NAMALT. Really? Dig deep and be honest with yourself. AMALT

[NoEggs]

I love my DH. He’s a great guy and we’ve been happy for many years.

But
He’s not perfect. Doesn’t do the laundry. Defaults to letting me make stuff happen etc. etc.

Now even if your partner is a paragon I would argue that the species ‘men’ will generally default to slightly bloody useless.

AIBU?

YABU and dangerously reductionist.
Sorry that your DH isn't a fully independent adult. You don't seem to be one either from your thought process, so don't complain too loudly

The point of AMALT as a counter argument to NAMALT is that women can't tell if a random stranger will hurt them or not, so for safety we need to assume the potential for danger from men in all of our activities.

Bringing this thinking into your settled and loving marriage with a husband that isn't a threat to you is pathetic

This! Absolutely this!

Do men use the phrase “NAMALT”?

Genuine question, becsuse when I read articles about men who’ve done something violent or harmful, I often see comments saying “he’s not a man.” It what seems like an attempt to distance men from male-patterned behaviour. That said, I’m aware I haven’t exactly seen every corner of the internet, so maybe somewhere men do respond NAMALT

Do you believe that there are patterns in behaviour though, that go beyond the individual? That while not every man who ever lived does less housework/childcare than his female partner, that its nevertheless a common, even typical, enough situation for it to be seen as a male trait?
And the big stuff, violence against women and each other, sexual assaults, sexual harassment, not every man of course, but nevertheless male patterned crime.
I don't think the premis of this thread is helpful as the OP is proposing the very thing the NAMALTers accuse women of when they want to discuss male problem behaviour. But the fact its quite obviously not every man doesn't for me mean there aren't patterns. Do you think that's fair?

I do think they default to "woman in charge of family" they are so used to their mothers running the home that it is just normal to them. My adult children do it to when they come to stay or i go and stay with them, when i stay with my daughter she will ask me what is for dinner, if they wee one wants something my daughter will say ask granny !
My home is run on a traditional(ish) system, i do inside other than washing dishes and DH does outside other than planting up plant pots. He does all the finance, insurance, car stuff etc and i do the birthdays, Christmas,planning holidays and organising. It works for us, there is no conflict and life rolls along happily.
Nobody is perfect.

This is the truth

All men are different just as all women are different. Theres not a “typical”.

My other half will admit he isn’t perfect and neither am I - we both have our faults or do things that annoys the other.

So @NoEggs if you and your friends are superior to the men you married, why are you staying with them?

Who is the idiot now?

Perfectly put.

In the context of sexual violence, NAMALT is unhelpful and dangerous because enough men are potentially predatory that women have to bear that in mind when interacting with all men. AMALT is a state of mind that women need to have in order to protect themselves, not a literal belief that every man is a sexial predator.

It's insulting and a bit stupid to apply that to domestic chores. It's wildly inaccurate, obviously - as an inveterate slattern with a fussy fastidious DP, I'll add my example to the many women in this thread who are the messier, lazier partners.

The MN-style reductive feminism whereby absolutely every last behaviour or habit is seen through the prism of gender - and ONLY through that prism, absolutely no other factors come into it - is really bloody tiresome. Sometimes it seems like the governing principle of this site is that all men are a homogenous mass and all women are a completely different homogeneous mass.

Traditional gender roles exist and are hard for society to leave behind. That's the pattern.

The pattern I see is that men who default to the traditional gender role of not doing housework tend to be married to women who have embraced aspects of traditional female gender roles themselves, and who in fact picked those men because they embodied other traditional gender roles (the protector-provider/nurturer dynamic, usually).

So it's all conditioning to me, and that means it can be overcome (but there's a huge amount of personal responsibility in there). However threads like this indicate that a lot of people actually think these traditional gender roles are somehow innate or biological and that's just an incredibly weird way of thinking to me.

I'm talking about traditional gender roles in a marriage, obviously, not sexual violence. How much of that is socialisation vs biology would be an interesting discussion (I err on the side of the former).

You make a really good point here, it’s very easy to think of the things that our other halves don’t do as well as us, such as the cognitive load associated with organising and managing a household, remembering to keep on top of everything and long term planning.

But it’s easy to forget the things they can handle that we can’t, my husband can sort out a lot of practical things, is far better like you say in an emergency, knows how to turn the electricity/ water on/off and sort out other house type things and is far stronger than me physically which is absolutely essential for some tasks.

Very good point!

That’s a different argument to the one posed by the op which was about uselessness in men taking on the domestic load.

I totally agree that misogyny and patriarchal dominance is a problem however much my Nigel (who is awesome) takes up the reins. Men are shit - just look at the destruction and explosion clouds in the Middle East right now - I am not a Pacifist but jeez what’s with blowing everything up? Stop swinging your dicks around.

But that is about power, and power dynamics. In a household, when it comes to putting a load on in the washing machine, or doing a food shop, it makes my teeth itch that in 2026 women are still whining that the men they shackled themselves to are ‘useless’. That’s on you babe for being his mummy and enabling it.

In this context namalt and amalt doesn't fit. It de rails what could be a really good discussion.

Yes I believe the majority of men have been raised/socially groomed and re inforced to find it far easier to let a woman take over certain aspects of life/default to uselessness in some aspects. I doubt anyone is going to argue the very clear gender roles that exist and are heavily portrayed in society. That doesn't mean we all succumb to them though. We have choice. I think it's more productive to look at trends rather than saying absolutely all men. I so wish the discussion could get further on than that.

Totally disagree. Just because a small number of men are awful does not mean we right off the whole demographic. My DS, DH and FiL are amazing. They would (and have) put themselves out for women and girls being hassled by other men in public spaces, one case involving the police when the drunken twat male tried to argue excessive force. Some men ARE heroes, even if they don’t do the laundry and occasionally forget your anniversary.

NAMALT

He’s perfectly capable, but he’s not stupid.

I think this is a good example of exactly why the OP thinks AMALT.

I would say that it’s interesting that the cleanest tidiest men you know are single - or had been for years. It shows that men are perfectly capable of house work, they just don’t think they need to do it when a woman is around.

I think the vast majority of men absorb the idea that they are superior to women. It is often unconscious but it doesn’t make it any less damaging.

men may logically think women are equal, but everything in society centres them so it’s difficult. A lot of women are the same btw and have internalised misogyny. But women are more likely to see it because it acts against them.

Which tasks would you say you physically can't do?

Agree re appreciating what oh does do.

This is a good point bit arguably we shouldn't peg 'being good in an emergency' etc as a male thing. I get this is more in the context of individuals though.

A lot of women who complain about housework not being done by the DH work themselves though. They're not necessarily asking for DH to be sole provider.

What expecting DH to be 'protector' actually entail in this day and age, anyhow?

Except history for each sex is different. Women have essentially freed themselves from domestic servitude - not allowed to work and earn or inherit money, not allowed to vote etc.

The two are not comparable.

Men (white men) have oppressed. And many hold that history in their socialisation still and have an unconscious sense that they don’t need to hold onto the day to day, mundane, daily grind tasks and emotional labour that keep home and family life going. The work that has been necessary for all to thrive, but undervalued for centuries because it’s ’women’s work’.

It is a pattern born out of the patriarchy that is hard to shift.

my StBXH and I had a period where I could no longer carry it all and I handed over the mental load to him. Several failures that resulted in upset children made him realise that he needed to apply his brain to this ‘grunt work’ and - despite his man-brain, he could.

Within two weeks he was complaining he was exhausted. He was doing paid work two days a week btw. Whereas when I was doing the same (but doing paid work for longer hours), he couldn’t understand why I was exhausted. And we had two hours of a cleaner a fortnight when he was doing it.

He didn’t connect the two. It is different when it’s him carrying that load to when I do.

I held off picking up the mental load again for a while so I could build myself back up, and I lived like him for a while. I did half the cooking and washing up and half the laundry. Half the school runs and watching the DC. I offered to help with domestic chores when I was free and asked him what needed doing. If I noticed a job that needed doing like shelves needed putting together I’d just take myself off and do it. I worked in paid employment and on those days that’s all I did.

And reporting from the other side…

IT. WAS. SO. MUCH. EASIER!

I felt relaxed. Because I had low mental load. Unfortunately I still had to carry the emotional labour because he continued to dysregulate like a massive toddler. He then had an injury and I had to pick it back up again and could never even it out. Bottom line is he didn’t like holding it all. Very few of us do. And historically men have delegated it to women because they have had the power.

YABVU. You just made a poor choice of partner. Mind you, maybe he did too.

Agreed and same here.

Don’t agree. It entirely depends on the individual. Sweeping generalisations should be avoided.