Demanding job

[FayKorgasm]

Not a TAAT but inspired by years of threads. Frequently I read threads on here by women posters who have husbands or partners who do the very bare minimum of child rearing. One of the reasons given is the all inclusive Demanding Job. Extra points for Long Hours in aforementioned Demanding Job.
It really gives me the rage. Lots of women work in Demanding Jobs and yet come home and just bloody get on with it but men are excused the daily drudge because of it.

I hear you Grays on barely able to walk. Its different when you come home late but you do your fair share on your days off.

It's hard to have 30 mins of real downtime when in charge of a 4 and a 2 year old. There's not even a nap time there anymore.....

It's all very well saying that I got to go out for coffee, or make cakes, or sit in the garden, but I got to do all of those things whilst wrangling 2 kids - it's the opposite of relaxing (or my nanny wouldn't get 12 quid an hour for it).

Yes, a 14 hour shift is exhausting, so is 14 hours of kids, you both need a rest. I bet that you don't object to taking your own cup to the kitchen and putting it in the dishwasher Grays, even if you wouldn't want to cook dinner.

All I ask is that both grown adults look after their own stuff enough that neither feels like they're doing everything - is that really too much?

I'm just holding out for finishing the house enough that I can get a cleaner, and the kids getting just that little bit older so they don't want to spend all their time playing with me/needing supervision.

Chunkypickle, it is hard with kids that age. mine are 8 and 10, and I enjoy them so much more now.

Don't wait untill your house is finished, get a cleaner now. The house might never get finished. The cleaner will not mind, we are all human. I was a cleaner when I was a student, and people get a cleaner because they need one, not because their house is finished or they have no dirt/mess.

I just mean the 30 min as a principle. If you don't take your down-time, you will end up as stressed as I did - I wish I had started taking my down-time earlier, rather than grinding myself into a deep stress-hole. This is not how I want my kids to remember me, stressed and shouty. They will not remember how clean/dirty it was, they will remember what mood I was in -good or bad.

"Men are much better at getting their down-time. I think it's just how they are wired."

I don't think they are wired to the sofa. I think many men are socialised to think that looking after themselves is their job, and looking after everything else is a woman's job. So if they themselves are clothed and contented, they are then free to sit on the sofa and gawp at the paper or out the window.

I totally agree with this.

'He doesn't see mess' is possibly the most irritating of all the irritating excuses/justifications I see from posters on here.

He does see mess and he knows that if he doesn't clean it his skivvy wife will.

He doesn't see mess as his responsibilty is what I always hear that phrase as!

I think socialisation is a massive part of it. My partner knows it's his job to unload the dishwasher every morning. He knows - but he still frequently forgets. Which is fine when he's home, but when he isn't and u have to do it before I can start cooking it gives me the absolute rage. Women don't just forget about domestic stuff - we've been socialised to believe it's not only important but also interesting, so we automatically devote mental energy to it in a way men don't.

Being blind is a genuine excuse to some degree I guess!

I am fed up with regular conversations in RL with both SAHMs and WOHM friends who do either pretty much everything or much, much more than their partners. I think they really think that if they tried to address it this it would risk the end of the relationship and this would be their fault for"expecting too much". I generally say nothing because there's no point but it's so depressing.

My DH isn't perfect by any stretch and does a fair bit less than me, especially things like school and health admin, but he does more than the other men we know, so people sometimes say things like "you're really lucky".

I don't know, I think there is something in that one, re. men not seeing mess. Or rather the small bits of mess. I think it might go on a scale, ie. if theres actual pieces of rubbish on the floor/surfaces and dirty plates, they notice them. One they're cleared, they will notice the surfaces themselves are dirty. When the surfaces are clean, they finally notice the long-term stains or dust on the skirting board or whatever. Whereas a woman looks at it and sees it all at once, men only see the most pressing thing. (Really want to mention the 'gathering berries vs hunting theory' of this and the lovely statistic that 80% of food for hunter gather societies was/is the stuff gathered by the women.... bet the men go off hunting with much pomp and circumstance though and )

The problem is, they don't care. My signicant other does deep cleaning of his flat in bursts after letting the filth mount up, making it harder work to clean and then starts noticing the ingrained filth, and laments it would be easier to to bother starting to clean because you notice there's more to do. (This is one reason he remains not DP.)

This one is really hard because you can end up in a stupid debate where they don't think it matters, so if you do you clean it... style of thing. (SO doesn't do this thankfully but is getting slowly more housetrained). What to do about this?

It is quite a balance between the woman's threshold for mess/dirt and the man's. Also, I think you are right re "he doesn't see mess as his responsibility". Quite often my DH will talk about "your mess" (mine), and when I look at it, it's either the kid's mess or shared mess (unopened letters). Again, he's blind, so maybe he doesn't know what he is looking at, but mess-wise, he definitely does not see himself as part of the family!

It is how men grew up/are socialised, but we can't always blame it on our MIL, most of the time I think it's actually the FIL being a bad role model - we copy our parents, whether we like it or not - and that's been going on in generations, and it decades ages to change it. It's the "outside" part that's "easy", like women working full time, it's sharing the house work that's hard. Instruction doesn't really sink in, but learning by watching our role models is very efficient.

Except that, it isn't.

Obviously being blind I would give some leeway on actually seeing mess but thinking he's somehow a bit more special/hopeless/incapable/programmed to be a disrespectful twat by dint of having a Y chromosome... not so much.

My understanding of a demanding job with long hours is one where you leave the house before the kids get up and get home after they've gone to bed, in which case, how much help can you be day to day?

If both parties in a couple have jobs like this then usually there will be a nanny who does everything.

More usually if the father has a job like this, the mother will either be a SAHM or have a part time job, in which case she does the lion's share and that is fair.

If the mother has a job like this and the father is a SAHD or works part time the he does the lion's share.

Can't see the problem.

The only time it will be an issue is if either both partners or just the mother works these hours and the father doesn't pick up the slack.

I left my ex because even when started working FT he still expected to do nothing around the house. That's not fair and shouldn't be tolerated.

Went to Relate counselling with DH and we discussed this exact issue, because resentment is building from my side about the disproportionate amount of chores/admin/child organisation/dog walking/cooking/food shopping that I do in addition to working 4 days a week in a 'Demanding Job'
It got down to our upbringings - my parents both worked and both took part in household chores equally, his DF went out to work and his DM stayed home and exclusively looked after his DF and him, he never had to lift a finger or do anything for himself. Now according to our counsellor, I should make more allowances for the fact DH wasn't brought up in a home where the chores were equally divided and if he doesn't 'see it' then I should direct him.
I was and and all at once. and had nothing further to contribute to the discussion after this.

How disappointing and infuriating Hels.

Just shows how strongly rooted the idea of "woman's work" is

I agree with Gray.
I am the one with the demanding job or rather the long hours job. Not back home until 7.30~8.00pm 3 days a week when DH finishes at 5.00pm everyday (sometimes earlier).

DH has learnt to be quite good at HW, picking dcs up from after school club, taking to activities, pushing the hoover around, knowing when to put the washing to go etc...
Actually, nowdays he is probably better than me in some respect as I've learnt to 'relax' from some duties.
He DOES see mess too more than me

The issue here isn't an issue about a demanding job etc... It's the fact that some men (but not all of them!) can't be bothered and know they can get away with not doing things.
And the fact that some women are also convinced that 'men can't see mess' and that they have to pick up the slack so then the men do even less than before (why should you make an effort when you know someone else is going to do it or has already done it?)

FWIW DH wasn't l;ike this when we met. I've had the 'but I don't know how to use the washing machine', the grumbles at being asked to deal with his dcs (I don't want to be a childminder) etc... But he learnt. Well he didn't have the choice.

Hels [shoch]
And from that... have yoou managed to sort out the problem?

Re the influence of parents...
FIL has never ever lifted a finger which has always annoyed my MIL. So she swore that she would bring her ds up so that he would know how to do HW.

Now the reality is that he learnt how to tidy and that he needed to be done. He also learnt how to do the washing up. That's about it.

When he REALLY learnt was when he was on his own at UNI and then when I put a stop to the 'this is woman's work' attitude (that appeared just after dc1 was born of course....).
Because the reality is that that sort of attitude isn't often there when you are in a couple wo children. It starts when you have your first child and the woman in on ML and she is supposed to take on the HW 'as she is at home all day doing nothing'.

Exactly - and now we have 3 DCs, so there is triple the work and mess and washing and cooking. Yet no input from DH unless prompted nagged
I really really really don't want to give up my job, which I love, to pick up the slack that should be covered by DH. We are at an impasse at present. I don't see a way forward.

Nag is a word used to silence women who express dismay at lazy men.

Hels I don't if that would help but the only thing that really worked with DH is to put him in the situation where he HAD to pick up some slack.
I don't mean going on strike or whatever but engineering things so that he had to pick up the dcs from school and feed them for example.
Or I have been on a course over the weekend and he had to look after them, feed them, do the washing and ironing so that he (and I and the dcs) had something to wear.

The main thing was that I wasn't there so couldn't do it. I didn't nag because again not present. It just had to isywim.

That and just stating that xxx is his responsibility is that OK? and then not making any comment about it and never ever doing it for him.

We've also had 'discussions' about HW etc whereby I would talk about x friends or the NDN and didn't you that xxxx and how awful it is that xxx. Things that he couldn't really argue about (like it's not on he is doing nothing when she is already working 50 hours a week or when his DW is ill etc...) but that slowly made him aware of hard it is for the woman when her DH is doing fuck all.
And that he is a fully functioning adult therefore no reason not to do it, not been able to do it or not knowing how to do it (Can use Youtube has been one conversation we had). Or rather if a man isn't doing xxx the it HAS to mean he isn't a functioning adult!

It took time, years, but as I said he is now better than me in some respect lol!

that counsellor is crap, Hels (and please don't give up your job and make yourself vulnerable for a selfish man)

my H was raised in a similar household

his mum worked FT (in a more demanding job than her husband), 3 kids under 5, she used to start the tea when she got in before she had even taken her coat off

FIL in the pub, he came home when tea was ready and then sat reading the newspaper while MIL cleared up and got the kids to bed

luckily for me I guess, H recognises this as wrong and despite a few incidences of selfish behaviour at the beginning of our relationship he has always done his fair share

Hels I had something similiar with my DH and I read the riot act to DH. Told him he needed to do x, y and z (yes I ended up giving him a list and it helped a lot) and get more involved in parenting our DC. I pushed the point that our DD is going to look to us first when it comes to deciding on what she wants to do in life. I aoso reminded him that how his parents ran their household was irrelevant. Told DH he should have married his mother if he wanted the same home environment he grew up with.

We have 2 DC aged 2 and 4. DH does have a demanding job as do I. We also live 3000 miles from home with closest family some 500 miles from us. We both get exhausted.

Do what Ido -Act like a man!! Simples - i come home from work sit on the sofa and ask my partner for a cup of tea!! His duties are dishes and cooking, if dishes arent dine i leave them until they are. I learnt tbis by realising if you fo it eventually why shpuld they. I used this strategy on all my exes and it worked a treat. Some were taken back by it but came too and got used to it.