Re: "DH says I've turned him into a chauvinist."

[ItsGraceAgain]

Insight & guidance required, please!

Your replies to that thread in Relationships really made me think about how far behind the times I may be? Can you paint some pictures for me, please?

I'm hot on the fundamental issues - despite (or, perhaps, because of) my oppressive upbringing and resultant choice of crappy partners. Truth is, though, the majority of my school friends have either settled in a kind of statusy/role-delimited/wealthy compromise or are, like me, serially divorced. I'm not at all sure my generation (I'm 55) knows what to expect - for our daughters, neices & granddaughters, or for ourselves.

I'm not diminishing the effects of my abusive family but, at the same time, suspect such abuse of daughters was exceptionally common during my time - when women began demanding equality, and society's 'works' tried to demolish the spanner thrown in by feminists.

I can do you a fantastic evaluation of corporate oppression, and even advise a younger woman on strategies to push against it. Choosing between two female candidates, I'd always select the feistier & more political. Like other Mumsnet "witches", I'll spot a dicatorial spouse & try to gentle his wife into thinking for herself.

All the above is, for me, a political and life-saving imperative. Thinking about the personal, I realise I have NO real-life, real-time models of an equal relationship between man & woman. That is, perhaps, both a victory and a curse on my generation. We taught girls & boys to think harder (and to accept emotional drivers) but we were not in a position to do that for ourselves.

Any input? Thoughts?
Thanks.

Do we count as the same generation? I'll be 45 in September and I'd say I'm the same as you except that I've never been married.

I find that I have better relationships (hah - the benchmark isn't high) with younger men. Men my age and older just don't seem able to cope with a woman who really doesn't want to be coddled (for want of a better word).

Not sure this is much help really...

It is, BDM - at least as a point of reference. I've preferred relationships with men younger than me, largely due to their more comprehensive ideas around household duties (thanks, enlightened teachers & aunties coming 10-25 years after me!). Also, though it might not sit too well with you: men 10 years my junior tend to be less obsessed with stocking, suspenders & basques! I had enough of feeling like a shop-window dummy with 'bits' iyswim.

I really, really could do with finding out how a 'healthy' relationship works in contemporary terms though. Not that I expect to have a functional relationship with a man young enough to be my son
It's more to do with knowing how things are ... you know, what's changed; what hasn't; what I might reasonably encourage my 20-year-old nieces to expect, for example.

Wrt to my own life: I suspect it will be a bloody miracle if I ever meet a same-generation bloke, who honestly shares responsibilites, rewards & respect. I assume they exist - don't think I've met any of them, though. There can't be many.

< 10-25 years after me >
was supposed to be 10-15 years. I haven't the cofidence to shag one whole generation down

me and my husband are equal. he earns more than me at the moment, I earned a lot more than him in the past, but (before we had children) I decided to change tracks a bit and I now do a job I love but which pays less.

I'm 29 he's 36.

He's much better at a lot of the domestic stuff than I am, some bit's I'm better at.

We're friends, we respect, care and love each other, we try hard to talk to each other and have fun together.

We are a good team, we get stuff done, we know each others strengths and weaknesses and we accept them and work with them.

We're not perfect, we get grumpy and have petty disagreements, but when it comes to equality, we are totally equal.

I think a lot of it is down to expectations, I expected to be equal to any man, I couldn't ever be with a man who didn't see me as his equal - I couldn't respect him.

I am 21, but I have hesitated to post here, because A, I haven't had that much experience yet of long term relationships, and B, my relationships have been pretty dysfunctional anyway.

But (taking into account limited experience, judging mainly TBH on male friends and friends' boyfriends etc) I think that most men my age are happy to do stuff around the home and split duties, if that makes sense. I was shocked to learn for example that my mum did everything around the house when she was married to my Dad, even when they both worked full time. I would have thought that if both partners are working full time there would be more of an equal split of household things. But it always seems to be women doing the washing, for some reason! A lot of men I know do cook.

I was born in '79 and DH in '80 - dunno what generation that makes us, but it does mean I was nearly 11 when I first saw a MAN in 10 Downing Street. And I remember a girl about 3 years younger than me in school saying, wonderingly, "I didn't know that men were allowed to be prime minister." And knowing, from the way grown ups reacted to that, that actually, it was women doing it which was unusual. (Don't get me wrong - I have no love for Thatcher, but if anything could have molded us as a generation...)

DH and I are a team. I tend to take the lead socially, and he's a bit less forward and chatty than I am. He's (I think) a bit more emotionally intelligent than me, very perceptive, very able to talk about his feelings (more so than me). We both work, we are both very proud of each other's careers and we value each other's input into things like going-to-the-work-drinks or attending-the-end-of-semester-party. Sometimes we run from grim social events giggling to ourselves, thanking the other one for coming along and helping us out.... We laugh a lot - a lot - and we share hobbies (videgames, boardgames, am-drams - really nerdy stuff ;) )

So far (no kids for another 2 months) we split the unpaid domestic work fairly equally (though he's happier with dirt than I am, and I'm happier with clutter than he is). I work from home 2-3 days a week and he commutes an hour, leaving at 6.30am. I do a bit more domestic stuff during the week (might have made a start on dinner before he gets back, or unloaded the dishwasher, or whatever). In turn, he does all the laundry at weekends, washes the dog - erm, I do the early morning dogwalk and he does he late night one....

I'd say one area of inbalance is that I do more social-emotional work (replying to invitations, writing thank-you letters) and he does more financial-administrative work (bills in his name). That came about cos I'm a bit more obsessed with things like thank-you notes, and the bills were in my name in our last flat, so this time I told him it was his turn... I don't miss it! Financially, we're also a team, and (since money is always a bit tight) we talk over all purchasing decisions and think about money carefully. We have a joint account and a separate account each, and we split bills on a percentage according to what each person makes. At the moment, he makes more money than me, but when I'm qualified I'll make a lot more than him. He regularly tells me how much he can't wait for that part. He also wants to spend some time at home with the DC (it's a long-term plan, a lot depends on where my next job happens).

We do a lot of the more boring stuff (supermarket, big cleans) together at weekends. It cuts into our social lives but frankly, it's more fun than doing it on our own, and afterwards we can have a beer and play on the xbox together...

Erm.. This is a novel, sorry! I'd tell someone 10 years younger than me (like your nieces) that your 20s is a fantastic time to have lots of great sex and work out what you like in a relationship, but hold out for a feminist to actually marry. Being expected to keep a reasonably hygenic home AND a pretty demanding career going at the same time is hellish hard work imo, and I wouldn't do it with someone who expected me to do it for him. The fact that DH had lived on his own for a long time and was a good cook and housekeeper in his own place was a pretty damned attractive thing. The fact that we share political viewpoints and feminist ideologies was an absolute must. Taking on another adult's baggage is quite enough. Taking on a man-child is out of the question.

It's not all sunshine and flowers by any means, and I'm sure I'm difficult to live with too - but we listen to each other. I think he's really extremely intelligent and I greatly respect his judgement on things. I know he values and respects my thoughts and opinions, and above all, we anticipate our lives and roles shifting and swapping a bit in the future - when I'm making more money he's indicated that if we can work out how to live on x amount, he'd like to spend time at home with the kids, or whatever. It's not either one of our roles to be the breadwinner or homemaker, it's our purpose to support and nurture each other, and respecting that the other person is a person is an enormous part of that...

Arrghgh! Ok, I am going to be very brave now and post this before I re-read it and decide it's terrible drivel and should be deleted! Well done to anyone who finished this massive tome - I am really interested in hearing what people expect from and enjoy in their relationships, so I hope to inspire mega-posts from everyone else, too!

Grace, I think I'm suffering from Reading Comprehension Fail today. Are you asking us to describe our relationships to build up a snapshot of where equality exists and how it looks in real terms?

I mean, goodness knows I'm happy to waffle on about mine, but since I have a tendency to do so, thought I'd make it sure that this is what you're asking first.

tortoise That's what I thought she was asking. But I just wittered.

Well, you've saved me the effort, actually. My relationship is a lot like yours, and post-child-having it's carried on that way.

We still do most of the errands and cleaning together on weekends - Friday nights he picks up our daughter from daycare and meets me at the supermarket after work, and we buy the week's groceries and grab a 'picnic' and take it home and have it in the living room with a glass of wine. Unless one of us is really exhausted, we always have dinner together and then share bathtime/bedtime duties, because our toddler adores bathtime and it's a nice fun family time of day with us sitting on the side of the bath and chatting while she plays with her ducks.

After she goes to bed we whip around and do the kitchen and tidy the toys and run the vacuum around. One or the other of us is usually home with her during the day, and they keep the laundry cycling and maybe start dinner, but generally we take the view that looking after a toddler is a fulltime job and the rest of it is done when we're both home.

I'm sure that when we have a second one, we'll have to divide and conquer a lot more, bbut so far we've got by happily by sharing as much of the family tasks as we can, which turns them into family activities instead of chores. And if one of us is tired, or ill, or swamped at work, the other just steps in and picks up the slack. We don't have assigned chores, we have a sense of what needs to be done in the household and we do it. I call it a socialist model; from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

I'm just coming up to 40, so a generation younger I guess. My dh has made some seriously crappy decisions in the 20 dd years we've been together (and yes I'd agree it's probably a good idea to grow up before committing to a long term relationship - dh and I met at university and have been together ever since!) but despite that I'd say that we have an equal relationship with few assumptions (certainly on the grounds of sex). When our children were little we both worked and did about the same amount of housework, and then dh has been a SAHD on and off, something he is very happy with (and I hate). I don't know anyone else with such unusual roles, but most of the guys I know are fairly hands on parents and there is an expectation that that is right and indeed enjoyable. I don't know many people (male or female) who actually enjoy housework though!

RobynLou what you said. Nearly every word of it.

I am 28. DH is 32. He is on the cusp and I am typical of what they are calling the 'millenial' generation. My mother is 47. My father is 51.

I actually posted on that thread a little about my upbringing, which was, I suspect, a backlash to the Equal Rights movement (which my parents' church opposed). I also mentioned that I had seen an abusive relationship from the inside.

Lately I have been reading lots and lots of statistics about my generation and a couple of things stand out: typically speaking, they see equality as a given - ie the idea of "women's role" is foreign to them; and they tend to be extremely family-oriented, partcularly wrt marrying older and generally having lower divorce rates (DH bears this out as his parents had an extremely ugly divorce when he was very young; mine are still together).

I don't know what that means for the long term, but I have hope.

(as far as my personal situation, DH had major spinal surgery a few months back, so I do all the housework and all the heavy lifting too! DH has good intentions but is utter rubbish at housework. His mother had a maid when he was younger, so he's never really learned to clean anything properly. He is slowly making progress, but I have been warned by his sister that it took her husband eight years of coaching to get her to really see the mess the way normal people do. In the meantime I clean round after he is done and try not to piss on him for trying to help me out )

Also, right now DH and I seem to have very traditional "roles" but, as an example, I didn't change a single one of DD's nappies until DH went back to work after paternity leave.

His mother says his father would NEVER have done such a thing and that when DH was a baby ('78/'79) husbands wouldn't have been expected to.

For our part, I never asked DH to change DD's nappies, he just decided that since I had done childbirth and was handling all the "input" (feeding), the least he could do was handle the "output."

I think that may be where we see the fundamental generational disconnect from the couples who have come before us. The older generations were fufilling gender roles (men don't change nappies), and the subsequent generations were rebelling against them (look what a modern man I am! I'm changing a NAPPY!), and our generation has ignored them and done what we see as practical.

My only reservation with this is that I fear we will forget what women have fought for, and forget the battles that have been won (and why) because we've not been alive long enough to know what it was like before. Looking at the women and men I know, I fear that we will forget why we needed feminism in the first place, and will then be doomed to repeat our past mistakes.

It's a relief to think that I might be a member of the last generation to have got it so wrong! You "younger" ones seem to have it sussed. I'm rather envious, actually, but also happy that my DD (who is still on 2.8) may have a real chance of an equal and "true" relationship.

BDSM: I should think she has a better chance than any of us.

Oddly, when I got married it wasn't my DH's expectations of wifely behaviour that I had to fight - it was my mother's expectations from inside my head. (She's a real 70s housewife, whom the 2nd wave, and ALL waves passed by. When my dad empties a dishwasher there's a parade, despite the fact that she's started her own business from the home and works harder and longer hours than him now...)

I suspect that the key difference between her and me is that while we both heard the voices of generations of women saying "Your husband looks so tired! He works so hard! Make him dinner! Cherish him to show your love! You've still got a bit of energy left...", she listened to the voices and I evicted them.

Your DD won't even hear them, I imagine (and I hope). She's going to do better than any of us.

She won't hear them from me... I'm having a hard time not indoctrinating her to the "men are a waste of time" ethos that I inherited from my mother!

Oh, yes, I think I am sking for "a snapshot of where equality exists and how it looks in real terms"! Thanks

I'm painfully aware of sexism's many guises - it still keeps women & "women's issues" out of seriously executive positions - and its cultural manifestations, which help to keep women down in private as well as in public arenas. A lot has changed, though. I see these changes in everyday life - young adults are more emotionally intelligent than my generation, yet that massive achievement goes unsung. Workplaces are less brutal (if not yet egalitarian) and the law is more balanced.

It's always easier to hear of problems than successes, isn't it? I get the idea that you, tortoise & blackcurrants, can set the bar higher but I still have little idea of how that pans out in real life. So thank you!

I hadn't realised what a difference Thatcher's mere existence as PM would have made ... Of course I should have, but was too busy loathing her policies to consider the impact on a generation of girls, who grew up under her 'rule'. Now you've mentioned it, I've gained a bit more insight into what Obama's election signified to black people.

It's odd; I thought of Thatcher as a PM, not specifically as a female PM. I didn't really get why Obama's colour was such a big deal. Your posts have opened a few more doors in my thinking ...
... and I'd better stop rambling right now!

I wrote this post just as the server shut down, but thought I'd send it anyway. I'm loving this discussion. Yes, I also worry about today's women taking too much for granted - there's a long way to go yet, and so much to lose. If the battle is being 'won' - which, I guess, means it becomes unnecessary - in the home: does that mean equality will filter outwards to life's other areas?

If the male partner in an enlightened young couple was invited to a sleazy stag do, how would that play out?

If the male partner in an enlightened young couple was invited to a sleazy stag do, how would that play out? Mine wouldn't go, and he'd explain why not (in clear, hectoring terms - hey, I didn't say he wasn't sometimes obnoxious!) and moreover, I think it would make him question the friendship a bit.

Interesting he went on a non-sleazy stag do in March, and hated it. They did some macho climbing activity, then drinks-and-cigars, then fancy steak dinners and heaps of booze... and he was just so uncomfortable with the gender-segregation, and so weirded out by the whole thing. Several of my friends that were on this 'traditional' stag night felt the same - it was very frat-boy, very immature, and kind of boring.

I went to the hen night of the same thing and it was a blast: Nice party in someone's flat then on to a club (which I didn't do, being pg and tired) but I missed having our male friends there, and I felt sad for them that they missed out on all the fun and laughs... absolutely none of my socialising is gender-segregated normally, some of my closest friends are men (and some of his are women) so it felt very odd to have half of our 'gang of mates' not there.

Anecdotally, another friend was planning his mate's stag do as a big night out in London and the groom-to-be said in no uncertain terms that all his jokes about the Spearmint Rhino had better be just that: jokes. The groom-to-be would be completely horrified if there was a stripper, and he'd find it miserable and it would ruin his night and their friendship. I know that couple well, and their marriage is rock-solid and extremely egalitarian, too.

Oh wow I just read that whole thread.

I could NOT respect a person (male or female) that had that kind of views about any marginalized group. I couldn't 'agree to disagree' with them. I'd find their views repellent and a tad threatening.

Wow. Okay, I'm sitting on my fingers and not posting over there, cos the OP seems pretty happy with her lot. I do feel for her DD, though.

RobynLou: "I expected to be equal to any man, I couldn't ever be with a man who didn't see me as his equal - I couldn't respect him."

This, really. What seems wrong in the other thread is that the OP hasn't lost any respect for her DH even though he doesn't seem to have much for her (or as he says, other members of her gender but not her). I think respect should ideally be mutual and equal for a healthy relationship.

I am of BertieBotts's generation and I think that for people of our age there has been a definite shift in expectations within a relationship. It's hard for us because we are likely to be influenced most by our parents, who were of a generation where roles were more clearly defined, and at the same time we are expected to have more "modern" relationships in which the roles overlap a lot more. In 30 years time perhaps things will be very different as we will be the grandparents rather than those who had kids in the 70s and 80s.

You know, your posts about nappy-changing and stag dos have made me realise what a brutalised environment I've been living in. Even co-workers who were 25-30 years younger than me, in my last workplace (I left in 2003), were horrendously sexist - and harsh in other ways - compared to you. Some friends, whose lives were less ... erm, capitalist than mine, often seemed uncomfortable with things I said and I could never quite see why.

I'm finding this VERY illuminating. But I don't know what to ask! I feel as though I'm exploring some remote & unknown country! How on earth has this happened? I read the papers, I watch TV - is real life simply not reflected in the media any more (quite possible, since that's where I worked with all the lapdance fans)? I suppose I could be 'failing to see' ... but am I? The posters on this thread aren't that unusual - are you?

Unusual? Erm, I dunno! DH's mother was at Greenham Common when he was tiny, apparently. So he might be a BIT of a rarity in how he was raised. He reads feminist blogs and we swap links and so on... erm. I think he's a bit rare (compared to, say, his colleagues) in how thoughtful and active he is in his pro-feminist stance. He doesn't always get it right, but he looks at the world and actually sees the patriarchy, not the matrix.
So maybe he's very rare.

It's hard for me to know cos most people in my job are lefty-liberal types who must at least pay more than lip-service to anti-racist, anti-sexist principles, so all my male friends and associates are, like DH, thoughtful allies....

We might live in a lovely bubble. But if so, I can't say I want to come out of it! I am struggling to remember what it was like in my temp jobs (at call centres and the like), but I just can't. I haven't worked at one of those since 2002ish, and I wasn't as coherent a feminist, then...

I know that DH and I are unusual, but as I mentioned on the other thread, we were both raised in a fundamentalist Christian group and so those were the people we were around. We consider ourselves lucky to have found each other, but the truth for me is that I would have kept looking until I found someone like DH, even if it meant I never found him. DH's mother is a retired neuropsychologist and his dad was (in his mind) the "bad guy" in their split, so he has a feminist streak in him that goes back to childhood

I didn't chime in later on the thread because I don't want to scare the OP away. I WAS in an abusive relationship, but I didn't realize it was abusive until several months after I got out - it took me THAT long to see how controlling he was. The truth of the situation was that my abusive boyfriend had eliminated any resource I may have gone to for comfort or advice because he thought they would be a threat (and rightly so). It meant that after six months with him I didn't feel like I had ANYONE I could really talk to and get support from - even my family and childhood friends who I saw regularly, so I had pieces of support scattered around different aquaintances - who I cut off as soon as they came to the boyfriend's attention. I'm rather sad she showed the thread to her H. I suspect she was reaching out in a truly anonymous fashion (we're just a bunch of women, she won't see a support group because that is akin to admitting there is a problem), and the H will "discourage" her from coming to this site now. We ARE the women he finds distasteful because we will point out ugly truths.

Actually, I'm rather grateful for that abusive relationship (in hindsight) because I realize that, once I found myself again, I KNEW who I was and I KNEW what I would stand for, and if I even got a whiff from a guy that he wasn't going to give my boundaries a wide berth, I stopped the relationship right there. I didn't make it past three dates with any guys after that boyfriend for two years until I met DH. It also meant I KNEW when it was right and went for it (after three years of DH gently massaging the idea of marriage into my mind ). I know several women who are going through that process now, and finding that they don't like their lives, but they have already married and had kids and so feel trapped. I'm VERY grateful I went through it when I was young.

Career-wise, I work in IT specifically because it is male-dominated. My dad was the one who got me in to it because he's been in computers forever. I used to trail along to the conventions and training courses with him. We used to joke that I was his oldest son, taking over the family business. I remember he told me when I was considering jobs to take the "high tech" ones, because the bosses wanted women and I could use that to my advantage. I took a lot of crap from a lot of men over the years, but NOT ONE, even during the years of the worst sexual harassment I endured, would have dared to say the horrible things that poster's husband has come out with. She has a real problem on her hands and I feel for her and doubly feel for her baby.

and a quick note - I don't think my generation has got it right, I just think we're screwing up in different ways than our parents and grandparents (ie, swinging too far towards acceptance of the pornification of, oh, everything and, even worse, trying to tell ourselves that it is empowering)

Grace, we are unusual in the larger societal sense, but amongst my close group of friends it's fairly common for the couple to have downsized their careers so they can share child rearing, or chosen jobs with flexible hours, or whatnot. I don't know how many of the men would call themselves feminists, but we are an inclusive sort of bunch; strictly non-homophobic, non-racist, etc (although we're a bunch of mostly-hetero middle class white folk, naturally). A lot of my friends have dabbled in polyamory and the like, which I suppose shows a willingness to step outside normal societal molds and try other family structures on for size?

I also work in a very family-friendly law firm (rare for the industry). Half of the solicitors here are working mothers with preschool-aged children, and all of us work part time - from 0.5 to 0.8 which is what I do. That is vanishingly rare, and we are known for it around town.

I don't mean to sound as if sharing childcare is the cruz of it all, but I talk about it a lot because I think that, for us, it's made an enormous difference. A lot of couples find that the veneer of equality breaks down after children come into the picture, and we've avoided that almost entirely.

I had a very strong feminist role model in my mother, who raised us singlehandedly without allowing her bitterness at my father to infect our attitudes towards men. My husband comes from a family with a loud, blustering, obnoxious father but the real strength lies in the women - classic power behind the throne stuff, his Mum's always worked and renovated and pursued hobbies, etc. Most of his family are female, so he's more comfortable interacting with them maybe?

My husband has gone on a couple of stag dos that have ended up in strip joints - perhaps 3 times in the 11 years I've known him - although the last time he did so he came home feeling really uncomfortable that it had ended up there; there were only three blokes as lots of people had cancelled, and he felt that to go home would hurt the groom further when he already felt rejected, and he (my husband) knew that it wasn't something that was going to bother me at all anyway. I do think that if I said to him that I really disliked him going to one, he wouldn't. His own stag do was a laser skirmish thing following by a jazz club, and was mixed sex because he thought it was stupid to only see his male friends.

Oh, but, re the stag do thing - if by 'sleazy stag do' you mean hired strippers in a private room, or anything involving sexual contact with other women, he would absolutely not participate. I'm talking about nights where the blokes have ended up in a strip club for the last drink of the evening, watching only I think. Slightly more removed, and less power differential.