Men whose lives are facilitated by women Part 2

[OlennasWimple]

Continuation of the other thread that got filled up

"I don't think it's a guise, I think many people are genuinely too tired from work, especially if they work long hours under the pressure of supporting their family on 1 income."

See earlier... women do what they must. Men do what they feel like doing! I used to work 6am to 6pm and then pick up my daughter from childcare (DH did mornings) and then cook a meal do the housework and go to bed at 9pm so I could do the whole thing again the next day.

Also it's bollocks that 1 income means its more pressure. You have someone at home looking after all the domestic stuff. You can stay late whenever. You don't have to do housework in the evening.

& YY to men who cannot say no to work. This is cultural / societal as they are conditioned to think 1. That it's the most important thing 2. That someone else will pick up little Jonny from daycare. My dh is like this even though he is quite good at the equality thing in other ways and "gets" it. He knows he prioritises work too much. But when he's at work, he doesn't think about other things. Ahhh the freedom of that! I've never had that! But although he knows he does it, it's incredibly hard for him to change his behaviour.

yolo

If you’re an equal parent you parent equally. Dh works long hours, I often work unsociable hours. When he’s home he splits the child and house stuff 50:50 because he’s an adult, it’s his house too and his child too.

This ‘oh I’ve had a long day I can’t possibly do anything with the kids’ is bollocks. It really is. You think there are only men doing this? There are many, many women out there doing 12-14 hour shifts, and then coming home and doing a back shift of all the housework and childcare.

If you’re at work and commuting even say 15 hours a day, that leaves nine hours. If your wife is at home on call for the kids 34 hours a day she is working nine more hours than you.

Dh and I share. When we are at work that’s the work shift. When we are at home that’s all split.

We are both tired because unfortunately that’s what happens when you work demanding jobs and have a demanding kid who doesn’t sleep more than an hour a go for 18m, and have no family or support within a few thousand miles.

And I dont think we have it that bad. If I was married to someone who expected to come him from work and pull the tired card and do nowt all evening I’d be running for the hills.

Mark this thread, yolo. Come back to it when you e got a colicky baby and a toddler and haven’t had more than two hours sleep in a row for years, and are mysteriously being passed over at work. I think you may get a different perspective

It's also small things like for example say I'm out with work and he has to be home to feed dd. He will inevitably end up giving her dinner at 9pm because he prioritised work. He sees this as no big deal kind of slippage. I prioritise her having a stable routine and enough sleep. I'll leave work unfinished for that. He won't.

The 50/50 shared care thing is a little bit barn door, bolting horses. Men have often been facilitated to the nth degree by that point. Besides I am very firmly in the camp that as much of the status quo should be maintained from the child's point of view as much as possible.

As relationships and marriages are voluntary, expectations need to be clear and concise up front and that deviation from what is agreed risks relationship breakdown. People need as far as is possible to be free to choose the sorts of relationships that are right for them.

"I don't think it's a guise, I think many people are genuinely too tired from work, especially if they work long hours under the pressure of supporting their family on 1 income."

When you're a parent, you just don't have that luxury though - I have to be up to get the kids to school - doesn't matter how tired I am, it has to be done. The children need feeding, the clothes need washing, homework needs to be supervised.

So many men (DP included - he slept in until 8 this morning for instance) don't take responsibility for that - if he's too tired, he's too tired, someone else (ie muggins) will do it. Whereas I know that if I don't get up, those kids aren't going to school.

yolo what’s your point? I worked hard, did well etc and was absolutely floored by demotion in my first maternity leave. You can’t be the change you want to see if the structure won’t let you. It’s so much easier to blame individual women for the status quo because then you can tell yourself it can’t happen to you. Well it can. I’ve seen it happen in the public sector and the private. To very high fliers and to women still working on their career path. All in the last few years. All brilliant women who are intelligent and hard working. None deserved to have their careers hampered as they did.

It’s infuriating and upsetting to be blamed for your own failure to be in a good career when the only way that would have been possible is to have not had children. Speaking for myself I’d rather have the children but I would have liked to have both or at least the opportunity to try. My husband gets to have both, no demotion or redundancy for him because he became a parent.

I’ve sah for a few months and it’s really not for me. It’s not the easy option by any means. Luckily for me my dh does not expect to be facilitated.

When you're a parent, you just don't have that luxury though - I have to be up to get the kids to school - doesn't matter how tired I am, it has to be done. The children need feeding, the clothes need washing, homework needs to be supervised.

Absolutely, Fizzy. None of this was clear to me - not really - before I had kids, either. It wasn't something that DH and I discussed beforehand because we weren't anticipating the relentlessness of dull-but-necessary tasks that goes with having kids and responsibility. We knew in theory but had no idea what it means in practise. We were smug. I fell into wifework by creeping default.

I'm quite shocked by the suggestion that a FT worker would come home too knackered to take on family responsibilities. Parents - especially mothers - do this all the time.

We knew in theory but had no idea what it means in practise.

I can actually pinpoint the moment the realization of it came to me - we'd been living in a town, so I was used to being able to just pop out and get whatever it was that we needed - milk/eggs/fruit/whatever. DS1 came along, and was a non-sleeper. I remember him finally going to sleep one day, and me thinking "right, I'm going to sit and have a quiet cup of tea for a moment" - only we were out of milk. I actually had my shoes on before I realised that I couldn't just go and get it, that the last thing I wanted to do was go and risk waking DS to take him, and that from now on, everything I was going to want to do, from as small a thing as popping out for milk, first I would have to consider DS.

DP never had that of course, because as a rule, if he's in the house with the kids, so am I so either of us can just pop out.

Fizzy, yes that's exactly it. The myriad of normal, inconsequential, dull daily activities that suddenly need forward planning. Making a cup of tea, showering, using a loud appliance that might wake the baby. Later on, reading aloud, quickly checking homework. I certainly had no idea that this could change the power dynamic in relationships to such a huge extent in practise.

Yes! The inability to EVER just let things go.

It doesn’t matter how tired you are. Ds didn’t sleep for more than an hour for 18m. ive been so tired I’ve passed on several occasions. And you still have to get stuff done because if dh is away with work (as he was for weeks in the first year) you still have to get up and sort things

I remember us both being really unwell with a high fever (over 40) for two days and us just lying in the playpen with the telly on, because DH was in the USA for the week and I was scared I’d pass out and he’d crawl off. Miserable. But you just get on with it.

The idea of being tired from work and that being enough to not do stuff is a long forgotten memory :/ and frankly, any man who comes in md say he’s tired and uses that as an out from house/child care is an arse.

This is why I find those threads where the bloke 'has to have his sleep because he has work tomorrow' so infuriating. During the fog of the first few months, sure, DP had to work the next day. I had to look after a bloody newborn! Also a pretty damn critical task!

Oh Yolo! You really don't get this do you.

Of course lots f people (men and women) are really tired when they get in from work. I know I am. But most women don't have or can't have the luxury of checking outof family life because they're a big cheese tired after a hard day big cheesing or whatever. Even when I worked 80+ hours last week including a load of travelling, I still hadto get in, make dinner, help kids with school stuff, make sure uniform etc was ready, think about what the schedule / meals / logistics were for the next day and make sure everything was in place for that etc etc etc etc. No flopping down on the sofa and ordering a take away for me. Because I have no facilitating army behind me. And that's with teenage kids. It's even harder when they're small and there's bathing / teeth cleaning / reading / story timing and all the other physical shit they need help with

Men with a facilitation team behind them simply never have this and don't get how much it wears you down and detracts from your performance. They just don't.

Eve when there's two of you acting 50:50 with this stuff (as you imagine you and your DH will be) it's hard work!

But do try, Yolo. Do have these discussions NOW with your partner, before trying to conceive. And listen very carefully if he thinks, without really thinking, that 'it'll all be fine' and 'how hard can it be?'

Children need input, lots and lots of it, daily. You both need to take this on board in advance.

I'm a bit crap at parenting, because I forget to plan the meals, the clean laundry and the next week's schedule, but I accept that all the meals and dressing and toothbrushing and appointments do need to happen, in however scrambled a fashion.

DH accepts that meals need to happen (and shops for them) but he definitely has form for complaining that the children, when smaller, surely didn't need to brush teeth daily, eat enough veg, have multiple sets of large enough clothes, go shoe shopping, have some fresh air, clean up behind themselves, try new activities and meet friends.

(Yes, he can be a bit of a scruffy sod...)

These are fabulous threads. I don't have anything to add just now, but I'm sitting here nodding like the Churchill dog at many of these posts.

Children need input, lots and lots of it, daily.

YY Lancelottie. Lots of daily input without exception, ever . There is no respite. Literally for years.

Especially for people who don't have family support. Or sufficient cash for non-working hours childcare and household help.

Surely "He can't do it because he's tired from work" is the facilitated man in a nutshell.

Because an unfacilitated man has to do it anyway, just like an unfacilitated woman.

This is why I find those threads where the bloke 'has to have his sleep because he has work tomorrow' so infuriating.

Yes. With a few exceptions like air traffic controller, brain surgeon or pilot, the reality is that you just get up and get on. To be honest, I know plenty of medics who do critical stuff and still get up three times a night...

I used to suffer from insomnia and thought I knew what exhaustion was. 18months of being woken hourly cured me of that delusion. There is a level of exhaustion so profound that it takes years off your life. Ds started sleeping, finally at 18m. He’s 24 m now and I still feel like I’m wading through fog. The impact of that much sleep deprivation on body and mind is catastrophic and lasting.
And still, I get up and sort things out and go to work, because there is no other option. As do countless millions of women.

Ours tag-teamed through the night. The oldest one (some SEN) wouldn't ever go to sleep till gone midnight. The youngest woke at least twice, being a baby. And the middle one would sleep serenely for 10 hours and get up refreshed and joyously full of life at about 5 a.m.

Even typing that gives me a slightly panicky feeling, years later.

I wonder if women surgeons receive the same level of sleep prioritisation from their partners as the men.

Yolo as I explained befire, I could have been you 15 years ago when I got pg with dc1.
In some ways it did me a disservice because I was so set on the idea that I coudnt possibly end up in the situation where H would just be there to ‘help’ whilst not really seeing his life turned upside down by two dcs, that I just didn’t see it happening.

The reality is that you can talk about it as much as you want, being in ML will change everything.
Because from that point on, younwill be the one in charge of the baby , the primary care giver. In your eyes and his.
Because you will, by default, because you are at home, start to do more HW etc...
And you will have taken 6~12 month off work.
And then, tada, things will happen that you didn’t anticipate.

The father will not be as hands on as you will, because, well, he will have less experience of it and you are there to pick up the pieces anyway.
Work will stop giving you promotions etc... you might not notice it straight away but 5 years down the line you will suddenly realise that actually your DH actually earns a good 20% or more than you, even if you started with a similar wage and carry on working as before.
You will start socialising with ‘mums’ (the issue of not being quite on the same planet than women with no children is totally true).
You will prioritise your dcs when making decisions rather than yourself (which your DH might well not do, or not to the same extend)
Etc
And I won’t even go into what will happen if you have two dcs relatively close together.....

It’s so much easier to blame individual women for the status quo because then you can tell yourself it can’t happen to you.

My husband gets to have both, no demotion or redundancy for him because he became a parent.

This is so true, and although there are many many reasons why this happens I think it is definitely partly due to the fact that men with children are expected to be facilitated by women. I have seen many very talented women sidelined in the workplace because they had children. Not in an open 'she can't be as good because she's a mother' way that would be relatively easy to complain about. In a more subtle form. For example, women returning from maternity leave and moved from large, important accounts to smaller accounts (to help them get back up to speed/so that they don't need to do as much after hours entertaining etc). Mothers being assumed not to want to go on career enhancing secondments (who would look after the children if they were working away?). Accounts that women have put a lot of energy in to building being passed on to a male colleague as soon as pregnancy is announced and the woman left to do the hard work of building up new customers again when she returns (putting her career progression back, but not technically any change to her post). I don't think this sort of thing will start to get any better until it becomes the norm for men to take on an equal role in childcare etc. Then perhaps the accepted way of doing things will change to make work and family easier to balance for ALL parents.

Pram What the heck they are.
I know a few women who are consultant/surgeons etc.. They just carry on doing all the getting up at night.
Actullay, they will tell you it’s not that different from the stupid shifts they are doing at work anyway so they are used to it.
So nope. No difference in that front.

I wonder if women surgeons receive the same level of sleep prioritisation from their partners as the men.

None of the ones I know do.

Shocker.