There's a Woman-App for that........

[OldQueen1969]

These thoughts were inspired by another thread where someone's DH wanted to move their elderly DF closer to the family, scale back professional care and provide more of it in house. Which sounds very compassionate and laudable. Until it is revealed that the DW has a full time job, three children in nursery and the DH works away 5 days out of 7.

Now I know there are rules regarding TAATS but my reason for this thread is because it struck me that the attitude displayed by this chap was very much "I have a woman for that", and I come across it all the time, personally and in the outside world.

Despite all our alleged equality, dealing with life's problems, especially on an emotional and administrative level seems to be regarded as the domain of women.

My own DP is guilty of this. I am currently tasked with sorting out all admin related to my MIL's care home funding because DP made a bit of a dogs breakfast of it and I am "so much better at all that". He works and I am trying to re-build our retail business post-Covid, following the death of my mother in April from cancer which I nursed her through at home (not a complaint, just a fact), and because we are struggling financially it's now been suggested I need to get a full time job working around our business in order to solve our problems. He is meeting his perceived commitments. I have been quite blunt about all this saying that in the current economic climate, given that I gave up my job to care for his Mum when she lived with us and now have at best, ironically a chance of perhaps care work at minimum wage (which frankly does not appeal) that he shouldn't hold his breath.

We'll work through it, so this isn't about me having a DP problem per se, but more about the allegedly flattering idea that women are so much better at all these sorts of things, generally putting the world to rights etc and "being nice" while we're doing it, and the attitude that when / if we "malfunction" it's so much more of a calamity and unnatural than when a man "isn't coping".

I'm so used to "pulling myself together" I feel like the patient who walks into the doctors and says "I think I'm a pair of curtains".

So I know this varies from relationship to relationship, etc, but I suppose this thread is to just test whether others feel the same or is it just because after a lifetime of having every boundary questioned and criticised if it's more in my favour than other peoples I'm becoming unpleasantly cynical.

Oh, and I also wonder why women collude in this behaviour against other women? I'm in my 50s and have been regarded as challenging all my life because I don't give quarter without proper discussion and compromise, yet still, I somehow always end up being the Woman-App.

Any thoughts appreciated......

I think a lot of men are guilty of this - DH is a good'un generally but does need a sharp reminder every now and then that his (v difficult) parents are mainly his problem to deal with, not mine.

On a side note - are you married? If not, then you're extremely vulnerable financially, having given up a career to care for his family with no financial protection.

Oh, am painfully aware of my financial vulnerability - we are not married but am taking steps to make myself a bit more independent. Trouble is, everything that has gone on in the last few years has been intense and I am still working on certain prioritising skills. Which is my bad.

I also see this so much in the care industry. I've used to work as a carer / support worker in a mental health ward. It is emotionally an extremely demanding and skilled job. However, because the skills needed are a mostly soft / people-oriented skills, it is never recognised as such. The 'skilled' role is that of the psychiatrist, who diagnoses and prescribes (which is also a skill - just a different one). Care workers are just bodies on the ground to make up the numbers, fill in observation charts and restrain people. The job description is completely deskilled, but the difference between someone who has the soft skills to do it well and someone who doesn't is night and day in terms of good client outcomes.

And I want to be really clear that soft skills are skills. Learnable, trainable skills. When I started that job, I was OK at it; but there were people on my team with more experience, who were much much better. I watched what they did and I learnt how to do those soft skills better: how to build rapport; how to help someone calm down; how to listen actively so that someone feels heard; when to be directive vs reactive; when to speak; when to be silent. Those aren't innate abilities that women have. They are things we can all learn. Too much of our culture, both professionally and socially, is built around accommodating men who lack these skills, with women either punished for lacking them too, or assumed to do them naturally and innately.

Dp and i had this fight once. I said I wanted to hire a regular cleaner once we could afford it. He said he didn't see the point in paying someone to do something "we" could do "ourselves". I pointed out that there was no "we" about it, what he actually meant was "why pay another woman to do that when I have one at home who should be doing it for free". That was the beginning of many such conversations. Things are a lot more balanced now. Not perfect, but better. So yes, I absolutely agree with you. Lots of important social labour is still so undervalued that it's assumed women should just be doing it themselves for free.

Very interesting replies - thank you :)

"Caring" is definitely very much one of the domains where men who don't feel able to cope seem to be more understood and tolerated while women have to simply up their game. And I agree, the skills required can be learned and honed - I was not a natural mother, but have adult children who are, in the main ok because I learned as I went along. Likewise, I learned about dementia and how to cope with that with MIL for 18 months. I also learned how to cope and support my DP through his very understandable emotional turmoil. I was also emotionally affected but years of other challenging circumstances made me better at compartmentalising I think. My DP has no children so in some respects was unprepared for having anyone dependent on him.

The job I gave up was not a career but it was the best paid job I'd ever had, and while I wasn't overly emotionally invested in it I was quite proud of getting it after my previous marriage fell apart (14 years, ExDH disabled biker, my teenagers and his all doing GCSES at the same time etc etc) because I'd been out of the employment field for so long. As my DP was the higher earner it was obviously a practical choice to have him working, but his identity is very bound up in his work and even if the situation was reversed, and I had been the higher earner, he would not have relinquished his status.

Part of the reason my "Woman-App" thought came into my head, was also the slight dehumanisation aspect of it all.

Apparently we are both superhuman in our emotional abilities to look after others, yet we have our opinions and feelings discounted if we say well, no, actually, that doesn't work for me. It seems like such a shock to others. Maybe there is an air of entitlement to the time and energy of others that those who regularly end up feeling imposed upon just don't have?

I'm struggling with my feelings and abilities to forge ahead in a positive manner and so I suppose I'm just trying to analyse how better to cope moving forwards, and I appreciate a good debate with moments of enlightenment very much. So thanks all for contributing :)

I definitely see this is learned behaviour as I’ve recently witnessed my mum waiting on everyone hand and foot at her own bday tea and I was the only one who told her to SIDDOWN.
A man behaving like that would’ve been lauded “oh he’s an excellent host!”
I too like to rebel against expectations (eg that I will deal with bdays etc on DH’s side, keep in contact/up to date with DH’s relatives’ kids’ lives because he doesn’t bother to...) but I still find myself doing so much of it (if it weren’t for me my DD would have no hobbies no friends no social skills)
Men are intentionally oblivious to all this stuff we do, the draining stuff.

Yes op, women's labour is simultaneously so incredibly difficult that men can't possibly do it, can't even help, especially not instead of or after doing their paid job. And yet it's so easy that it requires no pay, no gratitude, no support, no acknowledgement. Anyone could do it, it's beneath men's ability level, a single mum would have to do it by herself so you should as well etc etc. It's schrodingers difficulty level, both the easiest thing in the world, and yet also impossible, depending on who is being asked to do it.

My DH is overall ok. Does equal housework and childcare. I do get questions like "do we have any wrapping paper?" Well, I don't know, do we? Have you bought any? I sort DD's haircuts and school shoes and buy her clothes. But he does the laundry so that's ok.
And I do the majority of DD's playdates, even though I am socially an oddbod and would rather not. But I drive and other mums message me not him so it ends up with my doing it. I have just dropped them off at birthday parties and gone for a pint sometimes but overall it's me who takes her and sorts out a gift.
My parents however are much worse for dumping stuff on me than my DH. They really take the piss and I have realised how much I have let them. I have a sister but she is the sort who gets on the wrong bus, so everything falls to me, from booking restaurants to taking to hospital appointments and being the one who actually pays attention to what the consultant says. Hard to tell if I'd been male and competent if it would have been him being dumped on instead.

I get asked if anything needs doing round the house. Like he has no eyes