity to do something or do something because society or your partner feels that it's your job to do it, just because of your sex.

Agree completely. It's got nothing to do with marriage and everything to do with the partner you choose.

My mother always gave me the advice "start as you mean to continue". She pretended to be a different person in the early years of her relationship with my father and always regretted it because trying to turn the relationship around to what she actually wanted caused SO much conflict.

I think a lot of people put up with stuff in the early years and then expect it to magically change which is misleading to the person they are with, people should just be who they are and set their expectations from the start and ditch people who don't meet them.

@Account734

My mother always gave me the advice "start as you mean to continue". She pretended to be a different person in the early years of her relationship with my father and always regretted it because trying to turn the relationship around to what she actually wanted caused SO much conflict.

Yep. Setting boundaries and being yourself as early as possible is a good way to weed out the people who want to mould you to fit their ideas.

if he can’t handle you during the honeymoon phase he sure as well wont when you have three kids under five.

I think a general assumption of sexist men is that once they've married us, we're trapped with them. They don't have the bandwidth to realise that a lot of women won't tolerate that man-child shit permanently.

Unfortunately, life isn't that black and white. Few men parade their incompetencies, subtle (or not so subtle) sexism or misogyny around when looking for a partner. Those that do, tend to prey on the weak. I think most of the time, the boiling frog metaphor is at play...small changes over a period of time that one day add up to one partner looking around and finding themselves in a shitty position they didn't plan for.

Much also depends on the collective culture in which both parties live. The UK is shockingly sexist compared to some other countries. This trickles through to everything in life, including the subscious beliefs and actions of its citizens.

My family told me repeatedly growing up that no one else but them would ever put up with me. My father even warned my husband just before we got married that I'm difficult. Turns out I'm the only one in my family with a happy and harmonious marriage, it's now been over 25 years. Apparently it's all down to my husband though. 🙄 Parents can be incredibly toxic.

Yes it can work both ways and yes men can have unreasonable demands but there are women who have a child then spem 100% of their time child focussed and just use theit husband as a bank, sure i am aware women say men just have to put up withit till the child/ren leaves home but then the relationship break down and women then wonder what went wrong, no not always but some men are used for their sperm then their services are no longer required