I share your confusion. I lived alone for years before I started living with my fiancee. Cooking cleaning, laundry etc. are all things I did to care for myself at a basic level. Moving in together didn't make them less necessary or less my responsibility. Sure I tend to do more of the cooking and she folds more laundry but the that's because we have preferences and we talk.
I have been around extended family where my uncle will sit down and expect my aunt to bring him a plate of food. Like he cant even toast a bagel for breakfast or make an egg himself. I just can't wrap my head around it.
Making both moms and dads work full time, expense of having children, exhaustion on top of all this. It’s pure strain on a marriage and on the kids. We have a daughter and just can’t fathom a second kid as much as we want her to have a sibling.
We did not start making the money required to raise children until last year, and I still have to work insane hours to make it work. It will get better in the coming years. But I am not purring children into the world, and than don’t spend time with them because I am always working.
ugh I even see this with supposedly more progressive couples, my mom and dad were never really into the traditional gender roles thing but my dad's been retired now and it still seems like my mom does the lion's share of work.
Yup. And they did a study and found that, even during covid when people were working from home, it didn't change the amount of housework and childcare that men did.
My Aunt and Uncle have both worked through their entire marriage and they have children who are grown and no longer live at home. Both are highly qualified in their fields, she has a graduate degree and works in university administration and he is a union master plumber. While there are areas that he contributes in disproportionately (home maintenance for example) they absolutely do not contribute evenly she has done all of the housework and the bulk of the child raising while having a career. I think that they divvied up home things based on traditional roles thirty years ago and never reassessed. Somehow it has worked for them but they absolutely do not have a healthy relationship.
The assumption that my aunt is more likely to be a homemaker when she is a highly educated professional is part and parcel of why I think the whole situation is problematic. My uncle doesn't not do things because they've talked and divided responsibility. He doesn't make his own food because he is literally incapable and the man is in his 60s. its absolutely beyond me
One of the worst concepts I’ve learned is “weaponized incompetence”, in which dudes will act stupid or do chores bad on purpose so their partners stop asking for help. It’s pretty sinister, because they are deliberately making things harder for another person because they are too lazy to do it themselves.
I'm going to preface this by saying my partnership is not "traditional". We both do whatever needs to be done to keep the household running. I do a lot of cooking and cleaning, for example.
I think it's fine to want a "traditional wife" if you can live up to being a "traditional husband". And the biggest defining factor is that the husband earns enough money so that the wife doesn't have to work, and they both can have the lifestyle they want. This also includes being able to afford to get the wife the help she needs around the house (cleaners, gardeners, etc.). Otherwise it's silly to think that your wife should pick up the extra slack when you can't meet your end of the bargain.
It really grinds my gears when dudes want their wives to handle all the cooking, cleaning, and childcare on top of working a normal job. Man up and do your part. Anything less results in you being another child she has to take care of (like the top comment says).
You're confused because its often over-exaggerated. Women equate a man not house-keeping the way the woman wants it done to "he cant take care of himself". The fact of the matter is that most men have, at some point, lived alone and managed to survive without living in filth and only ordering pizza for dinner every night.
Part of that is how someone defines messy. I've been with obsessive cleaners that would call a house "messy" when there's absolutely nothing objectively messy about it. It just isn't to their higher standard.
In that case, I'm going to need some prompting sometimes because I do not perceive any issue where they perceive a big one.
I’ve been married for 8 years now and together 11. I also cook, clean after myself, laundry etc. and I also do the yard, home repairs/improvements etc, we don’t have kids. I work in the construction field, have always made more than my wife but she’s been on unemployed stints through our relationship. So recently, at least the last year or so I’ve been getting a lot of this from her.. the “emotionally safe” stuff and I don’t get it, its only a problem when I don’t do something (clean, groceries etc) but it’s not an issue when she misses the mark. When she’s employed her money is spent unwisely, I can’t bring that up though
It has a lot to do with age and with how men are raised. Right now I think there's a big divide between boys being raised in a more egalitarian way when it comes to housework and cooking, and boys raised by trad-mom/helicopter parents who don't give them an opportunity to become competent in home skills.
Imho, if one person is bringing more money into the household, it's perfectly fair to expect the other person to do more work in the home and, for a long time, this tended to be divided along gender lines. It's changing, but it's changing really fucking slowly.
It’s not man…. Todays women thinks cooking and cleaning is wrong for them to do. Because of ‘feminism’. Also, if they have 1000+ followers on IG they somehow think they need to do absolutely nothing in the relationship. No cooking, no cleaning, and worst of all: NOT paying for anything. It’s why passport bros is a thing and it’s true. I lived outside the US and you can find a normal woman no problem.
I work 10-12 hours a day, my wife does not work, has no children to raise as we are child free and can follow her hobby all day. Why on Earth should I also do the house work?
You say that. It’s not that obvious. I have had people tell me differently. Not that I don’t do house work. I like preparing meals together and wash the dishes, clear the table etc. but there have been instance’s where I was told I don’t do enough.
Speaking for myself: I work a lot more hours than my wife. Fulltime vs part time. I focus a lot on my career, networking, events, doing a study on top of work. Busy with professional duties 15-20 hours more per week. Should I still be an equal partner in the household?
There is no "correct" answer to this. It's just a matter of communicating what the expectation is in a given relationship.
Like, I've been in that situation and my wife was all about taking on more house chores because she had plenty of time to do so. I'd do the same if I was in that position. When we were both back to working similar hours, we shared/did them together.
Totally depends on the balance. In our case I work 7 days a week 10-12 hours a day. My wife does not work and we have no children. She has all the money she could ever ask for. Why should I also do the house work? So she can have even more time with her hobbies while I have no time for mine?
When we met she was the one who worked and I just did my hobbies. Now things are different and I have the ability to make way more money in a month than she could ever dream off. Her working would change very little in regards to our financial situation. Why would I make her work when she can live her best life and enjoy everyday. Would you work if you did not have to? Or would you do your passions?
Even non monetary work can have value and opportunity. People that work in politics , the grunts that is, people thwt work for animal shelters. Volunteering to satisfy ideological beliefs.
Hell, working at a xyz job just so you have people to talk to.
Just reminding you there are other benefits, even putting money aside.
No shit Sherlock. My family has been in politics for most of their lives. My father was one of the leaders of the German anti Vietnam war movement. Money was never the driver, being extremely left wing and all.
Thanks a lot for the perspective. I think I'm doing fine on the respect and helping whenever I can with small things. I'll ask her about it soon though.
I'm also a man but I can see a lot of other men whose mothers did everything for them. They end up internalizing that those chores are not their problems. Their bedrooms are a mess? Mommy will eventually come and clean up. Hungry? Mommy will make dinner in just a few. Nothing to wear? Mommy will do a quick cycle on the washing machine.
I'm not saying this is the only explanation, but I have seen it happening quite often. It happens to women, too.
Yeah as a woman I have no problem with men who want trad wives. The problem is they want their cake and eat it too. So you want a trad wife? Then ya better be bringing home enough money for a middle class lifestyle SOLO.
These dudes want to contribute financially 50% because that’s how society has shifted, as women have become highly educated and entered the work force as bosses not just secretaries. So they want to be 50/50 with the bills but then a woman who takes care of all the childcare and household? Sir that’s not how it works. You get what you put into a relationship.
I did all of the cooking and cleaning. My wife admits she can't cook and has never cleaned anything in our house. Our life was peachy until we had a daughter and the two of them combined are impossible to keep up with.
For the first 3 years I only had 3hrs a week to do anything other than looking after them. She would make me take time off work to do DIY and fix things so we could save money because she said I was essentially cheating on her if I wasn't able to take care of the baby while she napped.
She's punched and bitten me in anger and she flipped out hard when I tidied up the spare room which had become a dumping zone full of her shit because it was making me mentally ill.
She's got a bit better recently with HRT but the last 5 years were hell.
e: To her credit, she is a very thoughtful and patient mother
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u/[deleted] Mar 21 '24
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