To be upset about DSS comment about DH and I

[Friendof]

We were out for lunch as a family, talking about careers / uni / future with DSS 18. When he started saying that he didn’t think it was right that I earn more than DH, that it isn’t right, not how he wants to be in the future, he sees it as the man’s role to be the provider.
He’s never said anything like this in the past and found the comment really worrying. DH and I are a team, it doesn’t matter who earns what just that we like our jobs and can provide well for our family. I know these attitudes exist, but find it upsetting to be coming from DSS. I’m pretty pissed, why isn’t he seeing it as a positive thing?

Do you think it would be less ageing and exhausting for a man? Perhaps, it would be more sensible to have a family where both parties work and contribute to the best of their skill and ability?

It’s not a positive that he thinks men should earn more than women.

Why would anyone be positive about this attitude? What if he finds a ‘trad wife’ and they have daughters? What next - girls shouldn’t go to university because they will just get married and stop working?

it is certainly is an attitude in any young man that society needs to challenge. Early, subtle sexism and misogyny is at one end of a very scary spectrum of attitudes about women and girls.

Yes, this would be my take?

Are you in the US? (I think that because you said “pissed”, in the UK we say pissed off, pissed means drunk!) Is there a subsection of society over there that’s into a trad-wife lifestyle? Maybe he’s buying into that. Or Andrew Tate.

Either way it needs challenging. Who knows what other ideas he’s getting about a woman’s place. I’d get his dad to talk to him about it.

I think you just have to stay calm- ‘it’s fine to want to provide, although providing is far more than just money. Sounds like you’d better work hard to get good grades and professional acumen for building a career. I’ve worked hard but I’m worth every penny they pay me. Just when it comes to dating promise me you won’t rule out every smart talented girl who gets good grades in case she might out earn you one day - that’s a big chunk of the dating pool and your loss!’

I don't understand most of these responses. Your DSS is making misogynistic neanderthal remarks about the value of women, their contributions and devaluing a man's contribution to relationships to merely economic value. It most certainly is unacceptable for him to think like this. Very upsetting.

Definitely challenge him. It is also very insulting for him to speak about his father like this.

Except that challenging makes people double down. There’s loads of research on this, for example on motivational interviewing and how interrogators work. You do not “challenge“.

It depends what you want. If you want to blast someone and let them know you disagree then fine, go ahead and challenge.

But in dealing with cults and rigid thinking that is counter-productive. You have to be subtle. You have to get on side and gently explore. You might not like that and you might want to flag wave about how wrong you think their views are, but if you want to change those views you have to go about it differently. That’s just the way it is.

Because hopefully DSS will get married and they will have children and he will say 'what, you are going to be working full-time and pregnant? What, going by public transport or driving and trying your best not to vomit? Seriously? Also, in November-December time trying not to slip on icy surfaces and miscarry? No, absolutely not darling. I am the main breadwinner and I want you to carry to full term, happy, unbothered about being forced into meetings, etc'. I am only writing from my personal experience - when I walked to work, pregnant, like a tightrope walker, arms flung out for balance, not to fall and hurt myself and the baby, that is an awful memory.
Because there are a lot of deranged comments on here, I should rephrase myself and say 'I would have preferred, with all my university education, not to work and be a trust-fund baby, or nepo baby. And no, my brain would not have rotted from not running to meetings and meeting targets, no. In the alternative I would have preferred my dh to be the only breadwinner, so I would be able to spend some time with my children instead of outsourcing their care to randos.

Definately agree not confrontational. I just meant I'd be gently probing with questions, asking about he come to that opinion etc until he realised he was being a complete fuckwit.

I think he’s too into rubbish on the internet . My mum has similar views but she’s 82 and times have changed .

Stop him going down the rabbit hole. Other than that, yeah, he's young and a bit of a numpty. Goes hand in hand sometimes.

He's young, he'll learn.

He isn't seeing it as a positive as he sees value in money and status.

Tbh id have used it as an opportunity to have a casual conversation and probe his thinking. "Oh really, why is that?" / "what role do women have in relationships" / "what about in cases of single parents?" "I wonder how you'd feel if for whatever reason you were left holding the baby"?

(There are quite a lot of single dads with sole custody who never thought it would happen to them, either through death, illness, prison sentences or abandonment by the mother).

dont forget that outside of your relationship with his dad, he will have a world view that needs to extend to his own mum. Was she a lower earner? Did your husband provide for her during and after the relationship? How did that change during the separation? Because while he may be saying things that make him sound like a sexist pig, he is also a teen boy testing his values with safe adults and he may actually be inarticulately expressing something like he thinks his dad should have provided more for him or he thinks his own dad is a leech and he wants to do better than he saw from his dad.

Sadly, from what DD17 tells me that sounds about right for her generation. She says the BOYS are so misogynistic. They think women are there to serve them, objects for them to look at, comment on and touch.
It pisses me off that its MY generation that are the parents letting these little shits away with it!

A lot of the mums don't help though tbh...I see a number of mumfluencers that go on about how you need to find a 'PROVIDER'.