I am interested in advice especially from men

[midlifehope]

I have a problem in that I feel I am pulling the weight of 2 people in my family. I have ds aged 3 and am pregnant. I work 3-4 days a week. Ds is in nursery or with dp when I work. However I also end up doing 95% of domestic stuff. Dp doesn't work having
recently taken voluntary redundancy and bought a yacht! He has way more leisure time than me and I am feeling incredibly resentful. Howdo I get him to change. I don't want to ltb Jesuits

I think this thread demonstrates that there are men who view and post here. What are we supposed to do, take out adverts? Or give our perspective and experiences when they are asked for, as you'll note the OP did?

Give your perspective and experience if you want to in response to threads like this, just don't complain you can't be "in the right", like when you said

Just as a final point, it's fairly clear no man can be in the right on a thread like this. It's assumed we do next to nothing on the domestic front, or that anything we do has to be dragged out of us. If we try to say that's not the case we get told to stop bragging.

It's not about us, it's about a structural problem we need to fix.

LuisGarcia

We are totally in agreement on this. I don't want my DDs growing up thinking they can expect less from prospective partners.

Well let's go and start fixing it then, before our DD's get there. Got your back. (Let's just not try to do it here, ok? Where shall we start? Twitter?)

I am NOT going on twitter, Piers Morgan is on there....

Smoke signals? CB radio?

Ok, well, then how do you suggest we fix this, seriously?

Im Team Cleese.

As I said, by example. It can't happen any other way (and it won't happen quickly). And those examples have to be to women, too, so that expectations of domestic relationships change (it happens because it's allowed to happen, basically).

For example, more women in FT work, more women in high value jobs and more women with high value skills means more women bringing in the main wage. Therefore more men in the primary domestic/caring role. Promotion of higher value careers to women (for example, engineering) would be a start.

Out of interest Josh, why do you think there aren't more women already in FT work, kr working as engineers?

cailindana

A lot of reasons, including (and these are in the context of someone starting or going to to start a family):

• pay disparity (still exists across genders and will influence which parent stays in FT work)
• cost of living (doesn't allow for couples to take much of a pay hit when assessing options)
• lack of appropriate mat/pat leave allowing for other options
• social pressures (there are still expectations, not least from family, that couples will be 'traditional', i.e. man goes out and works, woman stays home, woman takes man's name, etc.)
• perceived/actual 'glass ceilings' in certain industries (a woman may think or have experienced that she will go no further in her current role so may as well be the primary carer rather than earner)
• lack of affordable or available childcare (prevents many people, largely but not exclusively women, from full access to the labour market - if you live rurally, good luck finding much less affording childcare)

Those are just early morning thoughts. As for female representation in heavier industries:

• it can be intimidating at a young age to go for competencies in male-dominated industries, where you might be the only female in a class
• lack of role models, examples or encouragement
• lack of initiative from industries to be welcoming to female recruits.
• social pressures again ("that's man's work")

Our local school runs vocational opportunities in care and engineering. This year, as in every year, the care complement is 100% female, and the engineering complement is 100% male.

Interestingly, I was an engineer [Civils] and lasted 14 years. The only reason I left was the incessant sexism day in, day out.

Where do you think those problems came from Josh?

Midlife what is your plans for looking after baby? If DP is not working would it not make sense for him to look after baby so you can go back to work? My DH took 6 months off with our first and it was the best thing ever, I did the first 6 months and he genuinely could not comprehend how much hard work it was, he thought he'd be off doing golf a lot! He had to learn to run the home, and all the little criticisms he might have made about what he thought I could have been doing at home whilst he was working he apologised for. Fast forward 3 years and I am having a lay in, pg with DC 3, he has taken care of the other2 kids since 6, brought me a cup of tea and also moaned at me for leaving the kitchen table covered in flour and a mixing bowl on the side. We both can be lazy sometimes but we do ok. I could not live your life. DH is pushing 50 too, and he says the kids keep him young and fit. I know too many women who's partners don't even know how to look after their kids without breaking out into a sweat and then persuading the mother to do it all and the housework. they just put up with it and say sexist crap that men are useless. They are not all useless but society has conditioned men to believe women do this stuff naturally, that we even enjoy it. And I think some women buy into that too. So sad really because I suspect boys who grow up believing this rubbish are going to find it hard in future relationships to maintain happy and equal marriages, and possibly have more chance of divorce as more and more girls grow up not standing for this shit.

The only person OPs man cares about is his own self (and he thinks more of his wooden yacht that he purchased with half of his redundancy money. Such boats require a lot of maintenance and this man is never going to step up.

Cleaner quit citing difficulties in cleaning the property, also this man used to follow the cleaner around and try to micro manage her.

cailindana

Long standing gender normative roles and economic imperatives.

Why? What do you think?

Alternative

That's terrible. Shocking and yet not surprising.

Funny (well not really) that some of the men who've tried to help have been ridiculed, made to explain every word, and forced to apologise if their viewpoint doesn't fit with a feminist agenda.

The women who've ignored OP's request for advice on how to make the relationship work, and probably made a pregnant woman feel very vulnerable and quite rubbish, and here's an example:

"Not only does he not respect you, he doesn't even really like you"

Have not been challenged at all. Why is that?

I agree. When a man calls his pregnant wife a slob because she hasn't messed up HIS mess while she was at work and he was on his yacht he clearly likes and respects her very much. He just has his own way of er showing it, right?

It takes two people to make a relationship work, not one and one person cannot carry a relationship on their own.

OP wants him to change; people only change if they want to and this man's life now with his boat (which also takes up a lot of time) suits him down to the ground. He won't step up even when his second child is born because he only cares for having his own needs and wants met.

Go ahead and challenge it Sleepless, no one is stopping you.

I don't disagree with you Josh but the way you're putting it it would seem that these normative role etc just popped up, no one's fault really. My question is more about who developed this situation and why. I'd be curious to know your view on that.

No cookies until you do your chores voyage.

cailindana

Sorry, computer problems and name change - previously JoshL.

I didn't mean to give that impression.

There are a million different answers that could be argued over (this is a thesis topic) from many different sources - Victorian repression, the failure of Enlightenment values, post-war economic rebuilding, religious conservatism...

But over the years, look at who has benefited from the status quo and you get a broad answer. Who benefits from women being kept 'in their place' and with restricted opportunities? It's not exclusively 'men', though - wouldn't many men have been better off without the expectation of being sole breadwinners?

Sorry, that's all over the place, I know.

Voyageofdad

Me too, chores done then off to work.

Family all still in bed so nobody saw me, though! Dammit!

When feminists say that men benefit from the situation, that doesn't mean every single man in the whole world is definitely better off than every single woman. It means that men as a group benefit, such that if two people are born into broadly the same circumstances, one a man and one a woman, the man will have an advantage in terms of safety from sexual violence, economic opportunities etc.

Again though you talk of Victorian repression as though that sprang up unbidden. Given that one group held all the economic power and all the political power,(a prize for guessing which group) that both groups were equally responsible for this?

do you believe that