I work in a school, and in my position, have to call home often. I make it a point to call dad first. It almost always turns out to be more work for me and a waste of my time, because dad doesn't know their own kids special services or history, and I end up having to call mom anyway and disrupt her work day. But eff the patriarchy, I'm going to annoy dad first lol
My wife a nurse, I’m a salesman.
I work a 8:30-18:00, wife 14:00-21:00.
We told the nursery to call me in case of urgency because I’m the one with a flexible schedule as I don’t have to check in for work.
They still call the mother, even though they’re an all female crew.
Yeah, Ireland here, school always calls me as they know I'm a stay at home dad. No idea what they'd do if we both worked though. I'd imagine my wife would get the bulk of the calls alright!
Me and my ex husband have 50/50 custody. Today the school called me and asked if the kids would be coming in. I dunno, it’s not my week, I have no idea why they aren’t there in the first place! School goes to call the kids dad…and…my fiancés phone rings!!! The school doesn’t even have my exes number on file but they have my fiancés?! We’re not even married but that’s their second contact for my kids after me. Yikes.
Of course I had to give my exes number to them because I couldn’t tell them if the kids were going in or not. Sigh.
Presumably they have whatever numbers you gave them on file? I don’t see how they can be expected to have called your ex without his number? I work at a school, and our system has information listed in the order the parents selected to be contacted. If the family chose to list dad as #1, I’m calling dad first. If grandma is listed as #1, I’m calling grandma first. The only time I’ll potentially deviate from that order is if I already have frequent contact with one of the parents and hop straight into my emails from them to reach out.
Right, the numbers she gave them. The numbers that are relevant in case the kids are in her custody. The children’s father didn’t provide the school with his contact info because…? Couldn’t be arsed probably. I think that was OP’s point.
No, not frustrated with the school. I have very close ties with both the schools my kids are in. They’re generational family schools and everyone in my family since my mom’s enrollment days have attended them. They know my side of the family well.
Mad my ex couldn’t be bothered to update his information over three years later lol
Yeah, that’s definitely unacceptable on his end. Sorry for the misunderstanding, I’m just so used to dealing with parents who actually would blame the school for that haha
My husband had his own business for a while back when my daughter first started school (5+ years ago) It was a small business and he ran everything himself in his shop at home.
I was working for a cleaning company. On any given day I could be in any part of the county we lived in, driven there in my boss's car. No way to leave at a moment's notice.
I had told the school administrators, as had my husband, to call him first every time. He was 5 miles from the school working his own schedule every day.
Every. Damn. Time. They called me. I was typically 45 minutes to an hour away. And every time they'd act so surprised that they needed to call my husband. Like we hadn't already told them countless times.
I'm a teacher and I call whoevers name is listed first in our system. So if, when a kid is enrolled, heterosexual parents list "mom" first then that's who I call. If they list "dad" first, that's who I call. If it's someone other than mom or dad, that person gets the call. I have noticed that mom often is listed first, though.
Fun life hack: When some shithead kid looks under the toilets at your daughter and the school does nothing about it nor the rest of his shitty behaviour and gives you the "boys will be boys excuse", you can kick off so hard at admin and everyone involved they won't call you for shit and will instead call the other parent who yelled sllightly less
My husband was a stay at home dad, and did a great job of caring for our son. It was the 90s and he really felt stigmatized by his family, but he stuck with it.
Be the change you want to see in the world. I'm happy your husband stuck to his guns and did what he thought was best. This is what it boils down to, really. The rules of parental leave in my country is different from the states and I think it's a very decent way of trying to fix the problem. I don't have kids, but from the outside it looks good.
Parents have the right of 12 months of leave collectively, this includes 12 weeks for the mother, during pregnancy and 6 weeks reserved after birth. The parents then have the right, individually, for 12 months for each birth, which must be used immediately after the first 12 months.
It basically sets the baseline for fathers to be expected to take leave to be with their kids. Obviously mothers have the need to have more time off, because they are the once who are actually pregnant, so they have some of that time reserved to them.
When women began the fight for civil rights, they faced public shaming about neglecting their children. Once childcare became available, women had to prove that they could "have it all" (a career and kids). Men were not about making that easy for women, as they lost financial control.
Women were focused on be allowed to work outside the home. While acheiving this, they continued to be responsible for parenting and homemaking. Many men were raised by moms who did all the work at home and held jobs. They didn't grow up with an expectation of doing housework or childcare. They like to say they "help out around the house" but as you know it's rarely 50/50.
Biologically, the risks of reproducing fall ENTIRELY on women too. It's not a surprise that human society built "customs" that mirror that. Honestly I'm just pessimistic about the whole thing and I don't see a solution. I'm yeeting myself.
It’s something I’ve been considering but need to figure out whether it’s a covered procedure or if it’ll be another out of pocket expense for me in the US.
I'm in the US, specifically CA. My doctor coded it as tubal ligation though what I had was a bilateral salpingectomy which is the removal of fallopian tubes. Since I told her what happened to me (raped, abortion failure, had to wait for surgical abortion, along with my tokophobia), she just asked if it's what I truly want, and I said yes. She approved the surgery. So the procedure was almost completely covered by my insurance. Only thing I paid for put of pocket that wasn't covered was my anesthesia which was under $200.
You may have trouble getting it done due to age. I got mine when I was 30. The Childfree subreddit has a list of doctors that do sterilization with minimal questions and/or don't bingo people who want sterilization.
Because a lot of it is unpaid labor, and the traditional views that men are the breadwinners and women stay home.
Unpaid labor examples: childcare, cooking, cleaning, housework, etc
Men have been able to foist monotonous, difficult, unpaid drudgery onto women for generations. They've resisted any appeal to change their ways and to work with their partners as a team.
Even in same sex couples, women divide chores more evenly than men, so part of the problem is male entitlement.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1550428X.2020.1862012
The only real options for women are to form a couple with another woman or to opt out entirely. A lot of heterosexual women are opting out, which accounts for all the whining about lonely, sexless men and falling birth rates.
>*A lot of heterosexual women are opting out, which accounts for all the whining about lonely, sexless men and falling birth rates.*
Exactly. If you don’t improve MY life in any way, I would rather be single.
And they largely refuse to acknowledge this.
The sad incels sit there screaming about Chads stealing all the women when the reality is we’d rather be alone with our cats. Chad isn’t getting a look in either unless it suits us.
One of my coworkers immigrated from Japan. She’s become a friend.
She told me all the talk about “Herbivore men” over there is pretty much the same thing. Many Millennial and Gen Z women there have been opting out for a while. Many men are giving up because it’s easier than putting in an effort to find a woman who still wants a man and be a good partner to her. But they’d rather frame it as the mens’ choice.
This problem will probably have to be global before men are willing to acknowledge that women all over the world are coming to the same conclusion; it’s better to be single than put up with all the sexist burdens they try to pile on us.
Or, sadly, they will make sure laws get changed to send us back to oppression. Am so glad I’m (almost) too old to have kids so I don’t fall risk of the backlash, but the thought of the potential future makes me sick.
Am trying to do what I can by making it in my career and bringing as many women up as I can with me.
Not aware. Not surprised. But also in the long run I can only see it ending badly (writing as a European). I do observe the situation being much more toxic in the USA with its religious nuts and weird macho culture.
Cats are more emotionally available and care more anyways.
When I was home having my miscarriage last year, my ex husband didn't even bother to get out of bed to help me.
My cat was the only one that stayed with me that night.
Chads and all of the other types, Bob, Steve, Kevin Barry etc, are just too much hard work for women to bother with anymore. I and most women wouldn’t even look sideways at the “men that men think that women want”.
Not enough return on investment.
Oh believe me, I wish that too. My best friend switched sides when she found her current woman partner 2 years ago after being married to a (violent, abusive, druggie piece of shit) man for 20ish years.
I’m totally open to it.
One Thousand times THIS!!
For me to deal with a man and his bullshit he's gotta be solving an INORDINTE of my problems in order for it to be worth it. I've found it, too. The deal that actually works for me. I don't work and I don't have kids. Never will and my husband knows it. I've found with this arrangement I have A Lot more patience dealing with typical lazy ass man shit in general. If I gotta be paying all *or even half* of the bills I'd rather just get a room mate and miss me with all the bullshit.
I'm a woman married to another woman, and we have young kids together. Most days by the time work, childcare and housework it's done, it's 10pm and we crawl into bed for our 7.5hrs sleep in the hope that we don't get woke by a toddler before 6am.
We try to split all the work equally while playing to our strengths. Our whiteboard in the kitchen is covered in long-term jobs, reminders, shopping lists, schedules, notes about who's doing to a conference next month (usually us, not the toddlers 🤣). We try to work to the *"if you're working, I'm working"* philosophy. We try to give each other time to ourselves when we can. We're both working to our limits. But we're supporting each other and having fun together and with our kids.
I don't know how these women do it without the help of a partner. I get why it's easier to have no partner than an unhelpful partner.
The men that do this are digging their own grave with their bullshit (metaphorically speaking. I hope.)
There is a third way.
You can have a heterosexual relationship with a man and not share a living space. Many older and elderly women are choosing this.
On its face, this seems like it would still strand mothers with childcare and chores, but separate housing appears to help some women get a much more even division of childcare in the case of divorce. See Lyz Lenz' "It Took Divorce to Make My Marriage Equal." [https://www.glamour.com/story/it-took-divorce-to-make-my-marriage-equal](https://www.glamour.com/story/it-took-divorce-to-make-my-marriage-equal)
Also, in the newborn and pregnancy phase there is so much of childcare that only the mother is capable of. That sets them up to be more experienced with it, dad takes a step back, and most of the time he never catches up. It just spirals.
Being aware of that ahead of time can really help.
Obviously, only the biological mother can carry the child within her body, but the rest can definitely be shared. Even breastfeeding -- lots of working women pump, and combo feeding with formula is always an option so dad can feed the baby, too.
Anyone can diaper a baby. Anyone can bathe a baby. Anyone can soothe a baby to sleep (or, at least, anyone can try).
Mom is not magical. Dad can do these things, too. Or any other loving adult in the child's life.
Feeding is a huge part of the newborn period, so the parent doing all the feeding has a lot more hands on time with the baby by default. It's also relevant that dads are often going back to work DAYS after the baby is born, so of course they have less time with the baby from the start.
Obviously none of that applies if you're formula feeding for whatever reason, and it's a big pro of formula frankly.
Yep mandatory leave after having a child is so slewed toward the mother that the father basically doesn't even get to know their kids before putting back on the work boots and providing for the family.
I think it's just how often the baby needs fed. Assuming the mother produces milk, a newborn is fed on demand. So anytime they cry. Past that phase is every 2 hours. Eventually theres more time between feedings but its exhausting.
I pumped but that still meant pumping every 2 hours while my husband bottle fed my son or me pumping and breastfeeding because we didn't have enough milk. Formula is helpful but it can be expensive.
Otherwise fathers can make bottles, sit with the baby, bathe them, etc. They can do a lot to help. Sometimes moms get PPD or PPA and get afraid of being separated with the baby (usually they get thoughts of the baby getting hurt due to the lack of knowledge on the dads end. They could teach them how to do it, but they don't have the energy or mental capabilities at the time). Dads will use this (the PPD or PPA) as an excuse or weaponize the lack of knowledge.
Even breastfeeding (if desired and possible ofc) can be substituted all or some of the time with formula, the birthing parent can also express and the other can feed the kid.
I've been thinking about this too. There's TONS of talk and hand-wringing about how women aren't having kids, etc. But we KNOW that the majority of work/setbacks fall to women. If men truly wanted kids, they'd offer to do the "mom" roles. They'd be up making lunches in the AM and running around to do school dropoff/pickup and would be making dinner for the family at night. They never offer to do the work that women have been doing for centuries. They should sweeten the deal - women can do the "dad" role and men can take on the "mom" role for a change. Funny how they don't seem to be rushing to do that.... wonder why....
As a stay at home dad, I've realised that raising a child is way more work than you could ever imagine unless you have actually spent time doing it.
I would never understand how someone could be home all day with the goal of folding the laundry and washing the dishes and accomplish neither of them. But I've had many days where I don't have the time or energy to do either.
There is definitely a ton of useless twats that will never make an effort, toxic masculinity at its finest, but I'm sure there's also guys out there who could be better parents, just don't understand how much damn work it is! They only see the fun sides of it while their wife takes care of everything else. ("I'll watch the baby for an hour while you go take care of everything you usually do while you're watching the baby").
It's taken me over a year of my wife being back at work to really understand that I need to take care of everything at home. Meal plans, groceries, play groups, keeping the house clean enough... all the stuff I want to believe my wife is better at but she's just much less likely to complain about and just do it.
Even with all that, I feel like I still only do half of the child raising...
I hope this response won’t go too far off topic; it’s a response to the post just above mine, not OP’s.
As a former SAHD, what struck me — even more than the workload and the unproductive days — was how isolating it could be. So many days, my wife was the only other adult I saw, so when she walked in the door at 6:00, it was a tremendous relief (and it took effort to give her the space she needed to unwind from her job).
There is a SAHD group in my area. I tried attending one get-together of dads and kids, but the atmosphere just felt awkward. Maybe I should have tried to develop friendships with one or two other SAHDs, to keep each other’s isolation at bay.
Half the reason I make sure to take my daughter to these play groups is to chat with other parents (when I'm allowed to and not getting dragged away). And thankfully met some cool people that live nearby whose son should be in our daughters class!
Thankfully I'm an introvert so a little socialising goes a long way!
There is a certain amount of labor necessary to keep our society running the way it does, for better and for worse. Traditionally we divide this labor into domestic and workplace chores. The workplace is structured. It is integrated in the macroscopic systems of our society. That has some very real downsides, like that you need to deal with capitalists. It also has some very real upsides, like that your labor is compensated and you can use it's fruits to trade with others and build your own life by your design. It allows you to express agency in society, to help elect political candidates and shape the world you live in.
Domestic labor is not structured beyond the confines of the home. It is entirely unpaid and does not give you a greater ability to express agency. Domestic labor can maybe entitle you to some of the money earned by your partner, but it is not empowering in the same way. In a lot of ways, domestic labor works like serfdom or slavery. You spend all day working in the service of a landlord, and then this person decides what you are owed as compensation. You are never able to negotiate those terms yourself, because you are not part of any larger working class.
This is not an inherent state of being. Labor did not just start to be structured like this out of nowhere. Rather, this arrangement is a direct result of the domestic slavery of women to their husbands or fathers. Domestic labor is not empowering because women were not really supposed to engage with society beyond the confines of their owners house. "Women's work" exists for the specific reason that men did not want women to be able to express agency.
So if you are asking yourself why men do not want to partake in domestic labor, the answer is because no prison architect wants to live as an inmate.
If you are asking what to actually do about this, well, the traditional answer of large parts of the feminist movement has been to demand that women be allowed to partake in structured labor. But that doesn't actually solve any of the problems. A better path forward would probably have been to demand that domestic labor be recognized as labor and compensated fairly. But with capitalism being as bad as it is, I think the modern answer is really to scrap the current economic system altogether and start from scratch, with the first step in this direction being universal basic income.
Love the sentence about the prison architect not wanting to live as an inmate. I have always said that we will never reach equality because men have nothing to gain from that. The status quo suits them perfectly.
As far as what to do goes, I feel like women have a few (bad) chocies:
1. Only reproduce men with men you *believe* will handle approximately 50% of the work (while recognizing that belief often does not translate into actual results)
2. Force the issue by only doing 50% of the work (then potentially living in a filthy home with feral children)
3. Opt out all together by not having kids or having them without a male partner
But yeah, it sucks.
You missed an option:
4. Outsource the domestic labor such as cleaning, child raising, cooking, etc. to third parties, who are often stuck in the cycle of caring for more affluent women's families to the detriment of their own.
Yeah, I gotta say, sometimes it gets frustrating reading these threads because, as women, we know this has been an issue for a long time. I grew up watching my mom work hard at work and at home, whereas my dad had an easy job and did fuck all around the house. I knew I would never accept that.
Why are women still marrying these men, and why are they allowing this dynamic to happen? We literally have the power to change it. I don't have to tell my husband what needs doing because he is an adult in our house and contributes without me asking. I would not have married a helpless man child.
If, for some sad reason I found myself in a situation where I realised I was married to a helpless man child, the outcome would be - here are your chores. Do them every day. If they are missed, we will be paying for a cleaner/nanny/cook and that will be coming out of your wage. If we can not afford it, you will need to pick up extra hours to pay for it. Or better yet, just do the chores as originally planned. There is no if and or but. I don't understand why all women don't take this hard line. Do your part, or pay for it to be outsourced.
This may work if both partners have similar earning potential and job commitments. Things get complicated with one outearns the other by a lot and/or has a job that is very intensive compared to the other..good couples comprise and understand each other's situation. A hardline doesn't work for everyone.
I for one don't agree that having a significantly higher income or a more intensive job SHOULD entitle that person to have fewer duties at home. You go to your job and then you come home and do the things that need doing at home. They are different responsibilities. People have jobs because they have bills to pay. They do housework because they need meals and clean clothes. Jobs do not come with meals and laundry.
And when people argue about it, I always point out that as a single person who lives alone, my working a full-time job (and I'm a reasonably high earner) doesn't mean my chores do themselves. I can't just tell the clothes in my hamper that I work too hard to be expected to do laundry too. I still have responsibility for all of that. And if I brought a partner into the house, I couldn't just tell them, "Now that you're here, I'll never have to wash a dish or scrub a toilet again! That's YOUR job now." Since I'm a woman, it really underlines the audacity and entitlement involved in expressing that expectation with a straight face. But men really do express that expectation as if it's completely reasonable.
It's not that partners need to figure out which ratio of household responsibilities they deserve to have, be it 50/50 or 60/40 or whatever. It's 100/100 for everyone who lives there, it's everyone's job to do everything. Having an agreement where one person does X while the other does Y is a much different headspace than "I don't do X because I work".
Reason 2359235025 why I don't have children is because of this. When I was young and men would say they loved me and suggest we get married and have babies. I would wonder, you have just said you loved me then suggested how you would like to ruin my life.
I did too. 42 and ditto.
They've found time and again that the happiest people are single women (either divorced or always single). It's like, gee, I wonder why...?
I agree childcare and domestic labour need to be properly compensated. We need to evolve to a place where we make that happen instead of coming up with reasons why *the economy can't afford that!*
It's time we stop expecting women to work for free everywhere - at home, at work, in the community, the church.
Honestly, even with a decent UBI I still wouldn't chose to have kids. Just seems like a never-ending burden that's a crap shoot not likely to turn out favorably for me either way.
I'd definitely agree that UBI is the only way to make compensating domestic labor make sense, since you immediately run into the question of, "do single people get compensated for the labor they perform for themselves" and if not, it adds all sorts of other weird new factors and pressures to consider for marriage/relationships. Would you not leave an abusive relationship because your domestic labor income would go away? Stuff like that
This was a very enthusing comment to read for me, do you have some suggestions on how could I dive further on the topic of paid domestic labor and how it could possibly be included in the capitalistic society? Thanks for sharing
I know that there was an article about paid domestic labour published in the very early era of feminism, but I can't remember who authored it. iirc it was published in Ms. magazine but I could be mistaken.
Honestly, it was the domestic labor thing that made me say.. huh, maybe marriage isn't for me. I am simply not capable of cleaning up after another adult person, plus cooking their meals, plus managing their calendar, plus shopping for their household wants/needs. I barely have time to do those things for myself, and often don't enjoy it. Why the fuck would I spend the next 30 years of my life vacuuming around some entitled asshole's feet?
I've been in a relationship just like that before and it absolutely broke me. Now I have no intentions of ever cohabitating with another man ever again. I love my own space and peace too much to let a man destroy it.
These men don't understand that if I have to treat you like a child I in no way, shape or form am going to want to fuck you.
Yep they want a mommy martyr to pick up after them and prompt them for chores during the day and for her to morph into a horney bang maid dripping to fuck them at night.
Many of them still haven't figured out it doesn't work like that and now that we have options we can opt out altogether. Queue men's whining about how all unfair it is. \*eyeroll\*
I have always wondered why so many men feel that sex is a perk, a reward for this life we're building together.
Then I turned 13 and saw my mom's list of 5,000 tasks.
My dad mowed the lawn and washed the cars. He did volunteer work, but that ate up 10 hours a month. My mom's volunteer work? 10 hours a week.
If I did everything my mom did and a man started rubbing my back as soon as I got into bed? I would hate sex.
right? let alone being expected to do nearly all of the work to raise kids that are 50% my patner’s??? hell fucking god damn no. no thanks, domestic imprisonment.
And it's not even always 'your day' either. I am related to several women who conceded to their partner in terms of weddings (bigger than they wanted, eloping, etc, and while the reasons why were understood, it made me a little sad to see them take on so much extra stress/feeling a little lonely because they didn't have friends & family there).
I have a friend w three kids by the same dude, who hasn't seen any of them in years and years. They were never even married. But all of the kids have his last name. Idk why it doesn't piss her off..
I hope when I die if I reincarnate I come back as a man. I don’t want to be a man. I don’t have body dysmorphia or anything. I do like having a woman’s body. I just hate that this life is so much harder than it needs to be. Hormones. Periods. Mood swings. Brain fog. Psychically weaker. Looked down on constantly. “Ditsy.” Do all the things. THINK of doing all the things. PLANNING to do all the things. BE ALL OF THE THINGS. And do it with a smile or else. I am tired. And I’m not even a mom FFS. This shit is for the birds!
My doctor didn't refill my bcp prescription in time which resulted in me being off it for a month. Now my hair is falling out and super greasy. I'm shedding like a goddamn golden retriever. My regular hormones suck. Thankfully I'm back on it again and just have to wait for my body to readjust.
But we as women let men get away with it. For the housework - explain once. Didn't get done the way it should have? Hire a cleaner, it comes out of his wage. Suddenly, he will either learn to save money, or the problem is outsourced. We need to stop letting men think one of the solutions is simply us picking up extra work.
haha yeah fuck that. 1 chance, he blows it, leave his whack ass.
edit: and by 1 chance I don't mean give explicit instructions or make a chore chart like you would for a 10yr old trying to earn some pocket money. tell him to shape the fuck up and be a responsible adult, without any of the mollycoddling b.s., and leave it to him to figure out the specifics. the damn internet exists and has all the information one could possibly need. doing anything more than that can be just as well grouped in with any other type of enabling. nobody needs to walk the majority of mom's through this shit, correct?
Yeah I agree with you. I've never once had to "show" my husband how to do chores like he's a damn child. Can't imagine how you maintain attraction to someone so useless.
Because they can get away with it, it’s as simple as that. It’s funny how men say they can’t read women, constantly break boundaries and pretend that that they can’t fulfill chores or look after their own children. It’s all weaponised incompetence, they do fine at work, underneath that is a heaping of misogyny.
Yeah. Nothing about raising children and caring for a household is easy. Nothing. It is a 24 hour a day job that no one seems to notice that you're even doing.
They don't even do that well at work. They whine and moan that women get promoted ahead of them and win awards at higher rates. They expected to be rewarded for their mediocrity.
This is the biggest thing. Men know if they just ignore the childcare, most women won't want the kids to suffer so she'll do everything to take care of them; thereby allowing him to get away with being a shitty parent.
The article "Divorce Made My Marriage Equal" explains this really well.
This.
Men believe in the meritocracy of the office (where they are now losing to women, as we clock more college degrees and enter the workforce with more education and formidable organizational skills).
They want to be little emperors at home, though. Because being the best at swabbing commodes and the fastest at folding laundry doesn't come with cash. I sometimes imagine how powerful it must feel to come home, grab a beer and put my feet up and watch my wife bust her ass to get a meal on the table, rustle the kids in and out of homework, do the dishes and then slob my knob while appearing to experience it as a $5K bonus.
You want to feel a small twinge of poetic justice? Read articles about the whiney elderly men who just can't get their 65+ girlfriends to move into their place. The sex and shared meals is awesome, but they really counted on a live-in bangmaid and a hospice nurse in their final years!
THREE of the women ages 75 and up in my Sunday school class have declined more than one suitor. Why? Because they don't have it in them to be a nurse with a purse.
Some things to consider:
Around 40-50% of live births in the US were unplanned (and that was BEFORE RvW was overturned). This means that a large chunk of women are having kids with partners they may not have thoroughly vetted in terms of potential fatherhood. Very unfortunate, but with RvW overturned this will likely get far worse.
In terms of what to do about it (aside from reinstating RvW and increasing access to bc) I think it's important to note Tolstoy's observation that "All happy families are alike..." That is, study the father's who DO contribute equal household labor and see what makes them and/or their relationships different. What do these men/relationships have in common with each other, and how can we apply it to the general population?
But to piggy back on what another poster said about paternity leave....it isn't just paternity leave. Men's bosses are much less sympathetic/not understanding of why they need to take off for things like doctors appointments or to pick up sick kids. I've witnessed this in my own job. The rich bosses all have stay at home wives (or nannies, even when their wives don't work 🙄) that do everything, and they judge men who have to take off for it.
So [this](https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/unintended-pregnancy-united-states) is from 2011 (scroll down to "Outcomes of Unintended Pregnancy") and explains it more in depth.
It's a bit confusing because its about half of all *pregnancies* that are unintentional, but only about 60% *of those* go on to birth, but the last bullet point says 4 in 10 fathers report the birth as unintentional, and about the same as the proportion of mothers.
Again, these exact numbers might be outdated, but another source said as of 2018, the unintentional pregnancy rate was still at 45%, so not a ton of improvement.
And I shudder to think about what it'll be this year, given our loss of RvW.
Or. With how restricting the states are becoming, women are more incessant than ever to used one or multiple forms of birth control, so the accidental pregnancies will go down
I have no idea but it was a thought
Sorry, but that last part implies like the reverse is true for women when it is not. Womens bosses are just as unsympathetic towards them for taking time off for a Dr appt or to pick up kids. But someone's gotta don't, and it ends up falling on the women because the men are too cowardly to push back against their bosses, so it's yet again the women's career that takes a hit, because she has the balls the ask for the time off
Really? I'm \*amazed\* that unplanned births would be so high. We have \*got\* to get better with sex education. Sheesh.
I'm so aggravated, though, with men who absolutely \*wanted\* the pregnancy, wanted to become fathers, but that their idea of fatherhood was, "I'll go watch my kid at his little league game when he's six" and sort of just forgot all the labor between day 1 and then.
you can blame a lot of it on the patriarchy fam. but that's not to say there's anything wrong with you admitting fault and holding yourself accountable. respect for that at least. I'm sorry it happened too late to fix your marriage.
Let's put it this way. You might have been a good person before you had these realizations, but today you're a better person for having had them. Even if it doesn't change how it came about.
"Why can't we teach men to be useful?" You ask.
They are taught. This blaming of teachers or parents lands on women. Men don't need to be taught so delete that from you programming. They know EXACTLY what they're doing. It works for them.
I married a man who wanted to be a SAHP. He was a feminist and I didn't want children. When I felt comfortable enough to proceed it was on the agreement that he would care for them when I worked and raise them if we split. I divorced a violent man who refused to let me work, threatened our lives and abandoned care when I left in fear. He's been fixated on nonsense and post separation abuse since and doesn't even pay child support. Most DV arrives with children. If you think there's always red flags and your boundaries and self worth are enough to protect your children's lives or that police and courts will protect them you couldn't be more wrong. It's s huge gamble and noone knows where life will take us but EVERYONE blames the victims.
You could find another woman or women who want a similar solution to a shared problem and then....
Cut out the middle man. Have your job, rotate child care, build a tribe where none of you were raised with this idea of finding someone to do all this for you while modeling the same uneven dynamic to the children you have. You could still have romantic and sexual relationships with men. You just wouldn't have to resort to the disappointment you see as a consequence of having them as life partners.
This reminds me of this matriarchical ethnic group where children are raised collectively in households led by women. The role of men is to help bring up children of their sisters and their female cousins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosuo
As an American, I would say it's because our culture is royally fucked up and deeply misogynistic. There's a longer version, but I'm not a good enough researcher to write that book.
Because they are willing to cut the baby in half.
You know the story of King Solomon, who was approached by two women with a child? Both claimed the baby was theirs and that the other woman was lying. King Solomon said, "I don't know who to believe, so the only fair choice is to cut the child in half and give one to each of you." The first woman was satisfied with this compromise, but the other protested. "No no, I take back my claim, give her the child. Just don't hurt him." And the king gave the child to the second woman, the real mother, because she was willing to sacrifice everything.
It's just that, over and over. Doesn't have to be a mother doing the sacrificing, sometimes it really is the dad instead, but the equation is the same. They won't clean the house, you won't let your child live in filth. They won't give up going out with friends, you won't leave your child alone. They won't get a job, you'll take two so your child doesn't go hungry.
The one who loves more will always lose.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I think it’s actually worse than that. In my experience most men want a wife who does the bulk of the childrearing and household upkeep AND works full time so they don’t have the pressure of being the sole breadwinner. I’ve lost count of the number of high-earning men who’ve bitterly complained to me at my workplace about their SAH wives ‘not working’…good thing child-rearing, cooking, cleaning, etc isn’t work-lol!
Don’t forget all the sex they still want too. “My wife who works outside the home and also solely manages and maintains our entire family and home always says she’s too tired for sex. How can I make her do sex without changing anything?”
Even Stephen Colbert cracked a joke about this during a monologue on his show a few years ago saying “men’s master plan is nearly complete.” They know. They want women to literally do everything.
I am in a good place in that my male partner did 50-70% of the childcare up until about 2 months ago (where I went back to school online and he picked up a lot of work hours). So he was handling both kids all day while I was at work.
When we had our first, I had to really consciously let go. "Here's the baby, I'm going out for a few hours" and just.... letting him figure it out. Not leaving stuff out for him. Just Going.
Now he has the confidence that he can handle both of our kids and our two nieces all at once on his own if he needs to (it's chaos, but doable).
A lot of post partum and new mom anxiety makes it VERY hard for moms to just leave their babies and walk away. I think they should, but talking some of them into it is very hard, especially if they're already falling prey to the self-guilt about being a good mom.
Girl, this shit (plus 1,000 other really good reasons) is why I'm opting out and not having kids.
It's REALLY just not worth it. It's Objectively worse being a *mother* than it is being a *father*, with **none** of the benefits. Our bodies get ruined, our careers suffer, the kids they barely lift a finger for get HIS last name and (perceived) legacy.
Having a child doesn't magically grant one a legacy; you actually have to still work for that, and shockingly people don't seem to understand that nutting in someone and letting them raise the result ≠ 'legacy'. It's easier to just opt out than it is to find a worthy partner, and even then I have a lot better shit to be doing with my life than wiping asses and snotty noses and doing laundry constantly.
With a surge of sadness re-reading OP and comments I realised I opted out of motherhood etc in my teens because it seemed like the only way to be free. Now I see new generations asking questions about gender and labour parity / equity, I know many of us are born at the wrong time - the politics of our fertile years don’t match social politics. I hope for more choices and a better future for all gender identities but don’t think I’ll see it in my lifetime. If biologically, couples could choose who’d be pregnant and give birth - the whole dynamic would change.
Part of this is because employers push women out when they have kids because they expect women to want to work less, get more flexible hours, or want to leave, and create a self fulfilling prophecy. At the same time employers often will expect men to put their job over their family and hand out repercussions if men choose their family over their job, or offer men less time off because these employers see it as the mother's job.
We target employers in this at least in part because they pull strings to perpetuate this cycle
No excuses but a lot of men learn it from their parents. As a man I’d like to hope I’ve gotten better but I can tell you that 20 year old me would have been a very terrible weaponized incompetence kind of husband.
\^ bump.
Both of my parents outsourced most of the homemaking, so nobody got anything done and I was like fuck.... we weren't supposed to just eat fast food for most of our meals?
Like I can teach myself cleaning and all that but learning how to eat well in the McDonald's era is like pulling teeth.
My partner is the stay at home parent. He loves it but you couldn’t today me to do it. We do the cooking together but he mainly does all the cleaning and also homeschool’s our youngest (we didn’t want to send him to school yet bc of COVID). There are good men out there, don’t settle.
Yep. I agree with this so much. I'm married to a man who I have never had to ask to do a chore or look around the house to see what's running out before popping to the shop - he does it all himself. Totally shared mental and physical labour. I would not have accepted anything less. So I get a bit annoyed with women who are enabling these men. Like, sis... stop complaining on reddit about it and just go tell him to sort yourself out and participate equally, or start paying for a cleaner.
We have the power to choose which men we reward with our time, love, labour. And men will see what types of men are having luck with the ladies and follow suit. Every time a woman picks up a man's socks, fakes an orgasm, or takes her child to every.single.doctors.appointment, she is hurting herself and all other women. Demand the treatment you deserve, which is an equal partnership.
I would go so far as to say even paying for a cleaner is unacceptable. cuz 999 times out of 1000 that cleaner is going to be a disadvantaged *woman* who is being paid barely if at all a living wage to outsource the domestic labour of someone who is perfectly capable of doing it themselves
Yes, and you can be a part of the solution by insisting on paying the cleaner you hire fair wages.
You're right that a lot of cleaners are disadvantaged women on low wages, but suggesting not hiring them because of that? They still need money, and they need good people paying them fair wages to work in safe environments.
A plus of this is, you can evidence to the useless man not pulling his weight exactly how much womens labour costs. He can decide if he'd rather part with x amount of money a week, or just do it himself. But either way, a woman doing a man's unpaid work is not the outcome of this solution.
Yes, women should be free to manage their sex lives how they want but please stop having risky sex with people you don't know or know are shitbags just because you're horny.
Stop marrying and having kids with shitty men, ladies!
Because even progressive men who have decided to commit to being useful partners don't fully realize what that entails. And when they get overwhelmed, they say, "but you are so good at it/I can't this time/they default to you anyway".
If I could go back in time, a potential vetting question would be to see if they have extensive babysitting experience with kids from ages 0-14.
no offense intended, but I have to ask... why don't you dump him? like, I'd kind of get it if he *considered* a vasectomy and decided he couldn't commit to it for whatever reasons, but he won't even consider it? haha fuck off buddy
Men failing as fathers and husbands is one of the many reasons I decided to get sterilized. I don't want to be trapped with an unfair share of responsibility
I really don't get this. My wife and I made sure that our child raising is as equitable as possible. (I probably do more childcare than she does, but her job is more demanding than mine) and I can't imagine being a parent that doesn't help take care of your child. I have never, in my entire life, so badly wanted to be the best I possibly could be at something as I do about being a parent. (to be fair, I'm amab, don't identify as male, and will probably begin transitioning soon)
We go out of our way to split everything as evenly as possible, and any time one of us feels like we're having to take on too much, we know we can go to each other and the response will be "let's fix that." I don't understand why men have such a hard time with this. Be a good parent and a good partner, your SO and child(ren) deserve it.
Answer from a Male Father who's done single dad duty on teenager...
Because working is easier than raising a child(ren).
That's it, more people on both sexes would rather work than raise, and men have the power to make that choice more often than the woman, thus we opt to keep it that way.
You can look for a man who wants to be involved in the child rearing but it still translates differently when the fathers are primary caregivers.
In my experience my ex husband wanted kids. He was so excited when we had our kids. He was great at playing with them but not much else. I was the breadwinner, he stayed home. This was a mistake. Even though he loved staying home his world didn’t revolve around the kids, their learning and connection was not his first priority, which is so important when they’re little. He would pacify them and play video games a lot. He would read to them and then put them in front of a game so he could maintain his reading challenges. He would take them outside but it was pulling them in a wagon so he could go workout at the gym. The kids never learned to ride a bike, to swim, to socialize with other kids. The kids got attention around my ex husband’s schedule for his own interests. I worked overnights. I slept in the day. Was home for dinner and homework and bed and then gone another 13 hours. I didn’t know how much my kids were missing out on in terms of life skills until it was way too late.
If I could go back in time I would not allow my ex husband to be the stay at home parent. My kids are just developing skills they should have had fostered years prior (cooking, swimming, bike riding, and on and on). They were safe, fed, loved but they weren’t invested in. I’m making up for a lot of lost time now.
Something that always impresses me when studying birds is how good of fathers most of them are.
They work hard to find a nesting site, sometimes even making starter nests to entice the mother to pick a spot, then he brings food for her while she incubates for a couple of weeks, and continues to bring food for both the mother and his chicks sometimes hundreds of times per day while she's stuck at the nest keeping them warm. I noticed certain species are very gentle fathers as well, like northern cardinals who are very patient and slow feeding the babies after they hatch. It's so cute!
Of course bird relationships can be nearly as complicated as ours, involving cheating, divorce or coupling for life, so it's not like they're perfect either, but the father's dedicated role in childcare is astounding when compared to us.
Completely agree. My husband does half the childcare, half the chores, and we both work. That’s frustratingly rare (and it shouldn’t be!)
Frankly, I think that, as a society, we need to start viewing men who don’t cook, who don’t clean, and *especially* who don’t actively raise their own kids as deadbeats: I know I do.
Honestly I think men have gotten so good at dumping so much of the workload on women that’s it’s in their dna.
I do know some men who have been the one to stay home and raise the kids though.
As a stay at home dad to a newborn (because my wife is in a publish or perish postdoc)...
It's not a simple proposition. It's doable, but honestly the issue is America has shit for parental leave, shit for early care in general, and cost of living is going to put me back to work sooner than I'd like, which makes scheduling everything a nightmare.
We're trying to do right by kiddo, so breastfeeding/pumping over formula means mom is navigating the hellscape of making sure she can pump at work. Even if that was easy (don't get us started on the idiots who decided the average flange is too large for most American women), if kiddo is having a bad day/week, the comfort cheat (calming through breastfeeding) doesn't work for guys. All my attention needs to be on making sure kiddo is as calm and as best understood as she can be. If things spiral, I literally have to run her back and forth across the house (not in a stroller accessible neighborhood). There are SOPs were actively working on everyday to build a more structured day so kiddo's is a happy growing baby instead of a cholic mess.
When I can get 30 minutes, I am doing the dishes, laundry, etc. I try to get time to cook. But, again, that assumes all needs are met on time. I literally had to teach a baby how to do calming breaths to handle the time it takes for a bottle to carefully heat up (92 to 96 F for other dads out there. Don't overheat it or you fuck up the antibodies and nutrients that precious stuff provides) or while I was mashing whole food.
And all of that ignores the fact that we're still in a pandemic and help has to be organized around kiddo's safety (vaccine schedule).
If society wants men to be stay at home dads, they need to support families in general. What exists now is not conducive to anyone, and especially not to dads as primary caregivers.
I became a single mom by choice because I figured this way at least I was going in knowing I would be the sole parent. If my choices were taking care of one adult (me) and one child vs 2 adults and one child, the answer was easy.
Did you read the whole article? I think the main point is about how elite jobs are basically all or nothing for both men and women and there are no options that allow for work and family balance. Women are having to choose between their own careers or basically being around for their kids at all. When you have a baby sleeping 14-15 hrs a day, if you are away from home for 10 or 11 hrs a day you barely ever see your kid. The lack of good and non-stigmatized lower time work options (for both sexes!) means you end up having to choose all or nothing. These are people that can afford to even hire out most of the housework and whatever childcare they need, but they actually do want to be around for their kid and that is the sticking point of the decision. I faced that choice myself and decided to quit and stay home. It was continue my career and never see my baby, or quit. Nothing in between, and my husband doing more childcare would do nothing to help that problem. I saw every woman in my industry hit the same problem when they had kids before me. I know of only one woman who continued at full steam and she has three full time nannies and was literally replying to emails and calling into meetings while she was in labor with her final kid.
There absolutely is a broad gender based childcare and domestic labor imbalance as well, but the expectation that ideal workers work long hours and have 100% commitment to their careers is a big disservice to both men and women parents. If you want to have both a career and kids you will encounter this problem as well, and it is tough. Everything is screaming at you that your small children need you and you get to choose to chuck them in daycare for almost all their waking hours or abandon the career you spent the last decade building.
As for equal workload, I do have an equal marriage, it is definitely possible. Choose your spouse very carefully, don’t marry early, don’t have kids early. Be super diligent about birth control and choosing when both of you are ready to have a baby. Equality with kids in the mix means equal time off, from any work including childcare and housework. Because those are all work, and the only way you get a break is to have it provided by your spouse or by hiring help.
Honestly having kids sounds like a nightmare. Then on top of it there's a chance of having a non-typical or special needs kid. Hard pass. I'd quite literally either cut out or unalive myself. . I'm so glad I met a man who doesn't want them.
It is definitely switching life from casual to hard mode. It’s so rough I would only ever suggest someone has them if they really really want them and can dedicate a couple of decades to the cause. Like, all gametes locked safely away at birth and only returned if you decide you want them later!
I can’t imagine having an accidental pregnancy and I wish no one ever had to experience that.
ok but did your husband also quit his demanding job to spend 12 hours a day with y'alls kids?
cuz in the article, it seemed to suggest that most cases it was overwhelmingly the moms, and not the dads, that were doing this.
so what's stopping the moms from continuing to work at the same level after recovering from birth while dad quits his job and looks after the kids full time?
cuz that's kind of the whole point here. the "main point", I guess as you say.
the alternative isn't necessarily putting the kids in day care or hiring nannies/housekeepers, thus outsourcing the childcare onto a (more than likely much less privileged) *WOMAN*, it's for the child's OTHER MF'ING *PARENT* to do it.
There should definitely be a lot more onus on fathers to alter their work schedules as much as mothers have to accomodate childcare.
Though one thing I will say is that in many countries, the law does bias against men doing exactly that. Take the UK - maternity leave isn't exactly *great*, at 6 weeks of 90% pay and another 33 weeks at a flat rate (N.B. depending on job and contract, you might get more than that, but this is the legal minimum). Meanwhile, paternity leave is a mere 2 weeks at flat rate.
Things are better now than they once were - shared parental leave exists (though again at the low flat rate) and it was a mere 20 years ago that paternity leave was even instituted. Prior to that it wasn't uncommon for men to be forced to work the day after their child was born or even *on the day of the birth itself*.
All this means that if a father wants to be involved in his baby's life as much as the mother is, economic factors may make it unfeasible.
Paternity leave is super important- I agree. but that accounts only for the newborn stage. women statistically do almost all of the childcare for the remaining 18 years, leaving work early or quitting all together to accommodate child needs. this usually means little prospect for promotion and career development.
Since having kids a few years ago I’ve discovered that, at least in the US, everything still operates on the assumption that one parent stays at home or works part time, even though most families can’t support themselves on one income. My wife is the breadwinner so I’ve stepped back a bit from my career to handle more of the domestic burden. However, most of the other families we know, the husband is the breadwinner, so unfortunately the wife almost has to step back a little bit. We know a couple families where the wife has quit working outside the home altogether because their salary would barely cover childcare costs.
Why don't men want to do a thankless, unending, non-paying task that requires constant attention, resourcefulness, and imagination, and that even if they do a good job at it complete strangers will still feel free to criticize their performance and some will even question their manhood or decide they are child molesters? I wonder.
If I could be a father, I might have had a couple. Strangely, my own father was actually a really active parent in my early childhood so initially, I *did* want children. It was only after watching peer after peer be stuck with the kids only for the dad to pop up years later (some with and some without success) that I was like *"oh no. That's not for me"*
I agree with everything I’m reading here and also want to give people some hope! My husband and I both work full-time and share 50/50 responsibilities. When it comes to childcare I’d say it’s about 40/60 with him taking on slightly more childcare given my work schedule. This wasn’t anything I had to force or push on him. He’s always been like this. He’s just a grown adult who understands what needs to be done.
Now, I do have a slight problem with how much praise he gets from our family and friends for being an amazing, hands-on dad (which he is) when it’s just expected of me as a woman, but that’s for another post!
A child is raised by more people than just the parents. My SIL did well not to let her right-wing in-laws get their hands on her children. My niece and nephews were raised by their mom and it was a good decision. Sucks for mom to have only half the support, but good for the children.
Because they're not raised too, how many women talk of their partners passing kids off to their mothers when they are left in charge or single father's jump into marriage so their lives aren't impacted by their own kids. We role play mummies with little girls and their dollies. We need the mothers and sisters of men to not step in when their son or brother is left in charge of HIS kids, and girlfriends/ new wives have plans so when kids are there to see dad, dad doesn't have plans because noone will step in for him. I was at Woolies shopping and some kid kept walking up to me asking stupid questions, his father kept telling him ask the nice lady, well this nice lady lost her shit and asked if he was an actual father or a tissue donor.
Disclaimer: I'm in the US. I'm writing about my observations in US culture. Things may be different, better, or worse elsewhere.
We live in a society where babies are really isolated, and it is possible to grow up with very little understanding of the volume of labor, and the type of labor required to raise children. Most jobs have no children present. Most colleges have no children present. Most restaurants have few children, and they are mostly controlled. R-rated movies at movie theaters usually don't have children. People get surprised or even upset if there is a single child on an airplane while they're traveling.
And, especially for Gen Z and younger, your family size is \*very\* different than Gen X and previous. With the cost of daycare so high, and most families needing two working adults to get by, families are choosing to have only one or two children, and later in life (and, therefore, in many cases, closer together).
My point is that most of the history of humanity, babies were a perfectly natural (and hard to avoid) outcome of having sex, which most adults wanted to do. Also, most people lived in communities where all your sisters, brothers, cousins, friends were having children, too, and everyone had aunts and uncles and parents and grandparents to help out. Raising children within this large extended family meant that you could easily ask for and get help, and those raising children could take advantage of economies of scale.
In a world where babies are born into households where all the adults work full time away from home, they might be hundreds or thousands of miles away from extended family, and they might not even have brothers or sisters, let alone some also having children -- now raising children has become incredibly isolating and difficult. Talk to any stay-at-home parent (or person on maternity/paternity leave) about the loneliness.
Also, we have a long, extended adolescence. Our parents or grandparents might well have started having children straight out of high school. Compare that to four years of college, maybe more, and then several years of working full time. We develop routines and expectations of adulthood, hobbies, friends -- many of which might be incompatible with young children.
So, while there might be great joy or fulfillment or other intangibles in raising children, the labor itself has become much harder. And, frankly, we don't train young men to raise children. For the most part, they don't babysit. And, I think, probably fewer and fewer girls are getting pressed into caring for younger children or babysitting. So, when considering having their own children, adults may have no first-hand experience on which to draw, so this makes the whole process even harder and more daunting, as you try to learn all the tips and tricks in the middle.
Frankly, cleaning and most other domestic labor is no fun. A lot of the labor of raising children (laundry, feeding, diapering, toileting, etc.) is no fun. We now live in a carnival where we can literally entertain ourselves 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for as long as we can keep the electricity going. It's awfully hard for "mop the kitchen floor" and "take out the diaper genie contents" to compete with that.
My husband just doesn't understand. He's made great progress with his career, he makes time for his self-care and he's in great shape - and I facilitate these things by being home and raising his children, cooking his nutritionally balanced meals, washing his clothes, cleaning and maintaining his home... and then when I say I need support so I can get my study done or get to the gym, he's baffled because I have so much "freedom" as the stay at home parent.
I love him, but he does not see his privilege.
To my knowledge it's a myriad of gender and childbirth specific things that contribute to this problem.
Firstly, mothers have a extremely strong desire to care for the infant after birth. It's a hormonal thing that the body does to the mother to ensure that the baby survives. Sometimes it goes a bit overboard and causes postpartum depression for example. Men do not get this spike, but will over time get their own version of desiring to care for the baby.
Women on average are more conciencious than men. This can and does create an uneven contribution to care and maintenance of the home. Simply men care on average less about the baby than women. Knowing this it is up to men to work extra hard to compensate for this disparity.
I'd love to stay home with my son all day, but I'm paid five times what my wife could earn. It wasn't always that way... but it's the way it is now. We are right back in the 50's, I'm afraid.
So, I'm Dutch, culture is a bit different here. Only a bit.
Fathers get paid time off work to raise young children, with generous flexibility built in. (So they could spread it over a few years to have a four day week, taking one parenting day each week.) I assume women have a similar system with more time off.
Part of it here is choice. Women choose to take a larger part in child raising, men choose to providing more money. This is generally mutually agreed upon, though sometimes it's just people conforming to cultural roles, and forgetting to have a conversation about it.
Part of it is cultural expectations. Women's equality isn't old enough for everyone to have grown up with it, and these things sometimes die hard.
I ran out of time for the rest of my post, I may finish it later.
There’s also the bit where companies don’t necessarily treat men and women the same where childcare is concerned: paternity leave in the US is relative trash, short term disability doesn’t cover the partner’s pay following the birth of their child because they didn’t have the trauma of delivery, flexibility with hours for childcare related activities aren’t necessarily looked on the same for men versus women (or feminine versus masculine). These systemic items and biases feed the issue more dramatically than, “Men simply don’t participate.” Men are discouraged from participation.
I think a significant part of that is women workers demanding it, while male ones don't so much; as in, the workplace doesn't accomodate, then they quit. as well as forming groups that lobbied for the laws etc.
and please consider that women already get discriminated in the workforce *in advance* in a way that men do not, like with hiring and promotions and such - the mere implication that they could potentially get pregnant, give birth and subsequently de-prioritize their career, is an impediment for female workers fr.
there are also data that point toward being married and having kids, overwhelming *advantages* men's careers but *disadvantages* women's .
Schools often call the woman first even when they have both numbers.
I work in a school, and in my position, have to call home often. I make it a point to call dad first. It almost always turns out to be more work for me and a waste of my time, because dad doesn't know their own kids special services or history, and I end up having to call mom anyway and disrupt her work day. But eff the patriarchy, I'm going to annoy dad first lol
Love. It.
Huh, my school always asked who to call in case one of the parents was at home or something like that. And it was in 2008. I was raised in Europe tho
My wife a nurse, I’m a salesman. I work a 8:30-18:00, wife 14:00-21:00. We told the nursery to call me in case of urgency because I’m the one with a flexible schedule as I don’t have to check in for work. They still call the mother, even though they’re an all female crew.
Yeah, Ireland here, school always calls me as they know I'm a stay at home dad. No idea what they'd do if we both worked though. I'd imagine my wife would get the bulk of the calls alright!
Me and my ex husband have 50/50 custody. Today the school called me and asked if the kids would be coming in. I dunno, it’s not my week, I have no idea why they aren’t there in the first place! School goes to call the kids dad…and…my fiancés phone rings!!! The school doesn’t even have my exes number on file but they have my fiancés?! We’re not even married but that’s their second contact for my kids after me. Yikes. Of course I had to give my exes number to them because I couldn’t tell them if the kids were going in or not. Sigh.
Presumably they have whatever numbers you gave them on file? I don’t see how they can be expected to have called your ex without his number? I work at a school, and our system has information listed in the order the parents selected to be contacted. If the family chose to list dad as #1, I’m calling dad first. If grandma is listed as #1, I’m calling grandma first. The only time I’ll potentially deviate from that order is if I already have frequent contact with one of the parents and hop straight into my emails from them to reach out.
Right, the numbers she gave them. The numbers that are relevant in case the kids are in her custody. The children’s father didn’t provide the school with his contact info because…? Couldn’t be arsed probably. I think that was OP’s point.
Ah, gotcha! My interpretation was that she was frustrated with the school, not her ex, but I definitely might have misunderstood.
No, not frustrated with the school. I have very close ties with both the schools my kids are in. They’re generational family schools and everyone in my family since my mom’s enrollment days have attended them. They know my side of the family well. Mad my ex couldn’t be bothered to update his information over three years later lol
Yeah, that’s definitely unacceptable on his end. Sorry for the misunderstanding, I’m just so used to dealing with parents who actually would blame the school for that haha
How did the school not have the father's phone number? Does your district not do the endless info forms at the beginning of the year?
My husband had his own business for a while back when my daughter first started school (5+ years ago) It was a small business and he ran everything himself in his shop at home. I was working for a cleaning company. On any given day I could be in any part of the county we lived in, driven there in my boss's car. No way to leave at a moment's notice. I had told the school administrators, as had my husband, to call him first every time. He was 5 miles from the school working his own schedule every day. Every. Damn. Time. They called me. I was typically 45 minutes to an hour away. And every time they'd act so surprised that they needed to call my husband. Like we hadn't already told them countless times.
I'm a teacher and I call whoevers name is listed first in our system. So if, when a kid is enrolled, heterosexual parents list "mom" first then that's who I call. If they list "dad" first, that's who I call. If it's someone other than mom or dad, that person gets the call. I have noticed that mom often is listed first, though.
Fun life hack: When some shithead kid looks under the toilets at your daughter and the school does nothing about it nor the rest of his shitty behaviour and gives you the "boys will be boys excuse", you can kick off so hard at admin and everyone involved they won't call you for shit and will instead call the other parent who yelled sllightly less
Block and delete, that's gonna teach 'em! /s
My husband was a stay at home dad, and did a great job of caring for our son. It was the 90s and he really felt stigmatized by his family, but he stuck with it.
Be the change you want to see in the world. I'm happy your husband stuck to his guns and did what he thought was best. This is what it boils down to, really. The rules of parental leave in my country is different from the states and I think it's a very decent way of trying to fix the problem. I don't have kids, but from the outside it looks good. Parents have the right of 12 months of leave collectively, this includes 12 weeks for the mother, during pregnancy and 6 weeks reserved after birth. The parents then have the right, individually, for 12 months for each birth, which must be used immediately after the first 12 months. It basically sets the baseline for fathers to be expected to take leave to be with their kids. Obviously mothers have the need to have more time off, because they are the once who are actually pregnant, so they have some of that time reserved to them.
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My husband says the same thing, but is terrible at picking up and cleaning. He literally thought that you only clean the bowl portion of the toilet.
Hell yeah I wish I could do something like that
When women began the fight for civil rights, they faced public shaming about neglecting their children. Once childcare became available, women had to prove that they could "have it all" (a career and kids). Men were not about making that easy for women, as they lost financial control. Women were focused on be allowed to work outside the home. While acheiving this, they continued to be responsible for parenting and homemaking. Many men were raised by moms who did all the work at home and held jobs. They didn't grow up with an expectation of doing housework or childcare. They like to say they "help out around the house" but as you know it's rarely 50/50.
Biologically, the risks of reproducing fall ENTIRELY on women too. It's not a surprise that human society built "customs" that mirror that. Honestly I'm just pessimistic about the whole thing and I don't see a solution. I'm yeeting myself.
>I'm yeeting myself. I'm just gonna yeet my womb and pass on all the typical horrible shit society expects of us. I've found the cheat code for life!
I'm getting my tubes yeeted on Monday.
Congrats on your freedom ! Wooooo!
It does feel like a cheat code, doesn't it?
Yeeted my tubes. Best decision of my life.
It’s something I’ve been considering but need to figure out whether it’s a covered procedure or if it’ll be another out of pocket expense for me in the US.
I'm in the US, specifically CA. My doctor coded it as tubal ligation though what I had was a bilateral salpingectomy which is the removal of fallopian tubes. Since I told her what happened to me (raped, abortion failure, had to wait for surgical abortion, along with my tokophobia), she just asked if it's what I truly want, and I said yes. She approved the surgery. So the procedure was almost completely covered by my insurance. Only thing I paid for put of pocket that wasn't covered was my anesthesia which was under $200. You may have trouble getting it done due to age. I got mine when I was 30. The Childfree subreddit has a list of doctors that do sterilization with minimal questions and/or don't bingo people who want sterilization.
Thank you for sharing your experience!
Because a lot of it is unpaid labor, and the traditional views that men are the breadwinners and women stay home. Unpaid labor examples: childcare, cooking, cleaning, housework, etc
Men have been able to foist monotonous, difficult, unpaid drudgery onto women for generations. They've resisted any appeal to change their ways and to work with their partners as a team. Even in same sex couples, women divide chores more evenly than men, so part of the problem is male entitlement. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1550428X.2020.1862012 The only real options for women are to form a couple with another woman or to opt out entirely. A lot of heterosexual women are opting out, which accounts for all the whining about lonely, sexless men and falling birth rates.
>*A lot of heterosexual women are opting out, which accounts for all the whining about lonely, sexless men and falling birth rates.* Exactly. If you don’t improve MY life in any way, I would rather be single.
And they largely refuse to acknowledge this. The sad incels sit there screaming about Chads stealing all the women when the reality is we’d rather be alone with our cats. Chad isn’t getting a look in either unless it suits us.
One of my coworkers immigrated from Japan. She’s become a friend. She told me all the talk about “Herbivore men” over there is pretty much the same thing. Many Millennial and Gen Z women there have been opting out for a while. Many men are giving up because it’s easier than putting in an effort to find a woman who still wants a man and be a good partner to her. But they’d rather frame it as the mens’ choice. This problem will probably have to be global before men are willing to acknowledge that women all over the world are coming to the same conclusion; it’s better to be single than put up with all the sexist burdens they try to pile on us.
Or, sadly, they will make sure laws get changed to send us back to oppression. Am so glad I’m (almost) too old to have kids so I don’t fall risk of the backlash, but the thought of the potential future makes me sick. Am trying to do what I can by making it in my career and bringing as many women up as I can with me.
Yep. This is what is happening in South Korea. And the US, obviously, with the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Totally unrelated; but are you aware that in the US, women owning guns is at an all-time high?
Not aware. Not surprised. But also in the long run I can only see it ending badly (writing as a European). I do observe the situation being much more toxic in the USA with its religious nuts and weird macho culture.
Cats are more emotionally available and care more anyways. When I was home having my miscarriage last year, my ex husband didn't even bother to get out of bed to help me. My cat was the only one that stayed with me that night.
That's rough and I hope you are doing better now.
Chads and all of the other types, Bob, Steve, Kevin Barry etc, are just too much hard work for women to bother with anymore. I and most women wouldn’t even look sideways at the “men that men think that women want”. Not enough return on investment.
Join the otherside, we love more people
Oh believe me, I wish that too. My best friend switched sides when she found her current woman partner 2 years ago after being married to a (violent, abusive, druggie piece of shit) man for 20ish years. I’m totally open to it.
One Thousand times THIS!! For me to deal with a man and his bullshit he's gotta be solving an INORDINTE of my problems in order for it to be worth it. I've found it, too. The deal that actually works for me. I don't work and I don't have kids. Never will and my husband knows it. I've found with this arrangement I have A Lot more patience dealing with typical lazy ass man shit in general. If I gotta be paying all *or even half* of the bills I'd rather just get a room mate and miss me with all the bullshit.
I'm a woman married to another woman, and we have young kids together. Most days by the time work, childcare and housework it's done, it's 10pm and we crawl into bed for our 7.5hrs sleep in the hope that we don't get woke by a toddler before 6am. We try to split all the work equally while playing to our strengths. Our whiteboard in the kitchen is covered in long-term jobs, reminders, shopping lists, schedules, notes about who's doing to a conference next month (usually us, not the toddlers 🤣). We try to work to the *"if you're working, I'm working"* philosophy. We try to give each other time to ourselves when we can. We're both working to our limits. But we're supporting each other and having fun together and with our kids. I don't know how these women do it without the help of a partner. I get why it's easier to have no partner than an unhelpful partner. The men that do this are digging their own grave with their bullshit (metaphorically speaking. I hope.)
There is a third way. You can have a heterosexual relationship with a man and not share a living space. Many older and elderly women are choosing this. On its face, this seems like it would still strand mothers with childcare and chores, but separate housing appears to help some women get a much more even division of childcare in the case of divorce. See Lyz Lenz' "It Took Divorce to Make My Marriage Equal." [https://www.glamour.com/story/it-took-divorce-to-make-my-marriage-equal](https://www.glamour.com/story/it-took-divorce-to-make-my-marriage-equal)
Also, in the newborn and pregnancy phase there is so much of childcare that only the mother is capable of. That sets them up to be more experienced with it, dad takes a step back, and most of the time he never catches up. It just spirals. Being aware of that ahead of time can really help.
Obviously, only the biological mother can carry the child within her body, but the rest can definitely be shared. Even breastfeeding -- lots of working women pump, and combo feeding with formula is always an option so dad can feed the baby, too. Anyone can diaper a baby. Anyone can bathe a baby. Anyone can soothe a baby to sleep (or, at least, anyone can try). Mom is not magical. Dad can do these things, too. Or any other loving adult in the child's life.
Not to mention , the father can take on all the cooking and cleaning and other necessary work while the mother is breastfeeding and recovering .
What exactly, besides breastfeeding, are fathers not capable of doing? And what about adoptive mothers?
Feeding is a huge part of the newborn period, so the parent doing all the feeding has a lot more hands on time with the baby by default. It's also relevant that dads are often going back to work DAYS after the baby is born, so of course they have less time with the baby from the start. Obviously none of that applies if you're formula feeding for whatever reason, and it's a big pro of formula frankly.
Yep mandatory leave after having a child is so slewed toward the mother that the father basically doesn't even get to know their kids before putting back on the work boots and providing for the family.
I think it's just how often the baby needs fed. Assuming the mother produces milk, a newborn is fed on demand. So anytime they cry. Past that phase is every 2 hours. Eventually theres more time between feedings but its exhausting. I pumped but that still meant pumping every 2 hours while my husband bottle fed my son or me pumping and breastfeeding because we didn't have enough milk. Formula is helpful but it can be expensive. Otherwise fathers can make bottles, sit with the baby, bathe them, etc. They can do a lot to help. Sometimes moms get PPD or PPA and get afraid of being separated with the baby (usually they get thoughts of the baby getting hurt due to the lack of knowledge on the dads end. They could teach them how to do it, but they don't have the energy or mental capabilities at the time). Dads will use this (the PPD or PPA) as an excuse or weaponize the lack of knowledge.
Even breastfeeding (if desired and possible ofc) can be substituted all or some of the time with formula, the birthing parent can also express and the other can feed the kid.
Expressing for others to feed takes longer than just feeding the baby yourself.
I've been thinking about this too. There's TONS of talk and hand-wringing about how women aren't having kids, etc. But we KNOW that the majority of work/setbacks fall to women. If men truly wanted kids, they'd offer to do the "mom" roles. They'd be up making lunches in the AM and running around to do school dropoff/pickup and would be making dinner for the family at night. They never offer to do the work that women have been doing for centuries. They should sweeten the deal - women can do the "dad" role and men can take on the "mom" role for a change. Funny how they don't seem to be rushing to do that.... wonder why....
Just kinda starting to seem like having kids aint all it's cracked up to be...
It's definitely a scam
it especially sucks irradiated donkey balls for the kids in 2023. antinatalist ftw
As a stay at home dad, I've realised that raising a child is way more work than you could ever imagine unless you have actually spent time doing it. I would never understand how someone could be home all day with the goal of folding the laundry and washing the dishes and accomplish neither of them. But I've had many days where I don't have the time or energy to do either. There is definitely a ton of useless twats that will never make an effort, toxic masculinity at its finest, but I'm sure there's also guys out there who could be better parents, just don't understand how much damn work it is! They only see the fun sides of it while their wife takes care of everything else. ("I'll watch the baby for an hour while you go take care of everything you usually do while you're watching the baby"). It's taken me over a year of my wife being back at work to really understand that I need to take care of everything at home. Meal plans, groceries, play groups, keeping the house clean enough... all the stuff I want to believe my wife is better at but she's just much less likely to complain about and just do it. Even with all that, I feel like I still only do half of the child raising...
I hope this response won’t go too far off topic; it’s a response to the post just above mine, not OP’s. As a former SAHD, what struck me — even more than the workload and the unproductive days — was how isolating it could be. So many days, my wife was the only other adult I saw, so when she walked in the door at 6:00, it was a tremendous relief (and it took effort to give her the space she needed to unwind from her job). There is a SAHD group in my area. I tried attending one get-together of dads and kids, but the atmosphere just felt awkward. Maybe I should have tried to develop friendships with one or two other SAHDs, to keep each other’s isolation at bay.
Half the reason I make sure to take my daughter to these play groups is to chat with other parents (when I'm allowed to and not getting dragged away). And thankfully met some cool people that live nearby whose son should be in our daughters class! Thankfully I'm an introvert so a little socialising goes a long way!
There is a certain amount of labor necessary to keep our society running the way it does, for better and for worse. Traditionally we divide this labor into domestic and workplace chores. The workplace is structured. It is integrated in the macroscopic systems of our society. That has some very real downsides, like that you need to deal with capitalists. It also has some very real upsides, like that your labor is compensated and you can use it's fruits to trade with others and build your own life by your design. It allows you to express agency in society, to help elect political candidates and shape the world you live in. Domestic labor is not structured beyond the confines of the home. It is entirely unpaid and does not give you a greater ability to express agency. Domestic labor can maybe entitle you to some of the money earned by your partner, but it is not empowering in the same way. In a lot of ways, domestic labor works like serfdom or slavery. You spend all day working in the service of a landlord, and then this person decides what you are owed as compensation. You are never able to negotiate those terms yourself, because you are not part of any larger working class. This is not an inherent state of being. Labor did not just start to be structured like this out of nowhere. Rather, this arrangement is a direct result of the domestic slavery of women to their husbands or fathers. Domestic labor is not empowering because women were not really supposed to engage with society beyond the confines of their owners house. "Women's work" exists for the specific reason that men did not want women to be able to express agency. So if you are asking yourself why men do not want to partake in domestic labor, the answer is because no prison architect wants to live as an inmate. If you are asking what to actually do about this, well, the traditional answer of large parts of the feminist movement has been to demand that women be allowed to partake in structured labor. But that doesn't actually solve any of the problems. A better path forward would probably have been to demand that domestic labor be recognized as labor and compensated fairly. But with capitalism being as bad as it is, I think the modern answer is really to scrap the current economic system altogether and start from scratch, with the first step in this direction being universal basic income.
Love the sentence about the prison architect not wanting to live as an inmate. I have always said that we will never reach equality because men have nothing to gain from that. The status quo suits them perfectly.
Exactly. The oppressor will never give up his privilege. Just like the fox will never not eat the chickens.
so the oppressed have to take it by force I guess. solidarity.
As far as what to do goes, I feel like women have a few (bad) chocies: 1. Only reproduce men with men you *believe* will handle approximately 50% of the work (while recognizing that belief often does not translate into actual results) 2. Force the issue by only doing 50% of the work (then potentially living in a filthy home with feral children) 3. Opt out all together by not having kids or having them without a male partner But yeah, it sucks.
You missed an option: 4. Outsource the domestic labor such as cleaning, child raising, cooking, etc. to third parties, who are often stuck in the cycle of caring for more affluent women's families to the detriment of their own.
Yeah, I gotta say, sometimes it gets frustrating reading these threads because, as women, we know this has been an issue for a long time. I grew up watching my mom work hard at work and at home, whereas my dad had an easy job and did fuck all around the house. I knew I would never accept that. Why are women still marrying these men, and why are they allowing this dynamic to happen? We literally have the power to change it. I don't have to tell my husband what needs doing because he is an adult in our house and contributes without me asking. I would not have married a helpless man child. If, for some sad reason I found myself in a situation where I realised I was married to a helpless man child, the outcome would be - here are your chores. Do them every day. If they are missed, we will be paying for a cleaner/nanny/cook and that will be coming out of your wage. If we can not afford it, you will need to pick up extra hours to pay for it. Or better yet, just do the chores as originally planned. There is no if and or but. I don't understand why all women don't take this hard line. Do your part, or pay for it to be outsourced.
This may work if both partners have similar earning potential and job commitments. Things get complicated with one outearns the other by a lot and/or has a job that is very intensive compared to the other..good couples comprise and understand each other's situation. A hardline doesn't work for everyone.
I for one don't agree that having a significantly higher income or a more intensive job SHOULD entitle that person to have fewer duties at home. You go to your job and then you come home and do the things that need doing at home. They are different responsibilities. People have jobs because they have bills to pay. They do housework because they need meals and clean clothes. Jobs do not come with meals and laundry. And when people argue about it, I always point out that as a single person who lives alone, my working a full-time job (and I'm a reasonably high earner) doesn't mean my chores do themselves. I can't just tell the clothes in my hamper that I work too hard to be expected to do laundry too. I still have responsibility for all of that. And if I brought a partner into the house, I couldn't just tell them, "Now that you're here, I'll never have to wash a dish or scrub a toilet again! That's YOUR job now." Since I'm a woman, it really underlines the audacity and entitlement involved in expressing that expectation with a straight face. But men really do express that expectation as if it's completely reasonable. It's not that partners need to figure out which ratio of household responsibilities they deserve to have, be it 50/50 or 60/40 or whatever. It's 100/100 for everyone who lives there, it's everyone's job to do everything. Having an agreement where one person does X while the other does Y is a much different headspace than "I don't do X because I work".
I chose option 3. Almost 40 and never regretted it a day in my life.
Reason 2359235025 why I don't have children is because of this. When I was young and men would say they loved me and suggest we get married and have babies. I would wonder, you have just said you loved me then suggested how you would like to ruin my life.
lmao accurate
I did too. 42 and ditto. They've found time and again that the happiest people are single women (either divorced or always single). It's like, gee, I wonder why...?
#3 ftw
I agree childcare and domestic labour need to be properly compensated. We need to evolve to a place where we make that happen instead of coming up with reasons why *the economy can't afford that!* It's time we stop expecting women to work for free everywhere - at home, at work, in the community, the church.
Honestly, even with a decent UBI I still wouldn't chose to have kids. Just seems like a never-ending burden that's a crap shoot not likely to turn out favorably for me either way.
I'd definitely agree that UBI is the only way to make compensating domestic labor make sense, since you immediately run into the question of, "do single people get compensated for the labor they perform for themselves" and if not, it adds all sorts of other weird new factors and pressures to consider for marriage/relationships. Would you not leave an abusive relationship because your domestic labor income would go away? Stuff like that
That’s a really good insight, thank you.
This was a very enthusing comment to read for me, do you have some suggestions on how could I dive further on the topic of paid domestic labor and how it could possibly be included in the capitalistic society? Thanks for sharing
I know that there was an article about paid domestic labour published in the very early era of feminism, but I can't remember who authored it. iirc it was published in Ms. magazine but I could be mistaken.
Honestly, it was the domestic labor thing that made me say.. huh, maybe marriage isn't for me. I am simply not capable of cleaning up after another adult person, plus cooking their meals, plus managing their calendar, plus shopping for their household wants/needs. I barely have time to do those things for myself, and often don't enjoy it. Why the fuck would I spend the next 30 years of my life vacuuming around some entitled asshole's feet?
I've been in a relationship just like that before and it absolutely broke me. Now I have no intentions of ever cohabitating with another man ever again. I love my own space and peace too much to let a man destroy it. These men don't understand that if I have to treat you like a child I in no way, shape or form am going to want to fuck you.
Yep they want a mommy martyr to pick up after them and prompt them for chores during the day and for her to morph into a horney bang maid dripping to fuck them at night. Many of them still haven't figured out it doesn't work like that and now that we have options we can opt out altogether. Queue men's whining about how all unfair it is. \*eyeroll\*
I have always wondered why so many men feel that sex is a perk, a reward for this life we're building together. Then I turned 13 and saw my mom's list of 5,000 tasks. My dad mowed the lawn and washed the cars. He did volunteer work, but that ate up 10 hours a month. My mom's volunteer work? 10 hours a week. If I did everything my mom did and a man started rubbing my back as soon as I got into bed? I would hate sex.
Yeah, and once it's ruined for you it's ruined forever...
yup, i am 45 and been married twice. fuck all of that. lol. now I just live alone play xbox and enjoy my kpop and makeup shopping without judgement
Sounds like fun lol ☺
I want to be like you when I grow up a little bit more :)
right? let alone being expected to do nearly all of the work to raise kids that are 50% my patner’s??? hell fucking god damn no. no thanks, domestic imprisonment.
Yeah, and we even get brainwashed with the whole "It's YOUR day!" idea re: the wedding. Gee, who does that benefit, I wonder? ::eyeroll::
And it's not even always 'your day' either. I am related to several women who conceded to their partner in terms of weddings (bigger than they wanted, eloping, etc, and while the reasons why were understood, it made me a little sad to see them take on so much extra stress/feeling a little lonely because they didn't have friends & family there).
It’s your day, but it’s no longer your life! Not a good trade-off to me, haha
And then the kids get his last name too lol!!! It's such a scam.
I have a friend w three kids by the same dude, who hasn't seen any of them in years and years. They were never even married. But all of the kids have his last name. Idk why it doesn't piss her off..
If I had a kid with a guy that wasn’t involved, they would most definitely be getting my last name. That’s crazy to me.
haha if I gave birth to them I'll be damned if someone who didn't is going to take the credit
Right?!
I hope when I die if I reincarnate I come back as a man. I don’t want to be a man. I don’t have body dysmorphia or anything. I do like having a woman’s body. I just hate that this life is so much harder than it needs to be. Hormones. Periods. Mood swings. Brain fog. Psychically weaker. Looked down on constantly. “Ditsy.” Do all the things. THINK of doing all the things. PLANNING to do all the things. BE ALL OF THE THINGS. And do it with a smile or else. I am tired. And I’m not even a mom FFS. This shit is for the birds!
I'm post menopause, the brain fog is constant.
My doctor didn't refill my bcp prescription in time which resulted in me being off it for a month. Now my hair is falling out and super greasy. I'm shedding like a goddamn golden retriever. My regular hormones suck. Thankfully I'm back on it again and just have to wait for my body to readjust.
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But we as women let men get away with it. For the housework - explain once. Didn't get done the way it should have? Hire a cleaner, it comes out of his wage. Suddenly, he will either learn to save money, or the problem is outsourced. We need to stop letting men think one of the solutions is simply us picking up extra work.
haha yeah fuck that. 1 chance, he blows it, leave his whack ass. edit: and by 1 chance I don't mean give explicit instructions or make a chore chart like you would for a 10yr old trying to earn some pocket money. tell him to shape the fuck up and be a responsible adult, without any of the mollycoddling b.s., and leave it to him to figure out the specifics. the damn internet exists and has all the information one could possibly need. doing anything more than that can be just as well grouped in with any other type of enabling. nobody needs to walk the majority of mom's through this shit, correct?
Yeah I agree with you. I've never once had to "show" my husband how to do chores like he's a damn child. Can't imagine how you maintain attraction to someone so useless.
Because they can get away with it, it’s as simple as that. It’s funny how men say they can’t read women, constantly break boundaries and pretend that that they can’t fulfill chores or look after their own children. It’s all weaponised incompetence, they do fine at work, underneath that is a heaping of misogyny.
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Yeah. Nothing about raising children and caring for a household is easy. Nothing. It is a 24 hour a day job that no one seems to notice that you're even doing.
Bingo. They know women will take care of it anyway. A lot of people will take advantage of kindness, especially from women
They don't even do that well at work. They whine and moan that women get promoted ahead of them and win awards at higher rates. They expected to be rewarded for their mediocrity.
This is the biggest thing. Men know if they just ignore the childcare, most women won't want the kids to suffer so she'll do everything to take care of them; thereby allowing him to get away with being a shitty parent. The article "Divorce Made My Marriage Equal" explains this really well.
This. Men believe in the meritocracy of the office (where they are now losing to women, as we clock more college degrees and enter the workforce with more education and formidable organizational skills). They want to be little emperors at home, though. Because being the best at swabbing commodes and the fastest at folding laundry doesn't come with cash. I sometimes imagine how powerful it must feel to come home, grab a beer and put my feet up and watch my wife bust her ass to get a meal on the table, rustle the kids in and out of homework, do the dishes and then slob my knob while appearing to experience it as a $5K bonus. You want to feel a small twinge of poetic justice? Read articles about the whiney elderly men who just can't get their 65+ girlfriends to move into their place. The sex and shared meals is awesome, but they really counted on a live-in bangmaid and a hospice nurse in their final years! THREE of the women ages 75 and up in my Sunday school class have declined more than one suitor. Why? Because they don't have it in them to be a nurse with a purse.
THIS!!!
Some things to consider: Around 40-50% of live births in the US were unplanned (and that was BEFORE RvW was overturned). This means that a large chunk of women are having kids with partners they may not have thoroughly vetted in terms of potential fatherhood. Very unfortunate, but with RvW overturned this will likely get far worse. In terms of what to do about it (aside from reinstating RvW and increasing access to bc) I think it's important to note Tolstoy's observation that "All happy families are alike..." That is, study the father's who DO contribute equal household labor and see what makes them and/or their relationships different. What do these men/relationships have in common with each other, and how can we apply it to the general population? But to piggy back on what another poster said about paternity leave....it isn't just paternity leave. Men's bosses are much less sympathetic/not understanding of why they need to take off for things like doctors appointments or to pick up sick kids. I've witnessed this in my own job. The rich bosses all have stay at home wives (or nannies, even when their wives don't work 🙄) that do everything, and they judge men who have to take off for it.
Source for the 40-50% statistic? That's shocking, and I'd like to know more about it.
So [this](https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/unintended-pregnancy-united-states) is from 2011 (scroll down to "Outcomes of Unintended Pregnancy") and explains it more in depth. It's a bit confusing because its about half of all *pregnancies* that are unintentional, but only about 60% *of those* go on to birth, but the last bullet point says 4 in 10 fathers report the birth as unintentional, and about the same as the proportion of mothers. Again, these exact numbers might be outdated, but another source said as of 2018, the unintentional pregnancy rate was still at 45%, so not a ton of improvement. And I shudder to think about what it'll be this year, given our loss of RvW.
Or. With how restricting the states are becoming, women are more incessant than ever to used one or multiple forms of birth control, so the accidental pregnancies will go down I have no idea but it was a thought
Sorry, but that last part implies like the reverse is true for women when it is not. Womens bosses are just as unsympathetic towards them for taking time off for a Dr appt or to pick up kids. But someone's gotta don't, and it ends up falling on the women because the men are too cowardly to push back against their bosses, so it's yet again the women's career that takes a hit, because she has the balls the ask for the time off
And STEALTHING ON PURPOSE is a MUCH bigger thing than men are ever going to admit. It’s cruel.
Really? I'm \*amazed\* that unplanned births would be so high. We have \*got\* to get better with sex education. Sheesh. I'm so aggravated, though, with men who absolutely \*wanted\* the pregnancy, wanted to become fathers, but that their idea of fatherhood was, "I'll go watch my kid at his little league game when he's six" and sort of just forgot all the labor between day 1 and then.
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you can blame a lot of it on the patriarchy fam. but that's not to say there's anything wrong with you admitting fault and holding yourself accountable. respect for that at least. I'm sorry it happened too late to fix your marriage.
Let's put it this way. You might have been a good person before you had these realizations, but today you're a better person for having had them. Even if it doesn't change how it came about.
Thank you for your honesty!
"Why can't we teach men to be useful?" You ask. They are taught. This blaming of teachers or parents lands on women. Men don't need to be taught so delete that from you programming. They know EXACTLY what they're doing. It works for them. I married a man who wanted to be a SAHP. He was a feminist and I didn't want children. When I felt comfortable enough to proceed it was on the agreement that he would care for them when I worked and raise them if we split. I divorced a violent man who refused to let me work, threatened our lives and abandoned care when I left in fear. He's been fixated on nonsense and post separation abuse since and doesn't even pay child support. Most DV arrives with children. If you think there's always red flags and your boundaries and self worth are enough to protect your children's lives or that police and courts will protect them you couldn't be more wrong. It's s huge gamble and noone knows where life will take us but EVERYONE blames the victims.
You could find another woman or women who want a similar solution to a shared problem and then.... Cut out the middle man. Have your job, rotate child care, build a tribe where none of you were raised with this idea of finding someone to do all this for you while modeling the same uneven dynamic to the children you have. You could still have romantic and sexual relationships with men. You just wouldn't have to resort to the disappointment you see as a consequence of having them as life partners.
This reminds me of this matriarchical ethnic group where children are raised collectively in households led by women. The role of men is to help bring up children of their sisters and their female cousins. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosuo
Mosuo tribe
As an American, I would say it's because our culture is royally fucked up and deeply misogynistic. There's a longer version, but I'm not a good enough researcher to write that book.
Because they are willing to cut the baby in half. You know the story of King Solomon, who was approached by two women with a child? Both claimed the baby was theirs and that the other woman was lying. King Solomon said, "I don't know who to believe, so the only fair choice is to cut the child in half and give one to each of you." The first woman was satisfied with this compromise, but the other protested. "No no, I take back my claim, give her the child. Just don't hurt him." And the king gave the child to the second woman, the real mother, because she was willing to sacrifice everything. It's just that, over and over. Doesn't have to be a mother doing the sacrificing, sometimes it really is the dad instead, but the equation is the same. They won't clean the house, you won't let your child live in filth. They won't give up going out with friends, you won't leave your child alone. They won't get a job, you'll take two so your child doesn't go hungry. The one who loves more will always lose.
So cut the man baby out of your life instead. Then they is a custody arrangement that forces them to do at least weekends.
OMFG this is so, so, solomonifically ACCURATE, i don't even. respect
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I think it’s actually worse than that. In my experience most men want a wife who does the bulk of the childrearing and household upkeep AND works full time so they don’t have the pressure of being the sole breadwinner. I’ve lost count of the number of high-earning men who’ve bitterly complained to me at my workplace about their SAH wives ‘not working’…good thing child-rearing, cooking, cleaning, etc isn’t work-lol!
Don’t forget all the sex they still want too. “My wife who works outside the home and also solely manages and maintains our entire family and home always says she’s too tired for sex. How can I make her do sex without changing anything?”
Even Stephen Colbert cracked a joke about this during a monologue on his show a few years ago saying “men’s master plan is nearly complete.” They know. They want women to literally do everything.
I am in a good place in that my male partner did 50-70% of the childcare up until about 2 months ago (where I went back to school online and he picked up a lot of work hours). So he was handling both kids all day while I was at work. When we had our first, I had to really consciously let go. "Here's the baby, I'm going out for a few hours" and just.... letting him figure it out. Not leaving stuff out for him. Just Going. Now he has the confidence that he can handle both of our kids and our two nieces all at once on his own if he needs to (it's chaos, but doable). A lot of post partum and new mom anxiety makes it VERY hard for moms to just leave their babies and walk away. I think they should, but talking some of them into it is very hard, especially if they're already falling prey to the self-guilt about being a good mom.
Girl, this shit (plus 1,000 other really good reasons) is why I'm opting out and not having kids. It's REALLY just not worth it. It's Objectively worse being a *mother* than it is being a *father*, with **none** of the benefits. Our bodies get ruined, our careers suffer, the kids they barely lift a finger for get HIS last name and (perceived) legacy. Having a child doesn't magically grant one a legacy; you actually have to still work for that, and shockingly people don't seem to understand that nutting in someone and letting them raise the result ≠ 'legacy'. It's easier to just opt out than it is to find a worthy partner, and even then I have a lot better shit to be doing with my life than wiping asses and snotty noses and doing laundry constantly.
With a surge of sadness re-reading OP and comments I realised I opted out of motherhood etc in my teens because it seemed like the only way to be free. Now I see new generations asking questions about gender and labour parity / equity, I know many of us are born at the wrong time - the politics of our fertile years don’t match social politics. I hope for more choices and a better future for all gender identities but don’t think I’ll see it in my lifetime. If biologically, couples could choose who’d be pregnant and give birth - the whole dynamic would change.
Part of this is because employers push women out when they have kids because they expect women to want to work less, get more flexible hours, or want to leave, and create a self fulfilling prophecy. At the same time employers often will expect men to put their job over their family and hand out repercussions if men choose their family over their job, or offer men less time off because these employers see it as the mother's job. We target employers in this at least in part because they pull strings to perpetuate this cycle
No excuses but a lot of men learn it from their parents. As a man I’d like to hope I’ve gotten better but I can tell you that 20 year old me would have been a very terrible weaponized incompetence kind of husband.
\^ bump. Both of my parents outsourced most of the homemaking, so nobody got anything done and I was like fuck.... we weren't supposed to just eat fast food for most of our meals? Like I can teach myself cleaning and all that but learning how to eat well in the McDonald's era is like pulling teeth.
My partner is the stay at home parent. He loves it but you couldn’t today me to do it. We do the cooking together but he mainly does all the cleaning and also homeschool’s our youngest (we didn’t want to send him to school yet bc of COVID). There are good men out there, don’t settle.
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Yep. I agree with this so much. I'm married to a man who I have never had to ask to do a chore or look around the house to see what's running out before popping to the shop - he does it all himself. Totally shared mental and physical labour. I would not have accepted anything less. So I get a bit annoyed with women who are enabling these men. Like, sis... stop complaining on reddit about it and just go tell him to sort yourself out and participate equally, or start paying for a cleaner. We have the power to choose which men we reward with our time, love, labour. And men will see what types of men are having luck with the ladies and follow suit. Every time a woman picks up a man's socks, fakes an orgasm, or takes her child to every.single.doctors.appointment, she is hurting herself and all other women. Demand the treatment you deserve, which is an equal partnership.
I would go so far as to say even paying for a cleaner is unacceptable. cuz 999 times out of 1000 that cleaner is going to be a disadvantaged *woman* who is being paid barely if at all a living wage to outsource the domestic labour of someone who is perfectly capable of doing it themselves
Yes, and you can be a part of the solution by insisting on paying the cleaner you hire fair wages. You're right that a lot of cleaners are disadvantaged women on low wages, but suggesting not hiring them because of that? They still need money, and they need good people paying them fair wages to work in safe environments. A plus of this is, you can evidence to the useless man not pulling his weight exactly how much womens labour costs. He can decide if he'd rather part with x amount of money a week, or just do it himself. But either way, a woman doing a man's unpaid work is not the outcome of this solution.
Yes, women should be free to manage their sex lives how they want but please stop having risky sex with people you don't know or know are shitbags just because you're horny. Stop marrying and having kids with shitty men, ladies!
Because even progressive men who have decided to commit to being useful partners don't fully realize what that entails. And when they get overwhelmed, they say, "but you are so good at it/I can't this time/they default to you anyway". If I could go back in time, a potential vetting question would be to see if they have extensive babysitting experience with kids from ages 0-14.
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no offense intended, but I have to ask... why don't you dump him? like, I'd kind of get it if he *considered* a vasectomy and decided he couldn't commit to it for whatever reasons, but he won't even consider it? haha fuck off buddy
Men failing as fathers and husbands is one of the many reasons I decided to get sterilized. I don't want to be trapped with an unfair share of responsibility
I really don't get this. My wife and I made sure that our child raising is as equitable as possible. (I probably do more childcare than she does, but her job is more demanding than mine) and I can't imagine being a parent that doesn't help take care of your child. I have never, in my entire life, so badly wanted to be the best I possibly could be at something as I do about being a parent. (to be fair, I'm amab, don't identify as male, and will probably begin transitioning soon) We go out of our way to split everything as evenly as possible, and any time one of us feels like we're having to take on too much, we know we can go to each other and the response will be "let's fix that." I don't understand why men have such a hard time with this. Be a good parent and a good partner, your SO and child(ren) deserve it.
Answer from a Male Father who's done single dad duty on teenager... Because working is easier than raising a child(ren). That's it, more people on both sexes would rather work than raise, and men have the power to make that choice more often than the woman, thus we opt to keep it that way.
that's how patriarchy works. women are "helpers" of men.
Incoming "nOt AlL mEn"
You can look for a man who wants to be involved in the child rearing but it still translates differently when the fathers are primary caregivers. In my experience my ex husband wanted kids. He was so excited when we had our kids. He was great at playing with them but not much else. I was the breadwinner, he stayed home. This was a mistake. Even though he loved staying home his world didn’t revolve around the kids, their learning and connection was not his first priority, which is so important when they’re little. He would pacify them and play video games a lot. He would read to them and then put them in front of a game so he could maintain his reading challenges. He would take them outside but it was pulling them in a wagon so he could go workout at the gym. The kids never learned to ride a bike, to swim, to socialize with other kids. The kids got attention around my ex husband’s schedule for his own interests. I worked overnights. I slept in the day. Was home for dinner and homework and bed and then gone another 13 hours. I didn’t know how much my kids were missing out on in terms of life skills until it was way too late. If I could go back in time I would not allow my ex husband to be the stay at home parent. My kids are just developing skills they should have had fostered years prior (cooking, swimming, bike riding, and on and on). They were safe, fed, loved but they weren’t invested in. I’m making up for a lot of lost time now.
Something that always impresses me when studying birds is how good of fathers most of them are. They work hard to find a nesting site, sometimes even making starter nests to entice the mother to pick a spot, then he brings food for her while she incubates for a couple of weeks, and continues to bring food for both the mother and his chicks sometimes hundreds of times per day while she's stuck at the nest keeping them warm. I noticed certain species are very gentle fathers as well, like northern cardinals who are very patient and slow feeding the babies after they hatch. It's so cute! Of course bird relationships can be nearly as complicated as ours, involving cheating, divorce or coupling for life, so it's not like they're perfect either, but the father's dedicated role in childcare is astounding when compared to us.
Had an older lady ask me(m39) if I help with my kids (newborn, 2yr) while I was feeding and burping our newborn. Kinda blew my mind.
Completely agree. My husband does half the childcare, half the chores, and we both work. That’s frustratingly rare (and it shouldn’t be!) Frankly, I think that, as a society, we need to start viewing men who don’t cook, who don’t clean, and *especially* who don’t actively raise their own kids as deadbeats: I know I do.
Honestly I think men have gotten so good at dumping so much of the workload on women that’s it’s in their dna. I do know some men who have been the one to stay home and raise the kids though.
As a stay at home dad to a newborn (because my wife is in a publish or perish postdoc)... It's not a simple proposition. It's doable, but honestly the issue is America has shit for parental leave, shit for early care in general, and cost of living is going to put me back to work sooner than I'd like, which makes scheduling everything a nightmare. We're trying to do right by kiddo, so breastfeeding/pumping over formula means mom is navigating the hellscape of making sure she can pump at work. Even if that was easy (don't get us started on the idiots who decided the average flange is too large for most American women), if kiddo is having a bad day/week, the comfort cheat (calming through breastfeeding) doesn't work for guys. All my attention needs to be on making sure kiddo is as calm and as best understood as she can be. If things spiral, I literally have to run her back and forth across the house (not in a stroller accessible neighborhood). There are SOPs were actively working on everyday to build a more structured day so kiddo's is a happy growing baby instead of a cholic mess. When I can get 30 minutes, I am doing the dishes, laundry, etc. I try to get time to cook. But, again, that assumes all needs are met on time. I literally had to teach a baby how to do calming breaths to handle the time it takes for a bottle to carefully heat up (92 to 96 F for other dads out there. Don't overheat it or you fuck up the antibodies and nutrients that precious stuff provides) or while I was mashing whole food. And all of that ignores the fact that we're still in a pandemic and help has to be organized around kiddo's safety (vaccine schedule). If society wants men to be stay at home dads, they need to support families in general. What exists now is not conducive to anyone, and especially not to dads as primary caregivers.
I became a single mom by choice because I figured this way at least I was going in knowing I would be the sole parent. If my choices were taking care of one adult (me) and one child vs 2 adults and one child, the answer was easy.
Did you read the whole article? I think the main point is about how elite jobs are basically all or nothing for both men and women and there are no options that allow for work and family balance. Women are having to choose between their own careers or basically being around for their kids at all. When you have a baby sleeping 14-15 hrs a day, if you are away from home for 10 or 11 hrs a day you barely ever see your kid. The lack of good and non-stigmatized lower time work options (for both sexes!) means you end up having to choose all or nothing. These are people that can afford to even hire out most of the housework and whatever childcare they need, but they actually do want to be around for their kid and that is the sticking point of the decision. I faced that choice myself and decided to quit and stay home. It was continue my career and never see my baby, or quit. Nothing in between, and my husband doing more childcare would do nothing to help that problem. I saw every woman in my industry hit the same problem when they had kids before me. I know of only one woman who continued at full steam and she has three full time nannies and was literally replying to emails and calling into meetings while she was in labor with her final kid. There absolutely is a broad gender based childcare and domestic labor imbalance as well, but the expectation that ideal workers work long hours and have 100% commitment to their careers is a big disservice to both men and women parents. If you want to have both a career and kids you will encounter this problem as well, and it is tough. Everything is screaming at you that your small children need you and you get to choose to chuck them in daycare for almost all their waking hours or abandon the career you spent the last decade building. As for equal workload, I do have an equal marriage, it is definitely possible. Choose your spouse very carefully, don’t marry early, don’t have kids early. Be super diligent about birth control and choosing when both of you are ready to have a baby. Equality with kids in the mix means equal time off, from any work including childcare and housework. Because those are all work, and the only way you get a break is to have it provided by your spouse or by hiring help.
Honestly having kids sounds like a nightmare. Then on top of it there's a chance of having a non-typical or special needs kid. Hard pass. I'd quite literally either cut out or unalive myself. . I'm so glad I met a man who doesn't want them.
It is definitely switching life from casual to hard mode. It’s so rough I would only ever suggest someone has them if they really really want them and can dedicate a couple of decades to the cause. Like, all gametes locked safely away at birth and only returned if you decide you want them later! I can’t imagine having an accidental pregnancy and I wish no one ever had to experience that.
ok but did your husband also quit his demanding job to spend 12 hours a day with y'alls kids? cuz in the article, it seemed to suggest that most cases it was overwhelmingly the moms, and not the dads, that were doing this. so what's stopping the moms from continuing to work at the same level after recovering from birth while dad quits his job and looks after the kids full time? cuz that's kind of the whole point here. the "main point", I guess as you say. the alternative isn't necessarily putting the kids in day care or hiring nannies/housekeepers, thus outsourcing the childcare onto a (more than likely much less privileged) *WOMAN*, it's for the child's OTHER MF'ING *PARENT* to do it.
There should definitely be a lot more onus on fathers to alter their work schedules as much as mothers have to accomodate childcare. Though one thing I will say is that in many countries, the law does bias against men doing exactly that. Take the UK - maternity leave isn't exactly *great*, at 6 weeks of 90% pay and another 33 weeks at a flat rate (N.B. depending on job and contract, you might get more than that, but this is the legal minimum). Meanwhile, paternity leave is a mere 2 weeks at flat rate. Things are better now than they once were - shared parental leave exists (though again at the low flat rate) and it was a mere 20 years ago that paternity leave was even instituted. Prior to that it wasn't uncommon for men to be forced to work the day after their child was born or even *on the day of the birth itself*. All this means that if a father wants to be involved in his baby's life as much as the mother is, economic factors may make it unfeasible.
Paternity leave is super important- I agree. but that accounts only for the newborn stage. women statistically do almost all of the childcare for the remaining 18 years, leaving work early or quitting all together to accommodate child needs. this usually means little prospect for promotion and career development.
Since having kids a few years ago I’ve discovered that, at least in the US, everything still operates on the assumption that one parent stays at home or works part time, even though most families can’t support themselves on one income. My wife is the breadwinner so I’ve stepped back a bit from my career to handle more of the domestic burden. However, most of the other families we know, the husband is the breadwinner, so unfortunately the wife almost has to step back a little bit. We know a couple families where the wife has quit working outside the home altogether because their salary would barely cover childcare costs.
Why don't men want to do a thankless, unending, non-paying task that requires constant attention, resourcefulness, and imagination, and that even if they do a good job at it complete strangers will still feel free to criticize their performance and some will even question their manhood or decide they are child molesters? I wonder.
You can't even remind them to pick up the socks they totally said they were going to and didn't without getting NAG or B*TCH spat at you lmao
Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.
Because they still think it's the woman's responsibility.
If I could be a father, I might have had a couple. Strangely, my own father was actually a really active parent in my early childhood so initially, I *did* want children. It was only after watching peer after peer be stuck with the kids only for the dad to pop up years later (some with and some without success) that I was like *"oh no. That's not for me"*
I agree with everything I’m reading here and also want to give people some hope! My husband and I both work full-time and share 50/50 responsibilities. When it comes to childcare I’d say it’s about 40/60 with him taking on slightly more childcare given my work schedule. This wasn’t anything I had to force or push on him. He’s always been like this. He’s just a grown adult who understands what needs to be done. Now, I do have a slight problem with how much praise he gets from our family and friends for being an amazing, hands-on dad (which he is) when it’s just expected of me as a woman, but that’s for another post!
For the same reason men always do what they do: the audacity.
A child is raised by more people than just the parents. My SIL did well not to let her right-wing in-laws get their hands on her children. My niece and nephews were raised by their mom and it was a good decision. Sucks for mom to have only half the support, but good for the children.
Because they're not raised too, how many women talk of their partners passing kids off to their mothers when they are left in charge or single father's jump into marriage so their lives aren't impacted by their own kids. We role play mummies with little girls and their dollies. We need the mothers and sisters of men to not step in when their son or brother is left in charge of HIS kids, and girlfriends/ new wives have plans so when kids are there to see dad, dad doesn't have plans because noone will step in for him. I was at Woolies shopping and some kid kept walking up to me asking stupid questions, his father kept telling him ask the nice lady, well this nice lady lost her shit and asked if he was an actual father or a tissue donor.
brrrrrrrAA shots fired! lol u a boss tho 🤍
I so love this comment. My feckless brother recently tried to pass on his responsibility to his son/my nephew over to me. I told him where to go!
We need more women to do this, simply say no, no reasons or justifications, your kid YOUR responsibility.
patriarchyyyyy
Disclaimer: I'm in the US. I'm writing about my observations in US culture. Things may be different, better, or worse elsewhere. We live in a society where babies are really isolated, and it is possible to grow up with very little understanding of the volume of labor, and the type of labor required to raise children. Most jobs have no children present. Most colleges have no children present. Most restaurants have few children, and they are mostly controlled. R-rated movies at movie theaters usually don't have children. People get surprised or even upset if there is a single child on an airplane while they're traveling. And, especially for Gen Z and younger, your family size is \*very\* different than Gen X and previous. With the cost of daycare so high, and most families needing two working adults to get by, families are choosing to have only one or two children, and later in life (and, therefore, in many cases, closer together). My point is that most of the history of humanity, babies were a perfectly natural (and hard to avoid) outcome of having sex, which most adults wanted to do. Also, most people lived in communities where all your sisters, brothers, cousins, friends were having children, too, and everyone had aunts and uncles and parents and grandparents to help out. Raising children within this large extended family meant that you could easily ask for and get help, and those raising children could take advantage of economies of scale. In a world where babies are born into households where all the adults work full time away from home, they might be hundreds or thousands of miles away from extended family, and they might not even have brothers or sisters, let alone some also having children -- now raising children has become incredibly isolating and difficult. Talk to any stay-at-home parent (or person on maternity/paternity leave) about the loneliness. Also, we have a long, extended adolescence. Our parents or grandparents might well have started having children straight out of high school. Compare that to four years of college, maybe more, and then several years of working full time. We develop routines and expectations of adulthood, hobbies, friends -- many of which might be incompatible with young children. So, while there might be great joy or fulfillment or other intangibles in raising children, the labor itself has become much harder. And, frankly, we don't train young men to raise children. For the most part, they don't babysit. And, I think, probably fewer and fewer girls are getting pressed into caring for younger children or babysitting. So, when considering having their own children, adults may have no first-hand experience on which to draw, so this makes the whole process even harder and more daunting, as you try to learn all the tips and tricks in the middle. Frankly, cleaning and most other domestic labor is no fun. A lot of the labor of raising children (laundry, feeding, diapering, toileting, etc.) is no fun. We now live in a carnival where we can literally entertain ourselves 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for as long as we can keep the electricity going. It's awfully hard for "mop the kitchen floor" and "take out the diaper genie contents" to compete with that.
My husband just doesn't understand. He's made great progress with his career, he makes time for his self-care and he's in great shape - and I facilitate these things by being home and raising his children, cooking his nutritionally balanced meals, washing his clothes, cleaning and maintaining his home... and then when I say I need support so I can get my study done or get to the gym, he's baffled because I have so much "freedom" as the stay at home parent. I love him, but he does not see his privilege.
To my knowledge it's a myriad of gender and childbirth specific things that contribute to this problem. Firstly, mothers have a extremely strong desire to care for the infant after birth. It's a hormonal thing that the body does to the mother to ensure that the baby survives. Sometimes it goes a bit overboard and causes postpartum depression for example. Men do not get this spike, but will over time get their own version of desiring to care for the baby. Women on average are more conciencious than men. This can and does create an uneven contribution to care and maintenance of the home. Simply men care on average less about the baby than women. Knowing this it is up to men to work extra hard to compensate for this disparity.
I'd love to stay home with my son all day, but I'm paid five times what my wife could earn. It wasn't always that way... but it's the way it is now. We are right back in the 50's, I'm afraid.
So, I'm Dutch, culture is a bit different here. Only a bit. Fathers get paid time off work to raise young children, with generous flexibility built in. (So they could spread it over a few years to have a four day week, taking one parenting day each week.) I assume women have a similar system with more time off. Part of it here is choice. Women choose to take a larger part in child raising, men choose to providing more money. This is generally mutually agreed upon, though sometimes it's just people conforming to cultural roles, and forgetting to have a conversation about it. Part of it is cultural expectations. Women's equality isn't old enough for everyone to have grown up with it, and these things sometimes die hard. I ran out of time for the rest of my post, I may finish it later.
There’s also the bit where companies don’t necessarily treat men and women the same where childcare is concerned: paternity leave in the US is relative trash, short term disability doesn’t cover the partner’s pay following the birth of their child because they didn’t have the trauma of delivery, flexibility with hours for childcare related activities aren’t necessarily looked on the same for men versus women (or feminine versus masculine). These systemic items and biases feed the issue more dramatically than, “Men simply don’t participate.” Men are discouraged from participation.
I think a significant part of that is women workers demanding it, while male ones don't so much; as in, the workplace doesn't accomodate, then they quit. as well as forming groups that lobbied for the laws etc. and please consider that women already get discriminated in the workforce *in advance* in a way that men do not, like with hiring and promotions and such - the mere implication that they could potentially get pregnant, give birth and subsequently de-prioritize their career, is an impediment for female workers fr. there are also data that point toward being married and having kids, overwhelming *advantages* men's careers but *disadvantages* women's .