The Dad Privilege Checklist

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This again guys? Look, we know there are some men out there who do 50% or more. But they are rare. Actual, objective research time and time again shows women do more domestic labor even if they also work outside the home. The whole “default parent” thing is true for many of us.

What resonated most for me on the list is the freedom men have to just assume the mom will handle things. Even if the dad does some of the things on that list 9/10 the mom has set it up or monitors it in some way. I happen to have an extreme version of default parenting that has led to divorce. At the end of the day, it was his complete freedom vs my complete lack of freedom that really soured me, more than the actual work I had to do. Time and time again, being treated like the maid, chef and nanny as he just … walked out the door to do whatever tf he wanted to do … really got demoralizing

You married a dud. The majority of the dads in our social circle are very involved. The moms also work. But in our group, a dud like your husband would stand out. Our bus drop offs and pick ups are at least 50% dads, and many families alternate days like ours does. Dads take kids to events as much as moms do. In fact, the dads take the kids on an annual camping trip. The moms also go on a trip...without the kids. We have a lot of neighborhood parties/events and more often than not it's the dads setting them up and doing the work. I don't doubt that these 1950s-era households still exist in the US, but they are also a relic of the past for many people.

Dp. These are signs that Dad is involved, not that they do 50/50. There’s a ton of day to day chores you’re not seeing.

By your standards, my DH would appear to do 50/50. In reality, he does not. Far from it. DH is not NT, and so our situation is not one of a dud Dad. But even if he was, showing up to events or volunteering, even pickups does not give you a full picture for any one family

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree a lot of this list is super condescending but there’s some real truth to it. In my marriage, and the marriage of most of my friends the saying “he does his best and I do the rest” is 100 percent the case. It’s not that the dads don’t do anything, it’s that they view virtually everything as optional or extra credit. If my husband gets busy at work or wants to travel, he does that. If one of our kids has extra needs, that’s a problem mom will solve regardless of whether she also works or what else she has going on. My husband is not a bad guy and will laugh about both our moms raving how wonderful he is for taking a child to a physical (scheduled by mom, Who is at work and needs to be there because she handled the sick days last week because dad “can’t” reschedule any meetings) but he is still totally guilty of kicking anything hard or inconvenient to me. He knows that I will always always always find a way to do the things I think are important for the kids so he can just say “I can’t” guilt free.

Also this one reminded me of DCUM:
If I do a task incorrectly, people will tell my partner to praise me for trying.

Totally agree. "He does his best and I do the rest" is absolutely how my marriage and those of pretty much all my friends work. "His best" can vary a bit, but I only know one marriage where I genuinely think the dad is the primary parent and is doing "the rest" and he's a SAHD and his wife is an executive and they have one kid.

I think this is the dirty secret of most dual income couples. It looks pretty equal from the outside -- both partners work, they say the right things, dad is visibly doing stuff like taking kids to activities, cooking, seems engaged. But if you open things up and really look at what is happening, dad is taking kids to activities that mom (who also works) researched, arranged, and provided dad with the schedule for. Dad is cooking but so is mom, and mom is also thinking a week ahead to when her MIL is in town and suggesting they make and freeze an extra casserole so they have a quick dinner for the night she arrives. Mom doesn't always seem engaged, because she's exhausted and has a laundry list of things in her head to keep track of (including laundry).

But the veneer of "things are pretty equal!" is there because it's easier on everyone's ego and it keeps the ship afloat. You could nag and nitpick dad to death but he's never, ever going to do as much as mom. Ever. If you don't want to ruin your marriage and get a divorce, which most of us don't, you just accept the inequity and move on. But it's unequal. Very, very unequal.

“I’m oppressed because DH doesn’t think a week ahead to freeze a casserole for MIL” isn’t quite the own you think it is. That is you concerned about appearances and looking on top of things lest MIL judge you.

+1

If you don't want to make food for your MIL's visit, just..don't make food for your MIL's visit. What is she going to do, have you arrested?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I feel bad for the moms who feel this way.

My DH and I both work, and both do the parenting. We are both lawyers with busy careers.

My DH enjoys doing grocery shopping and cooking. He also enjoys being a dad, and so does half of the parenting and household stuff, for sure.

So I think it's crucial to pick the right husband. If the moms have all of these complaints, maybe they settled for the wrong husband?

Also, my own dad (now in his 80's) was not like the dad described in the article. He was a super active dad and never assumed my mom would cover things. My dad cooked dinner on weeknights, and my mom cooked dinner on weekends. (My mom was a top realtor in our area when I was a kid/teen.)

Have you ever wondered if maybe having a dad who was unusual for his generation by cooking and supporting his wife in having her own career, it made it easier for you to find a similar man who would be an equal partner?

My dad was not like that. He did nothing. He still does nothing. He does not know how to cook. He does not clean. I do not think I have ever known him to clean a bathroom, run the vacuum, straighten/tidy, in 80 years. I am not sure I've ever even seen him wash dishes? He also didn't do almost any of the parenting beyond yelling at us occasionally. My mom also worked, but she had to squeeze her work in around his expectations -- he was never going to do anything to facilitate her working. And as a result, her work history was spotty and she often dropped in and out of the workforce because it was so hard to maintain a job while also raising kids and taking care of the house.

So maybe for those of us who did not have good role models in terms of the gendered division of labor, it is harder for us to know how to find partners like that, and it's harder for us to have more equal relationships because it was never modeled. So maybe for us, lists like this are (1) more relevant and likely to be reflective of inequalities in our marriages, and (2) really important for pushing for greater equality so that our daughter's don't have to start from scratch.

I hope my daughter gets to be like you, and simply expects equality from the start because she saw it modeled in her home. But in order to create that dynamic, I have to push my husband (who grew up in a home similar to mine) to do more, which means looking at lists like this and having these conversations with him because this is not how it was for us growing up and as a result my DH *has* exercised a lot more "dad privilege" since we had kids, as we have fallen into unequal patterns because we are having to invent a more equal dynamic from scratch.

If this list doesn't apply to you or your marriage, congratulations! You win. Some of us are still working on it because it turns out that sexism and gender inequality was not magically fixed across the entire society in 1978. I know, surprising.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree a lot of this list is super condescending but there’s some real truth to it. In my marriage, and the marriage of most of my friends the saying “he does his best and I do the rest” is 100 percent the case. It’s not that the dads don’t do anything, it’s that they view virtually everything as optional or extra credit. If my husband gets busy at work or wants to travel, he does that. If one of our kids has extra needs, that’s a problem mom will solve regardless of whether she also works or what else she has going on. My husband is not a bad guy and will laugh about both our moms raving how wonderful he is for taking a child to a physical (scheduled by mom, Who is at work and needs to be there because she handled the sick days last week because dad “can’t” reschedule any meetings) but he is still totally guilty of kicking anything hard or inconvenient to me. He knows that I will always always always find a way to do the things I think are important for the kids so he can just say “I can’t” guilt free.

Also this one reminded me of DCUM:
If I do a task incorrectly, people will tell my partner to praise me for trying.

Totally agree. "He does his best and I do the rest" is absolutely how my marriage and those of pretty much all my friends work. "His best" can vary a bit, but I only know one marriage where I genuinely think the dad is the primary parent and is doing "the rest" and he's a SAHD and his wife is an executive and they have one kid.

I think this is the dirty secret of most dual income couples. It looks pretty equal from the outside -- both partners work, they say the right things, dad is visibly doing stuff like taking kids to activities, cooking, seems engaged. But if you open things up and really look at what is happening, dad is taking kids to activities that mom (who also works) researched, arranged, and provided dad with the schedule for. Dad is cooking but so is mom, and mom is also thinking a week ahead to when her MIL is in town and suggesting they make and freeze an extra casserole so they have a quick dinner for the night she arrives. Mom doesn't always seem engaged, because she's exhausted and has a laundry list of things in her head to keep track of (including laundry).

But the veneer of "things are pretty equal!" is there because it's easier on everyone's ego and it keeps the ship afloat. You could nag and nitpick dad to death but he's never, ever going to do as much as mom. Ever. If you don't want to ruin your marriage and get a divorce, which most of us don't, you just accept the inequity and move on. But it's unequal. Very, very unequal.

“I’m oppressed because DH doesn’t think a week ahead to freeze a casserole for MIL” isn’t quite the own you think it is. That is you concerned about appearances and looking on top of things lest MIL judge you.

+1

If you don't want to make food for your MIL's visit, just..don't make food for your MIL's visit. What is she going to do, have you arrested?

You are confused. The PP wants to make sure that there is food to eat on a day when they will have house guests arriving and may not have time to cook. It's not about not wanting to cook for her MIL, it's about not having to be in charge of making sure that the family has food when it needs food, a planning responsibility that many men might not bother with.

Just like dad might drop the kids off at camp every day, but mom might be the one to start thinking about camp in December, knowing many camps fill in January, and start doing research and pricing things out, then start looking at the school calendar and also planning any travel so they know what weeks they need camp for (all while her DH is like "why are you asking about this now? that's months away? can't we plan this later?") and then making sure she signs up when camps go up so they don't get locked out, and filling out all the paperwork for the camps and getting any needed supplies as they approach. But all you might see is the dad dropping the kids off and think "wow, what an involved dad, he's definitely doing 50%. Maybe more -- I don't see their mom dropping these kids off. Boy is she lucky to have a partner who just totally handles camp for her." This is what people are talking about when they talk about the invisible labor of parenting that disproportionately falls on women.

I would LOVE to be the partner who simply gets to weight in on whether my mother would prefer lasagna or ordering pizza when she arrives next week (while my partner figures out the logistics of either and bothers to think about it at all) or the partner who drops off my kids at camp every day wearing appropriate clothes and sunscreen and with the requisite materials (while my partner figures out literally ever aspect of camp logistics months in advance and spends weeks making sure we have everything we need and the bill is paid and all the paperwork is filled out so that I can just hug my kids and look like a hero while doing almost nothing). That gig sounds great.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Before I logged on to DcUM, I just got off the phone with the ped’s office trying to get an earlier appointment for an anxiety med, after meeting with the therapist earlier this week, during an appointment that I made, based on emails that I exchanged with her (largely screenshots of text exchanges I had with my kid about her anxiety surrounding some exams….).

I told DW the where and when of the appointment.

Some of you are just blind to the fact that many dads are not as checked out as yours husbands are.

“ What I do hear constantly is women who are judged as being bad moms for working AND other moms who are judged for being lazy because the SAH.”

If you’re still butthurt about mommy war BS, you need to grow up. And newsflash, all that judgment comes exclusively from other women. When are you ever going to learn to ignore it?

+1. To the women of DCUM: on the eternal and nasty SAHM v. WOHM cage match, the call is coming from inside the house. That is all woman-on-woman mean girl BS. Stop blaming men for that.

Sorry about your reading comprehension skills. The PP was actually specifically arguing AGAINST the WOHM v. SAHM debate. That was the whole point of her comment -- "women who are judged as bad moms for working AND other moms who are judge for being lazy because they SAHM." Her point is that neither judgment is fair and yet they get thrown at women all the time because no woman is ever judged to be doing enough. It's an anti-mommy wars stance, arguing in favor of cutting women some freaking slack (the way we cut men slack all the time).

I am a woman and a mom. I happen to work, although I don't think that matters here. I have never once felt like I am being judged for not doing enough. Where is this judgment coming from? DCUM? That's not real life, and I couldn't care less about the people who say "why would you have kids to leave them home with a nanny so you can work?" That's not judgment, that's inanity. Where is this real judgment coming from?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I agree a lot of this list is super condescending but there’s some real truth to it. In my marriage, and the marriage of most of my friends the saying “he does his best and I do the rest” is 100 percent the case. It’s not that the dads don’t do anything, it’s that they view virtually everything as optional or extra credit. If my husband gets busy at work or wants to travel, he does that. If one of our kids has extra needs, that’s a problem mom will solve regardless of whether she also works or what else she has going on. My husband is not a bad guy and will laugh about both our moms raving how wonderful he is for taking a child to a physical (scheduled by mom, Who is at work and needs to be there because she handled the sick days last week because dad “can’t” reschedule any meetings) but he is still totally guilty of kicking anything hard or inconvenient to me. He knows that I will always always always find a way to do the things I think are important for the kids so he can just say “I can’t” guilt free.

Also this one reminded me of DCUM:
If I do a task incorrectly, people will tell my partner to praise me for trying.

Totally agree. "He does his best and I do the rest" is absolutely how my marriage and those of pretty much all my friends work. "His best" can vary a bit, but I only know one marriage where I genuinely think the dad is the primary parent and is doing "the rest" and he's a SAHD and his wife is an executive and they have one kid.

I think this is the dirty secret of most dual income couples. It looks pretty equal from the outside -- both partners work, they say the right things, dad is visibly doing stuff like taking kids to activities, cooking, seems engaged. But if you open things up and really look at what is happening, dad is taking kids to activities that mom (who also works) researched, arranged, and provided dad with the schedule for. Dad is cooking but so is mom, and mom is also thinking a week ahead to when her MIL is in town and suggesting they make and freeze an extra casserole so they have a quick dinner for the night she arrives. Mom doesn't always seem engaged, because she's exhausted and has a laundry list of things in her head to keep track of (including laundry).

But the veneer of "things are pretty equal!" is there because it's easier on everyone's ego and it keeps the ship afloat. You could nag and nitpick dad to death but he's never, ever going to do as much as mom. Ever. If you don't want to ruin your marriage and get a divorce, which most of us don't, you just accept the inequity and move on. But it's unequal. Very, very unequal.

“I’m oppressed because DH doesn’t think a week ahead to freeze a casserole for MIL” isn’t quite the own you think it is. That is you concerned about appearances and looking on top of things lest MIL judge you.

Yes, that was about not wanting to be judged by an MIL, and had nothing to do with just making an effort to make sure a family has food to eat on a day when you know no one will have time to cook. Correct, you nailed it. And for sure the only thing women do that men don't do is make casseroles ahead of time. It's the only one.

I was just reacting to the main example you provided. You chose it. But let’s get real: yes there are many lazy and delinquent husbands, no dispute there. But there are also many wives who get angry when their husbands balk at doing things that are principally focused on the endless intramural status contest among women, competitive mothering and the superficial appearance of homes and children, etc.

It wasn't the main example, it was the one you cherry picked and reframed to mean something different because that was the easiest way to attack.

Women compete over mothering because culturally we have decided mothering is the most important thing a woman can do but also that she should receive absolutely zero support in doing it. If men were active and equal partners in parenting, a lot of competitive mothering would go away because parenting would no longer be seen as both the exclusive purview of women, simultaneously unimportant and the only way for a woman to truly prove her worth.

I do my very best to avoid competitive mothering and as a result, I sometimes deal with being accused of being lazy and irresponsible because I don't volunteer with the PTA, my kid doesn't always look perfect, I don't sign my kid up for every last activity, I don't do holiday cards, I don't make a huge deal out of Halloween or Easter, and on and on. And yet my DH doesn't do any of those things either and he is never judged as lazy or irresponsible. It's almost like there are totally different standards for men and women when it comes to parenting, and those standards reinforce this idea that women must work 10x harder at parenting in order to be considered "good moms" but also the minute they hit that goal we pat them on the heads and say "oh, you know most of this doesn't even matter, right?"

What? Who?

Is there a mothering Olympics that I didn't get invited to?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree a lot of this list is super condescending but there’s some real truth to it. In my marriage, and the marriage of most of my friends the saying “he does his best and I do the rest” is 100 percent the case. It’s not that the dads don’t do anything, it’s that they view virtually everything as optional or extra credit. If my husband gets busy at work or wants to travel, he does that. If one of our kids has extra needs, that’s a problem mom will solve regardless of whether she also works or what else she has going on. My husband is not a bad guy and will laugh about both our moms raving how wonderful he is for taking a child to a physical (scheduled by mom, Who is at work and needs to be there because she handled the sick days last week because dad “can’t” reschedule any meetings) but he is still totally guilty of kicking anything hard or inconvenient to me. He knows that I will always always always find a way to do the things I think are important for the kids so he can just say “I can’t” guilt free.

Also this one reminded me of DCUM:
If I do a task incorrectly, people will tell my partner to praise me for trying.

Totally agree. "He does his best and I do the rest" is absolutely how my marriage and those of pretty much all my friends work. "His best" can vary a bit, but I only know one marriage where I genuinely think the dad is the primary parent and is doing "the rest" and he's a SAHD and his wife is an executive and they have one kid.

I think this is the dirty secret of most dual income couples. It looks pretty equal from the outside -- both partners work, they say the right things, dad is visibly doing stuff like taking kids to activities, cooking, seems engaged. But if you open things up and really look at what is happening, dad is taking kids to activities that mom (who also works) researched, arranged, and provided dad with the schedule for. Dad is cooking but so is mom, and mom is also thinking a week ahead to when her MIL is in town and suggesting they make and freeze an extra casserole so they have a quick dinner for the night she arrives. Mom doesn't always seem engaged, because she's exhausted and has a laundry list of things in her head to keep track of (including laundry).

But the veneer of "things are pretty equal!" is there because it's easier on everyone's ego and it keeps the ship afloat. You could nag and nitpick dad to death but he's never, ever going to do as much as mom. Ever. If you don't want to ruin your marriage and get a divorce, which most of us don't, you just accept the inequity and move on. But it's unequal. Very, very unequal.

“I’m oppressed because DH doesn’t think a week ahead to freeze a casserole for MIL” isn’t quite the own you think it is. That is you concerned about appearances and looking on top of things lest MIL judge you.

Yes, that was about not wanting to be judged by an MIL, and had nothing to do with just making an effort to make sure a family has food to eat on a day when you know no one will have time to cook. Correct, you nailed it. And for sure the only thing women do that men don't do is make casseroles ahead of time. It's the only one.

I was just reacting to the main example you provided. You chose it. But let’s get real: yes there are many lazy and delinquent husbands, no dispute there. But there are also many wives who get angry when their husbands balk at doing things that are principally focused on the endless intramural status contest among women, competitive mothering and the superficial appearance of homes and children, etc.

It wasn't the main example, it was the one you cherry picked and reframed to mean something different because that was the easiest way to attack.

Women compete over mothering because culturally we have decided mothering is the most important thing a woman can do but also that she should receive absolutely zero support in doing it. If men were active and equal partners in parenting, a lot of competitive mothering would go away because parenting would no longer be seen as both the exclusive purview of women, simultaneously unimportant and the only way for a woman to truly prove her worth.

I do my very best to avoid competitive mothering and as a result, I sometimes deal with being accused of being lazy and irresponsible because I don't volunteer with the PTA, my kid doesn't always look perfect, I don't sign my kid up for every last activity, I don't do holiday cards, I don't make a huge deal out of Halloween or Easter, and on and on. And yet my DH doesn't do any of those things either and he is never judged as lazy or irresponsible. It's almost like there are totally different standards for men and women when it comes to parenting, and those standards reinforce this idea that women must work 10x harder at parenting in order to be considered "good moms" but also the minute they hit that goal we pat them on the heads and say "oh, you know most of this doesn't even matter, right?"

I'm sorry, but this sounds like a you problem. Is someone sending you hate mail because you didn't send them a holiday care? Come on.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Find it here: https://zawn.substack.com/p/the-dad-privilege-checklist

Please read the checklist and return for a conversation about it. I want to hear from others about their own experiences with coparenting their children with the children's dad.

Women who approach coparenting like this list (keeping score) will 💯 be unhappy and resentful. Not because they do more than their husband but because they are keeping score of every darn thing. Essentially, looking to create drama.

Yes, women should just stfu and do all the work.

Instead of counting who does what, how would it look if you counted who has more downtime. Doing entertainment and self care stuff, like scrolling, gym, tv, bathroom alone, etc.

I'm suspecting many on this thread are just underestimating how long the things dh does should take. And not noticing important tasks. It's kind of human nature to remember our own work more and not notice others' work.

given that time-use studies consistently show women have less leisure time, I feel pretty confident that those of us saying we have less leisure time can be trusted.

Time use studies also show that men and women spend about the same amount of time in what I think most of us would consider "work" (paid work, childcare, and housework). The edge is actually slightly for men there. The extra leisure time men take isn't coming out of that combination, but no one seems to want to address that. My source here is this analysis of the American Time Use Study: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2013/03/14/chapter-6-time-in-work-and-leisure-patterns-by-gender-and-family-structure/ It shows that overall, men do .4 hours more of "work" per week, while in households with children, the gap is greater, with men doing about 2 hours more of "work" per week.

The most recent data I've seen (here: https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2023/time-spent-in-leisure-and-sports-activities-2022.htm) shows men taking roughly an extra 40 minutes a day in leisure. The gap in leisure time is probably smaller in households with children, in the Pew analysis from 2013 it was, then it was 2 hours per week of extra leisure time for men in households with children so roughly 16 minutes per day. Some of that seemingly comes out of sleep; women sleep an average of 14 minutes longer a day then men. I haven't dug into the data to see where the other discrepancies are, but I think the time use data actually shows men and women "work" equal amounts, men just take more for leisure too.

here’s another one showing that single mothers do LESS domestic work than married women: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6560646/

the researchers observe that when mothers live with other adults (not a husband/boyfriend) their domestic labor goes down.

“ Thus, although partnered mothers theoretically can share some household labor with their partners, our findings showed that living with a heterosexual male partner was associated with mothers’ greater time spent on housework, consistent with the gender perspective”

conclusion: dads drag moms down.

Men create more housework. And because they are less accustomed to DOING housework, they don't know how to live in a way that minimizes it. My husband will clomp through the house with muddy boots on, wander down hallways and through rooms while eating crackers, toss mail onto tables such that it falls behind the table, bang a spoon on the side of a pot so flecks of sauce get on the wall and cabinets, and so forth. But he never vacuums or mops, never fishes the mail out from against the wall, never wipes down the cabinets or the backsplash. If I ask him to take more care with these behaviors so less mess is made, he accuses me of being controlling. If I say "okay, then I need you to vacuum and mop and wipe things down," he complains my cleaning standards are too high. If I want to live in a house where I can walk through a room barefoot without getting bits of dirt and food on my feet, or where we don't have food on the walls of our kitchen, I have to do it myself.

This was really brought home during Covid. Men are so hard on homes. Having my DH home all the time created cleaning issues that had never existed before. The floor under his workspace in the living room became worn and dirty very quickly and I started having to mop it and treat the wood, even though I work in the same room and have never had to do this before. More dishes, more spills, more random items left all over the house. The bathroom gets gross faster (and I don't mean it just gets dirtier -- I mean it get's gross).

I have been cleaning up after myself, with normal hygiene standards (as opposed to "single guy in his 20s" hygiene standards) my whole life, so I know how to live more lightly and make less work for myself. Men don't get this. Men are generally as messy if not more so than children and pets, and one reason married women spend more time cleaning is that they are cleaning up after their husbands, even before kids enter the picture.

It’s 2024. Go get yourself a roomba or two. Or is the “mental load” of programming it one time and taking 30 seconds a day to empty the filter too much for you?

It's 2024. A man should know how to use a vacuum cleaner by now.

But in this scenario the man doesn’t care about being able to walk through the house barefoot or eat off the floors. The woman does. So vacuum every day and constantly p!$$ and moan about it, or maybe get a roomba and have your dirt free floors with practically zero effort on your part.

How’s the saying go? Work smarter, not harder?

Yes, because the husband who refuses to vacuum and claims he does not "see" all the dirt and crumbs he tracks through the house is also definitely going to be cool with buying a super expensive robot vacuum to solve something he doesn't even view as a problem [because the solution to the problem for hims is for his wife to provide free labor to their family to fix it].

It's like when women complain about doing way more childcare than their husbands and people say "just get a nanny." The people who need a solution the most are not going to benefit from these suggestions to pay for expensive outsourcing of these tasks. Their husbands don't value this work when their wives do it, they aren't going to want to pay someone else to do it either. The issue is men who simply do not value childcare or housework, plus think to the degree these tasks have value, they should be performed by wives and mothers without complaint.

Aww, poor little victim pretending she can’t set aside $350 to make her own life better.

PP ask yourself why you have so much anger towards the pp? You know what they say about defensive people? We are hitting too close to the truth. Again why should it only be up to the wife to come up with $350 to "make HER life better?" A clean house helps everyone!

The bolded is the crux of the argument, actually. You are either incapable of understanding or too stubborn to accept that some people truly DO.NOT.CARE if there’s some dirt on the floor or if the robot vacuum missed a spot (after all, it’ll get that spot next time… or maybe it won’t… I don’t really care). Or any other matters relating to a clean house, healthy cooking, curated/limited screen time, social engagements, etc. It’s not that they EXPECT you to do these things for them, they just don’t care if these things get done or not. Many people truly do not even notice or think about half of the complaints in this thread.

Your standards are not the CORRECT standards… they are simply YOUR standards. And while I am sure that your standards are indeed higher and that everyone in your life would be better off if they lived up to them, the sad truth is that as long as they aren’t doing anything illegal, no adult is required to live by any standards but their own. In other words, you are not the boss. You don’t get to make the rules and then demand that your spouse follow them. The sooner you can accept that reality, the happier you will be.

This is Dad Privilege, right here. When children are involved you don’t get to be that lazy and negligent. You just don’t. You can live in filth and isolation if you’re the only one it impacts. Your children cannot. And you are lying too because you KNOW it’s not good for the kids - but you also know your wife will take care of it. Dad Privilege.

Now going on to claim your wife is a crazy harridan for having child rearing and domestic standards somewhere above “not illegal” - that’s something beyond Dad Privilege headed towards pathology.

Everything that I have bolded in your post boils down to your own standards and opinions. There is no universal standard for filth, isolation, laziness, negligence, and “what’s good for the kids”. All of those things exist on a spectrum. Just as hoarding exists at one end of a spectrum and minimalism exists at the other end. You might like less clutter than your spouse, but that doesn’t mean that you’re right and he’s wrong.

Your main problem is you can’t get wrap your brain around the fact that there is more than one way to skin a cat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree a lot of this list is super condescending but there’s some real truth to it. In my marriage, and the marriage of most of my friends the saying “he does his best and I do the rest” is 100 percent the case. It’s not that the dads don’t do anything, it’s that they view virtually everything as optional or extra credit. If my husband gets busy at work or wants to travel, he does that. If one of our kids has extra needs, that’s a problem mom will solve regardless of whether she also works or what else she has going on. My husband is not a bad guy and will laugh about both our moms raving how wonderful he is for taking a child to a physical (scheduled by mom, Who is at work and needs to be there because she handled the sick days last week because dad “can’t” reschedule any meetings) but he is still totally guilty of kicking anything hard or inconvenient to me. He knows that I will always always always find a way to do the things I think are important for the kids so he can just say “I can’t” guilt free.

Also this one reminded me of DCUM:
If I do a task incorrectly, people will tell my partner to praise me for trying.

Totally agree. "He does his best and I do the rest" is absolutely how my marriage and those of pretty much all my friends work. "His best" can vary a bit, but I only know one marriage where I genuinely think the dad is the primary parent and is doing "the rest" and he's a SAHD and his wife is an executive and they have one kid.

I think this is the dirty secret of most dual income couples. It looks pretty equal from the outside -- both partners work, they say the right things, dad is visibly doing stuff like taking kids to activities, cooking, seems engaged. But if you open things up and really look at what is happening, dad is taking kids to activities that mom (who also works) researched, arranged, and provided dad with the schedule for. Dad is cooking but so is mom, and mom is also thinking a week ahead to when her MIL is in town and suggesting they make and freeze an extra casserole so they have a quick dinner for the night she arrives. Mom doesn't always seem engaged, because she's exhausted and has a laundry list of things in her head to keep track of (including laundry).

But the veneer of "things are pretty equal!" is there because it's easier on everyone's ego and it keeps the ship afloat. You could nag and nitpick dad to death but he's never, ever going to do as much as mom. Ever. If you don't want to ruin your marriage and get a divorce, which most of us don't, you just accept the inequity and move on. But it's unequal. Very, very unequal.

“I’m oppressed because DH doesn’t think a week ahead to freeze a casserole for MIL” isn’t quite the own you think it is. That is you concerned about appearances and looking on top of things lest MIL judge you.

+1

If you don't want to make food for your MIL's visit, just..don't make food for your MIL's visit. What is she going to do, have you arrested?

You are confused. The PP wants to make sure that there is food to eat on a day when they will have house guests arriving and may not have time to cook. It's not about not wanting to cook for her MIL, it's about not having to be in charge of making sure that the family has food when it needs food, a planning responsibility that many men might not bother with.

Just like dad might drop the kids off at camp every day, but mom might be the one to start thinking about camp in December, knowing many camps fill in January, and start doing research and pricing things out, then start looking at the school calendar and also planning any travel so they know what weeks they need camp for (all while her DH is like "why are you asking about this now? that's months away? can't we plan this later?") and then making sure she signs up when camps go up so they don't get locked out, and filling out all the paperwork for the camps and getting any needed supplies as they approach. But all you might see is the dad dropping the kids off and think "wow, what an involved dad, he's definitely doing 50%. Maybe more -- I don't see their mom dropping these kids off. Boy is she lucky to have a partner who just totally handles camp for her." This is what people are talking about when they talk about the invisible labor of parenting that disproportionately falls on women.

I would LOVE to be the partner who simply gets to weight in on whether my mother would prefer lasagna or ordering pizza when she arrives next week (while my partner figures out the logistics of either and bothers to think about it at all) or the partner who drops off my kids at camp every day wearing appropriate clothes and sunscreen and with the requisite materials (while my partner figures out literally ever aspect of camp logistics months in advance and spends weeks making sure we have everything we need and the bill is paid and all the paperwork is filled out so that I can just hug my kids and look like a hero while doing almost nothing). That gig sounds great.

DP, but my wife has definitely done camp drop off but she's never researched, booked, or submitted a camp form in her life. Usually, I do drop off, but sometimes she does. She's taken kids to dentist appointments I scheduled, but I don't think she's scheduled more than a handful of doctors/dentist appointments. Not knowing goes both ways.

And honestly if you gave me the choice between doing camp forms and signups and doing drop off, I'd pick the one I can do from my desk at work without a second thought. Commuting out of my way to do drop off is more annoying than signups, although neither are especially onerous tasks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some of the stuff on the list was petty or extra or an example of moms doing too much that they really just need to let go. Some of it is stuff that you can very easily delegate to your husband and even if he does it imperfectly the first few times, it’s not life or death. If dad forgets the kids water bottles when you go on an outing, you can buy water at Starbucks or whatever. You just have to be more flexible.

But honestly - a lot of it rings true and it’s uncomfortable. All the women in my circle are the planners. Without mom planning it, no one would go on vacations/trips out of town. Moms research and plan the hotel, the flights, the activities while you’re there.

Moms do all the clothes shopping, if dad notices that a kid’s shoes are getting too small it’s mom who finds and buys new shoes. Mom does all the summer camp/activity research and planning. Mom keeps the family social and events calendar and knows when all the after school stuff is happening at school (the Bingo nights, the Trunk or Treat, the spring festival …) and makes sure to pay ahead to reserve a pizza order to have some dinner to eat at the event. The school registrations, the yearly (or more than yearly, if you have an under 3) checkups, remembering to bring the school health form to the yearly checkup, the thing about the Halloween costumes - yep that all rings true.

I'm curious about where you live, what the average HHI is, and how many SAHMs there are in your circle.

I live in a VA suburb, average HHI is probably around $500-750K and only one mom in our group of about 20 families in our neighborhood is a SAHM. We have no SAHDs. I would say income between the two spouses is generally pretty close, so just say it's 50/50.

The texts in our group involving planning of things are at least 50% dads responding, if not more. We went on a trip with two other families for spring break and the dads planned it all. And by the way, us moms are also very good planners, we just don't do it all because why would we? We married men who are functional adults so they can do the planning for things as well.

[Anonymous]

Regarding floors, I will note here that when our floors go unswept or vacuumed for a few days, our kids will complain. They run around the house barefoot and do not enjoy stepping on crumbs, dirt, and tracked cat litter. Nor do I.

The PP (with a cat!) who claims they sweep twice a month and it's fine must have the tidiest family in the world. We don't wear shoes in the house and restrict eating to the kitchen and dining room and we still wind up with stuff on the floors after a few days. I think once a week is bare minimum and that's not to maintain perfect cleanliness or anything, just to ensure we don't attract bugs or ruin the floors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Regarding floors, I will note here that when our floors go unswept or vacuumed for a few days, our kids will complain. They run around the house barefoot and do not enjoy stepping on crumbs, dirt, and tracked cat litter. Nor do I.

The PP (with a cat!) who claims they sweep twice a month and it's fine must have the tidiest family in the world. We don't wear shoes in the house and restrict eating to the kitchen and dining room and we still wind up with stuff on the floors after a few days. I think once a week is bare minimum and that's not to maintain perfect cleanliness or anything, just to ensure we don't attract bugs or ruin the floors.

I think you fundamentally misunderstood that post. He’s not saying they sweep the floors twice a month because they don’t ever get anything on the floors. He’s saying they’re fine with whatever accumulates on the floors over a two week time period and apparently no one has been hospitalized over it yet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Regarding floors, I will note here that when our floors go unswept or vacuumed for a few days, our kids will complain. They run around the house barefoot and do not enjoy stepping on crumbs, dirt, and tracked cat litter. Nor do I.

The PP (with a cat!) who claims they sweep twice a month and it's fine must have the tidiest family in the world. We don't wear shoes in the house and restrict eating to the kitchen and dining room and we still wind up with stuff on the floors after a few days. I think once a week is bare minimum and that's not to maintain perfect cleanliness or anything, just to ensure we don't attract bugs or ruin the floors.

The day one of my kids complains about the floors being swept is that day is the day they get a new chore. I wonder if you'd feel less harried if you were in charge of your kids and not the other way around?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some of the stuff on the list was petty or extra or an example of moms doing too much that they really just need to let go. Some of it is stuff that you can very easily delegate to your husband and even if he does it imperfectly the first few times, it’s not life or death. If dad forgets the kids water bottles when you go on an outing, you can buy water at Starbucks or whatever. You just have to be more flexible.

But honestly - a lot of it rings true and it’s uncomfortable. All the women in my circle are the planners. Without mom planning it, no one would go on vacations/trips out of town. Moms research and plan the hotel, the flights, the activities while you’re there.

Moms do all the clothes shopping, if dad notices that a kid’s shoes are getting too small it’s mom who finds and buys new shoes. Mom does all the summer camp/activity research and planning. Mom keeps the family social and events calendar and knows when all the after school stuff is happening at school (the Bingo nights, the Trunk or Treat, the spring festival …) and makes sure to pay ahead to reserve a pizza order to have some dinner to eat at the event. The school registrations, the yearly (or more than yearly, if you have an under 3) checkups, remembering to bring the school health form to the yearly checkup, the thing about the Halloween costumes - yep that all rings true.

I'm curious about where you live, what the average HHI is, and how many SAHMs there are in your circle.

I live in a VA suburb, average HHI is probably around $500-750K and only one mom in our group of about 20 families in our neighborhood is a SAHM. We have no SAHDs. I would say income between the two spouses is generally pretty close, so just say it's 50/50.

The texts in our group involving planning of things are at least 50% dads responding, if not more. We went on a trip with two other families for spring break and the dads planned it all. And by the way, us moms are also very good planners, we just don't do it all because why would we? We married men who are functional adults so they can do the planning for things as well.

Again, congratulations.

Some of you are very determined to claim that IF anyone even experiences this kind of inequality in their marriage (and certainly you are reluctant to believe that's the case), then it MUST be because a handful of bad women chose unusually low performing men.

It could not possibly be that many families lean on the the women as the default parent and that, built into social attitudes about how is best at parenting and housework and how more naturally fills that role, many marriages are inherently unequal and men enjoy a good amount of "dad privilege" that exempts them from expectations regarding childcare and household management. That's not possible. Because after all, in your subdivision all the men are 50/50 partners and all the women work. If that's true for you and 10 other families in the same community, it must be universally true, correct?

Apparently if there are men not pulling their weight in families, they must exist in a few tiny small towns in the midwest maybe? Or is it perhaps a southern thing? After all, apparently every dad you've ever met is a 50/50 partner. It is simply not possible that anything else might be going on in the world outside of whatever NoVa suburbs you apparently live in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Regarding floors, I will note here that when our floors go unswept or vacuumed for a few days, our kids will complain. They run around the house barefoot and do not enjoy stepping on crumbs, dirt, and tracked cat litter. Nor do I.

The PP (with a cat!) who claims they sweep twice a month and it's fine must have the tidiest family in the world. We don't wear shoes in the house and restrict eating to the kitchen and dining room and we still wind up with stuff on the floors after a few days. I think once a week is bare minimum and that's not to maintain perfect cleanliness or anything, just to ensure we don't attract bugs or ruin the floors.

The day one of my kids complains about the floors being swept is that day is the day they get a new chore. I wonder if you'd feel less harried if you were in charge of your kids and not the other way around?

I'm happy to have my 5 yr old sweep the floor but also that is not a good way to get floors clean. And they are too small for the vacuum.