I was scrolling instagram and saw a post by one of my favorite follows, Paige Connell, talking about how there is an epidemic of women married to “good guys” who are overwhelmed and drowning.
I see this being a trendy subject lately, and to cut through it, what happens if she goes away for a few days, a week?
Mostly nothing. Dad gets done what is needed, that's what I've been hearing. The kids are relaxed and not stressed as they are not on the forced-bataan death march of sippy cups. Some snacks were missed, everyone dealt. Dishes were missed sometimes. No one cared.
This implies 1) These things didn't really need to be done, we should prioritize. 2) The standards are all set by women, who then assume, demand, invent, that this-thing-they-made-up-today is now set down by God. His opinion or preference is so irrelevant as to be laughable. 3) He IS saying it's stressful. But because modern life has very few places to trim back, what he's telling you is to trim back where you can and just decide it's okay, because your LIFE is more important than Instagramming your clean sink no one will ever see but you. That is, he's worried about you, the kids, being STRESSED. And if the only way to keep that below redline is skipping the dishes then skip them. This "Option B" section is not being seen, or availed. In fact, it's being divorced so she can continue with MORE stress in another house alone. In a reversal of gender expectations He cares more about you and the kids as PEOPLE than some pointless objects like folded laundry.
How can I know? Well in my house, I did the dishes, the laundry, the putting away, the lawn, the plumbing, the roof, the toilets, a host of other things. This was not good enough. So with a housecleaner, these were done professionally. That's fine, I can do other things as well. What happened? Instantly the LEVEL of clean doubled, to permit the same amount of stress and unhappy. House objectively cleaner, wife sadder and madder than before, in a stress arms-race. Not everyone gets to cross compare A-B like that. *The stress wasn't from the house at all*, it was probably from work but spilling over to a free-floating cloud of dissatisfaction.
Again, this is what men are trying to tell you. Probably in words at first, but as those will never work, in actions, by showing you things are still okay. You go away: the kids are fine, everything gets done somehow.
Which path is the "Good spouse/Good parent" path? Yelling at everyone all day and getting divorced, or taking it down a notch? Possibly both but consider my premise.
Going away for a few days or a week and everyone "surviving" and everything "getting done is not a metric of the mental load + running your entire life with no end in sight. Also, kids behave differently for the primary caregiver versus dad.
This is not about instagram worthy homes for most of us. It's about feeling the entire weight of life on us.
Mental load goes both ways. Men just deal with things a lot better. Husbands understand what stress does to the relationship and to the kids and prioritize that over their own well beings. Why do you think kids behave differently when the so called primary caregivers is not around. It's primarily because boundaries are set, everyone understands the rules and can just enjoy the moment instead of walking on eggshells.
This is a new phenomenon because we didn't want effective primary caregivers, we wanted softer fathers. I'm 40 now and I call my dad and grandmother frequently to thank them for their patience, their guidance, and for being fair and stern with me. My grandmother especially was a force of nature (12 kids raised and more than a third of us grandkids lived with her on and off). I had uncles that disciplined me and moved me through phases of my growth. It didn't occur to me that primary caregivers could be this ineffective to the point of kids acting like animals you see in a zoo. Society is getting what it asked for, softer men incapable of doing anything including shepherding their own kids or their partners.
“Men just deal with things a lot better.” No, they don’t! They abuse their wives and descend into addiction and commit suicide. Males prioritize their own well being FIRST and 100% of the time. You are literally programmed in the womb to not give a fuck. How do I know? I birthed and raised two boys to be men. It was never in their nature to ask if I needed help. That does not happen from sons or husbands. Common denominator being males.
If men prioritise their well being first how is it they’re descending into suicide, as per your words?! Suicide seems like the opposite of one’s own well being.
Also, men are “literally programmed” to serve and protect others.
No 2 things in your comment are coherent with each other.
No. I helped my mother as a daughter without her asking. Boys don’t do that. Men of past generations were providers and protectors. They took care of their well-being and that of their families. What white males of the right in particular seek are BREEDERS and WOMBS and most become deadbeat fathers. Those are MALES, not men, and they are the majority now. The crisis of masculinity in the world, including male suicide, is well documented. Those are the addicted and mentally ill males who hate their own mothers, women and children. Understand the distinction now?
Boys might not do that, but YOU raised your boys! You impart values, manners and behaviours on your children. You think those men of generations past were just born that way, fully formed and socialised beings?! It makes no sense. Maybe those mothers (and fathers) back then were doing a better job raising their children. Did this ever occur to you? I mean the fact, that you’re online complaining about all men including your own boys which you raised is telling. And that’s before the bit about “white males of the right”. Yikes.
I wish you the best in working through the hate in your heart. Are there bad men? Of course. But your blanket hatred of half the population will only hurt you in the end. Perhaps seek out some counseling to work through this hurt that has you lashing out. Either way, I’m wishing you the best.
It’s widely documented that children behave the worst where they feel the safest. If the kids are behaving better for you than the mom, it is likely not because of your skilled parenting or setting of boundaries. It is because they feel safer with their mother and so try to push the boundaries (which is healthy for children to do). Scaring your children into behaving may seem to have positive short term outcomes but does not produce well adjusted adults.
I'm curious about the research you are using to assert this. Kids may worst with mothers because it is just easier, even my 8 years old boy mademoiselle this observation 2 years ago. Safety is important but too much of it also produces crappy kids and then adult. Some of the men women are complaining about today had too much saleté, thats the reason why they dont think women today are worth the risks. Also, if you follow anything about single mothers, you will find kids need more than just safety. Mothers/women seek safety and thats why they raise children that are constantly scared of the outside world. Sociéty dosent benefit from young men that only seek safety.
There are lots of sources, a quick google just pulled up a Psychology Today article, among others. Dr. Becky along with other parenting experts, talks about this frequently. It is based on theories of secure attachment. When you say it is just easier do you mean for mother or child? All people need to have their primary needs met - food, shelter, safety- before they are able to be their best selves. We live in a world where a substantial number of women are physically, financially, emotionally, and sexually abused. In the US most of the people living below the poverty line are women and children. It is not men, but women who are at much greater risks in relationships and every real statistic bares that out. Clearly, some level of risk is always necessary for success. But that risk must be built on a foundation of safety. (Think swim lessons v. Getting tossed in a lake). Also, you say men don’t think women are worth the risk. Yet worldwide more young women are saying no to marriage and children. More older women are initiating divorce and remaining single. This shows that it is women who think men are not worth the effort. The anger today is not about men not wanting women, it is about men being bitter that women don’t want to provide free domestic labor for them. Statistically married men live longer than single men, yet single women live longer than married women. All of these men are accusing women of being selfish, but they should be pointing the finger inward. What is selfish is expecting another person to put their own health and happiness at risk without providing the same in return.
I think this is important. Obviously there are many cases where the article DOES apply, but I also think there are many cases where the wife needs to consider whether
a. The standards of the household are reasonable and mutually agreed upon (noting that the husband and wife will not always agree but you have to find some kind of middle ground that both parties can be ok with)
b. She is allowing her husband to take ownership of the tasks he is doing. I.e. not micromanaging.
That's not to say that women should accept husbands who don't do anything, or have really low standards. But it is also true that if you're stressing over every minor detail (for example, I think I once saw a social media post of a woman dragging her husband for dressing their toddler in an outfit that didn't look good) or constantly telling your husband that the way he does things is wrong, the answer is not simply for him to become exactly like you.
Well, I need to focus on getting my shirt buttons properly matched. And some of the more tense micro moments of my marriage have been as I’ve struggled to fasten the tiny hook at the top of my wife’s dress.
Putting swimming suits on my daughter sometimes is a comedic drama. Every new suit seems to pose a different challenge but only for me. My wife handles all these puzzling suits in her sleep though.
Hilarious! I recognise that it's probably easier for me to see how silly this stuff gets when it comes to clothing because I don't really care that much about style on myself or others so my standards for a child would probably be "clean, weather appropriate, comfortable, done".
I do have other areas that I would struggle with more, most notably food (I want my future kids to be healthy) and cleanliness of the house (being in a messy or dirty environment stresses me out).
Just to come back to this with some extra thoughts - I do think men in this situation would be much better off confronting this head-on and saying, "sorry, your expectations on X are unreasonable and we need to find some kind of compromise here" than begrudgingly agreeing and then not living up to expectations.
It's much easier to trust and respect someone who has boundaries and lays them out than someone who can be steamrolled and then just fails to follow through. And I think part of the problem here is that these wives don't trust or respect their husbands, at least in certain domains.
I'm not saying that's entirely the husbands fault - I imagine that in most cases it's a vicious cycle where the wife had certain expectations, the husband didn't live up to them, the wife starts micromanaging which makes the husband step back more and not take ownership, spiral downwards.
Damn. Yeah it's probably a high risk strategy - either you end up in a better situation or you end up divorced. Keeping quiet is the low risk low reward option.
There was just a Note on how when the woman stepped back to trust and let him act, her stress vanished and this relationship was restored, but I can't bookmark everything. Let's just say that's one possible path.
This is because of the phrase "if you want something done correctly, do it yourself." Men live by this. If you want something done some specific, assanine way, then do it yourself. Men do this all the time, and don't take it as an offense. They may be a bit irritated, but they do it. They figure the women are doing the same, yet some women take offense when they voluntarily took it on.
This is also the lack of understanding that what is important to one person, may not be important to the other. You have to compromise and meet halfway.
I'm somewhat traditional, so I take full responsibility for the condition of my family. I strategically manage my wife's stress. I jokingly call it, "wife maintenance". I will do some of her normal responsibilities, massage her, take the kids, or do SOMETHING to relieve pressure on her short-term. I try and preemptively massage her before her hips and back lock up entirely. I actually complain when she doesn't tell me before it's bad. Sometimes she needs to be "pounded" into the mattress and sleep in the next morning. I know if I don't preemptively reduce stress levels before it crosses the line, it's like flooding her engine. It's going to take longer for her to get back into the swing of things, and then I get overloaded worse than I already am. Then there are fights like in the article.
Been with my wife for 17 years, love her dearly, have the same convos about this stuff at least annually. Never changes. Including being exasperated by it never changing. It’s not always the men, ladies.
Yes, my point was not that no husbands slack. But they're so battered and berated that I can't caveat my statement upfront because it'll be ignored. I have to promote that MEN ARE DOING SOMETHING. So listen. Below vv there is a comment stating 5 men divorced for even SUGGESTING it.
Oh yes. Totally. So he DID tell you, but is smart enough to stop short of divorce because he loves you, hoping something else will come up as an opportunity. Statistically, it doesn't. Women just drive themselves insane, hate, blame, never ask or look. How? 60% divorce rate, 80% caused by women, and that's NOT including all the men who are trying now still married and walking on eggshells. What's the run rate adding those? 80-90%?
Nah, women were sold a bill of goods. It's self-contradictory, and that's being discovered right now. But we're all sold a bill of goods and men have a different one. ...Men's problem is not them "Getting in touch with their feelings" though.
That said, I feel sad about the fall of home standards. Not too much, but just a bit. We go to lunch at someone's home and the food is catered. No one dresses up for Christmas dinner. There aren't animal shaped homecooked foods in lunchboxes. Presents aren't wrapped with nice paper. The cranberry sauce is from a can.
This stuff is hard, yes, but also no one appreciates it when someone does it the hard way. Short term, it makes little difference. Long term, it makes life worth living.
I don't know what the solution is, but it seems like shorter hours at work could help greatly.
The hard stuff / high home standards could only really be done in a 50s household when women were expected to be housewives while the men were expected to be breadwinners, which creates its own set of problems. We could create shorter work hours, but then that means less money for households to spend on the raw materials needed to make the good stuff at home. Trade-offs are unavoidable
If you care and get something out of it, that’s all that matters. I wrap presents in nice paper every year for Christmas and most birthdays (even roped my husband in), and relish the beauty every time. I make at least one nice, non-shortcutted meal each week (and usually when the friends are over if that happens). As a working mom, I don’t have time to do everything the long way, but I pick a few things and enjoy them. If you get something out of it, who cares if nobody else does?
If we actually had things like health insurance NOT tied to work, family leave, and corporations that DIDN'T try to pay one person half the salary a person can live on to do three people's jobs, we could have shorter work hours.
No one cares right now. And I think that’s always been kind of true. No one cares that you made a homemade apple pie for Thanksgiving 2 years in a row- they care when you’ve done it for 40 years and everyone’s fighting for a slice of grandma’s famous pie. Your kids don’t care about the homemade baked goods and note from you in their lunchbox on Fridays right now but they probably will when they’re 38 and raising their own kids and reflecting on mom’s special touches.
These kinds of things matter when they’re done over the course of a lifetime. When all the details add up to a thoughtful, loving, abundant life. And most importantly, these things all have to be done with a generous and loving spirit or your kids will say “ugh remember how miserable mom was when she was running around and yelling at us while making all those Christmas dishes”.
I relate to you because this stuff matters to me too. It’s a really big reason I’m a stay at home mom, so that I can have those higher standards without an insane amount of stress. I really believe a lot of this homemaking work requires having a long-term view of the life you want to create and the childhood you want your kids to look back on.
When I was a kid my mother made her own tuna salad and all I wanted was tuna salad from the store. My kid wrote me a mother's day card thanking me for getting pizza or sushi every Sunday -- that's the one day we don't home-make real food for dinner. Whether kids appreciate things is not the barometer of whether you're doing it "right."
At the same time, they can't really miss what they never knew. If nobody in our circles is home baking pies for Thanksgiving, they're unlikely to consider me remiss for buying. As long as social standards drop in the whole, nobody has to feel bad.
I agree that what children appreciate isn’t inherently about doing things “right” (although I was talking about what adults appreciate about their childhoods in retrospect). No one can perfectly curate the things their kids like and dislike about their childhoods. However, I think there’s something special and good about cooking nice meals from scratch, baking alongside your kids, having special holiday traditions, etc and these things do involve some work. Some examples from my own life include keeping chickens, gardening, and heating our home with a wood burning stove. These things are cozy, nice, require work, and I think my kids will appreciate them later, although I have no way of guaranteeing that!
I also think your last paragraph is interesting because (if I’m understanding correctly) it basically says social standards dropping is a positive phenomenon because it means nobody has to feel guilty. I don’t really think about these things in terms of guilt. I’m personally not much of a baker (the pie example was about my grandmother) and if I get asked to bring a pie, it will be from Costco. But I don’t feel bad about this, not because of what other people do, but because I am comfortable with the things I choose to do “right” and the things I don’t. Other people baking pies isn’t a threat to me and I’m actually grateful my kids have other people in their lives who fill that role. And the idea that kids won’t know what they’re missing because social standards have lowered so much over generations is personally sad to me, not comforting.
It’s fine to have different perspectives and values on these things! Just in case my tone isn’t clear, I’m not offended by anything you said and hope I come off respectful :)
I think if we have a warm and loving relationship with our kids, they’ll pick *something* to latch onto, even if it’s not food. It’s the sensory details that remind us of someone when we’re apart.
The unsaid underlying thing in this is that caretaking is important, it makes life better, but women don’t want to do it all unseen and uncompensated or with no choice on the matter.
Yeah exactly. I want the time and space to celebrate my festivities appropriately (easier said than done as a Hindu in America when I never get a day off for any of my occasions). I want to spend time thinking about my kid's needs and ensuring she gets the appropriate care and personalization. Like she isn't reading much these days, how can I snap her out of that. Or she seems to be receptive to new vegetables, maybe I should try making okra.
I feel like this makes a difference even like in the span of 6 months. I had a very stressful few months at work and in that short time, my kid just stopped eating vegetables and it's been a hard painful battle to add them back in to her diet.
Staying home with kids is a privilege not afforded to most mothers. If you have this choice, then you’re in the minority, be grateful and stop preaching to mothers whose lived experience is nothing like your own. Working moms, and particularly single working moms, have no time to bake apple pie. And you’re right - no one would care anyway, so why bother?
I was specifically talking to a working mom who has similar interests to me. She seemed to receive my comments well. Choosing to perceive that as “preaching” to working moms says a lot more about you than me.
No, it tells that you live on another planet from working mothers, particularly single working mothers. It is the same rhetoric I have had to listen to for the past 21 years raising my sons alone. “Christian,” married, stay-at-home white mothers reinforce the patriarchy. Did you also vote no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother? Don’t you have some books to ban or teachers to harass?
Other people can have a conversation about a topic that you don't have an interest in or the time for and it not be a direct attack on you.
Your ad hominem attacks on my faith and lifestyle are uninteresting and irrelevant. They reveal a huge amount of bitterness that you are for some reason choosing to lash out at me over. Have a nice day.
Lot of people spend 11-12 hours per day on commute + work. Not much time for kids, spouse, and keeping up the house.
But I’ve also met a lot of women who work remote who still get overwhelmed, and at that point I don’t know what to tell them other than to chill out….and that’s exactly what they don’t want to hear.
Your wife works hard while you sit on social media and criticize working women whose lives you know nothing about. The double lives of “husbands” online.
Agree. I think a lot of it has to with having order, routine, and no drama. This is the stifling order of 1950s that no person every liked ever! 100% of all people, man, woman, child, dog, all hated forevah. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHF8LdiFhW8
No really -- to do these extras you need to have the daily things under control. Automatic. That means by definition it's a habit. But by being a habit it's not like TV: new, interesting, novel, expensive. It means you make egg salad instead of catering Panera every day and your big monthly purchase was one Tupperware bowl you have to now use for 20 years bc you don't have another one.
Nobody is doing this, living this way at all, you'll get divorced in about 90 seconds if you tell your wife to click off Amazon, but even so, if OTHER people make bad choices, are bad bosses, over-bid up the housing market bc they have no financial skills, don't show up for appointments, it is going to cut in 80% of YOUR life being orderly and under control. ...So you have the bandwidth to dress in a tie and make those Christmas brownies.
So yes, they're not doing it. And yes they are stressing themselves out about stuff they should let go and someone in 1955 would, BUT! You also can't do it alone. I think pulling every trick you'd barely be on the borderline of under control right now because the culture at large is unhinged.
Hey, is this why they ALSO social pressured "Conformity" to have other people do their thing too? So a few people's bad habits of senseless drama wouldn't destroy all of us?
Isn’t that a rosy view of the past though seen through the lens of movies and magazines of middle class and rich homes. Low income people in the past were not having lavish meals and dressing up for holidays. People were also able to live off one income and even hire help. Today’s world is very different. If you like doing more then do it but don’t expect it of others.
I moved from the east coast to the west coast and it took a long time to make the adjustment. These silly formalities were ingrained! I have learned to use the time and energy these things would have taken more wisely. Not everyone needs to relive their childhood in order to have a good life
I think about this sometimes. I would like my house decorated for holidays but... I don't want to do it. And you know what, my mother didn't actually do it either. She had her old-enough kids handle the task. It wasn't Martha Stewart stuff, but we got into the spirit of things and the house looked festive. My oldest is 8, so we are just approaching the cusp of where I can hand him a box of tinsel and say "make this place festive".
I know both scenarios well. My ex-husband expected me to do everything, and I did, being he was 15 years my senior and a pastor, I thought he knew better and bought into what our religion was teaching me, all while supporting ministry, PTA, etc.
I divorced him and those ideas (slowly) after 19 years, but was so programmed by them that I found myself sometimes overrunning myself in my new household with a new husband — a GOOD husband — and my ADULT children.
So I began being more intentional about reversing that behavior and allowing my good husband to share the load, letting my adult children be adults, and releasing the need to do everything and creating problems to solve. I am a work in progress.
I love this! I started out my marriage as a young “good” Christian woman. I had bought into the “biblical roles” idea… where men provided the money, and the wife “kept the home”. I was raising the baby, cooking, cleaning, laundry, planning meals, doing everything except having a 9-5 job. It was exhausting. I was burnt out. It didn’t help that I grew up with the idea I wasn’t allowed to express my needs, either. As I’ve deconstructed these evangelical fundamental beliefs, I’ve allowed myself to ask for help. To rethink my standards of “presentable”, and to expect my husband to contribute to the running of the household. It still isn’t 50/50… but my husband and I share the load. He works full time and I work part time so he is home less. But he still helps with dishes. Cooks a dinner here and there. Helps with laundry. Picks up the groceries. Cleans. And helps our son with school.
Anyway. Sometimes we have to deconstruct our ideas of gender roles. And our ideas of perfection. But also, we need to expect help and support from our partners!
Yes, I get all of this! I gave myself to that ideology from age 30-45, left the first husband and took him back long-distance for 2.5 more years until I realized that whatever had been was gone.
So after a brief romp in the hay (after my separation and then divorce a few years later), where I went in the extreme opposite direction to reclaim my youth and all the parts of myself that I had shut down for that marriage, I finally let go and allowed myself to be loved in all the ways I didn’t know I could be.
The trick now is turning that love inward. That has been a ten-year long process, but I see myself differently, better, valuable.
100%. Neuroticism drives women to expect all sorts of things that basically only cause stress and don't provide any real value. A man is not allowed to point this out, though, because that's a challenge to what's seen as a commandment from the God of Housewives or something.
Men, maybe due to the evolutionary process, tend to try and reduce stress, try to avoid extra work that isn't particularly necessary. Perhaps this comes from the hunter gatherer dynamic from ages ago where the male would have to be ready at an instant to hunt or protect, thus in the meantime would be wise to rest up and keep the stress level low as possible.
A male would ask the female if it's really necessary to fold the kids' underwear and neatly organize them by color or theme. The response would typically be "you're lazy, I guess I'll have to do it myself". The premise of the situation is never questioned, not allowed to be questioned.
The stress shall continue! Don't ask why, it just shall, and any protest means that you are lazy, useless, etc.
It's a common pattern seen with those who exhibit relatively high neuroticism: any resistance to their definition of a problem is seen as not recognizing the problem, when it's actually about how to solve the problem, or to prioritize resources by recognizing that maybe other problems are more important to solve first. I think it's related to neurotic people feeling a need to control their environment.
Thousands of years ago, women would typically be controlling their home environment, and only that. Now they have been freed from this limitation, yet maybe evolution has not had time to catch up yet.
Many men are useless at home, but from what I've seen, a lot of this is related to women who refuse to relinquish control, and are deathly afraid of allowing the man in the house to solve a problem in a different way than they would prefer.
The same happens to the children, they are controlled so much that there is no expectation on them to manage anything on their own, which leads to clingy, dependent children.
Feminism stands in the way of telling the women to chill out and maybe stop trying to control everyone and everything.
I don't know, but I've only ever been acquainted with men who didn't see ANY value in EVER vacuuming or dusting, and who left smelly PEE all over the toilet and floor for ME to clean up. My late husband lived here seven years and in all of those years he cleaned the sink and toilet NEVER and scrubbed the shower exactly once. I FUCKING HATED THOSE JOBS. He never dusted, never vacuumed. it was always me.
and the onus of picking out the birthday, christmas gifts, throwing the party, decorating the house, creating memories... all on you. So much of the kids happiness is dependent on moms actions when the dads a slacker... there's a lot of pressure there
I know very few women who could handle ceding control to their husbands on birthday/holiday celebrations. If dad didn’t do it perfectly right there would be problems.
And by “right” I don’t mean that dad doesn’t throw a party at all or does but forgets to order food or something equally disastrous. I mean the food choices won’t be good enough, not enough decorations, and there were 1-2 normal hiccups that mom feels humiliated by and gets super pissed about.
Mom almost always needs to be the one to handle these things and almost always puts too much pressure onto herself for things to be just right, resulting in party throwing being way harder than necessary. I include myself in this group by the way. There’s no world in which I could ever let my husband throw a party, it just wouldn’t be done how I would want it to be. And I’m working on lowering my standards in certain areas and preparing in advance more to lower stress.
I see this take all the time. Who has higher expectations than chips, pizza, cake, and something to drink at a children’s birthday party? I know maybe 2 people who act that way and they judge everyone for everything.
so true or God help you if you miscounted the goodie bags! then theres buying gifts for other kids birthday parties, making sure you spend the right amount and that its something theyll be excited about. And finding the time to shop gor it and wrap it. So many things! And Im not a perfectionist in any sense of the word...
I grew up in a house full of boys, because there was only one girl (me!) we all pitched in so my expectation was that married life would be similar. I was wrong. I had a friend who grew up in a household of women where the women did everything while the men sat around. Im not a perfectionist so I dont really get that argument, I believe it has more to do with your upbringing - how your siblings contributed to the household and how your parents showed each other respect
On average men have a higher tolerance for dirtiness, that is, it's not a priority to them to do something about it unless it reaches a critical level.
On top of that, it's common to get into a routine of expectations about who does what, and women tend to fall into the "I'll just do it myself" trap, which further drives the expectation that this isn't something he is expected to do.
Also, it's common for the man to do some of these tasks and then the woman says they didn't do it "properly" or "good enough" and ends up doing it again anyway, which removes the incentive for the man to do it in the future.
On average the man is expected to do other things that the woman leaves to the man to do in the same manner, such as anything dangerous, requiring large amounts of physical strength or strain, things involving financial risk, etc.
If you truly want to take turns doing these things, expectations need to be set and clear, each person needs autonomy to solve the task in the manner they see fit (within reason), and it has to go both ways.
The most common fallacy I see is that chores are evaluated according to how many minutes they take, yet there are hidden parameters that are actually in play, such as how stressful the task is, how much physical strain is required, the grossness factor, risk (of many kinds), psychological strain (such as having to do a task that has never been done before), etc.
If you set up chores as a market where each part "trades" for which tasks they want to do, I think you'll see that women would gladly "trade" some of the tasks they see as horrible, for a larger amount of smaller, less strenuous, annoying tasks.
If you treat your husband like a child who cannot be trusted to do anything right, they will become a child who cannot do anything right.
The parallel to that is women who never fix anything around the house, who never drive, who never change the tires on the car, who never set up anything technical, who never figure out what expensive things that need to be purchased, who never clean the gutters, etc. A modern trap is for women to expect the men to continue doing all the "man things" but also do half of the rest as well. That's a bad trade.
All that said, it does sound like you've been unfortunate with your men. 😅
Well, we ARE talking about a species that needs to be reminded to take a shower, brush teeth, and shave. I sometimes think a man would be perfectly happy with a potato crate to sit on, one to put the TV on, and a bare light bulb. They have no appreciation for the niceties of life.
Also, the kinds of chores men do take place once a week, once a month, once every few months, once a season. Once every few years. The shit we get stuck with goes on and on, on and on, on and on and on and on. And don’t forget the caregiving of the elderly parents. That ALWAYS gets stuck on the woman.
Then he wonders why she gained weight and let herself go. He wonders why she’s never up for sex anymore.
That wasn’t my husband. but according to therapists, it’s true for a lot of people. Besides, when they’re dating they don’t act like this! Otherwise no one would date them.
OTHERWISE, he was a great and funny guy and we had a good relationship … which was why I just learned to work around it. He wasn’t going to change and I didn’t want to divorce him and we couldn’t afford to hire help, so oh, well.
This is what most women do. But you see how much resentment there can be when another person knows you will take up the slack and just forces you to do it. Don’t be that person.
Im being a bit facetious but I thought men were visual creatures? Are they not adept at spotting things broken, enemies on the front lines, shooting targets etc etc etc. If a man can spot a problem in an engine and fix it they certainly can see dust or dirty dishes. Its a cop out to claim theyre not detailed oriented in the home. Say it like it is and just admit most men dont care about cleaning because they dont *want to*
Far too many men choose not to see these things. It’s not about too high standards, it’s choosing to be lazy. The toilet they don’t wipe up after they left a mess. Never wiping up the crumbs they left on the counter. Sitting 6 feet away from the litter box all evening and choosing not to clean it out daily. Choosing not to notice that bed sheets are disgusting 3 weeks later. All because if they wait long enough, even if it’s weeks, a female in the household will be so disgusted they will break down and clean it up. It isn’t about high standards, it’s about basic health and safety, and avoiding ant or roach infestations.
Its just basic caring for a home and then beyond that respect for your partner. I would never leave a mess for days for someone else. I put things back where they belong. I know where the trash and recycling goes. I dont leave towels and toiletries everywhere. How disrespectful it would be for me to leave dirt and grime on the expensive floors and countertops. I remember cleaning my husband's dresser and side of the bed while he was away on a trip. Added some organization pieces to encourage the maintenance of this space, he was pleased with the results. But, it took two weeks for the disgusting mess to be back. That was three years ago. I will never do it again. 🥲
Men are focused on one thing at a time. That's what it's meant by detail oriented. We can walk by a full garbage can because it is not time to do garbage. He is focusing on something else more important. The garbage won't blow the house up. There are more important priorities
Women are hardwired genetically to focus more attention to detail on stuff that men find tedious. Very helpful when sorting mushrooms and berries that might be poisonous, or when doing accounting work.
But in these modern times women can get caught up in “Why won’t anyone care as much as I do about all these little items on my mental list?”
If a husband sits on his ass day after day and doesn’t clean, cook, or change the diapers, he’s definitely an asshole. But if he’s simply not assigning a high priority to little details that aren’t really important to anyone but the wife, maybe she needs to come to terms with that.
It doesn’t make him a bad “good” husband for not remembering little details he’s not hardwired to assign a high priority to.
I had the same thought regarding the small details. My husband just isn't hardwired to pay attention to those things like I am, which I still remind myself of daily.
The mention that society has programmed women in this way made me pause because I don't believe that it is a societal indoctrination.
If anything, I feel society is programming us to believe that we need a different husband because the one we have isn't good enough.
You make a lot of valid points. I think that we all come from different dynamics that shape how we view roles in relationships — who’s responsible for what, etc.
I was unfortunately shaped in childhood sexual abuse and abandonment, so any semblance of a “normal” household was me looking at my friends’ families, etc.
Where I came from, a lot of women were the sole providers and parents in the home, so there was no man to represent what a healthy dynamic was. When men were present, there usually also abuse and unbalanced responsibility.
I grew up watching men take from women and I thought that was how it was. So, as long as someone picked me, I was willing to endure that. I learned by experience that it wasn’t ok.
I am now married to a man who is a protector and a provider, but he is also learning to allow me to partner with him on both fronts (while I learn to let him lead) and he helps support the physical needs of our household.
We should all, in partnership and mutual agreement, define what is right for our homes. At least that’s how I see it based on what I’ve had to unlearn.
While some, if not most, of what you say is true, I will counter with this: when I divorced my first husband (a “good” one), my household stress levels went down and my house was cleaner (even with a child). I think the expectation of help and not getting it is worse than no help at all.
Additionally, while the husband and kids might be fine if the wife is away for a short period of time, I promise those little concessions compound. Kid 2 wearing kid 1’s shoes might not be a big deal, but what about when kid 2 falls off the playset and breaks an arm because they tripped over shoes two sizes too big? What may seem like a small, inconsequential thing that mom knows (because she’s put in the time and carries the mental load of knowing what belongs to whom) becomes a big issue. Mom gets called anal or obsessive, but these things do matter. And they can’t be assessed after a short absence.
for sure. When my husband is traveling for work I cheerfully clean the house top to bottom and then sit and enjoy it. Having someone scrolling on the couch while doing same is impossible to enjoy.
And I bet money that once you divorced you were still responsible for your child’s doctors visits, signing up for extracurriculars, the first one the school called etc. it’s not as if your ex husband suddenly had to do anything. I’m not married but this is the major argument my married friends have. The husbands just don’t get it
You're right that in these situations, the housework is not what the women in these situations are really concerned about, but it's the lack of leadership and responsibility. These men are acting like kids with their wife as mom, and of course they can take care of some things ok when the wife/mom is gone, the problem is they don't when she isn't.
I suggest that if what you are saying is true, and they have a clear vision for reducing stress by being less on top of the home, the wife would usually be totally fine with that, if they'd lead, communicate, and share the plan. The wives are freaking out, and deeply upset and disappointed, because they don't want to be in charge of everything while the husband relaxes and lets them take care of it all every single time.
If my wife is upset about the state of the house, and I'm too tired to do my part in cleaning it up, I tell her so. I tell her I am too tired to do this right now, and I really dislike not being able to do my part. Would you please take it easy, maybe relax in a warm bath, and let it go for today, and we'll take care of it together tomorrow? Tomorrow I will clean the bathrooms and floors, and you do the dishes and kitchen. Then I actually do it, and I get it done first, before she even gets a chance to do her half.
100%. My husband can lead at work, he can lead in community volunteering, but at home he's a follower and someone I have to manage. The only way to get him to take a task seriously is to give him a task that (1) has consequences that hurt him if it's not done and (2) relinquish it entirely so if he doesn't do it then it will never get done. He is completely incapable of sharing a responsibility with me, and I do not micromanage. My motto is "better a crap job by someone else than any job by me."
SO he has to lead everywhere? Home work and in the community? does he ever get downtime or do you just expect him to grind himself to a pulp for your benefit?
lol wut. I never asked him to volunteer in the community or go for the leadership role at work. He enjoys those things. But when it comes to things that aren't fun, I have to grind myself to a pulp for his benefit? So he can enjoy being the big man where there are lots of accolades while his little lady makes sure he never has to wipe his own butt behind the scenes?
Have you talked to him about this? I think a lot of men implicitly expect traditional gender roles at home without even thinking about the fact that it was based on the wife not having a job outside the home. On the flip side, I see a lot of professional couples where the wife expects the husband to do half the inside housework, but also all of the stereotypical male jobs like fixing the cars, and maintaining the home- which are also a ton of work, and require learning special skills. I had an ex that said those don’t count because they’re “fun for men.” I did know how to do them, but they weren’t “fun” they were just chores to me. Ultimately couples have to explicitly divide up responsibilities these days and not count on cultural assumptions.
We have explicitely discussed chores many times. I have brought up the leadership thing a couple of times but for the most part I let it go as long as he does his part. And fwiw, I do all the yardwork and more of the home maintenance. But I do that because it's fun for me. ;-)
“Women’s standards are too high.” Give me a break. Men have been using that line forever — it’s one of the most-used forms of gaslighting around. Well, guess what? Men’s standards are too low.
BTW, if I ever see someone’s clean sink on Instagram, I’ll let you know. 🙄
So you were able to care for your kids for a few days, a week. Big deal. Take care of them for a month and then we’ll talk. How many of your kids had birthdays during that week? How many major holidays were there? How many relatives came to visit? Were one or more of the kids sick? Did you take any of them to the pediatrician, the dentist, the eye doctor, the ER? How often did you take them shopping for new clothes? How many band/orchestra/choral concerts did you attend? How many sports practices and games?
That’s what I thought.
Just curious, but what happened to those tasks you didn’t get to, that you didn’t “prioritize,” but in all likelihood still needed to be done? Did some magic fairies come in at night, or were those undone tasks waiting for your wife when she got home?
Why does it seem like a man’s answer to this dilemma is almost always “Do less”? Could it be because he knows the less he does, the more she’ll do?
I mean if I only had to hold things together for a week then it would be easy but in a week you can get away with not washing the bed sheets or deep cleaning anything, swapping out different size clothes, doing the school and health admin - you are in survival mode. But you can't make that sustainable over months and years.
I am very type B and do not have high standards but there is a huge difference between just getting the kids fed and to bed and to school in a week and running an entire household over years. The mental load is crushing even with low standards.
I really appreciate this perspective, Arda! Before we got married, I told my husband I’d have as many kids as he could handle on his own for a week. We currently have two and I regularly (2-3 times per year) travel for long weekends or up to a week. The kids are well cared for and have a blast. The house is mostly clean when I come home. Everyone is fed, rested and happy without me leaving a detailed schedule or pre-made meals.
I think a big piece of the equation is not expecting my spouse to do it my way. I’ve learned so much from watching my husband parent. I don’t love everything about his way of doing things (and I know he doesn’t love everything about my way of doing things), but I regularly see ways I’m setting expectations that don’t actually matter or support our core family values.
In my personal experience, there were issues when Dad was in charge. Things were missed that needed to be made up for later or had actual reprocussions. I experienced this as a child and saw it as a mom. Agreed, women can getore drawn into wanting to be 'perfect' but, to be fair, women actually are 'expected' to meet these high standards much more. There is certainly some validity to what you say. In my estimation, from my experience, I would gauge it at about 30-50% accurate. 🤷
For ten years I hectored my husband to wash dishes. He would always claim he did his fair share. I would say that a schedule of dishwashing would ensure this. He would say there's no need to keep score; everyone should do their best.
At our tenth anniversary I did a reckoning, and then I... stopped washing dishes. Unless he did. I matched his energy. After he washed a sinkful, I'd do the next sinkful.
He was incensed. He would rage that the dishes weren't washing themselves. It turned out he *did* notice when the house was messy. He was just used to it cleaning itself. He did a bit of name-calling in his frustration, but I just patiently waited.
After more than 4 months of living in the most disgusting conditions, he wrote up standards for cleanliness that he said we needed to maintain. He wrote up a schedule of dishwashing and cleaning. I accepted it, and we have been on pretty good terms ever since.
It wasn't quite as straight as this. I will say the book Fight Right helped us a lot as well. I know there are husbands who are not like this, who would live like pigs to avoid helping their wives. And I think that might clarify who is actually a good, if oblivious husband and who is taking advantage.
many women divorce because their husbands sit on the couch all weekend watching sports while they manage the family, yards, and household. Not what we signed up for, modern day slavery
I make twice what my husband makes and carry the insurance for our family. We probably work about the same though he coaches which has some long hours but he also has his summers off (teacher). I cook/shop almost all our meals, do (or oversee) all the household laundry except my husband’s, do everything for the yard and pool except mow, handle all the “fix-it” items around the house, handle my own car maintenance, manage all the finances for our family from bills to retirement investments and oversee most holidays and gift giving. He does oversee the kids’ sports but that’s tricky because I am not on the contact lists and I’m usually the one taking them to and from practice and managing our calendar. I don’t think my standards are too high (I clean sheets once a month and just want the washer filter cleaned out annually). I once read an article about how of all combinations of adults, single men had the shortest life expectancy. One of the major contributions was engagement in their community which includes things like wearing a red shirt on red shirt day at school. You may say these things aren’t important (and I agree somewhat, if you miss one, no big deal) but to continually ignore the importance of these things in life (red shirt day, get togethers with friends, traveling, meaningful time and/or gifts with loved ones) is actually important in life. So when my husband says that I do too much unnecessarily, it’s deeply hurtful. A life with little outside interaction, eating dinners of cereal and frozen pizza off paper plates, sheets never cleaned or floors never vacuumed, this is my husbands standard so of course anything beyond this is “too much” and all on me. It’s exhausting and hard and sometimes I don’t see an end. I have 2 boys and I’m trying my best to help them become good future members of a household. To have some minimal household standards and be a willing part of work done inside the home. Wish me luck ❤️
At 67 years old, I fall into the generation written about in that NYT editorial. I was very involved in coaching my kids sports but my wife carried a much bigger load with the everyday responsibilities (while also working a demanding job). I did far more than my father had done and now I observe my adult son doing far more than I did. My experience is that each generation of men is doing more, moving closer to 50/50 with the current generation of young men.
Wow. It takes men only a generation to navigate a few more steps toward doing their fair share. That’s remarkable.
Meanwhile, in a single generation and at most two, women went from being predominantly stay-at-home mothers to being mothers with full-time careers — and they still carried the load at home. All it took was contraceptives, reproductive rights, and higher education and careers opening their doors to women for them to excel.
Yet men still plodded along. That’s good that you do more than your father did, but it sounds like he set the bar pretty low. My son does way more than his father ever did, who does more than his father did, which was essentially nothing. But men need to step it up. They still have a long way to go to get to 50/50. Women aren’t going to wait many more generations.
You make a fair point and sound like a conscientious husband and father. That being said, this does not mean that every woman is similar to your wife or every man is similar to you.
From a cultural perspective there are different for sure, there are many unhappy women cross culturally who remain in unhappy marriages because society/culture dictates or they just believe it's the way it should be.
I was raised within such a family and saw the consequences of that, I don't choose that for myself or for my child. I don't choose it for any woman.
There has to be transparency and openness of communication to discuss what is and isn't helpful without shame, blame or ego, this is the very least and foundation of healthy respect and a mature relationship. If this can't be achieved then it's more healthy for those all around to consider separating. Yes, it's less than ideal - more stressful and more costly but that's because it requires adaptation. The cost to wellbeing and the generational impact is too high to remain in a situation most because it looks like it's easier in the short run.
Couldn't agree more, although I come from a patriarchal culture and definitely absorbed too much of the 'he doesn't beat you, he doesn't get drunk, he works, what have you got to be unhappy about' and kept the marriage going for far too long. Finally got divorced because he was cheating on me, but the interesting thing is that my sons (then 13 and 11) instantly asked: 'Are you getting divorced because he never does anything around the house?'
I let my wife take care of everything. When I do things she gets incredibly stressed. I used to mow the lawn: she got a lawn service. I used to work on the cars: she hired a mechanic. I planned parties: she vetoed half the guest list. I make a ton of money: she works full-time. She plans our exercise, menu, clothing, recreation, vacations, friend activities. The television is set to whatever she wants to watch. And it’s all fine by me, why wouldn’t it be? Sometimes she will come home from a busy day at work, and then if I’ve beaten her home, she will ask “Where’s dinner?” I’ll say “Oh, sorry, I will cook tomorrow.“ Five minutes later, she’s telling me what we’ll have for dinner the next night.
Even if this is true, which I’m not convinced about, the more likely explanation isn’t that single women are more miserable — it’s that SSRI use and mental health care is sadly much more stigmatized for men. Men also have higher suicide rates than women. So clearly, using SSRIs is an indicator of the willingness and access to mental health care, not overall happiness.
Stats show that married moms actually do more labor at home than single moms. And that widowed women are far less likely to remarry. I’m personally happily married but being a single woman doesn’t sound so bad when you compare marriage to most men (luckily not true for me).
I was married and a father with two children by the age of 24. When the kids were small, I changed many many diapers and did many many 2 AM feedings. Drove kids to the doctor and school, coached Little League, sat on the PTA. The only household chore I was forbidden was laundry, because of my tendency to throw everything into one load. That was completely unacceptable.
This constant drum beat of stories concerning men behaving like spoiled, lazy little boys is like reports from some alien world. They don’t sound real to me, they sound like rhetoric and propaganda. I can only conclude the most women authors are liars, or that modern men or woefully infantilized. Given evidence from other sources, the latter seems more likely.
And if you’ve lived long enough you’ll see the pattern that women without families are pretty miserable, in general. It’s a basic biological need for them. You’re whole body is designed for one thing, when you don’t do it your brain does everything to coerce you into it, including making you miserable.
I take it from your name and biological essentialism that you are likely a male person? I have not seen what you describe at all. I have a long life and lots of experiences and relationships, including a 37 year marriage, children, a recently concluded big career and lots of relationships and friendships around the world. I would say on this subject that the most happy people I know are coupled without children, or single moms (who have enough resources to support their households).
Many many couples I know transformed from relative equality to gendered inequality and frustration as soon as they had children. And that change comes primarily from the man acting as though his wife/partner has some magical capability to parent that is innate, and failing to step up to the huge amount of additional work occasioned by managing children's needs in addition to the general household. Sure, he'll roughhouse with the kids or take them on a fun adventure, but day in day out he will not notice what's needed in the (countless) moments when action is needed to meet the family's needs. Partly it's the male one-track mind vs the multitasking capabilities of women (whether these are innate or trained into us is not really material), and sure, parts of the im balance may arise from the woman's assumption of her greater competence at the household and child management role. (The latter is often realistic, given that girls tend to be 'trained' while growing up to be more involved in household tasks, or emotional.management, but whatever the reason, this still can create a dynamic that the man responds to by shutting down, instead of asking to learn.) But the (male partner's) consistent assumption that he can "help" in between his own activities, while the woman can only pursue her own interests after competing the childcare/home duties, is corrosive to relationships - and INCREDI KY COMMON. When my husband had a massive disabling stroke at 64, my 19 y.o. daughter said " well our family is luckier than most people in this situation, because you already take care of everything". Sad but true - though I think we would find our situation to actually resemble most heterosexual American parent/family situations.
If we look at all the places that are happiest they are all traditional societies with iron clad sex roles.
We can say we’re happy, but half the country needs brain pills to get through their day.
We are a failed society and a failed culture, we cannot even replace ourselves. All American society since 1960 has been is a warning to others on the future about how not to do things.
Anything you can point to in the way the modern American family organizes and comports itself it either a cause or symptom of this failure. We’re a dying corpse of a people, and these’s no going back. All we can do now is pontificate on the reasons behind our collapse as a coherent people and civilization. We are a stark object lesson to the future, not a sustainable model that should be copied. We have done the opposite of the “right thing” at every turn for 8 decades, and the evidence is piled up all around us in the form of deracinated people with absolutely no meaning or identity in their lives. We created an American race of bug people, human yeast that has no purpose or direction to its existence. We deserve to die out.
Essentialist much? “All the places that are the happiest”? how old are you - fifteen? Pretty early to be collapsing into passivity - you know what “real men” (and “real women”) do? They engage with their society and their family and build for a better future, Iintead of sitting around their mom's basement feeling superior.
The amount of insecure men in these comments who feel like they just have to share their little narratives about why they are really the put-upon good guys in these situations is hilarious.
It's true, men really shouldn't complain, ever. Especially if the audience is women. Whining about one’s problems and seeking emotional validation is a womanly thing.
And that’s part of what makes your gender not just sick and injured as people, but just plain fucking boring…the fact that you think feelings are womanly things. You cut off half of yourself and then blame us for why you’re hurting…and then you treat us like shit, exploit our labor, and rape us because you’re walking around half of a person and in pain.
If you think men should embrace their feelings, maybe calling them insecure for sharing their perspective and telling them to go away isn't going to be a winning strategy.
I know that as a man you’ve been taught to believe from birth that your perspective is automatically the most important thing in the discussion and that women especially should always welcome your comments and perspective (and sexual interests and telling us to smile more and so on), but the reality is that most of us don’t care. If you want us to care, do the work on yourselves *first*, then come talk to us when *we* want to talk to you.
This was a post for women, written by a woman, about a woman’s perspective. You are not wanted. You are not special. Your perspective is not privileged. Go away.
Okay, that’s it, everyone who is either male or doesn’t agree with everything in the original post, show yourselves out.
Actually, hold on a second…I’m being told that it’s not actually true that some random person with an extremely unearned sense of self-importance gets to declare herself the arbiter of everyone’s engagement with a Substack article that she didn’t write and on which commenting was made open to anyone with an account. So, as you were.
Also has anyone ever seen Alice and Kat Highsmith in the same room? I find it hard to believe anyone real is actually like this, whereas it would be trivially easy to train an AI LLM on jezebel.com and Jessica Valenti’s Bluesky account and create a bot from it that would post comments indistinguishable from Alice’s here.
Yes, yes, it’s all an evil conspiracy to trick men into revealing yet again how awful they are. I, a person with a completely different blog with an obviously different writing style and content and who is easily searchable as a separate person is actually the same person as the author. You are truly very clever. You should be proud.
It's not a post for women, if it was it'd be on a website which is only accessible to women to read and comment on. By posting it out in public where it's visible for all, and by having comments open to all, clearly it is a post for all to read and comment on.
Do you really think that making statements about women's biological impulses is showing your feelings? If a man here wants to talk about his uncertainties about how to coparent, or concerns that his wife expects too much or whatever kind of FEELINGS this post gave rise to for him, I'm sure no.one would be pushing back. But when all you trolls come in here making statements about what makes women happy or how we should behave that is not sharing your feelings, that is just vomiting up preconceived bullshit into what was a sincere discussion.
Wow, the jump to rape is a bit extreme. I prefer enthusiastic consent, thank you. Don't paint a whole sex as rapists for the like <1% that do.
No, men understand the world does not care about your feelings. Feelings are a luxury. A predator cares not of your fear of death. Starvation doesn't change with feelings. Natural law does NOT care about your feelings.
Men feel that if something bothers us, try and do something to change it, or deal. Feelings are motivational at best. They accomplish nothing on their own.
I think the dynamic that men are reacting (sometimes very badly) to in this kind of discourse is "she decides the grading standard and then he is measured to it". If I understood the gist of the original essay here, it's "there's too much grade inflation."
But there's an irony here - often the complaint is not "he doesn't take out the garbage" but "he doesn't own the responsibility." E.g. she wants help with the management, not just the grunt work.
But there can't be sharing of the responsibility without sharing of the grading standard. "Be more invested and present in this thing with me, but I totally own what the thing is" is a big ask.
I think the main issue here is women give more of a shit on average than men and then expect men to give more shits when they get married.
Women are failing themselves by not clearly defining the level of shits they give before they tie the knot.
They should be asking "Will you clean the house on your own without me asking when it reaches the level of dirtiness I deem unacceptable or will you continue to do it when you deem appropriate even if it upsets me?" It might seem robotic, but "will you help clean?" just really doesn't get the point across about what women are looking for.
People need to find partners who give an equal number of shits. My wife and I have been together for ten years and we both give relatively little shits. It's worked out perfectly. We haven't had a real argument in close to 4 years.
I did, though. I married a guy who very clearly stated that we should be splitting the housework equally since we were both going to do 40hrs a week paid labor. And then... he just didn't. So I structured it as alternating days of dishes/cooking and alternating months of laundry. And again he just... didn't. By that I mean 30 days would pass, the laundry wouldn't get done, and then it would be my turn again, now with backlog. And if I pointed this out I was accused of "keeping score."
I guess so. Or else he didn't change much. However, I too acquired over 30 pairs of underwear and learned to outwait him. He does his part now, but it was a long training process. He's not a shitty guy, but he was a bad partner. That's precisely the problem this post is about. How do you take a generally good guy and get him to be a good partner?
I’m not questioning your account, but there are a fair amount of cases where the female partner has unreasonable or idiosyncratic standards, or where she delegates tasks but retains supervisory authority. Which means she either nags when things are done, but not to her precise specifications, or she sighs and just redoes the work. If one has very precise standards, one should probably take over the task entirely. In my house, I do most of the cooking, because I am just better at it than my wife. She does baking, when baking is called for, because baking does not lend itself to my improvisational style. And we both do dishes, but I clean the cast iron, because I have a very specific ritual, which she refuses to master.
There are indeed guys who won’t do anything, but nobody wants to do things only to be inundated with one’s perceived faults.
Also, out of house work does count. If one partner is working full time and the other is a stay at home spouse, the one who isn’t bringing money kind of has more responsibility at home. One of the Substack authors who writes in the women-complain-about-men genres was roundly roasted when she told how she presented her husband — who ran his own financial advisory firm — with a list of tasks and demanded he take half. She was outraged when he provided a list of things he had to do for clients and said that his bringing in money should be taken into account.
And some female demands really are unreasonable or onerous. Or maybe could use a bit of flexibility. I know a couple, now divorced, where mom used to have daily screaming matches getting daughter, then age seven, ready for school. Dad said he’d take over the school prep job. He accomplished it, no screaming required. Well, when mom saw daughter, she blew her stack. To be clear, daughter’s dress wasn’t inappropriate or revealing, or something a child shouldn’t wear. She wasn’t wearing a micro miniskirt with fishnet stockings or some such. No, her socks didn’t match and her shirt clashed with her pants, allegedly. Mom wondered why dad had picked such a mismatched outfit and dad explained he let the daughter pick her own outfit within the boundaries that it had to be school-appropriate. They ended up following dad’s no argument approach, but mom nagged and complained and yelled constantly about how awful the daughter’s idiosyncratic dress made them look. In fact, she had an offbeat Punky Brewster look and was generally very charming.
About six years later, during the divorce, the girl showed up with her own lawyer (the mother of a school friend) and claimed her mom was emotionally abusive and asked for her father to be given sole custody with no visitation. Dad got custody, but the judge didn’t go along with the no visitation request. After college, the girl did go no-contact with her mom.
I think we can agree that there's quite a spectrum of possible ways chore-division in a marriage can go. We can all look at the worst extremes and point fingers in the gender wars. It certainly makes online life more interesting.
I agree that female gatekeeping and too-high expectations are a thing.
Can you agree that men underperforming in order to avoid responsibility is also a thing? I've seen both, as well as several ambiguous cases.
Do we really believe there are absolute rules in this space? All (wo)men are at fault always?
Here's an ambiguous case my friend had recently. She had to take a work call, and asked her husband to keep the 2yo alive and away from her while she took the call in the dining room. Husband sat on couch in living room scrolling on phone while toddler wandered into the kitchen where knives were out on the counter in full reach. Later, he wandered into the dining room and mom had to call husband to remove him. Wife argued that husband failed to perform. Husband said "everything was FINE. Nothing bad happened." I think we can all agree there's fault to go around here.
Here's a less ambiguous case I witnessed personally. We were at dinner with friends. They had three young children, including a 2yo boy. The wife (who had worked a full day and then prepared and served a really nice dinner) left the table to put the older children to sleep. She asked her husband to keep an eye on the toddler. The toddler climbed up the couch and fell over the back and started screamed. The husband did not move from the table or miss a beat in his conversation. The wife ended up having to interrupt bedtime, come down, sooth the toddler, and take him up to disturb bedtime for the older two. My husband said he lost all respect for the man.
Here's another less ambiguous case. Husband told wife he'd love if she could pick up a French apple brandy when she traveled through duty-free. He did not mention what it was called. She couldn't reach him in the airport, and ended up spending 20 min researching French apple brandy and going to five different duty-free shops in order to find it. She was enraged at him for making her do this. I think we can all agree that most of this "making her do this" was in her head. A normal person would have just gone home.
To some extent, this sort of thing is a normal part of marriage. Nobody is going to hit all the balls all the time. But when the behavior becomes pervasive and nobody is open to reconsidering or changing their position, then we have a real problem. At some point you have to be able to give a little and say "fine, I'll keep the kid away the kitchen knives but take your call on a different floor ffs". If neither party is willing to budge, or if only one party budges again and again while the other doesn't, frustration mounts and a schism is going to happen.
And just because being an asshat worked for ten years, doesn't mean it will work for the next ten. "I had no idea this was coming" is a dumb response to a divorce.
I think I’d agree about your specific intuitions. I think there is a big gap between doing nothing and failing to perform tasks to precise and meticulous standards.
I do think it’s somewhat more common for women to randomly device they are unfulfilled and end a marriage for no reason. In my experience, quite a few of those women end up being shocked to find out that male attention is less forthcoming at 55 than it was at 25.
I just left someone (we weren't married, but we were together for seven years. No children.) who I do think would've shared the project manager load with me fairly well. He's neater than I am. He doesn't have too much trouble staying on top of his chores (I do). He can't relax when there's clutter around. He can cook fine and was willing to. He would've been a good dad.
But the EMOTIONAL labor part wasn't there. He was not comfortable being vulnerable with me. I felt like I knew the inner worlds of all my girlfriends (and some guy friends) better than his. He didn't seem to be curious about mine. He wasn't interested in growing as a person or growing our shared relationship.
But I stayed so long because....he would've been a good task manager? He did make my life easier in some ways that having another person to fall back on does. There's so much conversation about men being useless that I thought I had to stay with mine who actually wasn't useless. Until I finally decided that I needed more. I wish I DIDN'T need more and I could just be happy with a task manager, but it's 2025. I want it all or nothing. Maybe this means I will be alone forever.
But in general I just want to encourage women to pick the bar up off the floor. Marriages were meant for so much more, I think. I sure hope so, anyway.
This is another huge piece of it. Emotional labor also takes energy and is tiring when you're the only one putting the effort in. Relationships take emotional effort.
I guess going into emotional labor is the first step to birthing emotional babies.
" Until I finally decided that I needed more." - Why dress this all up in a Disney princess song? If you don't love him and want to leave - leave.
But all of this speaks to a guilty conscience - of leaving for selfish and shallow reasons. "I don't really love him and made a mistake" is enough - you don't need to find whole articles online posing rationalizations - UNLESS - the women want to use all this to look like the true victim and thereby gain concessions in life.
The emotional effort in a healthy relationship is not draining but energizing.
I do have a guilty for conscience for how long I stayed when I wasn't sure. I want marriage and kids VERY badly and I found a pretty good guy by society's standards to do those things with, so yes, it was hard to leave.
How much of a deep, emotional connection can I realistically expect from a man (who was socialized to never show emotions, never be vulnerable)? That was the question I wrestled with and tried to talk to him about.
I'm not a victim in this situation, but I am wondering how well we've equipped men to meet emotional needs for their partners...I don't need a house cleaner or a car fixer as much as I need depth and connection.
I hope you don’t find a man who opens up and is vulnerable but end up not liking him for being too emotional. A lot of women look for that until they get it. This is a big problem men seem to have to grapple with the last few years; women getting the “ick” because he’s emotional and she wonders if he’s stable enough to handle her emotions if he’s got so many of his own. Something to be mindful of. Good luck out there!
Yes because what it actually is missing in what she describes above is presence. Actually being there emotionally and present fully with the person. And without that it really just like living with a co worker in a version of an at home office. So many relationships end like this because people don’t know how to be present with their partner. Presence is everything.
> But the EMOTIONAL labor part wasn't there. He was not comfortable being vulnerable with me. I felt like I knew the inner worlds of all my girlfriends (and some guy friends) better than his. He didn't seem to be curious about mine. He wasn't interested in growing as a person or growing our shared relationship.
You kind of make it sounds like getting to know each other’s “inner worlds” are a set of relationship video game achievements you need to earn. There is no relationship ladder, only the relationship you’d like to have. Sounds like he’s just not interested in having the kind of relationship you want. It’s ok to dislike that and end it, but that’s not the only way to have valid relationships.
I think modern people expect too much of our partners sometimes. You have girlfriends you can do this kind of thing with, why does it have to be him? Does he have to be everything to you? If you’re unhappy and can only enjoy very emotionally intense relationships, then that’s alright. You probably did the right thing by ending it. But for those of us who like less intense relationships, we’re not doing life wrong or having growth stunted relationships.
But the "emotional labor part wasn't there" - what you are describing sounds to me like "the emotional *intimacy* wasn't there."
I want to point to this distinction because I while I think emotional intimacy in a relationship takes effort (especially for us men who have sometimes been socially conditioned to _never be emotionally vulnerable_), it's a different from the work that I sometimes see called "emotional labor" of a household (maybe epitomized by "I have to send flowers to my husband's mother on her birthday because he won't bother").
I think the distinction is also important because in the argument about "helps run the household" and husbands who don't pull their weight, the other side of the coin is sometimes husbands not having a say in what the work is. I am strongly of the opinion that if both members of a marriage don't agree on what the husband doing a good job is, that's a bigger problem than whether he does a good job.
By comparison, if you decide you need emotional intimacy in your long term romantic relationship, that's great that you've identified what is important to you. Your partner could say "I don't want that" and maybe y'all aren't compatible, but he can't possibly tell you what your own needs are.
I completely agree with all of this. You're right — there is a distinction. I think it's important to talk as specifically as you can about what your expectations (or at least hopes are) for your future partnership and see if that's something the person you're dating can get excited about or on board with. I think a good marriage is a little give and take, a little compromise, and a LOTTTTT of honest communication.
I agree that in the emotional labor conversation (and literal household maintenance conversation) the standards that you're holding each other to HAVE TO BE AGREED UPON and partners should try their hardest not to micromanage each other about *how* they get to these standards.
Hmmm...I don't think that "women routinely freaked out when their husbands broke down during therapy" implies "Men are right not be vulnerable".
I think it does imply "men are playing it safe by not being vulnerable."
Also, can you be more specific about "freaked out"? Since your professor was the counselor running the session, what did he think a good resolution was?
I'm strongly Terry Real-pilled...my view is that men live less full lives for not being emotionally connected to other people, and if there are women who are bothered by men who are not emotionally shut down, they'll have to widen their ideas of what men can be.
(You can gender invert this to get a sense of how I feel about it. "Women are right not to have careers. ...he said that men routinely freaked out when their wives said they prioritize their own careers during therapy.")
Ben I agree with your take about men missing out on life, not being emotionally connected to other people.
This is why pornography is becoming more and more rampant, because it capitalizes on men's innate human desire to connect to others, but not have the skills to do so.
I myself am embarking on the path of learning to reach out and connect to others on a deeper level, and to express my emotions and regulate them in healthy ways.
I also think that it is 100% True that Women want more vulnerable partners; in fact, they need it for the exact reasons this post talks about. The problem with men breaking down in front of their partners isn't that women are lying about the fact that they want vulnerable partners; it's that they realize that men cannot regulate their emotions properly, which isn't a sign of a stable partner.
I think all of this is right, especially the part about regulation. I think "I can hide my emotions, or I can dump them into my relationship without managing them at all and hope my partner can emotionally regulate both of us" is a false dichotomy!
My thoughts exactly. This is why its important that before and during a committed relationship men (and people in general) should not just work on their external success but their internal self as well. Especially emotional regulation.
So I was going to say that there's a big difference between being open, sharing, and thus vulnerable (on one hand) vs being a dysregulated guy who is overwhelmed by his own strong emotions and is looking for a partner to provide emotional regulation _for_ him.
But if it's in therapy I'd hope that's a safer environment.
This is what I also thought, reading this post. It seems less like a practical load for women in these situations. With both my mother and sisters, I see that when they feel so tired all the time and feel like they are doing the absolute most (and usually are), it's not because they are not physically capable of getting everything done. Women naturally have a much better natural capability to multitask, while men are naturally better at driving forward and tunneling on a single task.
It's often not the actual physical load, but the emotional stress and pressure that leads to these feelings of misery. I was taught by my father that in situations like this, it's about the emotional support, not leaving your partner to deal with things alone, even if she really can do it all, doesn't mean she has to feel like she's doomed to be buried under the to-do list of life.
I think besides communicating well, and having conversations about a matter, another thing to do is to take time out of our own schedules, and offer to take over 1 or 2 tasks off her list. For my sisters, my mother, and my aunts, I noticed that when I said "well, for this week, I can make time to handle this for you..." even if its just washing dishes, or looking after small children, or getting the groceries, it takes a huge emotional weight off of them.
it doesn't matter if you work full time, if your wife is a stay-at-home mom, or if you are a "good father" or "kind person"; you can make time in your life for the people that mean something to you.
Stay at home mum isn't a hard job, except maybe when the kids are really tiny. If someone's having problems with it it's likely unrelated to the actual things they have to do, they probably just have mental problems, are socially isolated, physically unhealthy or something like that.
Yes, my wife sometimes goes overseas to visit her family for a few months at a time and I have to take over her roles. I manage to do it while running my business, which is a 40-50 hour/week job. And not a memos and email, fucking around in an office job either. More if things are going crazy.
My wife would be the first to admit that she doesn't actually have that much to do. She's a happy and relaxed person, enjoying her life. That's rubbed off on the kids, which to me is the point of the whole thing, not a 'who does what' keeping score scenario where everyone's living out some egocentric self-actualisation fantasy.
I have to work way harder than my wife, I'm not going to cry about it, it's just what life is.
Men don't want relationships, they want ownership. Yeah mask off. Thinking that a man is going to stoop down to your level and "emotionally" connect with you on any level is retarded, and you'll eventually get the ick from his simp behavior.
Imagine using the phrase "project manager" to refer to your spouse or significant other like they're some sort of business colleague. No wonder there wasn't any "emotional intelligence" - you treated him like a fucking coworker.
Emotional bonds for men and women are different in the same way that the roles we play in life which cultivate those bonds are different. I would love my wife if I owned her and she wasn't trouble; women love their husband when they have an aura to them and fuck them well.
there may be an unresolvable tension between heterosexual partners. each of us is the product of our culture as experienced by each generation, and our genetic heritage. a perfect match is likely impossible. a truly balanced sharing of household "chores" is against our slowly evolving cultural standards, but possible. finding a partner willing to work at the partnership in its various areas, really, really hard. it takes work to change even if you want to change. perhaps it is the effort done every day that makes a pairing work. people change and drift apart, perhaps few relationships last more than a couple decades in the 21st century. but a run of 12-20 years with mostly good memories is a lucky love.
btw, had to laugh because my hopefully third wife is an emotional disaster and i have never cried heartbroken as much in my life because she isn't able to step outside of her drama and support me in my struggles. sounds like you were with a guy too locked up to share his fears and guilt. it goes in both directions, but mostly it is men not understanding what commitment towards a marraige requires (constant effort and gratitude).
Hi Alex. Sorry to hear about your lost guy but everything comes down to trust. The vulnerability women expect from their men only comes many years later. Men can be vulnerable with each other because we don't throw that vulnerability in each other faces. Most men don't trust that their women won't throw that vulnerability back at them. There is a reason why depression is up significantly with women. Marriages were also responsible for the sharing of the emotional labor and of duties. The emotional labor component is very important to women but nothing is thought of the duties. That guy you left will be alright, he already has some of the components needed and will develop whatever men lack in the initial part of a relationship later. The average good guy/task manager always does.
There is an okay chance he already knew what you felt, and it is never attractive for a man to share his feelings overmuch. He probably knew this instinctively. Maybe he was uninterested in you altogether, which would obviously precipitate separation eventually.
Amen. So much self imposed stress in the wife-o-sphere. Half the “mental load” was never needed by anybody.
Favorite foods? Mental load? I never asked my wife to stress over all that. She never needed to. Nobody did. Life goes on fine. Just enjoy not having to work and soak up the kiddos. Every other social media post is more complaining from empowered divorced wives.
There is a huge disconnect between men and women today and it’s sad. I think social media is driving much of it. That, divorce law, and maybe the glut of romance fantasy books. Who knows. Marriage was a nice idea until I tried keeping her happy only to still be labeled a narc husband.
Bill, my sense (as someone who unsatisfactorily shared household and family work with my husband for many decades) is that single parenting may be practically more challenging but emotionally easier because there's no debate about how to love and teach and raise kids. You can bring them up without being triangulated on critical conversations or decisions, which looks like a great relief.
how many more left leaning think pieces like “men bad” does the world need? have these women tried communicating with their husbands? who does this serve exactly? dudes like you who can repost and share to signal you’re One Of The Good Ones? It’s so fucking tiring.
The author says women are “gaslighting themselves”? Because they think their husband is Not That Bad? lol. do women have agency or not?
I can't help but wonder how much of this is about the absence of continual discussion and negotiation between couples. What worked for our relationship twenty years ago doesn't work now. We've both changed, our standards have changed, and the responsibilities we have to our family have changed. Frustration creeps up when the conditions change but the terms of the partnership don't adapt accordingly.
One example I'll share is when we decided it was time for me to return to graduate school. My wife worked full-time to support the family financially. She told me, in no uncertain terms, if she was the full-time bread winner, I was taking most of the responsibility for the home and the kids. In particular, I remember her telling me, "I want a clean bathroom and the floors to be scrubbed at least weekly." It was her job to be clear and direct and my job to listen and respect her needs.
Years later when she went to graduate school (while working full-time), we discussed it again. Since I was also working full-time, we agreed to hire a housekeeper once a month for a deep clean, but I would still up my game a bit while she focused on her studies.
We've been doing this for so long that we can sense when the other is frustrated. Sometimes that means we need to recalibrate our workload distribution. Other times, we just acknowledge that one of us is pissing the other one off. Just saying that out loud takes some of the tension out of the equation--even if we can't make things perfect in that moment.
I don't want to come across as a perfect, but I'll tell you reason that I think my wife is happy with our division of labor. The reason I think we are in a good place now is because, over thirty years of marriage, she has told me when she's unhappy with my contributions. I've done the same with her.
I’m 12 years in versus your thirty, but more and more it seems to me that marriage advice is stupid simple and can be summed up by the cliche “communication.” Probably if you’re already in the hole (and no longer trust each other) it’s more complicated than that. But if you can keep it up enough to stay out of the hole in the first place, it’s simple.
The point of marriage isn't the housework of running a home. It's a soul connection, a meeting of minds, a decision to be together and do the best you can to keep the other happy. Unless you consider a woman's only priority to be housework, a husband not being helpful around the home doesn't matter all that much.
My grandma was horrible around the house. Her food was barely nutritious. She had an awful emotional temperament and raised her kids with issues. She made excellent sweets though. My grandpa otoh made all the money, was an excellent chef because he was a food scientist (his homemade preserves were legendary), and if we'd visit him when grandma was away visiting relatives, the house would be neat as a pin. My dad barely did a thing around the house and I was very shocked when he made me instant noodles once. And I complain about having so much housework but I found i don't even do an hour a day of housekeeping. I'm the one who finds all the Christmas presents and I complain about it, but it involves browsing Etsy and Amazon, is that so hard.
And it's all fine, because the point of marriage isn't housework, just like the point of marriage isn't kids. It's love, connection and whatever it is you agree upon is your contribution to making the other's life better.
My grandpa was no picnic though. He was exacting about standards and the only person who could put up with that was someone whose self esteem was not dependent on those things.
I don't particularly empathize with the women who complain about their husbands not helping around the house tbh. They remind me of my mom. She always complains about her kids being messy, but once we moved out, it hit us we didn't mind tidying, we just didn't want to be tidying around her because in her eyes we were always doing it wrong. I wouldn't be surprised if 80% of the whiners were like my mom.
I don't have issues of inequality in my marriage, and that is because I spent the initial few years making my husband feel like the house and what it looks like is also his domain and he gets to pick what art goes on the walls even if it doesnt go with my taste. He grew up in a house where they ate a lot of canned food and cleaned once a week tops because everyone worked long hours, so he's not the best at standards, but he has better follow-through than me. So it works out.
Yeah I don't think the issue is neurotic women, I know plenty of "type B" moms who struggle majorly with this and it's not because they need things to be perfect, it's because they need things to be done. People need clean clothes to wear, food in their lunchboxes, and clean bowls to put cereal in.
The problem isn't type-A or type-B. I see messy houses where the husband is like "oh she has all the ideas, I just stay out of it and do the heavy lifting when she asks". My parents house wasn't the golden standard of tidy either. Being a control-freak isn't about perfection. It's about having an idea in your head about how things are going to go and not enjoying it when it deviates from that idea, and, often, expecting everyone to read your mind for your ideas and then being mad when they don't. They still want to be the sole arbiter of the home domain, because that's how they've seen/experienced it done.
And another part of the problem is just taking on more than you can do and not realizing it. I've been guilty of this. If you're both working long hours and have kids, maybe you're not going to be able to sort laundry into multiple loads (I've talked about this online on multiple women-oriented subreddits, and everyone seems to take laundry more seriously than I do). Maybe you can't handle a lawn, just put down weed cloth and woodchips. Maybe there are going to be barbies on the floor all the time.
I notice generally that women who complain about their husbands being incompetent at home don't actually mind their husbands are incompetent at these things - it makes them feel like domestic goddesses in comparison. The complaining is a kind of bragging or trying to feel better/equivalent - 'oh he might be a big dude at work, but at home, I've to remind him to take the trash out'. I wonder if some of it is a luxury thing - you've made it according to male expectations if your wife can lose money on a business. Maybe you've made it according to female expectations if you can deal with your husband making a giant mess to be happy. The next time some such woman is complaining IRL, try being outraged on her behalf and see how quickly she changes her tone (I've done this earnestly when I didn't know how these things worked).
Bottomline - I believe people are competent and rational. If women are happy being married to men who don't do chores much, it must mean the chores don't matter so much. If it becomes a real issue, people usually hire a cleaner. When that is an option, if people are getting divorced over chores, it usually means other things are wrong in the marriage and the chores are just what you say to your friends.
Your mom sounds a lot like mine. She doesn’t see my version of clean as valid and gets offended if I can clean up quicker than she can, like even if she can’t see how I did it differently from her, somehow it’s cheating to have done it faster.
Spot on. this is the best comment in the section. A lot of the women here never valued the men they were with, not really. Maybe the men also didn't value the women back. goid luck with the next guy.
I have to remember things at work and at home. Need help with that? Get a planner. Get a calendar. You can literally just go to the calendar app on your phone and put things down so you dont even have to buy one. It even reminds you so you don't have to do all the remembering yourself!
We need America to dissolve. It should be replaced with warring tribes who constantly raid each other, stealing women to make them wives or concubines. Only then will women realize, “oh, this is why men are different - so that they can fight off the invader, and prevent the desecration that comes with subjugation.”
Amen. Instead women want men to be worried that the doilies haven't been dusted in 2 days and the floor hasn't been spit shined a 3 days. Women are the victims of some shitty chore mandates that they constructed in their own heads, then they get pissed when men don't want to follow their mandates. Next they are going to complain that men lack leadership skills and are simply following their wives demands
Do you mean the man you chose to submit to when you married him? If you have a problem, go to the elders of your church - that’s what they are there for.
You know what I have noticed? Women today aren’t doing so great with marriage in comparison to women 80 years ago. Perhaps you ought to have more humility.
Boy howdy I'm reminded every day how glad I am that I will not have children.
I'm completely terrified of being the so-called "good husband," and that's just with the two of us here. I can't imagine how much more stressful it would be with kids.
I'm so glad that you've found someone like you have. Aaron is the best of all of us.
There are several outraged comments, wow! I think there's some merit to the idea that there are ~some~ women that have way too high standards, but when it's such a common thing that comes up, I think it's dismissive to say that all women have high standards and are expecting too much of men. Maybe we're just trying to equal the load, the one that we've been socialized to see, the one we are going to be judged on. And this is coming from a messy person, who definitely has several dust bunnies chillin in plain sight. (Cause also, this isn't just about cleaning. This is about grocery shopping, laundry, cooking, scheduling, the list goes on)
I will say it is tiring to constantly see women defending a man as good when they're doing the bare minimum expectation, or mistreating them constantly. No, the man forgetting your birthday and anniversary each year is not good. I guarantee that man has a calendar he can use.
I think for the average man that wasn't socialized to notice these things when young, if he is willing to actually care to put in some effort, you likely can find a compromise. (Which he should, if he gives any shits about you and your mental health!) Communication is key.
I guarantee many men do in fact care if their partner buys them a gift for their birthday, and in fact would be upset if their wife forgot about it. Not sure where that is coming from. You can literally google "wife forgot my birthday" and there are men that are upset about it. Which is totally fair!
Now, not everyone wants to be celebrated on their birthday, but that's a case by case basis.
as someone entirely removed from the dating world, it is baffling to me that people choose to be with-- and stay with!-- people who make them miserable, just because said people aren't serial killers, abusers, cheaters, etc. These guys that don't know how to cook or do laundry-- it's not like they all have had head injuries that suddenly made them forget these extremely basic skills. What convinces people that they should be with these people, who are in many respects less capable than children?
This is honestly pretty normalized behavior, you hear women talking about it your whole life. It's normalized and accepted in media. And when you marry young, your frontal lobe is not developed!
why is every comment from a man about women’s expectations being too high? sick to know y’all will do everything possible except just fucking listen to us.
I think there's a lot of selection bias. Like, if you are a dad who is oblivious to how much moms do in the household, how did you find this article? Did you bother to read it? To make it this far into the comments?
So you get jerks like me going "hey not all dads" bla bla bla because ... as a dad in an egalitarian household who does tons of housework, I'm triggered by the comments to the point of reacting.
And you get guys going "it's women's fault because women are just always unhappy" or "housework is only for women" and other totally stupid bullshit, because the guys who think that were looking for some rage bate and can troll on an open comments section for a free substack.
you’re not wrong, which is part of the reason I’m not engaging with the other response to my comment. it’s neat that they thought four comments from men in support of the article was a scathing reply when the 383 comments on the original post are absolutely filled with men who don’t get it, and clearly aren’t even willing to take a critical look at what the article is actually trying to say.
we don’t hate all men and I know a ton of really great dads who are around, show up, do housework, share in childcare. but I think it is genuinely rare to find a man who knows just how stocked the fridge and pantry are. the state of the household’s laundry. when back to school is, who their children’s teachers are. there are intricacies of maintaining a functional household that men don’t even consider because historically they haven’t had to.
men want women to make modern accommodations in so many areas of life, but combat us on others. I have empathy because, again, this is new. but not listening to us, telling us we’re wrong or needy for asking for help, is not only annoying but also contributing to male loneliness (something we, again, are blamed for in the end).
and I can’t even start on the numerous comments saying that they felt fine with a half-functioning household they maintained while a wife was sick or away. I’m glad they feel like that’s realistic for a week. it probably isn’t for any longer than that.
"I think it is genuinely rare to find a man who knows just how stocked the fridge and pantry are."
I had just copy-pasta'd this comment when my wife texted me to ask if we were low on hummus. :-)
I think the most frustrating thing about all of the discourse on this topic is the problem of sample sizes.
My initial reaction to your sentence was "is it really that rare?" The dads I know are like me, and we help run a household, and our wives have full time jobs, and sometimes either of the spouses has work travel and the carpool for kid sports gets complicated.
That could just be my own very unusual bubble...maybe our family is friends with other families that are in a similar socioeconomic situation in a particular place at a particular time. Maybe if I could randomly sample lots of families I'd be like "wow these dads _suck_!!"
I am genuinely not at all confident that my lived experience is remotely typical.
But in the comments, from some of the women, there's a "yeah, the guys who do the work are exceedingly rare, you're hosed" vibe that is so different from what I see day to day, it makes me wonder if that's a cluster of like-minded people too.
I mean, I think it’s highly possible that your friend group is like-minded, and it sounds like you probably wouldn’t attract the type of men who are uninterested in being involved in this side of family management. I still stand by what I said as the majority of the men in my life do not fit into such a supportive mold, though I’m hopeful that we as a society are moving towards that.
I'm a mid-gen-X-er in an affluent blue state suburb where most people have professional jobs, two-income houses are the norm and both partners jobs are careers, and there's still a decent amount of telework post COVID. So that's my filter bubble.
Are you coming from a very different space? I've read on the internet (the source of all authority) that the millenial dads are pretty normed into egalitarianism, and if I walk by the bus stop for the little kids in the AM, it's mostly dads watching the gaggle of kids.
Maybe I'm seeing us move forward, but only a small pocket of us.
I should clarify and say that a ton of my perspective comes from my community experience and that I, myself, am not a parent, so this is coming from a very outside perspective other than the examples I have in my own immediate family and friend groups. that being said, my husband was brought up in very hard-gender-roles household and culture, and it’s been put upon me to teach him things like how to cook, clean, etc. and he’s still working on things like knowing when things need to be cleaned, when groceries are needed, when the cat needs flea medicine, etc. unlike some other women I love him and the person he is and I’m down to grow with him because he is receptive to these convos and wants to do better. THAT being said, we also don’t have kids, and that would be so so much harder.
while I see many dads who are around, proportionally more than when I grew up in the 90s and aughts, I also hear them complain about the need to watch their kids, impatience with normal kid behaviors, and an overall douchey vibe when they are in charge of watching their kids. I have friends who voice some level of resentment towards having kids (I wanna make it clear that they don’t resent their children, but their loss of freedom as parents) because they aren’t able to hang out, have free time, play videogames, etc. my own brother is a mid-gen-xer and he’s a terrible parent, mostly stemming from his own internalized issues with gender.
I agree with the other person in saying that this isn’t about you, or other good dads. it’s fair to advocate for yourselves but it feels off-topic and like we’re getting into a “not all men” conversation, and I hope you know how unproductive that is.
I went back and re-read your original article carefully, and first, I think you are right - this is not about me. Mostly.
I think my 3-line summary of your post (and apologies if this is way off the mark) is:
* If he's not contributing enough and she's burned out, he's not a good husband/dad.
* She contributes by saying he is a good husband/dad despite this dynamic.
* She should demand more from him.
Some couples fall into a "she demands, he is insubordinate" dynamic. She demands, he ignores. She nags, he stonewalls. This is not the dynamic my wife and I have, so this one is not about me.
But green's original comment here was disgust at all of the men arguing against the premise of the post, and my comment was that the posters are all the ones who were triggered. And I think this dynamic is one of them - if a husband or dad is trapped in this dynamic (and I would say both partners are trapped, because the dynamic is self-reinforcing and no one is happy), then hearing "the solution for her is to demand more" sounds, to those men, *totally insane*.
The solution is not (in my opinion) for the women to just suck it up and accept the situation as it is and be like "well at least I'm not being punched." I'm with you 100% on that.
I am also skeptical that taking away the label of 'good dad' or 'good husband' is going to help. Whether it is my co-workers, my kids, my wife, teammates on a sports team, any time I imagine someone with a serious performance problem and consider relabeling them as a subpar X and not a good X, I'm not seeing good management/coaching/parenting/leadership.
This is not an argument for telling them they're good when they're not...I think I am arguing for not tying up negative feedback with a deeply meaningful identity.
Finally, I think a lot of the men's reaction to this piece comes not from this piece itself, but from the "parent context" of Paige Connell and her other writings and videos (which I discovered by CHH's commentary on them - strong recommend for CHH's substack!).
And in that parent context, a lot of dads saw a sort of rigid perfectionist anxiety-driven way of running the household, where some of the "mental load" of the house hold is worrying, and some of the "must be done" work of the household is being done to appease her anxiety. This is where the men show up and go "mom went away for a week and it was FINE" - they're trying to use their solo parenting, where they had their own agency as to how to run the house, as proof that what was being asked of them included anxiety appeasement and not just necessary work.
This is both...not about me _and_ not at all what you wrote, so it is totally off topic. But having read through a lot the comments, I think this "well, actually it's anxiety" discourse totally leaked into the comments section. This is one I have experienced in my life (and I have my own anxiety to manage - I have been on both sides).
I do not want to claim that "it's all anxiety-driven" or even that it's "mostly anxiety driven". But it is an element, and when it is, once again, demanding more isn't, in my opinion, a good solution.
I think the “she demands,” is in error too, and again feels like it’s coming from a place of defensiveness. I think many women are just asking for more help (or even just, like, some shared perspective), and framing it as a “demand,” implies that 1) it’s being asked for in a negative way and 2) it’s something that shouldn’t be asked for in the first place.
There is nothing egalitarian about any household. My roommate in college lived in an egalitarian dorm. Any time my wife ask about splitting the work even, I always agree with her and then she switches it when it's her turn to go on top of the roof and clean the isht up there or when it's time to plan a trip abroad, or when it's time to deal with her father or when the kids are not listening to her.
I don't think egalitarian has to mean "everything is exactly split in half." My wife and I both have tasks we specialize in and some we split...the egalitarian is more that there aren't major domains that are off limits to one of us. I think the important things are:
- decision making is shared...no one person is doing the deciding and the other one just accepts that.
- overall work-load is shared...however busy or not we are, there isn't a huge mismatch in how overworked we feel. When I had a major version release while my wife was in vet school and we had a six month old, that meant we were both absolutely wiped out, but we were in it together.
completely agree with your definition of egalitarian. I think you need to convince a lot of the women here of your definition. Again, some women have reasons to complain, we socialize boys like girls and expect them to become men. I think what women are finding out now is that they are having to do the very thing men were accused of not being able to do, which includes going to work, focusing on your partner and serving as a model for your kids. Your are not the project, your partner and your kids are.
You don't need to convince women of that definition. Women don't want exactly 50/50, they want a teammate and to have a partner who is in it with them, not a partner who regularly ignores things that "aren't his job" or opts in to family life as he chooses.
I think one of the things that makes this discourse complicated is that wanting an egalitarian partner who pulls his weight and wanting an emotionally intimate partner who isn't walled off are different things, but I'd be shocked if there wasn't a lot of overlap in the venn diagram of where women feel resentment over these things.
(I say this as someone who was both egalitarian in doing things but totally walled off and shut down emotionally for years.)
I think there is an intuition in what you wrote that I agree with, which is that a me-first focus isn't good for families or communities, and this is true whether it's coming from men who adopt an old-fashioned "because I'm a man..." viewpoint or from a woman who has adopted this view (as Terry Real says: "I was weak, now I'm strong, go screw yourself"). My view is this isn't great for any humans, any gender.
But my experience has been different from yours in a lot of ways.
In my particular corner of the world (white collar often two-working-parent blue state parents) that egalitarian definition is pretty well accepted by most of the parents I know, and if there's griping, it's "he/she isn't pulling her weight", not "the split was bad in theory".
And I would not say we socialize boys like girls. We deliver boys about a gajillion messages about a set of behaviors that are *not* okay for boys. "Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys" covers this in fantastic detail and is a great read. It's 25 years old, but I would say it's still extremely accurate. (This book is, like me, US centric.)
We do put boys and girls together *in school* and I have read serious commentary that school-as-we-have-it-now not working well for boys. But the socialization experience within school is totally gendered.
I agree that we socialize boys terribly for their relationships! And it's not their fault! But it is their responsibility when they become adults (and it's our collective responsibility to raise our boys differently).
"In my particular corner of the world (white collar often two-working-parent blue state parents) that egalitarian definition is pretty well accepted." I have no doubt about this and am not against egalitarian but the result of egalitarianism are not particularly good for relationships (men and women) and without a doubt not good for kids. I lived in the U.S. for over 15+ years and all over Europe for 16+ as well but am also US centric as well. I have read Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys. I recommend Richard Reeves of Boys and Men.
I think a lot of parents have no idea about what is happening to boys in schools. There is a reason they are failing out at a higher rate.
I was taught by the best, my grandmother and aunts taught me everything I know about having a great relationship and how to treat my wife. there is no divorce in our family (that's 6 aunts and 5 uncles), lots of kids and incredible legacy. My wife is the only one not divorced in her group of friends, I give credit to my grandmother and aunts. And all the women in my circle come to me for advice specifically because they left good men thinking they could do better trying to figure out how to get back with the men they left. The men couldn't be happier because someone's trash is another person's treasure . I actually don't blame our current situation on the women or men of today. Sometimes what we are taught as kids becomes us. Both boys and girls over the last 30 years have been taught how to prioritize themselves, specifically their own happiness. I was taught how to treat my wife from other wives (not just women but actual wives/partners). My wife has never been on the roof cleaning isht but it's my way of waking her up of her world when she is overwhelmed.
I see this being a trendy subject lately, and to cut through it, what happens if she goes away for a few days, a week?
Mostly nothing. Dad gets done what is needed, that's what I've been hearing. The kids are relaxed and not stressed as they are not on the forced-bataan death march of sippy cups. Some snacks were missed, everyone dealt. Dishes were missed sometimes. No one cared.
This implies 1) These things didn't really need to be done, we should prioritize. 2) The standards are all set by women, who then assume, demand, invent, that this-thing-they-made-up-today is now set down by God. His opinion or preference is so irrelevant as to be laughable. 3) He IS saying it's stressful. But because modern life has very few places to trim back, what he's telling you is to trim back where you can and just decide it's okay, because your LIFE is more important than Instagramming your clean sink no one will ever see but you. That is, he's worried about you, the kids, being STRESSED. And if the only way to keep that below redline is skipping the dishes then skip them. This "Option B" section is not being seen, or availed. In fact, it's being divorced so she can continue with MORE stress in another house alone. In a reversal of gender expectations He cares more about you and the kids as PEOPLE than some pointless objects like folded laundry.
How can I know? Well in my house, I did the dishes, the laundry, the putting away, the lawn, the plumbing, the roof, the toilets, a host of other things. This was not good enough. So with a housecleaner, these were done professionally. That's fine, I can do other things as well. What happened? Instantly the LEVEL of clean doubled, to permit the same amount of stress and unhappy. House objectively cleaner, wife sadder and madder than before, in a stress arms-race. Not everyone gets to cross compare A-B like that. *The stress wasn't from the house at all*, it was probably from work but spilling over to a free-floating cloud of dissatisfaction.
Again, this is what men are trying to tell you. Probably in words at first, but as those will never work, in actions, by showing you things are still okay. You go away: the kids are fine, everything gets done somehow.
Which path is the "Good spouse/Good parent" path? Yelling at everyone all day and getting divorced, or taking it down a notch? Possibly both but consider my premise.
Going away for a few days or a week and everyone "surviving" and everything "getting done is not a metric of the mental load + running your entire life with no end in sight. Also, kids behave differently for the primary caregiver versus dad.
This is not about instagram worthy homes for most of us. It's about feeling the entire weight of life on us.
Mental load goes both ways. Men just deal with things a lot better. Husbands understand what stress does to the relationship and to the kids and prioritize that over their own well beings. Why do you think kids behave differently when the so called primary caregivers is not around. It's primarily because boundaries are set, everyone understands the rules and can just enjoy the moment instead of walking on eggshells.
If dad is the primary caregiver, they also behave badly for him!
Huh? No they don't. At least in my household, I set and enforce rules and my wife is the pushover. Though in general, my kids just don't behave badly.
This is a new phenomenon because we didn't want effective primary caregivers, we wanted softer fathers. I'm 40 now and I call my dad and grandmother frequently to thank them for their patience, their guidance, and for being fair and stern with me. My grandmother especially was a force of nature (12 kids raised and more than a third of us grandkids lived with her on and off). I had uncles that disciplined me and moved me through phases of my growth. It didn't occur to me that primary caregivers could be this ineffective to the point of kids acting like animals you see in a zoo. Society is getting what it asked for, softer men incapable of doing anything including shepherding their own kids or their partners.
“Men just deal with things a lot better.” No, they don’t! They abuse their wives and descend into addiction and commit suicide. Males prioritize their own well being FIRST and 100% of the time. You are literally programmed in the womb to not give a fuck. How do I know? I birthed and raised two boys to be men. It was never in their nature to ask if I needed help. That does not happen from sons or husbands. Common denominator being males.
Or common denominator you being their mother!
If men prioritise their well being first how is it they’re descending into suicide, as per your words?! Suicide seems like the opposite of one’s own well being.
Also, men are “literally programmed” to serve and protect others.
No 2 things in your comment are coherent with each other.
No. I helped my mother as a daughter without her asking. Boys don’t do that. Men of past generations were providers and protectors. They took care of their well-being and that of their families. What white males of the right in particular seek are BREEDERS and WOMBS and most become deadbeat fathers. Those are MALES, not men, and they are the majority now. The crisis of masculinity in the world, including male suicide, is well documented. Those are the addicted and mentally ill males who hate their own mothers, women and children. Understand the distinction now?
Boys might not do that, but YOU raised your boys! You impart values, manners and behaviours on your children. You think those men of generations past were just born that way, fully formed and socialised beings?! It makes no sense. Maybe those mothers (and fathers) back then were doing a better job raising their children. Did this ever occur to you? I mean the fact, that you’re online complaining about all men including your own boys which you raised is telling. And that’s before the bit about “white males of the right”. Yikes.
I wish you the best in working through the hate in your heart. Are there bad men? Of course. But your blanket hatred of half the population will only hurt you in the end. Perhaps seek out some counseling to work through this hurt that has you lashing out. Either way, I’m wishing you the best.
😒
It’s widely documented that children behave the worst where they feel the safest. If the kids are behaving better for you than the mom, it is likely not because of your skilled parenting or setting of boundaries. It is because they feel safer with their mother and so try to push the boundaries (which is healthy for children to do). Scaring your children into behaving may seem to have positive short term outcomes but does not produce well adjusted adults.
I'm curious about the research you are using to assert this. Kids may worst with mothers because it is just easier, even my 8 years old boy mademoiselle this observation 2 years ago. Safety is important but too much of it also produces crappy kids and then adult. Some of the men women are complaining about today had too much saleté, thats the reason why they dont think women today are worth the risks. Also, if you follow anything about single mothers, you will find kids need more than just safety. Mothers/women seek safety and thats why they raise children that are constantly scared of the outside world. Sociéty dosent benefit from young men that only seek safety.
There are lots of sources, a quick google just pulled up a Psychology Today article, among others. Dr. Becky along with other parenting experts, talks about this frequently. It is based on theories of secure attachment. When you say it is just easier do you mean for mother or child? All people need to have their primary needs met - food, shelter, safety- before they are able to be their best selves. We live in a world where a substantial number of women are physically, financially, emotionally, and sexually abused. In the US most of the people living below the poverty line are women and children. It is not men, but women who are at much greater risks in relationships and every real statistic bares that out. Clearly, some level of risk is always necessary for success. But that risk must be built on a foundation of safety. (Think swim lessons v. Getting tossed in a lake). Also, you say men don’t think women are worth the risk. Yet worldwide more young women are saying no to marriage and children. More older women are initiating divorce and remaining single. This shows that it is women who think men are not worth the effort. The anger today is not about men not wanting women, it is about men being bitter that women don’t want to provide free domestic labor for them. Statistically married men live longer than single men, yet single women live longer than married women. All of these men are accusing women of being selfish, but they should be pointing the finger inward. What is selfish is expecting another person to put their own health and happiness at risk without providing the same in return.
I think this is important. Obviously there are many cases where the article DOES apply, but I also think there are many cases where the wife needs to consider whether
a. The standards of the household are reasonable and mutually agreed upon (noting that the husband and wife will not always agree but you have to find some kind of middle ground that both parties can be ok with)
b. She is allowing her husband to take ownership of the tasks he is doing. I.e. not micromanaging.
That's not to say that women should accept husbands who don't do anything, or have really low standards. But it is also true that if you're stressing over every minor detail (for example, I think I once saw a social media post of a woman dragging her husband for dressing their toddler in an outfit that didn't look good) or constantly telling your husband that the way he does things is wrong, the answer is not simply for him to become exactly like you.
I once put my toddler daughter's skirt on her head because I thought it was a hat. It has become a family legend.
My husband cannot grasp that girls clothes have buttons that go in the back, not the front.
Well, I need to focus on getting my shirt buttons properly matched. And some of the more tense micro moments of my marriage have been as I’ve struggled to fasten the tiny hook at the top of my wife’s dress.
Even I get that one wrong sometimes lol
Yeah and with how wriggly kids are, it's a wonder to get clothes on at all.
That day, it was a hat.
It looked like a hat that one of Santa’s helpers might wear!
Perhaps it was always a hat, and never a skirt
Putting swimming suits on my daughter sometimes is a comedic drama. Every new suit seems to pose a different challenge but only for me. My wife handles all these puzzling suits in her sleep though.
One word-icon.
Hahaha I needed this today. Still a great job in my opinion
Hilarious! I recognise that it's probably easier for me to see how silly this stuff gets when it comes to clothing because I don't really care that much about style on myself or others so my standards for a child would probably be "clean, weather appropriate, comfortable, done".
I do have other areas that I would struggle with more, most notably food (I want my future kids to be healthy) and cleanliness of the house (being in a messy or dirty environment stresses me out).
And then “fathers” make jokes and laugh about their own ineptitude at the expense of mothers. Not funny.
Being a sourpuss leads to self-fulfilling bad relationships. I think you meet all the qualifications.
Tell me again how you reacted to the headline without reading the article.
I’ve always been a very involved father if not always good at dressing my children.
Just to come back to this with some extra thoughts - I do think men in this situation would be much better off confronting this head-on and saying, "sorry, your expectations on X are unreasonable and we need to find some kind of compromise here" than begrudgingly agreeing and then not living up to expectations.
It's much easier to trust and respect someone who has boundaries and lays them out than someone who can be steamrolled and then just fails to follow through. And I think part of the problem here is that these wives don't trust or respect their husbands, at least in certain domains.
I'm not saying that's entirely the husbands fault - I imagine that in most cases it's a vicious cycle where the wife had certain expectations, the husband didn't live up to them, the wife starts micromanaging which makes the husband step back more and not take ownership, spiral downwards.
The five steamrolled husbands I know are all divorced now for speaking up. At all. Arda's points stand.
I've always thought it's more interesting to inquire what about our culture made the wives this way? I'm sure it's a confluence of stuff.
Of course the original article stands as well. Just providing $ and not cheating doesn't make a good husband.
Damn. Yeah it's probably a high risk strategy - either you end up in a better situation or you end up divorced. Keeping quiet is the low risk low reward option.
There was just a Note on how when the woman stepped back to trust and let him act, her stress vanished and this relationship was restored, but I can't bookmark everything. Let's just say that's one possible path.
This is because of the phrase "if you want something done correctly, do it yourself." Men live by this. If you want something done some specific, assanine way, then do it yourself. Men do this all the time, and don't take it as an offense. They may be a bit irritated, but they do it. They figure the women are doing the same, yet some women take offense when they voluntarily took it on.
This is also the lack of understanding that what is important to one person, may not be important to the other. You have to compromise and meet halfway.
I'm somewhat traditional, so I take full responsibility for the condition of my family. I strategically manage my wife's stress. I jokingly call it, "wife maintenance". I will do some of her normal responsibilities, massage her, take the kids, or do SOMETHING to relieve pressure on her short-term. I try and preemptively massage her before her hips and back lock up entirely. I actually complain when she doesn't tell me before it's bad. Sometimes she needs to be "pounded" into the mattress and sleep in the next morning. I know if I don't preemptively reduce stress levels before it crosses the line, it's like flooding her engine. It's going to take longer for her to get back into the swing of things, and then I get overloaded worse than I already am. Then there are fights like in the article.
Been with my wife for 17 years, love her dearly, have the same convos about this stuff at least annually. Never changes. Including being exasperated by it never changing. It’s not always the men, ladies.
It's hardly ever the men.
You have to take the feedback and boundaries with grace. Many, if not most, women fail at this.
Maybe those men are all totally weak willed and incapable of basic assertion, or perhaps many of them justifiably don't feel safe to do so?
Yes, my point was not that no husbands slack. But they're so battered and berated that I can't caveat my statement upfront because it'll be ignored. I have to promote that MEN ARE DOING SOMETHING. So listen. Below vv there is a comment stating 5 men divorced for even SUGGESTING it.
Oh yes. Totally. So he DID tell you, but is smart enough to stop short of divorce because he loves you, hoping something else will come up as an opportunity. Statistically, it doesn't. Women just drive themselves insane, hate, blame, never ask or look. How? 60% divorce rate, 80% caused by women, and that's NOT including all the men who are trying now still married and walking on eggshells. What's the run rate adding those? 80-90%?
YOU DON'T HAVE AN INSTAGRAM LIFE. You MUST CHILL!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMV_r4LjQIo
This is what husbands are for, and why you have them. Take the W.
Women don't want peace. They loathe it. They want control. Women are the problem.
“Women don't want peace. They loathe it. They want control. Women are the problem.”
Bullshit. Males commit the vast majority of violence in the world, including inside of their relationships. Males are the problem.
Nah, women were sold a bill of goods. It's self-contradictory, and that's being discovered right now. But we're all sold a bill of goods and men have a different one. ...Men's problem is not them "Getting in touch with their feelings" though.
This is extremely extremely true.
That said, I feel sad about the fall of home standards. Not too much, but just a bit. We go to lunch at someone's home and the food is catered. No one dresses up for Christmas dinner. There aren't animal shaped homecooked foods in lunchboxes. Presents aren't wrapped with nice paper. The cranberry sauce is from a can.
This stuff is hard, yes, but also no one appreciates it when someone does it the hard way. Short term, it makes little difference. Long term, it makes life worth living.
I don't know what the solution is, but it seems like shorter hours at work could help greatly.
The hard stuff / high home standards could only really be done in a 50s household when women were expected to be housewives while the men were expected to be breadwinners, which creates its own set of problems. We could create shorter work hours, but then that means less money for households to spend on the raw materials needed to make the good stuff at home. Trade-offs are unavoidable
See i want to do at least some of the stuff the hard way, but NO ONE CARES. And life as a result is less beautiful.
If you care and get something out of it, that’s all that matters. I wrap presents in nice paper every year for Christmas and most birthdays (even roped my husband in), and relish the beauty every time. I make at least one nice, non-shortcutted meal each week (and usually when the friends are over if that happens). As a working mom, I don’t have time to do everything the long way, but I pick a few things and enjoy them. If you get something out of it, who cares if nobody else does?
If we actually had things like health insurance NOT tied to work, family leave, and corporations that DIDN'T try to pay one person half the salary a person can live on to do three people's jobs, we could have shorter work hours.
No one cares right now. And I think that’s always been kind of true. No one cares that you made a homemade apple pie for Thanksgiving 2 years in a row- they care when you’ve done it for 40 years and everyone’s fighting for a slice of grandma’s famous pie. Your kids don’t care about the homemade baked goods and note from you in their lunchbox on Fridays right now but they probably will when they’re 38 and raising their own kids and reflecting on mom’s special touches.
These kinds of things matter when they’re done over the course of a lifetime. When all the details add up to a thoughtful, loving, abundant life. And most importantly, these things all have to be done with a generous and loving spirit or your kids will say “ugh remember how miserable mom was when she was running around and yelling at us while making all those Christmas dishes”.
I relate to you because this stuff matters to me too. It’s a really big reason I’m a stay at home mom, so that I can have those higher standards without an insane amount of stress. I really believe a lot of this homemaking work requires having a long-term view of the life you want to create and the childhood you want your kids to look back on.
When I was a kid my mother made her own tuna salad and all I wanted was tuna salad from the store. My kid wrote me a mother's day card thanking me for getting pizza or sushi every Sunday -- that's the one day we don't home-make real food for dinner. Whether kids appreciate things is not the barometer of whether you're doing it "right."
At the same time, they can't really miss what they never knew. If nobody in our circles is home baking pies for Thanksgiving, they're unlikely to consider me remiss for buying. As long as social standards drop in the whole, nobody has to feel bad.
I agree that what children appreciate isn’t inherently about doing things “right” (although I was talking about what adults appreciate about their childhoods in retrospect). No one can perfectly curate the things their kids like and dislike about their childhoods. However, I think there’s something special and good about cooking nice meals from scratch, baking alongside your kids, having special holiday traditions, etc and these things do involve some work. Some examples from my own life include keeping chickens, gardening, and heating our home with a wood burning stove. These things are cozy, nice, require work, and I think my kids will appreciate them later, although I have no way of guaranteeing that!
I also think your last paragraph is interesting because (if I’m understanding correctly) it basically says social standards dropping is a positive phenomenon because it means nobody has to feel guilty. I don’t really think about these things in terms of guilt. I’m personally not much of a baker (the pie example was about my grandmother) and if I get asked to bring a pie, it will be from Costco. But I don’t feel bad about this, not because of what other people do, but because I am comfortable with the things I choose to do “right” and the things I don’t. Other people baking pies isn’t a threat to me and I’m actually grateful my kids have other people in their lives who fill that role. And the idea that kids won’t know what they’re missing because social standards have lowered so much over generations is personally sad to me, not comforting.
It’s fine to have different perspectives and values on these things! Just in case my tone isn’t clear, I’m not offended by anything you said and hope I come off respectful :)
I think if we have a warm and loving relationship with our kids, they’ll pick *something* to latch onto, even if it’s not food. It’s the sensory details that remind us of someone when we’re apart.
The unsaid underlying thing in this is that caretaking is important, it makes life better, but women don’t want to do it all unseen and uncompensated or with no choice on the matter.
Yeah exactly. I want the time and space to celebrate my festivities appropriately (easier said than done as a Hindu in America when I never get a day off for any of my occasions). I want to spend time thinking about my kid's needs and ensuring she gets the appropriate care and personalization. Like she isn't reading much these days, how can I snap her out of that. Or she seems to be receptive to new vegetables, maybe I should try making okra.
I feel like this makes a difference even like in the span of 6 months. I had a very stressful few months at work and in that short time, my kid just stopped eating vegetables and it's been a hard painful battle to add them back in to her diet.
Staying home with kids is a privilege not afforded to most mothers. If you have this choice, then you’re in the minority, be grateful and stop preaching to mothers whose lived experience is nothing like your own. Working moms, and particularly single working moms, have no time to bake apple pie. And you’re right - no one would care anyway, so why bother?
I was specifically talking to a working mom who has similar interests to me. She seemed to receive my comments well. Choosing to perceive that as “preaching” to working moms says a lot more about you than me.
No, it tells that you live on another planet from working mothers, particularly single working mothers. It is the same rhetoric I have had to listen to for the past 21 years raising my sons alone. “Christian,” married, stay-at-home white mothers reinforce the patriarchy. Did you also vote no exceptions for rape, incest or the life of the mother? Don’t you have some books to ban or teachers to harass?
Other people can have a conversation about a topic that you don't have an interest in or the time for and it not be a direct attack on you.
Your ad hominem attacks on my faith and lifestyle are uninteresting and irrelevant. They reveal a huge amount of bitterness that you are for some reason choosing to lash out at me over. Have a nice day.
Lot of people spend 11-12 hours per day on commute + work. Not much time for kids, spouse, and keeping up the house.
But I’ve also met a lot of women who work remote who still get overwhelmed, and at that point I don’t know what to tell them other than to chill out….and that’s exactly what they don’t want to hear.
Remote jobs can be much more stressful. I worked one which didn't leave me enough time to even take a walk to relax.
That is also true. My wife has entire weeks where it looks like she’s glued to her chair in our home office due to workload
Your wife works hard while you sit on social media and criticize working women whose lives you know nothing about. The double lives of “husbands” online.
I know you don’t work at all.
Have you tried ‘Awright Sweetie. Calm down.’
Agree. I think a lot of it has to with having order, routine, and no drama. This is the stifling order of 1950s that no person every liked ever! 100% of all people, man, woman, child, dog, all hated forevah. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHF8LdiFhW8
No really -- to do these extras you need to have the daily things under control. Automatic. That means by definition it's a habit. But by being a habit it's not like TV: new, interesting, novel, expensive. It means you make egg salad instead of catering Panera every day and your big monthly purchase was one Tupperware bowl you have to now use for 20 years bc you don't have another one.
Nobody is doing this, living this way at all, you'll get divorced in about 90 seconds if you tell your wife to click off Amazon, but even so, if OTHER people make bad choices, are bad bosses, over-bid up the housing market bc they have no financial skills, don't show up for appointments, it is going to cut in 80% of YOUR life being orderly and under control. ...So you have the bandwidth to dress in a tie and make those Christmas brownies.
So yes, they're not doing it. And yes they are stressing themselves out about stuff they should let go and someone in 1955 would, BUT! You also can't do it alone. I think pulling every trick you'd barely be on the borderline of under control right now because the culture at large is unhinged.
Hey, is this why they ALSO social pressured "Conformity" to have other people do their thing too? So a few people's bad habits of senseless drama wouldn't destroy all of us?
What are animal shaped home cooked foods?
dont know but I sure can carve a pizza! 😁
Oh like you make vegetable or meat patties in the shape of a cat or horse or unicorn so your kid eats them
You could just add more butter and salt
Implying they'll somehow taste it first when it looks like a regular piece of food
I have never heard of this.
It's all over Instagram.
Oh.
Isn’t that a rosy view of the past though seen through the lens of movies and magazines of middle class and rich homes. Low income people in the past were not having lavish meals and dressing up for holidays. People were also able to live off one income and even hire help. Today’s world is very different. If you like doing more then do it but don’t expect it of others.
I'm talking about things my mom did.
This is all capitalism related.
I moved from the east coast to the west coast and it took a long time to make the adjustment. These silly formalities were ingrained! I have learned to use the time and energy these things would have taken more wisely. Not everyone needs to relive their childhood in order to have a good life
I think about this sometimes. I would like my house decorated for holidays but... I don't want to do it. And you know what, my mother didn't actually do it either. She had her old-enough kids handle the task. It wasn't Martha Stewart stuff, but we got into the spirit of things and the house looked festive. My oldest is 8, so we are just approaching the cusp of where I can hand him a box of tinsel and say "make this place festive".
I know both scenarios well. My ex-husband expected me to do everything, and I did, being he was 15 years my senior and a pastor, I thought he knew better and bought into what our religion was teaching me, all while supporting ministry, PTA, etc.
I divorced him and those ideas (slowly) after 19 years, but was so programmed by them that I found myself sometimes overrunning myself in my new household with a new husband — a GOOD husband — and my ADULT children.
So I began being more intentional about reversing that behavior and allowing my good husband to share the load, letting my adult children be adults, and releasing the need to do everything and creating problems to solve. I am a work in progress.
I love this! I started out my marriage as a young “good” Christian woman. I had bought into the “biblical roles” idea… where men provided the money, and the wife “kept the home”. I was raising the baby, cooking, cleaning, laundry, planning meals, doing everything except having a 9-5 job. It was exhausting. I was burnt out. It didn’t help that I grew up with the idea I wasn’t allowed to express my needs, either. As I’ve deconstructed these evangelical fundamental beliefs, I’ve allowed myself to ask for help. To rethink my standards of “presentable”, and to expect my husband to contribute to the running of the household. It still isn’t 50/50… but my husband and I share the load. He works full time and I work part time so he is home less. But he still helps with dishes. Cooks a dinner here and there. Helps with laundry. Picks up the groceries. Cleans. And helps our son with school.
Anyway. Sometimes we have to deconstruct our ideas of gender roles. And our ideas of perfection. But also, we need to expect help and support from our partners!
Yes, I get all of this! I gave myself to that ideology from age 30-45, left the first husband and took him back long-distance for 2.5 more years until I realized that whatever had been was gone.
So after a brief romp in the hay (after my separation and then divorce a few years later), where I went in the extreme opposite direction to reclaim my youth and all the parts of myself that I had shut down for that marriage, I finally let go and allowed myself to be loved in all the ways I didn’t know I could be.
The trick now is turning that love inward. That has been a ten-year long process, but I see myself differently, better, valuable.
Beautiful. Loving myself is part of my journey too right now. ❤️❤️❤️
100%. Neuroticism drives women to expect all sorts of things that basically only cause stress and don't provide any real value. A man is not allowed to point this out, though, because that's a challenge to what's seen as a commandment from the God of Housewives or something.
Men, maybe due to the evolutionary process, tend to try and reduce stress, try to avoid extra work that isn't particularly necessary. Perhaps this comes from the hunter gatherer dynamic from ages ago where the male would have to be ready at an instant to hunt or protect, thus in the meantime would be wise to rest up and keep the stress level low as possible.
A male would ask the female if it's really necessary to fold the kids' underwear and neatly organize them by color or theme. The response would typically be "you're lazy, I guess I'll have to do it myself". The premise of the situation is never questioned, not allowed to be questioned.
The stress shall continue! Don't ask why, it just shall, and any protest means that you are lazy, useless, etc.
It's a common pattern seen with those who exhibit relatively high neuroticism: any resistance to their definition of a problem is seen as not recognizing the problem, when it's actually about how to solve the problem, or to prioritize resources by recognizing that maybe other problems are more important to solve first. I think it's related to neurotic people feeling a need to control their environment.
Thousands of years ago, women would typically be controlling their home environment, and only that. Now they have been freed from this limitation, yet maybe evolution has not had time to catch up yet.
Many men are useless at home, but from what I've seen, a lot of this is related to women who refuse to relinquish control, and are deathly afraid of allowing the man in the house to solve a problem in a different way than they would prefer.
The same happens to the children, they are controlled so much that there is no expectation on them to manage anything on their own, which leads to clingy, dependent children.
Feminism stands in the way of telling the women to chill out and maybe stop trying to control everyone and everything.
I don't know, but I've only ever been acquainted with men who didn't see ANY value in EVER vacuuming or dusting, and who left smelly PEE all over the toilet and floor for ME to clean up. My late husband lived here seven years and in all of those years he cleaned the sink and toilet NEVER and scrubbed the shower exactly once. I FUCKING HATED THOSE JOBS. He never dusted, never vacuumed. it was always me.
and the onus of picking out the birthday, christmas gifts, throwing the party, decorating the house, creating memories... all on you. So much of the kids happiness is dependent on moms actions when the dads a slacker... there's a lot of pressure there
I know very few women who could handle ceding control to their husbands on birthday/holiday celebrations. If dad didn’t do it perfectly right there would be problems.
And by “right” I don’t mean that dad doesn’t throw a party at all or does but forgets to order food or something equally disastrous. I mean the food choices won’t be good enough, not enough decorations, and there were 1-2 normal hiccups that mom feels humiliated by and gets super pissed about.
Mom almost always needs to be the one to handle these things and almost always puts too much pressure onto herself for things to be just right, resulting in party throwing being way harder than necessary. I include myself in this group by the way. There’s no world in which I could ever let my husband throw a party, it just wouldn’t be done how I would want it to be. And I’m working on lowering my standards in certain areas and preparing in advance more to lower stress.
okay and also if the party is bad, no one blames the husband.
I see this take all the time. Who has higher expectations than chips, pizza, cake, and something to drink at a children’s birthday party? I know maybe 2 people who act that way and they judge everyone for everything.
so true or God help you if you miscounted the goodie bags! then theres buying gifts for other kids birthday parties, making sure you spend the right amount and that its something theyll be excited about. And finding the time to shop gor it and wrap it. So many things! And Im not a perfectionist in any sense of the word...
I grew up in a house full of boys, because there was only one girl (me!) we all pitched in so my expectation was that married life would be similar. I was wrong. I had a friend who grew up in a household of women where the women did everything while the men sat around. Im not a perfectionist so I dont really get that argument, I believe it has more to do with your upbringing - how your siblings contributed to the household and how your parents showed each other respect
On average men have a higher tolerance for dirtiness, that is, it's not a priority to them to do something about it unless it reaches a critical level.
On top of that, it's common to get into a routine of expectations about who does what, and women tend to fall into the "I'll just do it myself" trap, which further drives the expectation that this isn't something he is expected to do.
Also, it's common for the man to do some of these tasks and then the woman says they didn't do it "properly" or "good enough" and ends up doing it again anyway, which removes the incentive for the man to do it in the future.
On average the man is expected to do other things that the woman leaves to the man to do in the same manner, such as anything dangerous, requiring large amounts of physical strength or strain, things involving financial risk, etc.
If you truly want to take turns doing these things, expectations need to be set and clear, each person needs autonomy to solve the task in the manner they see fit (within reason), and it has to go both ways.
The most common fallacy I see is that chores are evaluated according to how many minutes they take, yet there are hidden parameters that are actually in play, such as how stressful the task is, how much physical strain is required, the grossness factor, risk (of many kinds), psychological strain (such as having to do a task that has never been done before), etc.
If you set up chores as a market where each part "trades" for which tasks they want to do, I think you'll see that women would gladly "trade" some of the tasks they see as horrible, for a larger amount of smaller, less strenuous, annoying tasks.
If you treat your husband like a child who cannot be trusted to do anything right, they will become a child who cannot do anything right.
The parallel to that is women who never fix anything around the house, who never drive, who never change the tires on the car, who never set up anything technical, who never figure out what expensive things that need to be purchased, who never clean the gutters, etc. A modern trap is for women to expect the men to continue doing all the "man things" but also do half of the rest as well. That's a bad trade.
All that said, it does sound like you've been unfortunate with your men. 😅
Well, we ARE talking about a species that needs to be reminded to take a shower, brush teeth, and shave. I sometimes think a man would be perfectly happy with a potato crate to sit on, one to put the TV on, and a bare light bulb. They have no appreciation for the niceties of life.
Also, the kinds of chores men do take place once a week, once a month, once every few months, once a season. Once every few years. The shit we get stuck with goes on and on, on and on, on and on and on and on. And don’t forget the caregiving of the elderly parents. That ALWAYS gets stuck on the woman.
Then he wonders why she gained weight and let herself go. He wonders why she’s never up for sex anymore.
It’s because she’s slowly being worked to death.
You shouldn't marry someone who needs reminding to take showers and brush their teeth. That's on you
That wasn’t my husband. but according to therapists, it’s true for a lot of people. Besides, when they’re dating they don’t act like this! Otherwise no one would date them.
No worries, women are figuring it out and getting divorced ❤️
OTHERWISE, he was a great and funny guy and we had a good relationship … which was why I just learned to work around it. He wasn’t going to change and I didn’t want to divorce him and we couldn’t afford to hire help, so oh, well.
This is what most women do. But you see how much resentment there can be when another person knows you will take up the slack and just forces you to do it. Don’t be that person.
Okay that is pretty disgusting. Siding with the womenz on this one
Im being a bit facetious but I thought men were visual creatures? Are they not adept at spotting things broken, enemies on the front lines, shooting targets etc etc etc. If a man can spot a problem in an engine and fix it they certainly can see dust or dirty dishes. Its a cop out to claim theyre not detailed oriented in the home. Say it like it is and just admit most men dont care about cleaning because they dont *want to*
Far too many men choose not to see these things. It’s not about too high standards, it’s choosing to be lazy. The toilet they don’t wipe up after they left a mess. Never wiping up the crumbs they left on the counter. Sitting 6 feet away from the litter box all evening and choosing not to clean it out daily. Choosing not to notice that bed sheets are disgusting 3 weeks later. All because if they wait long enough, even if it’s weeks, a female in the household will be so disgusted they will break down and clean it up. It isn’t about high standards, it’s about basic health and safety, and avoiding ant or roach infestations.
Im trying to raise my son better 🙏
Men are Not hardwired to not clean up after themselves. It’s Not genetic.
Its just basic caring for a home and then beyond that respect for your partner. I would never leave a mess for days for someone else. I put things back where they belong. I know where the trash and recycling goes. I dont leave towels and toiletries everywhere. How disrespectful it would be for me to leave dirt and grime on the expensive floors and countertops. I remember cleaning my husband's dresser and side of the bed while he was away on a trip. Added some organization pieces to encourage the maintenance of this space, he was pleased with the results. But, it took two weeks for the disgusting mess to be back. That was three years ago. I will never do it again. 🥲
Men are focused on one thing at a time. That's what it's meant by detail oriented. We can walk by a full garbage can because it is not time to do garbage. He is focusing on something else more important. The garbage won't blow the house up. There are more important priorities
Ah yes. Dishes and trash aren't important 😒 😑
Women are hardwired genetically to focus more attention to detail on stuff that men find tedious. Very helpful when sorting mushrooms and berries that might be poisonous, or when doing accounting work.
But in these modern times women can get caught up in “Why won’t anyone care as much as I do about all these little items on my mental list?”
If a husband sits on his ass day after day and doesn’t clean, cook, or change the diapers, he’s definitely an asshole. But if he’s simply not assigning a high priority to little details that aren’t really important to anyone but the wife, maybe she needs to come to terms with that.
It doesn’t make him a bad “good” husband for not remembering little details he’s not hardwired to assign a high priority to.
I had the same thought regarding the small details. My husband just isn't hardwired to pay attention to those things like I am, which I still remind myself of daily.
The mention that society has programmed women in this way made me pause because I don't believe that it is a societal indoctrination.
If anything, I feel society is programming us to believe that we need a different husband because the one we have isn't good enough.
You make a lot of valid points. I think that we all come from different dynamics that shape how we view roles in relationships — who’s responsible for what, etc.
I was unfortunately shaped in childhood sexual abuse and abandonment, so any semblance of a “normal” household was me looking at my friends’ families, etc.
Where I came from, a lot of women were the sole providers and parents in the home, so there was no man to represent what a healthy dynamic was. When men were present, there usually also abuse and unbalanced responsibility.
I grew up watching men take from women and I thought that was how it was. So, as long as someone picked me, I was willing to endure that. I learned by experience that it wasn’t ok.
I am now married to a man who is a protector and a provider, but he is also learning to allow me to partner with him on both fronts (while I learn to let him lead) and he helps support the physical needs of our household.
We should all, in partnership and mutual agreement, define what is right for our homes. At least that’s how I see it based on what I’ve had to unlearn.
Because there are no neurotic males in the world at the highest levels destroying it! You arrogant, delusional, grandiose and sexist males!
While some, if not most, of what you say is true, I will counter with this: when I divorced my first husband (a “good” one), my household stress levels went down and my house was cleaner (even with a child). I think the expectation of help and not getting it is worse than no help at all.
Additionally, while the husband and kids might be fine if the wife is away for a short period of time, I promise those little concessions compound. Kid 2 wearing kid 1’s shoes might not be a big deal, but what about when kid 2 falls off the playset and breaks an arm because they tripped over shoes two sizes too big? What may seem like a small, inconsequential thing that mom knows (because she’s put in the time and carries the mental load of knowing what belongs to whom) becomes a big issue. Mom gets called anal or obsessive, but these things do matter. And they can’t be assessed after a short absence.
The expectation of help and not getting it is worse than no help at all. Yes.
for sure. When my husband is traveling for work I cheerfully clean the house top to bottom and then sit and enjoy it. Having someone scrolling on the couch while doing same is impossible to enjoy.
Do you live in my house? *looks around*
And I bet money that once you divorced you were still responsible for your child’s doctors visits, signing up for extracurriculars, the first one the school called etc. it’s not as if your ex husband suddenly had to do anything. I’m not married but this is the major argument my married friends have. The husbands just don’t get it
Absolutely. Continued to be the default parent in every way.
You're right that in these situations, the housework is not what the women in these situations are really concerned about, but it's the lack of leadership and responsibility. These men are acting like kids with their wife as mom, and of course they can take care of some things ok when the wife/mom is gone, the problem is they don't when she isn't.
I suggest that if what you are saying is true, and they have a clear vision for reducing stress by being less on top of the home, the wife would usually be totally fine with that, if they'd lead, communicate, and share the plan. The wives are freaking out, and deeply upset and disappointed, because they don't want to be in charge of everything while the husband relaxes and lets them take care of it all every single time.
If my wife is upset about the state of the house, and I'm too tired to do my part in cleaning it up, I tell her so. I tell her I am too tired to do this right now, and I really dislike not being able to do my part. Would you please take it easy, maybe relax in a warm bath, and let it go for today, and we'll take care of it together tomorrow? Tomorrow I will clean the bathrooms and floors, and you do the dishes and kitchen. Then I actually do it, and I get it done first, before she even gets a chance to do her half.
100%. My husband can lead at work, he can lead in community volunteering, but at home he's a follower and someone I have to manage. The only way to get him to take a task seriously is to give him a task that (1) has consequences that hurt him if it's not done and (2) relinquish it entirely so if he doesn't do it then it will never get done. He is completely incapable of sharing a responsibility with me, and I do not micromanage. My motto is "better a crap job by someone else than any job by me."
SO he has to lead everywhere? Home work and in the community? does he ever get downtime or do you just expect him to grind himself to a pulp for your benefit?
lol wut. I never asked him to volunteer in the community or go for the leadership role at work. He enjoys those things. But when it comes to things that aren't fun, I have to grind myself to a pulp for his benefit? So he can enjoy being the big man where there are lots of accolades while his little lady makes sure he never has to wipe his own butt behind the scenes?
Have you talked to him about this? I think a lot of men implicitly expect traditional gender roles at home without even thinking about the fact that it was based on the wife not having a job outside the home. On the flip side, I see a lot of professional couples where the wife expects the husband to do half the inside housework, but also all of the stereotypical male jobs like fixing the cars, and maintaining the home- which are also a ton of work, and require learning special skills. I had an ex that said those don’t count because they’re “fun for men.” I did know how to do them, but they weren’t “fun” they were just chores to me. Ultimately couples have to explicitly divide up responsibilities these days and not count on cultural assumptions.
We have explicitely discussed chores many times. I have brought up the leadership thing a couple of times but for the most part I let it go as long as he does his part. And fwiw, I do all the yardwork and more of the home maintenance. But I do that because it's fun for me. ;-)
“Women’s standards are too high.” Give me a break. Men have been using that line forever — it’s one of the most-used forms of gaslighting around. Well, guess what? Men’s standards are too low.
BTW, if I ever see someone’s clean sink on Instagram, I’ll let you know. 🙄
So you were able to care for your kids for a few days, a week. Big deal. Take care of them for a month and then we’ll talk. How many of your kids had birthdays during that week? How many major holidays were there? How many relatives came to visit? Were one or more of the kids sick? Did you take any of them to the pediatrician, the dentist, the eye doctor, the ER? How often did you take them shopping for new clothes? How many band/orchestra/choral concerts did you attend? How many sports practices and games?
That’s what I thought.
Just curious, but what happened to those tasks you didn’t get to, that you didn’t “prioritize,” but in all likelihood still needed to be done? Did some magic fairies come in at night, or were those undone tasks waiting for your wife when she got home?
Why does it seem like a man’s answer to this dilemma is almost always “Do less”? Could it be because he knows the less he does, the more she’ll do?
I mean if I only had to hold things together for a week then it would be easy but in a week you can get away with not washing the bed sheets or deep cleaning anything, swapping out different size clothes, doing the school and health admin - you are in survival mode. But you can't make that sustainable over months and years.
I am very type B and do not have high standards but there is a huge difference between just getting the kids fed and to bed and to school in a week and running an entire household over years. The mental load is crushing even with low standards.
I really appreciate this perspective, Arda! Before we got married, I told my husband I’d have as many kids as he could handle on his own for a week. We currently have two and I regularly (2-3 times per year) travel for long weekends or up to a week. The kids are well cared for and have a blast. The house is mostly clean when I come home. Everyone is fed, rested and happy without me leaving a detailed schedule or pre-made meals.
I think a big piece of the equation is not expecting my spouse to do it my way. I’ve learned so much from watching my husband parent. I don’t love everything about his way of doing things (and I know he doesn’t love everything about my way of doing things), but I regularly see ways I’m setting expectations that don’t actually matter or support our core family values.
Love this!!
In my personal experience, there were issues when Dad was in charge. Things were missed that needed to be made up for later or had actual reprocussions. I experienced this as a child and saw it as a mom. Agreed, women can getore drawn into wanting to be 'perfect' but, to be fair, women actually are 'expected' to meet these high standards much more. There is certainly some validity to what you say. In my estimation, from my experience, I would gauge it at about 30-50% accurate. 🤷
I agree with you but.
For ten years I hectored my husband to wash dishes. He would always claim he did his fair share. I would say that a schedule of dishwashing would ensure this. He would say there's no need to keep score; everyone should do their best.
At our tenth anniversary I did a reckoning, and then I... stopped washing dishes. Unless he did. I matched his energy. After he washed a sinkful, I'd do the next sinkful.
He was incensed. He would rage that the dishes weren't washing themselves. It turned out he *did* notice when the house was messy. He was just used to it cleaning itself. He did a bit of name-calling in his frustration, but I just patiently waited.
After more than 4 months of living in the most disgusting conditions, he wrote up standards for cleanliness that he said we needed to maintain. He wrote up a schedule of dishwashing and cleaning. I accepted it, and we have been on pretty good terms ever since.
It wasn't quite as straight as this. I will say the book Fight Right helped us a lot as well. I know there are husbands who are not like this, who would live like pigs to avoid helping their wives. And I think that might clarify who is actually a good, if oblivious husband and who is taking advantage.
He should be thankful you didn't just leave 😬
many women divorce because their husbands sit on the couch all weekend watching sports while they manage the family, yards, and household. Not what we signed up for, modern day slavery
I make twice what my husband makes and carry the insurance for our family. We probably work about the same though he coaches which has some long hours but he also has his summers off (teacher). I cook/shop almost all our meals, do (or oversee) all the household laundry except my husband’s, do everything for the yard and pool except mow, handle all the “fix-it” items around the house, handle my own car maintenance, manage all the finances for our family from bills to retirement investments and oversee most holidays and gift giving. He does oversee the kids’ sports but that’s tricky because I am not on the contact lists and I’m usually the one taking them to and from practice and managing our calendar. I don’t think my standards are too high (I clean sheets once a month and just want the washer filter cleaned out annually). I once read an article about how of all combinations of adults, single men had the shortest life expectancy. One of the major contributions was engagement in their community which includes things like wearing a red shirt on red shirt day at school. You may say these things aren’t important (and I agree somewhat, if you miss one, no big deal) but to continually ignore the importance of these things in life (red shirt day, get togethers with friends, traveling, meaningful time and/or gifts with loved ones) is actually important in life. So when my husband says that I do too much unnecessarily, it’s deeply hurtful. A life with little outside interaction, eating dinners of cereal and frozen pizza off paper plates, sheets never cleaned or floors never vacuumed, this is my husbands standard so of course anything beyond this is “too much” and all on me. It’s exhausting and hard and sometimes I don’t see an end. I have 2 boys and I’m trying my best to help them become good future members of a household. To have some minimal household standards and be a willing part of work done inside the home. Wish me luck ❤️
At 67 years old, I fall into the generation written about in that NYT editorial. I was very involved in coaching my kids sports but my wife carried a much bigger load with the everyday responsibilities (while also working a demanding job). I did far more than my father had done and now I observe my adult son doing far more than I did. My experience is that each generation of men is doing more, moving closer to 50/50 with the current generation of young men.
Wow. It takes men only a generation to navigate a few more steps toward doing their fair share. That’s remarkable.
Meanwhile, in a single generation and at most two, women went from being predominantly stay-at-home mothers to being mothers with full-time careers — and they still carried the load at home. All it took was contraceptives, reproductive rights, and higher education and careers opening their doors to women for them to excel.
Yet men still plodded along. That’s good that you do more than your father did, but it sounds like he set the bar pretty low. My son does way more than his father ever did, who does more than his father did, which was essentially nothing. But men need to step it up. They still have a long way to go to get to 50/50. Women aren’t going to wait many more generations.
You make a fair point and sound like a conscientious husband and father. That being said, this does not mean that every woman is similar to your wife or every man is similar to you.
From a cultural perspective there are different for sure, there are many unhappy women cross culturally who remain in unhappy marriages because society/culture dictates or they just believe it's the way it should be.
I was raised within such a family and saw the consequences of that, I don't choose that for myself or for my child. I don't choose it for any woman.
There has to be transparency and openness of communication to discuss what is and isn't helpful without shame, blame or ego, this is the very least and foundation of healthy respect and a mature relationship. If this can't be achieved then it's more healthy for those all around to consider separating. Yes, it's less than ideal - more stressful and more costly but that's because it requires adaptation. The cost to wellbeing and the generational impact is too high to remain in a situation most because it looks like it's easier in the short run.
Facts
🙄
Couldn't agree more, although I come from a patriarchal culture and definitely absorbed too much of the 'he doesn't beat you, he doesn't get drunk, he works, what have you got to be unhappy about' and kept the marriage going for far too long. Finally got divorced because he was cheating on me, but the interesting thing is that my sons (then 13 and 11) instantly asked: 'Are you getting divorced because he never does anything around the house?'
I let my wife take care of everything. When I do things she gets incredibly stressed. I used to mow the lawn: she got a lawn service. I used to work on the cars: she hired a mechanic. I planned parties: she vetoed half the guest list. I make a ton of money: she works full-time. She plans our exercise, menu, clothing, recreation, vacations, friend activities. The television is set to whatever she wants to watch. And it’s all fine by me, why wouldn’t it be? Sometimes she will come home from a busy day at work, and then if I’ve beaten her home, she will ask “Where’s dinner?” I’ll say “Oh, sorry, I will cook tomorrow.“ Five minutes later, she’s telling me what we’ll have for dinner the next night.
Well. How many people are on SSRI medications, period?
These are minor things compared to the Great Unhappiness of single women. Look up their SSRI use.
Even if this is true, which I’m not convinced about, the more likely explanation isn’t that single women are more miserable — it’s that SSRI use and mental health care is sadly much more stigmatized for men. Men also have higher suicide rates than women. So clearly, using SSRIs is an indicator of the willingness and access to mental health care, not overall happiness.
Stats show that married moms actually do more labor at home than single moms. And that widowed women are far less likely to remarry. I’m personally happily married but being a single woman doesn’t sound so bad when you compare marriage to most men (luckily not true for me).
I was married and a father with two children by the age of 24. When the kids were small, I changed many many diapers and did many many 2 AM feedings. Drove kids to the doctor and school, coached Little League, sat on the PTA. The only household chore I was forbidden was laundry, because of my tendency to throw everything into one load. That was completely unacceptable.
This constant drum beat of stories concerning men behaving like spoiled, lazy little boys is like reports from some alien world. They don’t sound real to me, they sound like rhetoric and propaganda. I can only conclude the most women authors are liars, or that modern men or woefully infantilized. Given evidence from other sources, the latter seems more likely.
And if you’ve lived long enough you’ll see the pattern that women without families are pretty miserable, in general. It’s a basic biological need for them. You’re whole body is designed for one thing, when you don’t do it your brain does everything to coerce you into it, including making you miserable.
I take it from your name and biological essentialism that you are likely a male person? I have not seen what you describe at all. I have a long life and lots of experiences and relationships, including a 37 year marriage, children, a recently concluded big career and lots of relationships and friendships around the world. I would say on this subject that the most happy people I know are coupled without children, or single moms (who have enough resources to support their households).
Many many couples I know transformed from relative equality to gendered inequality and frustration as soon as they had children. And that change comes primarily from the man acting as though his wife/partner has some magical capability to parent that is innate, and failing to step up to the huge amount of additional work occasioned by managing children's needs in addition to the general household. Sure, he'll roughhouse with the kids or take them on a fun adventure, but day in day out he will not notice what's needed in the (countless) moments when action is needed to meet the family's needs. Partly it's the male one-track mind vs the multitasking capabilities of women (whether these are innate or trained into us is not really material), and sure, parts of the im balance may arise from the woman's assumption of her greater competence at the household and child management role. (The latter is often realistic, given that girls tend to be 'trained' while growing up to be more involved in household tasks, or emotional.management, but whatever the reason, this still can create a dynamic that the man responds to by shutting down, instead of asking to learn.) But the (male partner's) consistent assumption that he can "help" in between his own activities, while the woman can only pursue her own interests after competing the childcare/home duties, is corrosive to relationships - and INCREDI KY COMMON. When my husband had a massive disabling stroke at 64, my 19 y.o. daughter said " well our family is luckier than most people in this situation, because you already take care of everything". Sad but true - though I think we would find our situation to actually resemble most heterosexual American parent/family situations.
If we look at all the places that are happiest they are all traditional societies with iron clad sex roles.
We can say we’re happy, but half the country needs brain pills to get through their day.
We are a failed society and a failed culture, we cannot even replace ourselves. All American society since 1960 has been is a warning to others on the future about how not to do things.
Anything you can point to in the way the modern American family organizes and comports itself it either a cause or symptom of this failure. We’re a dying corpse of a people, and these’s no going back. All we can do now is pontificate on the reasons behind our collapse as a coherent people and civilization. We are a stark object lesson to the future, not a sustainable model that should be copied. We have done the opposite of the “right thing” at every turn for 8 decades, and the evidence is piled up all around us in the form of deracinated people with absolutely no meaning or identity in their lives. We created an American race of bug people, human yeast that has no purpose or direction to its existence. We deserve to die out.
Essentialist much? “All the places that are the happiest”? how old are you - fifteen? Pretty early to be collapsing into passivity - you know what “real men” (and “real women”) do? They engage with their society and their family and build for a better future, Iintead of sitting around their mom's basement feeling superior.
it’s testosterone. Testosterone makes you much less susceptible to that sort of thing. It makes you ignore things you’re not focused on.
Well then take some estrogen, or do the work to notice those things as an adult human who is not ruled by instinct but by acculturation
Good point. I wonder if the SSRI use is higher in dissatisfied married women.
I believe the majority of young single white women are on some kind of brain pill
The amount of insecure men in these comments who feel like they just have to share their little narratives about why they are really the put-upon good guys in these situations is hilarious.
No one cares. Go away. The women are talking.
It's true, men really shouldn't complain, ever. Especially if the audience is women. Whining about one’s problems and seeking emotional validation is a womanly thing.
And that’s part of what makes your gender not just sick and injured as people, but just plain fucking boring…the fact that you think feelings are womanly things. You cut off half of yourself and then blame us for why you’re hurting…and then you treat us like shit, exploit our labor, and rape us because you’re walking around half of a person and in pain.
Good job, masculinity. You’re just awesome. 🤮
If you think men should embrace their feelings, maybe calling them insecure for sharing their perspective and telling them to go away isn't going to be a winning strategy.
I know that as a man you’ve been taught to believe from birth that your perspective is automatically the most important thing in the discussion and that women especially should always welcome your comments and perspective (and sexual interests and telling us to smile more and so on), but the reality is that most of us don’t care. If you want us to care, do the work on yourselves *first*, then come talk to us when *we* want to talk to you.
This was a post for women, written by a woman, about a woman’s perspective. You are not wanted. You are not special. Your perspective is not privileged. Go away.
Okay, that’s it, everyone who is either male or doesn’t agree with everything in the original post, show yourselves out.
Actually, hold on a second…I’m being told that it’s not actually true that some random person with an extremely unearned sense of self-importance gets to declare herself the arbiter of everyone’s engagement with a Substack article that she didn’t write and on which commenting was made open to anyone with an account. So, as you were.
Also has anyone ever seen Alice and Kat Highsmith in the same room? I find it hard to believe anyone real is actually like this, whereas it would be trivially easy to train an AI LLM on jezebel.com and Jessica Valenti’s Bluesky account and create a bot from it that would post comments indistinguishable from Alice’s here.
Yes, yes, it’s all an evil conspiracy to trick men into revealing yet again how awful they are. I, a person with a completely different blog with an obviously different writing style and content and who is easily searchable as a separate person is actually the same person as the author. You are truly very clever. You should be proud.
It's not a post for women, if it was it'd be on a website which is only accessible to women to read and comment on. By posting it out in public where it's visible for all, and by having comments open to all, clearly it is a post for all to read and comment on.
Like most men, you don’t seem to know when you’re not wanted.
You don't need to care about my opinion, but I expect the fact of your own self-contradiction is evident enough to those reading our exchange.
Maybe this comments section isn't for me, but is it for you? It seems like the article was aimed at women who want to be in relationships with men.
Do you really think that making statements about women's biological impulses is showing your feelings? If a man here wants to talk about his uncertainties about how to coparent, or concerns that his wife expects too much or whatever kind of FEELINGS this post gave rise to for him, I'm sure no.one would be pushing back. But when all you trolls come in here making statements about what makes women happy or how we should behave that is not sharing your feelings, that is just vomiting up preconceived bullshit into what was a sincere discussion.
Exploiting women’s labor is my favorite hobby. Really grateful for these articles so I can learn to get better at it.
Wow, the jump to rape is a bit extreme. I prefer enthusiastic consent, thank you. Don't paint a whole sex as rapists for the like <1% that do.
No, men understand the world does not care about your feelings. Feelings are a luxury. A predator cares not of your fear of death. Starvation doesn't change with feelings. Natural law does NOT care about your feelings.
Men feel that if something bothers us, try and do something to change it, or deal. Feelings are motivational at best. They accomplish nothing on their own.
Feminists think a lot of things are rape which you don’t.
Men won’t communicate.
Then they ‘mansplain’.
Women complain, and say what men are like. They explain to men what men are like. They explain and explain. In articles and book after book.
So men give it a go. Try to say something.
‘Men aren’t needed here!! Shut up!! Go away!!
Ok. You got it. As you were.
“Go away. The women are talking.” This says it all.
Are the husbands invited to the discussion or not? (This is a non-rhetorical question.)
Why not? Don't let one loud woman speak for all of us.
Well said. :-)
I think the dynamic that men are reacting (sometimes very badly) to in this kind of discourse is "she decides the grading standard and then he is measured to it". If I understood the gist of the original essay here, it's "there's too much grade inflation."
But there's an irony here - often the complaint is not "he doesn't take out the garbage" but "he doesn't own the responsibility." E.g. she wants help with the management, not just the grunt work.
But there can't be sharing of the responsibility without sharing of the grading standard. "Be more invested and present in this thing with me, but I totally own what the thing is" is a big ask.
Misandry and hatred of men.
And yet here you are. Obviously, you care, as you type that you don’t.
I think the main issue here is women give more of a shit on average than men and then expect men to give more shits when they get married.
Women are failing themselves by not clearly defining the level of shits they give before they tie the knot.
They should be asking "Will you clean the house on your own without me asking when it reaches the level of dirtiness I deem unacceptable or will you continue to do it when you deem appropriate even if it upsets me?" It might seem robotic, but "will you help clean?" just really doesn't get the point across about what women are looking for.
People need to find partners who give an equal number of shits. My wife and I have been together for ten years and we both give relatively little shits. It's worked out perfectly. We haven't had a real argument in close to 4 years.
I did, though. I married a guy who very clearly stated that we should be splitting the housework equally since we were both going to do 40hrs a week paid labor. And then... he just didn't. So I structured it as alternating days of dishes/cooking and alternating months of laundry. And again he just... didn't. By that I mean 30 days would pass, the laundry wouldn't get done, and then it would be my turn again, now with backlog. And if I pointed this out I was accused of "keeping score."
Well thats just a shitty guy who was being a bad partner. Didn't live together long enough to find out these habbits before getting married.
How did he go 30 days without doing laundry? Did he have 30 pairs of underwear?
I guess so. Or else he didn't change much. However, I too acquired over 30 pairs of underwear and learned to outwait him. He does his part now, but it was a long training process. He's not a shitty guy, but he was a bad partner. That's precisely the problem this post is about. How do you take a generally good guy and get him to be a good partner?
I’m not questioning your account, but there are a fair amount of cases where the female partner has unreasonable or idiosyncratic standards, or where she delegates tasks but retains supervisory authority. Which means she either nags when things are done, but not to her precise specifications, or she sighs and just redoes the work. If one has very precise standards, one should probably take over the task entirely. In my house, I do most of the cooking, because I am just better at it than my wife. She does baking, when baking is called for, because baking does not lend itself to my improvisational style. And we both do dishes, but I clean the cast iron, because I have a very specific ritual, which she refuses to master.
There are indeed guys who won’t do anything, but nobody wants to do things only to be inundated with one’s perceived faults.
Also, out of house work does count. If one partner is working full time and the other is a stay at home spouse, the one who isn’t bringing money kind of has more responsibility at home. One of the Substack authors who writes in the women-complain-about-men genres was roundly roasted when she told how she presented her husband — who ran his own financial advisory firm — with a list of tasks and demanded he take half. She was outraged when he provided a list of things he had to do for clients and said that his bringing in money should be taken into account.
And some female demands really are unreasonable or onerous. Or maybe could use a bit of flexibility. I know a couple, now divorced, where mom used to have daily screaming matches getting daughter, then age seven, ready for school. Dad said he’d take over the school prep job. He accomplished it, no screaming required. Well, when mom saw daughter, she blew her stack. To be clear, daughter’s dress wasn’t inappropriate or revealing, or something a child shouldn’t wear. She wasn’t wearing a micro miniskirt with fishnet stockings or some such. No, her socks didn’t match and her shirt clashed with her pants, allegedly. Mom wondered why dad had picked such a mismatched outfit and dad explained he let the daughter pick her own outfit within the boundaries that it had to be school-appropriate. They ended up following dad’s no argument approach, but mom nagged and complained and yelled constantly about how awful the daughter’s idiosyncratic dress made them look. In fact, she had an offbeat Punky Brewster look and was generally very charming.
About six years later, during the divorce, the girl showed up with her own lawyer (the mother of a school friend) and claimed her mom was emotionally abusive and asked for her father to be given sole custody with no visitation. Dad got custody, but the judge didn’t go along with the no visitation request. After college, the girl did go no-contact with her mom.
I think we can agree that there's quite a spectrum of possible ways chore-division in a marriage can go. We can all look at the worst extremes and point fingers in the gender wars. It certainly makes online life more interesting.
I agree that female gatekeeping and too-high expectations are a thing.
Can you agree that men underperforming in order to avoid responsibility is also a thing? I've seen both, as well as several ambiguous cases.
Do we really believe there are absolute rules in this space? All (wo)men are at fault always?
Here's an ambiguous case my friend had recently. She had to take a work call, and asked her husband to keep the 2yo alive and away from her while she took the call in the dining room. Husband sat on couch in living room scrolling on phone while toddler wandered into the kitchen where knives were out on the counter in full reach. Later, he wandered into the dining room and mom had to call husband to remove him. Wife argued that husband failed to perform. Husband said "everything was FINE. Nothing bad happened." I think we can all agree there's fault to go around here.
Here's a less ambiguous case I witnessed personally. We were at dinner with friends. They had three young children, including a 2yo boy. The wife (who had worked a full day and then prepared and served a really nice dinner) left the table to put the older children to sleep. She asked her husband to keep an eye on the toddler. The toddler climbed up the couch and fell over the back and started screamed. The husband did not move from the table or miss a beat in his conversation. The wife ended up having to interrupt bedtime, come down, sooth the toddler, and take him up to disturb bedtime for the older two. My husband said he lost all respect for the man.
Here's another less ambiguous case. Husband told wife he'd love if she could pick up a French apple brandy when she traveled through duty-free. He did not mention what it was called. She couldn't reach him in the airport, and ended up spending 20 min researching French apple brandy and going to five different duty-free shops in order to find it. She was enraged at him for making her do this. I think we can all agree that most of this "making her do this" was in her head. A normal person would have just gone home.
To some extent, this sort of thing is a normal part of marriage. Nobody is going to hit all the balls all the time. But when the behavior becomes pervasive and nobody is open to reconsidering or changing their position, then we have a real problem. At some point you have to be able to give a little and say "fine, I'll keep the kid away the kitchen knives but take your call on a different floor ffs". If neither party is willing to budge, or if only one party budges again and again while the other doesn't, frustration mounts and a schism is going to happen.
And just because being an asshat worked for ten years, doesn't mean it will work for the next ten. "I had no idea this was coming" is a dumb response to a divorce.
I think I’d agree about your specific intuitions. I think there is a big gap between doing nothing and failing to perform tasks to precise and meticulous standards.
I do think it’s somewhat more common for women to randomly device they are unfulfilled and end a marriage for no reason. In my experience, quite a few of those women end up being shocked to find out that male attention is less forthcoming at 55 than it was at 25.
KP has expressed this very well.
Sorta. The key is relatively little shits.
I just left someone (we weren't married, but we were together for seven years. No children.) who I do think would've shared the project manager load with me fairly well. He's neater than I am. He doesn't have too much trouble staying on top of his chores (I do). He can't relax when there's clutter around. He can cook fine and was willing to. He would've been a good dad.
But the EMOTIONAL labor part wasn't there. He was not comfortable being vulnerable with me. I felt like I knew the inner worlds of all my girlfriends (and some guy friends) better than his. He didn't seem to be curious about mine. He wasn't interested in growing as a person or growing our shared relationship.
But I stayed so long because....he would've been a good task manager? He did make my life easier in some ways that having another person to fall back on does. There's so much conversation about men being useless that I thought I had to stay with mine who actually wasn't useless. Until I finally decided that I needed more. I wish I DIDN'T need more and I could just be happy with a task manager, but it's 2025. I want it all or nothing. Maybe this means I will be alone forever.
But in general I just want to encourage women to pick the bar up off the floor. Marriages were meant for so much more, I think. I sure hope so, anyway.
This is another huge piece of it. Emotional labor also takes energy and is tiring when you're the only one putting the effort in. Relationships take emotional effort.
I guess going into emotional labor is the first step to birthing emotional babies.
" Until I finally decided that I needed more." - Why dress this all up in a Disney princess song? If you don't love him and want to leave - leave.
But all of this speaks to a guilty conscience - of leaving for selfish and shallow reasons. "I don't really love him and made a mistake" is enough - you don't need to find whole articles online posing rationalizations - UNLESS - the women want to use all this to look like the true victim and thereby gain concessions in life.
The emotional effort in a healthy relationship is not draining but energizing.
I do have a guilty for conscience for how long I stayed when I wasn't sure. I want marriage and kids VERY badly and I found a pretty good guy by society's standards to do those things with, so yes, it was hard to leave.
How much of a deep, emotional connection can I realistically expect from a man (who was socialized to never show emotions, never be vulnerable)? That was the question I wrestled with and tried to talk to him about.
I'm not a victim in this situation, but I am wondering how well we've equipped men to meet emotional needs for their partners...I don't need a house cleaner or a car fixer as much as I need depth and connection.
I hope you don’t find a man who opens up and is vulnerable but end up not liking him for being too emotional. A lot of women look for that until they get it. This is a big problem men seem to have to grapple with the last few years; women getting the “ick” because he’s emotional and she wonders if he’s stable enough to handle her emotions if he’s got so many of his own. Something to be mindful of. Good luck out there!
I'm sure if you aim for that as an early must have priority it'll work out. Pretty hard to fake vs the other roles.
He was settling and so was she. Neither was being honest to themselves about it
Yes because what it actually is missing in what she describes above is presence. Actually being there emotionally and present fully with the person. And without that it really just like living with a co worker in a version of an at home office. So many relationships end like this because people don’t know how to be present with their partner. Presence is everything.
> But the EMOTIONAL labor part wasn't there. He was not comfortable being vulnerable with me. I felt like I knew the inner worlds of all my girlfriends (and some guy friends) better than his. He didn't seem to be curious about mine. He wasn't interested in growing as a person or growing our shared relationship.
You kind of make it sounds like getting to know each other’s “inner worlds” are a set of relationship video game achievements you need to earn. There is no relationship ladder, only the relationship you’d like to have. Sounds like he’s just not interested in having the kind of relationship you want. It’s ok to dislike that and end it, but that’s not the only way to have valid relationships.
I think modern people expect too much of our partners sometimes. You have girlfriends you can do this kind of thing with, why does it have to be him? Does he have to be everything to you? If you’re unhappy and can only enjoy very emotionally intense relationships, then that’s alright. You probably did the right thing by ending it. But for those of us who like less intense relationships, we’re not doing life wrong or having growth stunted relationships.
The 'emotional labor' thing is just a euphemism for soft control, aka narcissistic neuroticism.
This. All of this.
But the "emotional labor part wasn't there" - what you are describing sounds to me like "the emotional *intimacy* wasn't there."
I want to point to this distinction because I while I think emotional intimacy in a relationship takes effort (especially for us men who have sometimes been socially conditioned to _never be emotionally vulnerable_), it's a different from the work that I sometimes see called "emotional labor" of a household (maybe epitomized by "I have to send flowers to my husband's mother on her birthday because he won't bother").
I think the distinction is also important because in the argument about "helps run the household" and husbands who don't pull their weight, the other side of the coin is sometimes husbands not having a say in what the work is. I am strongly of the opinion that if both members of a marriage don't agree on what the husband doing a good job is, that's a bigger problem than whether he does a good job.
By comparison, if you decide you need emotional intimacy in your long term romantic relationship, that's great that you've identified what is important to you. Your partner could say "I don't want that" and maybe y'all aren't compatible, but he can't possibly tell you what your own needs are.
I completely agree with all of this. You're right — there is a distinction. I think it's important to talk as specifically as you can about what your expectations (or at least hopes are) for your future partnership and see if that's something the person you're dating can get excited about or on board with. I think a good marriage is a little give and take, a little compromise, and a LOTTTTT of honest communication.
I agree that in the emotional labor conversation (and literal household maintenance conversation) the standards that you're holding each other to HAVE TO BE AGREED UPON and partners should try their hardest not to micromanage each other about *how* they get to these standards.
Hmmm...I don't think that "women routinely freaked out when their husbands broke down during therapy" implies "Men are right not be vulnerable".
I think it does imply "men are playing it safe by not being vulnerable."
Also, can you be more specific about "freaked out"? Since your professor was the counselor running the session, what did he think a good resolution was?
I'm strongly Terry Real-pilled...my view is that men live less full lives for not being emotionally connected to other people, and if there are women who are bothered by men who are not emotionally shut down, they'll have to widen their ideas of what men can be.
(You can gender invert this to get a sense of how I feel about it. "Women are right not to have careers. ...he said that men routinely freaked out when their wives said they prioritize their own careers during therapy.")
Ben I agree with your take about men missing out on life, not being emotionally connected to other people.
This is why pornography is becoming more and more rampant, because it capitalizes on men's innate human desire to connect to others, but not have the skills to do so.
I myself am embarking on the path of learning to reach out and connect to others on a deeper level, and to express my emotions and regulate them in healthy ways.
I also think that it is 100% True that Women want more vulnerable partners; in fact, they need it for the exact reasons this post talks about. The problem with men breaking down in front of their partners isn't that women are lying about the fact that they want vulnerable partners; it's that they realize that men cannot regulate their emotions properly, which isn't a sign of a stable partner.
I think all of this is right, especially the part about regulation. I think "I can hide my emotions, or I can dump them into my relationship without managing them at all and hope my partner can emotionally regulate both of us" is a false dichotomy!
My thoughts exactly. This is why its important that before and during a committed relationship men (and people in general) should not just work on their external success but their internal self as well. Especially emotional regulation.
So I was going to say that there's a big difference between being open, sharing, and thus vulnerable (on one hand) vs being a dysregulated guy who is overwhelmed by his own strong emotions and is looking for a partner to provide emotional regulation _for_ him.
But if it's in therapy I'd hope that's a safer environment.
agreed
This is what I also thought, reading this post. It seems less like a practical load for women in these situations. With both my mother and sisters, I see that when they feel so tired all the time and feel like they are doing the absolute most (and usually are), it's not because they are not physically capable of getting everything done. Women naturally have a much better natural capability to multitask, while men are naturally better at driving forward and tunneling on a single task.
It's often not the actual physical load, but the emotional stress and pressure that leads to these feelings of misery. I was taught by my father that in situations like this, it's about the emotional support, not leaving your partner to deal with things alone, even if she really can do it all, doesn't mean she has to feel like she's doomed to be buried under the to-do list of life.
I think besides communicating well, and having conversations about a matter, another thing to do is to take time out of our own schedules, and offer to take over 1 or 2 tasks off her list. For my sisters, my mother, and my aunts, I noticed that when I said "well, for this week, I can make time to handle this for you..." even if its just washing dishes, or looking after small children, or getting the groceries, it takes a huge emotional weight off of them.
it doesn't matter if you work full time, if your wife is a stay-at-home mom, or if you are a "good father" or "kind person"; you can make time in your life for the people that mean something to you.
Value your Family, Value your Partner.
Stay at home mum isn't a hard job, except maybe when the kids are really tiny. If someone's having problems with it it's likely unrelated to the actual things they have to do, they probably just have mental problems, are socially isolated, physically unhealthy or something like that.
Interesting Steve, have you done this?
Yes, my wife sometimes goes overseas to visit her family for a few months at a time and I have to take over her roles. I manage to do it while running my business, which is a 40-50 hour/week job. And not a memos and email, fucking around in an office job either. More if things are going crazy.
My wife would be the first to admit that she doesn't actually have that much to do. She's a happy and relaxed person, enjoying her life. That's rubbed off on the kids, which to me is the point of the whole thing, not a 'who does what' keeping score scenario where everyone's living out some egocentric self-actualisation fantasy.
I have to work way harder than my wife, I'm not going to cry about it, it's just what life is.
This sounds exactly like the 5.5 years relationship I just left.
This is an interesting comment. I feel like a guy like that is more rare? It seems like we have to pick between one or the other.
Took you seven years to figure that out?
“Emotional labor” is literally just bullshit yall make up as an excuse to get out of the relationship
If you weren’t doing any emotional labor, you were already not in the relationship.
Men don't want relationships, they want ownership. Yeah mask off. Thinking that a man is going to stoop down to your level and "emotionally" connect with you on any level is retarded, and you'll eventually get the ick from his simp behavior.
Imagine using the phrase "project manager" to refer to your spouse or significant other like they're some sort of business colleague. No wonder there wasn't any "emotional intelligence" - you treated him like a fucking coworker.
You corporate girly retards are fucking cooked.
You are right. Wanting an emotional bond with your husband is definitely retarded.
Emotional bonds for men and women are different in the same way that the roles we play in life which cultivate those bonds are different. I would love my wife if I owned her and she wasn't trouble; women love their husband when they have an aura to them and fuck them well.
Wow. You have concluded it perfectly.
It’s a privileged position. Good thing, means life’s not heard enough to have nowhere to go. Use it wisely.
Exactly, pick the bar off the floor 💯
there may be an unresolvable tension between heterosexual partners. each of us is the product of our culture as experienced by each generation, and our genetic heritage. a perfect match is likely impossible. a truly balanced sharing of household "chores" is against our slowly evolving cultural standards, but possible. finding a partner willing to work at the partnership in its various areas, really, really hard. it takes work to change even if you want to change. perhaps it is the effort done every day that makes a pairing work. people change and drift apart, perhaps few relationships last more than a couple decades in the 21st century. but a run of 12-20 years with mostly good memories is a lucky love.
btw, had to laugh because my hopefully third wife is an emotional disaster and i have never cried heartbroken as much in my life because she isn't able to step outside of her drama and support me in my struggles. sounds like you were with a guy too locked up to share his fears and guilt. it goes in both directions, but mostly it is men not understanding what commitment towards a marraige requires (constant effort and gratitude).
Hi Alex. Sorry to hear about your lost guy but everything comes down to trust. The vulnerability women expect from their men only comes many years later. Men can be vulnerable with each other because we don't throw that vulnerability in each other faces. Most men don't trust that their women won't throw that vulnerability back at them. There is a reason why depression is up significantly with women. Marriages were also responsible for the sharing of the emotional labor and of duties. The emotional labor component is very important to women but nothing is thought of the duties. That guy you left will be alright, he already has some of the components needed and will develop whatever men lack in the initial part of a relationship later. The average good guy/task manager always does.
There is an okay chance he already knew what you felt, and it is never attractive for a man to share his feelings overmuch. He probably knew this instinctively. Maybe he was uninterested in you altogether, which would obviously precipitate separation eventually.
Single dad here. Life is easier doing everything yourself than living with a perpetually dissatisfied woman.
If she has this attitude that you owe it to her to make her happy you can never win no matter how hard you.try. Do yourself a favor and move on.
Amen. So much self imposed stress in the wife-o-sphere. Half the “mental load” was never needed by anybody.
Favorite foods? Mental load? I never asked my wife to stress over all that. She never needed to. Nobody did. Life goes on fine. Just enjoy not having to work and soak up the kiddos. Every other social media post is more complaining from empowered divorced wives.
There is a huge disconnect between men and women today and it’s sad. I think social media is driving much of it. That, divorce law, and maybe the glut of romance fantasy books. Who knows. Marriage was a nice idea until I tried keeping her happy only to still be labeled a narc husband.
True that. I’m raising 3 myself. I had amazing parents and my mom would always say women today are wimps.
Bill, my sense (as someone who unsatisfactorily shared household and family work with my husband for many decades) is that single parenting may be practically more challenging but emotionally easier because there's no debate about how to love and teach and raise kids. You can bring them up without being triangulated on critical conversations or decisions, which looks like a great relief.
nice, another take about Bad Men and Bad Husbands from someone with Taylor Swift in their bio lmao
I'd be interested in reading your rebuttal, alex.
how many more left leaning think pieces like “men bad” does the world need? have these women tried communicating with their husbands? who does this serve exactly? dudes like you who can repost and share to signal you’re One Of The Good Ones? It’s so fucking tiring.
The author says women are “gaslighting themselves”? Because they think their husband is Not That Bad? lol. do women have agency or not?
I guess I'll take them in order.
Well that depends. How many more left-leaning thinkpieces do you think the world needs until men learn how to step it up?
Yes, "these women" tried communicating with their husbands.
This serves the people who have been shouldering the majority of the everyday responsibility for most of human history.
Dudes like you who get a little chubby by signalling you're One Of The Bad Ones are so fucking tiring.
What do you know about gaslighting? How do you think gaslighting interacts with agency?
I’m a woman
LMFAO
BRO THAT IS SO MUCH WORSE WHAT THE FUCK HAHAHAHAHAHA
Oh man I don't know why I didn't see this coming. You truly sniped me with that one.
Yeah bro I don't really know what to tell you. This is institutionalization levels of weaponized self-loathing
Forget about it
The delusion & sense of entitlement are too thick to cut through
I can't help but wonder how much of this is about the absence of continual discussion and negotiation between couples. What worked for our relationship twenty years ago doesn't work now. We've both changed, our standards have changed, and the responsibilities we have to our family have changed. Frustration creeps up when the conditions change but the terms of the partnership don't adapt accordingly.
One example I'll share is when we decided it was time for me to return to graduate school. My wife worked full-time to support the family financially. She told me, in no uncertain terms, if she was the full-time bread winner, I was taking most of the responsibility for the home and the kids. In particular, I remember her telling me, "I want a clean bathroom and the floors to be scrubbed at least weekly." It was her job to be clear and direct and my job to listen and respect her needs.
Years later when she went to graduate school (while working full-time), we discussed it again. Since I was also working full-time, we agreed to hire a housekeeper once a month for a deep clean, but I would still up my game a bit while she focused on her studies.
We've been doing this for so long that we can sense when the other is frustrated. Sometimes that means we need to recalibrate our workload distribution. Other times, we just acknowledge that one of us is pissing the other one off. Just saying that out loud takes some of the tension out of the equation--even if we can't make things perfect in that moment.
I don't want to come across as a perfect, but I'll tell you reason that I think my wife is happy with our division of labor. The reason I think we are in a good place now is because, over thirty years of marriage, she has told me when she's unhappy with my contributions. I've done the same with her.
Just my two cents here.
I’m 12 years in versus your thirty, but more and more it seems to me that marriage advice is stupid simple and can be summed up by the cliche “communication.” Probably if you’re already in the hole (and no longer trust each other) it’s more complicated than that. But if you can keep it up enough to stay out of the hole in the first place, it’s simple.
Remember, to men an observation is not a command. You have to be explicit.
The point of marriage isn't the housework of running a home. It's a soul connection, a meeting of minds, a decision to be together and do the best you can to keep the other happy. Unless you consider a woman's only priority to be housework, a husband not being helpful around the home doesn't matter all that much.
My grandma was horrible around the house. Her food was barely nutritious. She had an awful emotional temperament and raised her kids with issues. She made excellent sweets though. My grandpa otoh made all the money, was an excellent chef because he was a food scientist (his homemade preserves were legendary), and if we'd visit him when grandma was away visiting relatives, the house would be neat as a pin. My dad barely did a thing around the house and I was very shocked when he made me instant noodles once. And I complain about having so much housework but I found i don't even do an hour a day of housekeeping. I'm the one who finds all the Christmas presents and I complain about it, but it involves browsing Etsy and Amazon, is that so hard.
And it's all fine, because the point of marriage isn't housework, just like the point of marriage isn't kids. It's love, connection and whatever it is you agree upon is your contribution to making the other's life better.
Do you think your grandma made your grandpa's life better? She sounds kinda terrible.
I agree that the point of marriage isn't housework, the point of marriage is building a shared life.
My grandpa was no picnic though. He was exacting about standards and the only person who could put up with that was someone whose self esteem was not dependent on those things.
I don't particularly empathize with the women who complain about their husbands not helping around the house tbh. They remind me of my mom. She always complains about her kids being messy, but once we moved out, it hit us we didn't mind tidying, we just didn't want to be tidying around her because in her eyes we were always doing it wrong. I wouldn't be surprised if 80% of the whiners were like my mom.
I don't have issues of inequality in my marriage, and that is because I spent the initial few years making my husband feel like the house and what it looks like is also his domain and he gets to pick what art goes on the walls even if it doesnt go with my taste. He grew up in a house where they ate a lot of canned food and cleaned once a week tops because everyone worked long hours, so he's not the best at standards, but he has better follow-through than me. So it works out.
Yeah I don't think the issue is neurotic women, I know plenty of "type B" moms who struggle majorly with this and it's not because they need things to be perfect, it's because they need things to be done. People need clean clothes to wear, food in their lunchboxes, and clean bowls to put cereal in.
The problem isn't type-A or type-B. I see messy houses where the husband is like "oh she has all the ideas, I just stay out of it and do the heavy lifting when she asks". My parents house wasn't the golden standard of tidy either. Being a control-freak isn't about perfection. It's about having an idea in your head about how things are going to go and not enjoying it when it deviates from that idea, and, often, expecting everyone to read your mind for your ideas and then being mad when they don't. They still want to be the sole arbiter of the home domain, because that's how they've seen/experienced it done.
And another part of the problem is just taking on more than you can do and not realizing it. I've been guilty of this. If you're both working long hours and have kids, maybe you're not going to be able to sort laundry into multiple loads (I've talked about this online on multiple women-oriented subreddits, and everyone seems to take laundry more seriously than I do). Maybe you can't handle a lawn, just put down weed cloth and woodchips. Maybe there are going to be barbies on the floor all the time.
I notice generally that women who complain about their husbands being incompetent at home don't actually mind their husbands are incompetent at these things - it makes them feel like domestic goddesses in comparison. The complaining is a kind of bragging or trying to feel better/equivalent - 'oh he might be a big dude at work, but at home, I've to remind him to take the trash out'. I wonder if some of it is a luxury thing - you've made it according to male expectations if your wife can lose money on a business. Maybe you've made it according to female expectations if you can deal with your husband making a giant mess to be happy. The next time some such woman is complaining IRL, try being outraged on her behalf and see how quickly she changes her tone (I've done this earnestly when I didn't know how these things worked).
Bottomline - I believe people are competent and rational. If women are happy being married to men who don't do chores much, it must mean the chores don't matter so much. If it becomes a real issue, people usually hire a cleaner. When that is an option, if people are getting divorced over chores, it usually means other things are wrong in the marriage and the chores are just what you say to your friends.
Your mom sounds a lot like mine. She doesn’t see my version of clean as valid and gets offended if I can clean up quicker than she can, like even if she can’t see how I did it differently from her, somehow it’s cheating to have done it faster.
Spot on. this is the best comment in the section. A lot of the women here never valued the men they were with, not really. Maybe the men also didn't value the women back. goid luck with the next guy.
What horrible examples for marriage, fuck that life
Woman-brain is definitely the belief that remembering things is work
It is work.
Facebook literally does it for you
You’re not tired from remembering things nobody needed you to remember, you’re tired because you stay up late on your phone
It is not. If you think it's work, you are literally an inferior creature. Lol
I have to remember things at work and at home. Need help with that? Get a planner. Get a calendar. You can literally just go to the calendar app on your phone and put things down so you dont even have to buy one. It even reminds you so you don't have to do all the remembering yourself!
XD Thank you Chet. Truth here.
We need America to dissolve. It should be replaced with warring tribes who constantly raid each other, stealing women to make them wives or concubines. Only then will women realize, “oh, this is why men are different - so that they can fight off the invader, and prevent the desecration that comes with subjugation.”
Amen. Instead women want men to be worried that the doilies haven't been dusted in 2 days and the floor hasn't been spit shined a 3 days. Women are the victims of some shitty chore mandates that they constructed in their own heads, then they get pissed when men don't want to follow their mandates. Next they are going to complain that men lack leadership skills and are simply following their wives demands
Summary: women refuse to submit to their husbands and then blame those husbands for the resulting dissatisfaction.
How can you submit to a lazy loser
Do you mean the man you chose to submit to when you married him? If you have a problem, go to the elders of your church - that’s what they are there for.
yeah nothing like discussing your marriage issues with a bunch of dudes that look like your dad!
You know what I have noticed? Women today aren’t doing so great with marriage in comparison to women 80 years ago. Perhaps you ought to have more humility.
Boy howdy I'm reminded every day how glad I am that I will not have children.
I'm completely terrified of being the so-called "good husband," and that's just with the two of us here. I can't imagine how much more stressful it would be with kids.
I'm so glad that you've found someone like you have. Aaron is the best of all of us.
Men who are bad husbands are not worried about being bad husbands ❤️ I think you’re in the clear!
this is unrelated, but you have some of the most shining talent i've ever seen at pissing off the worst dudes you can imagine.
she’s not going to fuck you lil bro
The world is also grateful that you will not have children.
There are several outraged comments, wow! I think there's some merit to the idea that there are ~some~ women that have way too high standards, but when it's such a common thing that comes up, I think it's dismissive to say that all women have high standards and are expecting too much of men. Maybe we're just trying to equal the load, the one that we've been socialized to see, the one we are going to be judged on. And this is coming from a messy person, who definitely has several dust bunnies chillin in plain sight. (Cause also, this isn't just about cleaning. This is about grocery shopping, laundry, cooking, scheduling, the list goes on)
I will say it is tiring to constantly see women defending a man as good when they're doing the bare minimum expectation, or mistreating them constantly. No, the man forgetting your birthday and anniversary each year is not good. I guarantee that man has a calendar he can use.
I think for the average man that wasn't socialized to notice these things when young, if he is willing to actually care to put in some effort, you likely can find a compromise. (Which he should, if he gives any shits about you and your mental health!) Communication is key.
Highly recommend giving a shit about something just because it matters to your wife.
Yall are a sad species
I guarantee many men do in fact care if their partner buys them a gift for their birthday, and in fact would be upset if their wife forgot about it. Not sure where that is coming from. You can literally google "wife forgot my birthday" and there are men that are upset about it. Which is totally fair!
Now, not everyone wants to be celebrated on their birthday, but that's a case by case basis.
as someone entirely removed from the dating world, it is baffling to me that people choose to be with-- and stay with!-- people who make them miserable, just because said people aren't serial killers, abusers, cheaters, etc. These guys that don't know how to cook or do laundry-- it's not like they all have had head injuries that suddenly made them forget these extremely basic skills. What convinces people that they should be with these people, who are in many respects less capable than children?
This is honestly pretty normalized behavior, you hear women talking about it your whole life. It's normalized and accepted in media. And when you marry young, your frontal lobe is not developed!
Why are you assuming the husbands are the problem and not the women?
When was the woman ever the problem?
why is every comment from a man about women’s expectations being too high? sick to know y’all will do everything possible except just fucking listen to us.
>why is every comment from a man about women’s expectations being too high?
That's false, here are some counterexamples:
https://www.emilysversion.com/p/hes-not-a-good-husband/comment/118435906
https://www.emilysversion.com/p/hes-not-a-good-husband/comment/118285649
https://www.emilysversion.com/p/hes-not-a-good-husband/comment/118482206
https://www.emilysversion.com/p/hes-not-a-good-husband/comment/118288816
>sick to know y’all will do everything possible except just fucking listen to us.
Just because I'm listening to you doesn't mean I agree with you. Perhaps what you really meant to say is: "just fucking agree with us."
Or, as another female commenter aptly put it in this thread: "No one cares. Go away. The women are talking."
I guess this must be the "emotional labor" I keep hearing about.
I think there's a lot of selection bias. Like, if you are a dad who is oblivious to how much moms do in the household, how did you find this article? Did you bother to read it? To make it this far into the comments?
So you get jerks like me going "hey not all dads" bla bla bla because ... as a dad in an egalitarian household who does tons of housework, I'm triggered by the comments to the point of reacting.
And you get guys going "it's women's fault because women are just always unhappy" or "housework is only for women" and other totally stupid bullshit, because the guys who think that were looking for some rage bate and can troll on an open comments section for a free substack.
It's all reaction, all the way down.
you’re not wrong, which is part of the reason I’m not engaging with the other response to my comment. it’s neat that they thought four comments from men in support of the article was a scathing reply when the 383 comments on the original post are absolutely filled with men who don’t get it, and clearly aren’t even willing to take a critical look at what the article is actually trying to say.
we don’t hate all men and I know a ton of really great dads who are around, show up, do housework, share in childcare. but I think it is genuinely rare to find a man who knows just how stocked the fridge and pantry are. the state of the household’s laundry. when back to school is, who their children’s teachers are. there are intricacies of maintaining a functional household that men don’t even consider because historically they haven’t had to.
men want women to make modern accommodations in so many areas of life, but combat us on others. I have empathy because, again, this is new. but not listening to us, telling us we’re wrong or needy for asking for help, is not only annoying but also contributing to male loneliness (something we, again, are blamed for in the end).
and I can’t even start on the numerous comments saying that they felt fine with a half-functioning household they maintained while a wife was sick or away. I’m glad they feel like that’s realistic for a week. it probably isn’t for any longer than that.
"I think it is genuinely rare to find a man who knows just how stocked the fridge and pantry are."
I had just copy-pasta'd this comment when my wife texted me to ask if we were low on hummus. :-)
I think the most frustrating thing about all of the discourse on this topic is the problem of sample sizes.
My initial reaction to your sentence was "is it really that rare?" The dads I know are like me, and we help run a household, and our wives have full time jobs, and sometimes either of the spouses has work travel and the carpool for kid sports gets complicated.
That could just be my own very unusual bubble...maybe our family is friends with other families that are in a similar socioeconomic situation in a particular place at a particular time. Maybe if I could randomly sample lots of families I'd be like "wow these dads _suck_!!"
I am genuinely not at all confident that my lived experience is remotely typical.
But in the comments, from some of the women, there's a "yeah, the guys who do the work are exceedingly rare, you're hosed" vibe that is so different from what I see day to day, it makes me wonder if that's a cluster of like-minded people too.
I mean, I think it’s highly possible that your friend group is like-minded, and it sounds like you probably wouldn’t attract the type of men who are uninterested in being involved in this side of family management. I still stand by what I said as the majority of the men in my life do not fit into such a supportive mold, though I’m hopeful that we as a society are moving towards that.
I'm a mid-gen-X-er in an affluent blue state suburb where most people have professional jobs, two-income houses are the norm and both partners jobs are careers, and there's still a decent amount of telework post COVID. So that's my filter bubble.
Are you coming from a very different space? I've read on the internet (the source of all authority) that the millenial dads are pretty normed into egalitarianism, and if I walk by the bus stop for the little kids in the AM, it's mostly dads watching the gaggle of kids.
Maybe I'm seeing us move forward, but only a small pocket of us.
I should clarify and say that a ton of my perspective comes from my community experience and that I, myself, am not a parent, so this is coming from a very outside perspective other than the examples I have in my own immediate family and friend groups. that being said, my husband was brought up in very hard-gender-roles household and culture, and it’s been put upon me to teach him things like how to cook, clean, etc. and he’s still working on things like knowing when things need to be cleaned, when groceries are needed, when the cat needs flea medicine, etc. unlike some other women I love him and the person he is and I’m down to grow with him because he is receptive to these convos and wants to do better. THAT being said, we also don’t have kids, and that would be so so much harder.
while I see many dads who are around, proportionally more than when I grew up in the 90s and aughts, I also hear them complain about the need to watch their kids, impatience with normal kid behaviors, and an overall douchey vibe when they are in charge of watching their kids. I have friends who voice some level of resentment towards having kids (I wanna make it clear that they don’t resent their children, but their loss of freedom as parents) because they aren’t able to hang out, have free time, play videogames, etc. my own brother is a mid-gen-xer and he’s a terrible parent, mostly stemming from his own internalized issues with gender.
I agree with the other person in saying that this isn’t about you, or other good dads. it’s fair to advocate for yourselves but it feels off-topic and like we’re getting into a “not all men” conversation, and I hope you know how unproductive that is.
Okay but Ben if your wife is happy and you're happy, this isn't about you.
I went back and re-read your original article carefully, and first, I think you are right - this is not about me. Mostly.
I think my 3-line summary of your post (and apologies if this is way off the mark) is:
* If he's not contributing enough and she's burned out, he's not a good husband/dad.
* She contributes by saying he is a good husband/dad despite this dynamic.
* She should demand more from him.
Some couples fall into a "she demands, he is insubordinate" dynamic. She demands, he ignores. She nags, he stonewalls. This is not the dynamic my wife and I have, so this one is not about me.
But green's original comment here was disgust at all of the men arguing against the premise of the post, and my comment was that the posters are all the ones who were triggered. And I think this dynamic is one of them - if a husband or dad is trapped in this dynamic (and I would say both partners are trapped, because the dynamic is self-reinforcing and no one is happy), then hearing "the solution for her is to demand more" sounds, to those men, *totally insane*.
The solution is not (in my opinion) for the women to just suck it up and accept the situation as it is and be like "well at least I'm not being punched." I'm with you 100% on that.
I am also skeptical that taking away the label of 'good dad' or 'good husband' is going to help. Whether it is my co-workers, my kids, my wife, teammates on a sports team, any time I imagine someone with a serious performance problem and consider relabeling them as a subpar X and not a good X, I'm not seeing good management/coaching/parenting/leadership.
This is not an argument for telling them they're good when they're not...I think I am arguing for not tying up negative feedback with a deeply meaningful identity.
Finally, I think a lot of the men's reaction to this piece comes not from this piece itself, but from the "parent context" of Paige Connell and her other writings and videos (which I discovered by CHH's commentary on them - strong recommend for CHH's substack!).
And in that parent context, a lot of dads saw a sort of rigid perfectionist anxiety-driven way of running the household, where some of the "mental load" of the house hold is worrying, and some of the "must be done" work of the household is being done to appease her anxiety. This is where the men show up and go "mom went away for a week and it was FINE" - they're trying to use their solo parenting, where they had their own agency as to how to run the house, as proof that what was being asked of them included anxiety appeasement and not just necessary work.
This is both...not about me _and_ not at all what you wrote, so it is totally off topic. But having read through a lot the comments, I think this "well, actually it's anxiety" discourse totally leaked into the comments section. This is one I have experienced in my life (and I have my own anxiety to manage - I have been on both sides).
I do not want to claim that "it's all anxiety-driven" or even that it's "mostly anxiety driven". But it is an element, and when it is, once again, demanding more isn't, in my opinion, a good solution.
I think the “she demands,” is in error too, and again feels like it’s coming from a place of defensiveness. I think many women are just asking for more help (or even just, like, some shared perspective), and framing it as a “demand,” implies that 1) it’s being asked for in a negative way and 2) it’s something that shouldn’t be asked for in the first place.
There is nothing egalitarian about any household. My roommate in college lived in an egalitarian dorm. Any time my wife ask about splitting the work even, I always agree with her and then she switches it when it's her turn to go on top of the roof and clean the isht up there or when it's time to plan a trip abroad, or when it's time to deal with her father or when the kids are not listening to her.
I don't think egalitarian has to mean "everything is exactly split in half." My wife and I both have tasks we specialize in and some we split...the egalitarian is more that there aren't major domains that are off limits to one of us. I think the important things are:
- decision making is shared...no one person is doing the deciding and the other one just accepts that.
- overall work-load is shared...however busy or not we are, there isn't a huge mismatch in how overworked we feel. When I had a major version release while my wife was in vet school and we had a six month old, that meant we were both absolutely wiped out, but we were in it together.
completely agree with your definition of egalitarian. I think you need to convince a lot of the women here of your definition. Again, some women have reasons to complain, we socialize boys like girls and expect them to become men. I think what women are finding out now is that they are having to do the very thing men were accused of not being able to do, which includes going to work, focusing on your partner and serving as a model for your kids. Your are not the project, your partner and your kids are.
You don't need to convince women of that definition. Women don't want exactly 50/50, they want a teammate and to have a partner who is in it with them, not a partner who regularly ignores things that "aren't his job" or opts in to family life as he chooses.
I think one of the things that makes this discourse complicated is that wanting an egalitarian partner who pulls his weight and wanting an emotionally intimate partner who isn't walled off are different things, but I'd be shocked if there wasn't a lot of overlap in the venn diagram of where women feel resentment over these things.
(I say this as someone who was both egalitarian in doing things but totally walled off and shut down emotionally for years.)
I think there is an intuition in what you wrote that I agree with, which is that a me-first focus isn't good for families or communities, and this is true whether it's coming from men who adopt an old-fashioned "because I'm a man..." viewpoint or from a woman who has adopted this view (as Terry Real says: "I was weak, now I'm strong, go screw yourself"). My view is this isn't great for any humans, any gender.
But my experience has been different from yours in a lot of ways.
In my particular corner of the world (white collar often two-working-parent blue state parents) that egalitarian definition is pretty well accepted by most of the parents I know, and if there's griping, it's "he/she isn't pulling her weight", not "the split was bad in theory".
And I would not say we socialize boys like girls. We deliver boys about a gajillion messages about a set of behaviors that are *not* okay for boys. "Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys" covers this in fantastic detail and is a great read. It's 25 years old, but I would say it's still extremely accurate. (This book is, like me, US centric.)
We do put boys and girls together *in school* and I have read serious commentary that school-as-we-have-it-now not working well for boys. But the socialization experience within school is totally gendered.
I agree that we socialize boys terribly for their relationships! And it's not their fault! But it is their responsibility when they become adults (and it's our collective responsibility to raise our boys differently).
"In my particular corner of the world (white collar often two-working-parent blue state parents) that egalitarian definition is pretty well accepted." I have no doubt about this and am not against egalitarian but the result of egalitarianism are not particularly good for relationships (men and women) and without a doubt not good for kids. I lived in the U.S. for over 15+ years and all over Europe for 16+ as well but am also US centric as well. I have read Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys. I recommend Richard Reeves of Boys and Men.
I think a lot of parents have no idea about what is happening to boys in schools. There is a reason they are failing out at a higher rate.
You sound like a peach to live with
I was taught by the best, my grandmother and aunts taught me everything I know about having a great relationship and how to treat my wife. there is no divorce in our family (that's 6 aunts and 5 uncles), lots of kids and incredible legacy. My wife is the only one not divorced in her group of friends, I give credit to my grandmother and aunts. And all the women in my circle come to me for advice specifically because they left good men thinking they could do better trying to figure out how to get back with the men they left. The men couldn't be happier because someone's trash is another person's treasure . I actually don't blame our current situation on the women or men of today. Sometimes what we are taught as kids becomes us. Both boys and girls over the last 30 years have been taught how to prioritize themselves, specifically their own happiness. I was taught how to treat my wife from other wives (not just women but actual wives/partners). My wife has never been on the roof cleaning isht but it's my way of waking her up of her world when she is overwhelmed.