Men whose lives are facilitated by women - how did this happen??!

[windygallows]

Now that I'm in my mid-40s I look around at my peers and am astounded that so many men my age have their lives facilitated by women: wives who don't work or who work part time who manage the household and make lunch for their DHs and do all the childcare and prop men up. It's just amazing how many men have a leg up by this support.

And they become blind to what it's like not having that support. My boss has a female PA, two female assistants, and a wife at home who looks after the household - leaving him totally supported and completely free to focus on his job. He thinks he's responsible for his success and doesn't understand why others can't mimic what he's achieved or even the time he dedicates to work.

How did we let this happen? How did we create a situation where so many middle aged men have such a leg up over women because they've been given so much support?

I've put this in Feminism because for me this is a feminist issue. If anything this situation it creates an absolute imbalance in life but also in the workplace, with men given much more freedom to dedicate to work and devoid of many domestic responsibilities that burden women.

I've also put this in Feminism because I'm trying to avoid the usual comments by women like 'We're a team' (referring to her and her DP) or comments like 'It works for us' or 'DH works hard and makes enough for both of us - should I go out to work just because you want me to.' blah blah blah I appreciate too that some women benefit from a set up where a DP/DH is 'looking after you' when you then facilitate/prop up his life in return, but I'm not quite sure it's really helping anyone in the grand scheme of things.

For context I'm in my mid40s, single with 2DCs and work FT and definitely frustrated when I see the advantages that 'facilitated men' have in the workplace and in life.

Not in any way accusing your dh here vashna but I’ve noticed a phenomenon in some men that I call strategic incompetence - they do something they don’t want to do badly so that they dont get asked to do it again.

Cooking for example- I hear women saying their husbands can’t cook so they do it all. I refuse to believe that an adult able bodied male who is capable of holding down a job can’t whip up a few basic meals. It’s just that they don’t want to and they don’t have to.

Ditto childcare. A man with sufficient self control, attention to detail and discipline to succeed in the military? He can look after a baby. Is he honestly saying he can command men, handle weapons, give orders but not keep an eye on a baby?

I don’t buy it. What they mean is “this is women’s work. It’s below me. “ and what they know is that the facilitators will do it for them.

My husband are generally 50:50 in most family related stuff. I organise more school related things, he remembers that cars need servicing, insuring and MOTs. I bake cakes and he makes sandwiches. We share the childcare pretty evenly and likewise on cooking and housework.
I can't say that I chose him on this basis but I never filled the gaps by assuming the jobs were mine either.
Of all the women I have managed post mat leave, women who share duties with partners and single women are the most successful, while those who have their partners "help" them out are less so. Having a SAHD is a mixed bag as many women resent him having all the time with the baby.

"he remembers that cars need servicing, insuring and MOTs."

Hmm. So these things happen every day/week do they?

I wouldn't go so far as to say he would let them die, but I they would have had a lot of near-misses and I couldn't risk it.

When our first DS was about a week old DH started up his first company and literally went into overdrive about that - and here we are 15 years later. It's like his head has always been at least half-full of work related stuff. He has no concept of limiting working hours - if it needs to to be done now, then that's that and there is nothing I or anyone else can do about it. Most of his friends are like this so I know I'm not the only one in this kind of situation.

More usual scenarios for men in those situations is to put the baby into care or to get remarried, not let a child die.

I mean in the event the wife and their own mother are not around.

Car things - not every day, no @BertrandRussell. But then again the school needs a pound for mufty dat in the same frequency.

He stays on top of the daily milk/bread/fruit situation better than me!

The way I see that situation though Vashna, is that he had a baby and then did pretty much nothing to look after it, in fact he couldn't be trusted to keep it safe. That's pretty shit really isn't it?

I wonder how many mothers can't be trusted to keep their children safe? And how many of them have other people to step in for them when they don't do their basic parenting duty?

I would also say that if my dh was left to look after a baby and neglected to do so to the point of danger to that baby, I would not be making excuses for him along the lines of ‘his brain is just full of important man stuff,’

I’d be horrified he had almost harmed his own child through inattention or neglect.

It’s them not wanting to do it, plain and simple. If they do it badly, the wife won’t ask again.

Now it’s not nice is it, to think a husband would care so little that they almost let harm come a baby? So in order to avoid that hard thought, the wife justifies and constructs a thought process - he’s busy, he can’t be expected to... because he... he contributes financially.., he’s much better at me than...

All those thoughts are nicer to live with than the reality that he won’t look after his own child.

I have always been a single mum. My head is always half full of work stuff. I run a business, and part of the reason I do that is to allow myself the flexibility to be there when dc needs me. Needs must, surely?
This stood out for me:
The government could make childcare free, but they can't force women to use it if they don't want to or have to
Why is childcare (for non single mums) something that women use? Shouldn't it be something that parents use?

I agree Anatidae. The thing is, looking after a baby isn't actually very complicated. It is very hard though, in the sense of being quite dull, repetitive and tiring. Very few people have so much patience that they really don't mind being with a tiny baby day in and day out for weeks on end - most people find that very difficult. And yet, women have to get on with it and many men simply opt out of it. And women support that by saying they 'don't have patience' and other such nonsense. Em tough shit if you don't have patience! Babies need looking after no matter how much patience the adults around them have.

I think the masterful headfuck that a lot of men pull off, though, is to make out that taking care of a baby is too hard for them, but that the woman who takes care of the baby all the time is doing nothing. So when the man is doing childcare, he is doing something really hard that requires a lot of praise and thanks and payback. But when the woman is doing it she's being a lazy waste of space because for some reason it's easy for her. Perfect tactic to have everything your way isn't it? And plenty of women swallow it.

Well yes, when you put it like that, it does sound shit, as you say. I don't think he was consciously trying to avoid his DC as babies, but I always felt like he wouldn't have coped with them for long. That was my gut feeling.

Maybe if we had met in similar professions to begin with, e.g. we were both teachers or something, we would have had more discussions about who would return to work when and how we would organise ourselves around the kids going forward? It wasn't like that for us though because of circumstances and personalities and different expectstions, I guess.

Yes, he expected you to take care of the children with no input from him. Where did he get that expectation from? And why did you accept that?

What DH has done though, to be fair, is made sure we never had to worry about money. That is parenting too because it's equally necessary.

Yes but if he hadn't been there to do that, you would have brought in enough money to live on, I'd imagine? As in, you can be trusted to do what needs to be done to keep your children safe and fed?

Look at it another way, there are many occasions that a child rolls off a bed or something else unfortunate happens to them while in the care of their mother (we ALL make mistakes) but I've never heard the father take this to mean that only he is capable of minding the child.
We are victims of the society we grew up in, therefore we've been socialised to think women are naturally better at looking after children. It's total bollox. It's just that while our brothers had Action Man we had Tiny Tears and layer upon layer of reinforcements later we are where we are today. Men can "cope" with work so they can "cope" with the domestic, it just doesn't pay as well and there is no ego stroking involved.

LeCroissant - I suppose I accepted it because I felt compelled to do it - how much was instinct and how much cultural pressure, I couldn't say. I'm sure he felt the same from his perspective.

Nothing is perfect. If I was with a man who expected me to go back to work after a few months, I would have struggled with that.

Yes I do take the point that as his own boss, he could have limited his hours more effectively if he'd wanted to over the years. I realise that in retrospect.

Something I've talked about a lot on here before (under other names) is the way in which men view so many things as optional, when for women those things aren't optional. So for a woman, generally, looking after your own children in some capacity isn't optional - you have to do it, even when you're so tired you can't see straight. Many men simply opt not to do it and never think twice about the impact of that. Can you imagine having a baby and never really putting any thought into how it's being looked after?

Croissant - I totally agree with that.

Also, I should say that my DH is from a different cultural background and that probably comes into play in some respects.

I think the masterful headfuck that a lot of men pull off, though, is to make out that taking care of a baby is too hard for them, but that the woman who takes care of the baby all the time is doing nothing. So when the man is doing childcare, he is doing something really hard that requires a lot of praise and thanks and payback. But when the woman is doing it she's being a lazy waste of space because for some reason it's easy for her. Perfect tactic to have everything your way isn't it? And plenty of women swallow it

This

Which is why men say things like

“ I’m such a great dad, I babysit for my wife every Christmas so she can go out with her friends “

And

“ I’m such a greater husband, I earning enough for my wife to stay at home wth the baby”

I don't think it's about different cultural backgrounds as this happens in all cultures Vashna. It's about how men are brought up generally, to see the raising of children as women's work.

Which brings us back around to the original point of the thread, which is that men do expect to have children, but they don't expect their lives to change because of them. They expect to have others (ie women) take care of it for them, while they just carry on doing what they want to do. The end result is exhausted women forced to leave work when they don't want to, and men surging ahead in their careers taking up all the positions of power. And thus the inequality continues.