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.

Hels you might have to get serious on his ass

I have the Demanding Job in our house so DH has to get on with it. Although we do have a lot of outside help.

I do sometime have to remind him that things need doing sometimes but im quite grateful to be forgiven participation in the daily drudge as a result of my work.

this totally gives me the rage too. I resolved it when I started to travel a lot more for work and therefore he had no choice but to step up. I used to cook like mad before I left on a week's work trip and that meant that the kids had some semblance of nice food - but recently as I had no time, the kids ended up eating tinned food, McD's a couple of times, and oven chips. It's disappointing because he is actually able to cook (he used to do really nice shepherd's pies etc) but he doesn't now 'because he has no time'.

I on the other hand started to cook a lot more now because I didn't want the kids to just eat crap. The kids (7 and 4) do say though, that when I'm home, they eat better food. it makes me so angry.

He now works from home, but he doesn't put the dishes in the dishwasher (just leaves them on the side - because he's 'too busy') and doesn't take clothes out of the w/m because he's got no time'. I don't get it. the amount of time I 'waste' when people come knocking on my office door - I could use that time to hang laundry, load dishwasher, defrost a chicken...!

He also won't throw away old letters, newspapers, nonsense like that; his idea of tidying up is piling all that shit in a pile whereas I have to go through the pile - coz he's got no time.

argh.

I have some friends whose wife couldn't do the washing up for a while, so the husband had to do it. that weekend, they went out and bought a dishwasher. simples.

I've read the riot act and got serious, many many times over the years. Things improve for a while then slowly tail off again so that I end up back where I started. Discovered I was anaemic the other day, 15mo DS waking every night at least twice, and then getting up for work every morning was about the limit of my tolerance/energy. Its becoming unbearable.
Any I had doubts about the (female, older) counsellor's wisdom too - she arched her eyebrow at me when I said I wasn't sure I wanted to conform to the old-fashioned norms of women's work and mens work and household duties particularly as we both worked.

Oh and when on the rare occasions I do go away for the weekend - think once, maybe twice since having the DC - the house is an absolute shit-tip when I return. Think dishes piled up in the sink, dishwasher full or dirty pots, laundry baskets overflowing, toys everywhere, children half dressed, empty food wrappers littered about, bagged up nappies still in baby's room, used milk bottles sitting on side etc etc etc
so much so, its not worth ever going away because of the devastation that greets me on my return 'oh I didn't have time' is the stock reply. FFS.

I am sorry, Hels

I couldn't live that

it seems he has no care for you and you becoming ill means perhaps you might as well be better off without him

at least you would have only yourself and dc to look out for if he wasn't around

Hels, that sounds shocking. do you at least have a cleaner? That seems to work to some extent in some households I know of with lazy men.

When you got back and the house was a shit tip did you ask him to clean it up?

Does he do any school runs/breakfasts/teas?

Have you tried doing just yours and DCs' stuff (more than enough I know) and not cooking for him or doing his washing?

Hels that's such rubbish from the counsellor. It's housework, not astrophysics, it's not that hard to teach yourself how to do it if you want to learn.

I imagine if you were discussing with the counsellor how you were a very accomplished cyclist and you wanted your husband to learn so he could share your passion that she would be able to find ways to build a plan for him to learn to be a better cyclist. Not come out with some bollocks about being sympathetic because he never saw his parents cycle

We have a cleaner yes, once a week. Thank goodness because that would never get done otherwise. My parents do ironing/gardening for us. On the surface it would seem like theres not much left to do but it doesn't seem that way. Not enough hours in the day.
I asked him to help me clear up after my weekend away, which he did half-heartedly. He does school run then goes to work himself. But I have to get DDs lunch packed up, get PE kits out, get coats out, get drinks bottles ready etc or it wouldn't get done, DDs would go to school/preschool without.
I would get major attitude from him if I didn't do his washing/cooking - if I was doing it for everyone else anyway, would just seem very mean and petty.
I agree, the counsellor was rubbish - I hope we see someone else next time. That was just the assessment meeting where I was told that.

so you pretty much organise the DCs' stuff daily then. do you generally do the washing (clothes, sheets, towels) and cooking too? Or is that shared?

If the former then it would not be at all petty to stop doing DH's. You are looking after three people plus paid work, while he would be looking after himself only. If you got "major attitude" that'd be his decision.

Make sure you get a better counsellor next time!

Yeah I do all the washing too, changing sheets, washing towels and every bit of the cooking. I look after 4 children as far as I see it
I just don't know how to make him see what I do every day, its as if he is oblivious to it, like theres some magic fairy who gets it all done. Yet if he doesn't something like empty the dishwasher on a rare occasion he expects a bloody medal. He actually said that at the counselling appointment - incredulously 'you didn't even notice' I did notice, but why should I have to comment and thank him? The dishes are his too!

Hels - I'm no paragon here, DP and I have issues, but what I do when it gets too much is just not make any extra effort for DP.

I don't unball his socks before putting in the washer, I don't fold his clothes out of the dryer, I don't go hunting for his clothes or cups to wash. I just wash what's in the basket (and the kids stuff - although the kids are better about putting clothes in the basket than he is though). I put anything of his that I'm tidying up either in a big box of things dp is too important to tidy, or just in a heap. That's not being petty, that's conserving energy. We call it 'Sanctions' - he knows that if I'm imposing sanctions then he's let himself slip and he needs to pull his socks up.

Something that drove home to me how much more he could do for very little effort was getting a nanny a couple of days a week. She was paid to look after the kids, yet I'd come home to a swept, tidy living room floor, filled dishwasher, and clean sides in the kitchen. Just having one extra pair of adult hands that pulled their weight made a huge difference - DP saw the difference in me too.

Hels it sounds very frustrating. DH took about 5 years to get the hang of domestic tasks (his mum did everything at home, his dad did the "manly" jobs like lawn mowing and gutter clearing and so on), and only then because he was working from home and doing the house stuff was part of a deal we made in exchange for him being able to pursue a career that doesn't earn any money. It also helps that I have low domestic standards and could look the other way while he learned.

I do try to say thank you when DH does something I don't want to do around the house, but I expect him to say thank you when I do as well. And I do the same thing that you're describing - "look look what I did, I've achieved" until he does say thank you.

I think there is a big difference between a stay at home parent of pre school/ nursery children and a SAHp of school children. The latter gets a lot of free time and should take responsibility for the majority of household chores. There are also a lot of complaints about husbands (generally) demanding certain standards of tidiness. I am not sure what is wrong with that as the working parent has to meet certain standards every day too and the SAHp gets to share the fruits of him meeting these standards.

Ultimately the idea of equal free time and equal demands seems eminently fair to me.

I don't consider workplace "standards" (usually arrived at by consensus, established hierarchy or subject to certain lawful or industry specific requirements) to be anything like the descriptions of the attempts at tinpot dictatorship sometimes described on here by the WOHP (most often male)

if I were a SAHM I would not consider my husband to be my boss

do you think that should be the case, Larry ?

No, af, as in a workplace, it should be arrived at by consensus. However, surely it is equally unfair for one partner to have their standards broadly dictated to them (and this IS what happens in most workplaces, it is called a job description) and the other partner to entirely self define the job. Both partners share the money and the house after all.

and the WOHP benefits from the work and free child care done by the SAHP

you make it sound like a one way system

No,af, I don't. I have expressed very clearly that there are 2 jobs to be done and 2 people who share the benefits of both jobs.

Thank you for this thread.

I have been called a man-hater on a couple of threads recently, and I just can't fathom it. Because I have zero tolerance for lazy, feckless men, I'm a 'man-hater'.

I mean, unless ALL men are feckless and lazy, then I don't see how thoroughly disliking the ones who are, is being a man-hater.

My DH is a fully competent human being - kind, thoughtful, pro-active and capable. So is my Dad, and my brother. I'm surrounded by lovely, capable men, and so when I see other women complaining about their inept versions, and I say 'you don't have to put up with this', I'm called a man-hater. By other women.

I suggest that if they think hating feckless men = being a man-hater, then they're the haters, not me.

I honestly think SAHM-dom is such a risky little game, unless you're with a throughly decent bloke, who doesn't have a mysogjnist bone in his body. I even think that having a SAHM can bring out previously dormant arsehole/rampantly sexist tendencies. It's not great.

Larry - I suggest that if such men want to maintain any sort of satisfying sex life with their life partners (I assume they would like their partners to actively want to have sex with them), they might want to re-think their 'demanding a certain level of tidiness' stance...

Dowager,

So should a man withold sex from a woman who expects him to do his job to a certain standard?

It is interesting how many threads on here complain about men not going for promotions, or choosing to do less demanding jobs and the general consensus is that they should work hard to support their families.

Ooh, I like this thread!

We both have "demanding jobs" and the rule is - whoever is home first sorts dinner out. We have "blue jobs" and "pink jobs" - so his jobs include cleaning the bathroom, all the hoovering, all the ironing, looking after the gardens.
I sort the washing, kitchen, general financial stuff and dogs out.
We food shop together and agreed this year that for any medium or large diy jobs, we'll just get someone in to do it.

I don't nag him about his jobs - I just do my share. If he doesn't have a shirt ironed for work, that's his issue - my job is to make sure he has clean shirts in his wardrobe. He can't complain that the bathroom is a mess, cos it's up to him to clean it.

DH and I had an interesting conversation about this the other day.

We both work full time and don't yet have any DC. I am self employed, which means I can work from home some days, but frequent have to work very long days and my work is pretty intellectually and emotionally draining. DH's job is 9-5 and arguably not as intense as mine.

DH is far more domestically minded than me. He actually enjoys the little tasks of running the home. He does all of the washing up and cleaning the kitchen, and takes charge of the tidying, laundry, hoovering, bins. I do the weekly on-line shop, but DH does the top-up supermarket run every 2-3 weeks.

I sometimes 'help' with the tidying, laundry and cleaning, but would say that DH does 90%. I am in charge of cleaning the bathroom and my biggest contribution is cooking dinner, which I will do maybe 5 nights a week and either DH will cook or we will get a takeaway for a couple of other nights. I do the dusting far less often than it actually needs it.

DH does most of the house admin, such as renewing insurances etc, but I will arrange for any necessary trades to visit the house as I can work from home far more easily. DH does the maintenance for the car and bikes.

I brought up in discussion that it feels like I actually contribute less than he does to the running of the house, and if you added up the total numbers of hours a week this is true. He does still end up with more leisure time, as I work longer hours. When I said that I felt he contributes more, he disagreed. He pointed out that I do take charge of the garden (I came up with a landscaping design a couple of years ago and do a couple of hours a fortnight maintenance) and I take charge of the DIY projects (I have built some fitted furniture in our house as it currently is and am busy planning the interior design of our forthcoming extension and conversion). I enjoy gardening and DIY and see this as my hobbies rather than chores, but DH said that he values it as a contribution to our lifestyle and the general amenity of our environment. We agreed that it takes far more 'thinking' and skill than the washing up and laundry does.

Our household roles are pretty much reversed from traditional gender roles. I do wonder if we have a fair split. DH is happy, and he is the one who said that my DIY and gardening contributions may require less time to do, but have an equivalent 'value' to the more time consuming daily tasks that he does. I do wonder at this. Is it a fair comparison? Or is he automatically undervaluing the tasks that are traditionally seen as the woman's domain?

Larry - it's not about withholding sex. That would suggest that the woman otherwise wants it, and is refusing to partake of it, to make a point.

It's about killing, stone dead, any desire in the woman, because she's treated like a maid or a skivvy, by a man who somehow thinks he's her boss. Having sex with such a man would be a complete chore; not enjoyable in the slightest. She is not partaking because she absolutely does not want to.

Do you understand the quite considerable difference?

Hels, if he expects praise for even tiny things like emptying the dishwasher and got angry when this wasn't forthcoming you do have a man with an entitled, crappy attitude there!

If you cut out the stuff you do for him your domestic work would significantly reduce. Why do you feel you must continue to do his work for him? It must be exhausting. And sets a shit example to the DC.