Millennial men pitched themselves as equal partners. What happened?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My husband is an equal partner. I've never downshifted my career.

+1. You may be in a circle where this isn't the case, OP, but that's more a reflection of your circle than it is every one's experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Growing up, going to college and law school, I never knew a man who wanted a SAHW. Almost universally, high achieving men sought out peers to date. A guy who wanted to date a woman with a “mommy track” job or a low paying job was an unusual outlier. Most guys I knew were actively trying to date fairly high powered professional women, especially if they were on a high powered professional track themselves. One of my friends doggedly tried to pick up med students. Another one was over the moon when he met a woman who had just been admitted to Yale Law.

Also, the men I dated and the men I was friends with along the way professed to be all in on equal relationships. I knew lots of guys who prided themselves on cooking dinner as a date idea to show off how domestic they could be.

Now that we all have kids, it’s the tiny minority of men I know who have lived up to the promise. Their wives downshift while their careers take off. Best I can tell they’ve all forgotten how to cook or even grocery shop.

Was it just not modeled for them so they they didn’t know what they were signing up for? I’ve heard it speculated that boomer moms “did it all” meaning being a housewife and a corporate drone at the same time.

Is it that modern corporate jobs have just become so much more demanding you can’t perform on both fronts anymore?

Or are men just socialized to be more selfish?

You live in a bubble

[Anonymous]

In hindsight “I’d totally be a SAHD” was a big tell. I wish I’d asked those guys back then “because you love and respect homemaking as a calling or because you think it’d be a cover for your video game addiction?”

Because not one of those guys is actually Mr. Mom now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband is an equal partner. I've never downshifted my career.

+1. You may be in a circle where this isn't the case, OP, but that's more a reflection of your circle than it is every one's experience.

I never said it was 100% completely universal. I just see few examples like yours.

[Anonymous]

I’m an equal partner DH who thought I was marrying a future SAHM. That was the plan, then she got offered PT WAH. It works well for us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's that they were young and naive when they said those things. They didn't understand how tiring and complicated it is when you have kids and both parents have real careers. They didn't understand anything at all about the parenting grind. They're more tired now than they were in their twenties. And some of them were saying those things and truly aspired to do it, but simply do not have the executive functioning ability.

This. We were that couple, then we had a preemie. Everything changed in an instant. 25 YO me could never have predicted this future.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Growing up, going to college and law school, I never knew a man who wanted a SAHW. Almost universally, high achieving men sought out peers to date. A guy who wanted to date a woman with a “mommy track” job or a low paying job was an unusual outlier. Most guys I knew were actively trying to date fairly high powered professional women, especially if they were on a high powered professional track themselves. One of my friends doggedly tried to pick up med students. Another one was over the moon when he met a woman who had just been admitted to Yale Law.

Also, the men I dated and the men I was friends with along the way professed to be all in on equal relationships. I knew lots of guys who prided themselves on cooking dinner as a date idea to show off how domestic they could be.

Now that we all have kids, it’s the tiny minority of men I know who have lived up to the promise. Their wives downshift while their careers take off. Best I can tell they’ve all forgotten how to cook or even grocery shop.

Was it just not modeled for them so they they didn’t know what they were signing up for? I’ve heard it speculated that boomer moms “did it all” meaning being a housewife and a corporate drone at the same time.

Is it that modern corporate jobs have just become so much more demanding you can’t perform on both fronts anymore?

Or are men just socialized to be more selfish?

Economics, instincts about nature and nurture, and the pandemic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:IMO It’s because people are specifically socialized *out of* traditional relationships and buy into utopic visions of egalitarianism. Then real life hits and nature reveals herself to be uncompromising, thus the gender roles revert to the old fashioned no-fun way that things have been for thousands of years.

But not really, because in many cases the women actually meant it and the men don't want to support them, so they're still working.

(Save for the wealthy) Women have always worked, just not outside of the household. Post-industrialization made women’s labor inside the home of no value and we’ve spent about 150 years reeling from that as a society. I think the remote revolution is a step in the right direction to women’s benefit in bringing equilibrium back.

[Anonymous]

You can’t expect it to be totally equal until you respect DHs who earn less and step back from careers to raise kids and want to go to Mommy and Me and story time.

The vast majority of you do not actually respect that as much as the high earner, so you can’t be surprised that men are gravitating toward the roles that society respects.

[Anonymous]

I think it's a few things.

First, as a woman, I am so much more aware than my husband and better at multi-tasking. If I notice something needs to be done, I do it soon because otherwise it takes mental space to remember. Meaning that it is actually less work overall for me to sign up for music lessons instead of discuss it with my husband and wait for him to get to it and remember the deadlien to sign up and then subtly check in with him as we get closer to the deadline because if I ask outright I'm "nagging."

For many things, the easiest thing is just doing it myself. The only way that I've found to split the work is for each of us to 100% own things. I own more than he does though, and it's self fufilling because I am busy so I want things to be done, and I have a lot of things on my plate so I want to manage work myself so I can plan around it. This means I continue to take on more than my fair share.

I think a big piece of it is mental load. I've tried to implement different mechanisms to share it but it's nearly impossible with someone who was socialized without mental load. It's like my brain has a rolling ticker at the bottom of things that need to get done and I can't turn it off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:IMO It’s because people are specifically socialized *out of* traditional relationships and buy into utopic visions of egalitarianism. Then real life hits and nature reveals herself to be uncompromising, thus the gender roles revert to the old fashioned no-fun way that things have been for thousands of years.

But not really, because in many cases the women actually meant it and the men don't want to support them, so they're still working.

(Save for the wealthy) Women have always worked, just not outside of the household. Post-industrialization made women’s labor inside the home of no value and we’ve spent about 150 years reeling from that as a society. I think the remote revolution is a step in the right direction to women’s benefit in bringing equilibrium back.

Intensive parenting, including a longer childhood with limited extended family support, plus intensive work, has not been anyone's norm. Women really are doing something different and adapting faster than their partners.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Growing up, going to college and law school, I never knew a man who wanted a SAHW. Almost universally, high achieving men sought out peers to date. A guy who wanted to date a woman with a “mommy track” job or a low paying job was an unusual outlier. Most guys I knew were actively trying to date fairly high powered professional women, especially if they were on a high powered professional track themselves. One of my friends doggedly tried to pick up med students. Another one was over the moon when he met a woman who had just been admitted to Yale Law.

Also, the men I dated and the men I was friends with along the way professed to be all in on equal relationships. I knew lots of guys who prided themselves on cooking dinner as a date idea to show off how domestic they could be.

Now that we all have kids, it’s the tiny minority of men I know who have lived up to the promise. Their wives downshift while their careers take off. Best I can tell they’ve all forgotten how to cook or even grocery shop.

Was it just not modeled for them so they they didn’t know what they were signing up for? I’ve heard it speculated that boomer moms “did it all” meaning being a housewife and a corporate drone at the same time.

Is it that modern corporate jobs have just become so much more demanding you can’t perform on both fronts anymore?

Or are men just socialized to be more selfish?

What happened? They grew up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In hindsight “I’d totally be a SAHD” was a big tell. I wish I’d asked those guys back then “because you love and respect homemaking as a calling or because you think it’d be a cover for your video game addiction?”

Because not one of those guys is actually Mr. Mom now.

+1 they’re looking for a mommy to take care of them. To earn all the $$$ in a big job and manage the household stuff (most are ok with lots of outsourcing but also don’t want to manage the outsourcing so they need mommy to hire, manage, and pay the housekeeper/deliveries/yard service/etc.) AND the kid stuff while they do whatever.

I also think the PP who said that Boomer moms appeared to “have it all” was actually pretty correct - but the moms usually worked in lower stress and lower pay jobs, BUT the Millennial men didn’t realize that at the time because they were teens. Then they had an unrealistic expectation of working women/2 income households that carried into adulthood.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's that they were young and naive when they said those things. They didn't understand how tiring and complicated it is when you have kids and both parents have real careers. They didn't understand anything at all about the parenting grind. They're more tired now than they were in their twenties. And some of them were saying those things and truly aspired to do it, but simply do not have the executive functioning ability.

This.

But also once the responsibilities started piling up (oil changes, kid development/schools/sports, two sets of grandparents, two careers) they turned inward instead of outward (ie actually doing life’s demands).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think it's a few things.

First, as a woman, I am so much more aware than my husband and better at multi-tasking. If I notice something needs to be done, I do it soon because otherwise it takes mental space to remember. Meaning that it is actually less work overall for me to sign up for music lessons instead of discuss it with my husband and wait for him to get to it and remember the deadlien to sign up and then subtly check in with him as we get closer to the deadline because if I ask outright I'm "nagging."

For many things, the easiest thing is just doing it myself. The only way that I've found to split the work is for each of us to 100% own things. I own more than he does though, and it's self fufilling because I am busy so I want things to be done, and I have a lot of things on my plate so I want to manage work myself so I can plan around it. This means I continue to take on more than my fair share.

I think a big piece of it is mental load. I've tried to implement different mechanisms to share it but it's nearly impossible with someone who was socialized without mental load. It's like my brain has a rolling ticker at the bottom of things that need to get done and I can't turn it off.

The mental load is real. My sister’s husband has a diagnosed anxiety disorder, and it comes with its own issues, but part of it is that he wants to be in control of everything, so he deals with all of the crap…arranging childcare, finding music lessons, opening 529’s, getting the leak in the ceiling fixed, planning vacations, figuring out why the dog keeps vomiting, etc.
I had thought this was all BS when other women complained about it because it could be done between other things, but I can’t tell you how much easier parenthood has been for my sister when she doesn’t have to think about all of this stuff. She goes to work, then comes home and plays with her girls. If she has to go out of town, then she tells her husband and he just deals with it.