The Dad Privilege Checklist

[Anonymous]

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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.

Such a great example. Yet what happens when MIL arrives at dinner time on a Tuesday? Has “DH” come home early from work to tidy the house, make up the guest bed, then figured out a nice dinner that allows MIL to feel welcomed while DIL isn’t overly stressed? Lololol. I think we ALL know the answer to that one. Here’s how it really goes:

(Saturday) DW, my mom wants to come stay for a few nights on Tuesday. Is that ok?

DW: of course! your mom is always welcome.

DW: OK, Tuesday I have that presentation at 2 so I won’t have any time to get the house ready on Monday. I think I can get home Tuesday around 5 - that gives me an hour or so to tidy up and put clean sheets on the guest bed. But that doesn’t leave time to make dinner. I think I could put a lasagna together today so I can pop it in the oven Tuesday. Do you think you can do pickup and dropoff on Tuesday so I can make that work?

DH: Why do you have to do any of that? Mom just wants to see the kids, she doesn’t care.

DW: Well the guest bed sheets haven’t been changed since your brother stayed here, the house will be messy, and we do need to eat dinner. I’d like to have something a bit nicer than frozen meatballs for your mom.

DH: Why do you make up all this stuff? None of that needs to be done.

So don't make the dinner. Don't change the bed sheets. Don't clean the house. If YOU want it done, do it. If you don't care, then don't. It's really not that complicated.

My SIL does this. Husband doesn’t care if they have processed food every night, no one writes thank you notes, they don’t take vacations, they don’t entertain, they don’t host extended family, they don’t pay bills on time, they don’t clean their cars etc. Two highly educated successful career people who basically don’t do any of the “niceties.” We went to their house once for thanksgiving and it was on Paper plates and precooked from Costco. I feel sorry for their kids.

Yes this is my aunt as well! My mom is her husband's sister and when we would come over she pretty much said "This is your family so you take charge." So we came to a filthy house and ate pizza off of paper towels. And my mom and her sister crow to this day about what an awful hostess she was. But it was their brother's house too! Somehow it wasn't his fault.

Pretty much all the judgement that this stupid dad privilege checklist is complaining about comes from OTHER WOMEN.

I’ll bet if your uncle went to your mom’s house and was served pizza on a paper plate (the horror!) he’d smile, say thank you, eat it, and move on with his life.

And to the poster who feels sorry for kids eating premade Costco Thanksgiving dinner on paper plates… you’re the problem that you’re complaining about. You’re so concerned about being judged because YOU are so judgmental.

Holidays and hospitality are actually super essential to human society and social ties, which are essential to human well being and happy kids. Nobody says you have to go overboard but it’s impoverished and dysfunctional for your kids never to make any effort - and yes, never do any of the “normal” things other families do. You know, like having a meal with extended family not served on paper towels. It truly truly is Dad Privilege and also rank misogyny to pretend that this actually crucial work tying together people & families just “stupid women stuff

+1000, you can do it your own way if you want (there are lots of outdated traditions my DH and I have thrown out the window, plus new traditions we don't participate in, like the family Christmas card with the photo) but a lot of this is about tying families and communities together. Work women have done for centuries. But with two-income families and women taking on a lot more paid work outside the home, men should be stepping up to help carry this. They largely don't. There are exceptions, but there are very few men who view "making holidays special" or "ensuring the family sees each other and treats each other respectfully" as their job.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Honestly, all of this is made easier if mom stays home with the children and dad makes more money to compensate. I know it’s an unpopular sentiment, but most women would feel much less resentment if they dropped work to focus their efforts (when the children are young) on raising them and let their DH work harder to cover the bills.

The problem with this is once upon a time when women stayed home, they viewed their role as "homemaker" and that job description included everything: Care for children, keep the house clean and orderly, fix the meals.

Today's young women define this role as "SAHM" with the emphasis on the "M." They think their duty is only to look after the children during the hours that their husband is working or commuting but that he should immediately step in for 50% on all of the other tasks. They bristle at the "homemaker" label -- basically they are invested in intensive mothering; so, basically, they want to be a nanny or governess to their own children. The rest of the duties that used to be embedded in the role are beneath them and either need to be outsourced or shared equally.

Uh, women did all the childcare and housework 24/7 (including physically caring for their husbands like they were children -- cooking for them, cleaning them, washing their clothes, running their errands, even bathing and grooming them sometimes) because they were oppressed, had no economic power and no political rights, and were viewed as the property of their fathers and husbands. Not because the really "embraced the role" of homemaker. But because if they failed to perform the role, their husbands might abandon them and they were not allowed to do most jobs or own property or have bank accounts, plus rape wasn't even illegal except as a violation of another man's property rights so they'd be very vulnerable.

The good old days. When women would cook and clean and tend to children all day, and then the second their husbands came home, tend to him while continuing to cook and clean until bedtime, while their husbands with "real jobs" replaced after a hard day of work.

Yeah, it's so weird that women today are not eager to return to that set up, I wonder why.

But ... they want a "shell" of that that set-up. They only want the intensive mothering bit. Which is insanely easy. Easiest job ever. So, really, they're just lazy. The ones who continue to do this when their children are in elementary school are the laziest of them all. It would be different if they embraced the actual job description of a homemaker.

But men want the whole set up. They want to go to work and then come home and do nothing. Men expect this whether their wives work outside the home or not. Whether the kids are toddlers or teens. They do not believe that the work of childcare outside their working hours should be evenly divided. EVEN if both people worked all day (whether that work was for pay or unpaid wiping of butts and preparing snacks and all that).

Women who have husbands with this attitude (which is most husbands) are stuck. If they work, they will still be expected to do the majority of childcare/housework outside of work hours. Sometimes this is justified by "I make more money" or "my job is harder" or "I work longer hours." But usually not.

On the other hand, if they SAHM, they may have more time to do all the tasks they will be expected to do anyway. But they are expected to work 24/7, because men like you think being a SAHM is easy. You don't understand what is so hard about childcare that she can't also keep the house perfectly tidy and do all the administrative stuff too. What's she doing all day? No really, you have no idea, having never cared for kids full time. What IS she doing all day? So even if she spends the entire day working, you still expect her to do the vast majority of the after-work childcare/household responsibilities because, after all, she doesn't have a "real job" like you (nevermind if your job actually involves a lot of sitting, downtime, and socializing with colleagues and clients, things that could easily be called easy when compared to the hardest parts of what even a SAHM of school age kids does).

Which is why the only "solution" anyone has ever found to this is outsourcing a lot of the childcare and housework so that the couple can divide what is left. But most families can't afford that.

Is there ANY situation in which you actually believe that a man should do 50% (or more!) of the childcare/housework/household admin? I bet no. That's women's work.

Um, not most men. My father wasn't like this. My husband isn't like this. I know plenty of men who aren't like this.

I also know men who do more than 50% at home because their wives' careers are more intense or they have other issues going on.

It's comments like the ones you're responding to that make these complaints hard to take seriously. We have data; we know what "most men" do. They don't come home and do "nothing" they come home and do less, but they also work more. The issue, if there is one, is about distribution, not that either party is doing "nothing." Overall, we're all doing about the same amount.

No, we have data showing that men increase women’s domestic labor. Also it’s well known that men hide at work to avoid coming home to take care of kids.

1) We most certainly do have data showing that between paid work, household work, and caregiving men and women do similar amounts of work in a week. You might not like it, but you can just say "no."
2) We do have data that women in married households do more household work than women in other types of households. Some other data showed men doing less, but there's also data that shows that married men do more household work than single men. The 2022 ATUS data showed men doing a bit over 30 minutes more of household activity per day if they were married and living with their spouse than if they were single (or married but living apart from their spouse). Would you call that "data that women increase men's domestic labor"?
3) I know nothing about men hiding at work to avoid coming home to kids. I don't do it, I don't know a man who does it (all the dads at my office check out early to take do school pick up, actually, but it's a small office). I do think it's funny, though, that time use data about women's housework and childcare is reliable, but the same data about men doing paid labor isn't. Convenient.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/husbands-create-extra-seven-hours-of-housework-a-week-a6885951.html

Dude we ALL know men aren’t making it up by actually working more at the office. Maybe “working” but not actually working.

I'm telling you what the data shows, which you seem to admit since you need to create a story of men pretending to work to explain it away. Meanwhile your link shows that women and men both do more housework when they're married, exactly like I said.

I've got nothing personally invested in this particular issue. I'm lucky enough to be a man who doesn't have a job that takes a ton of time, so I do way more than 50% of the housework/childcare without complaint. Organizing stuff for my kids is incredibly rewarding and not very difficult. The real "dad privilege" I have is that I get to make my family dinner, pick camps, drive my kids to music lessons, and help out with their scout troops. I just think we have to be honest about the data, which is not what's happening in this conversation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, all of this is made easier if mom stays home with the children and dad makes more money to compensate. I know it’s an unpopular sentiment, but most women would feel much less resentment if they dropped work to focus their efforts (when the children are young) on raising them and let their DH work harder to cover the bills.

The problem with this is once upon a time when women stayed home, they viewed their role as "homemaker" and that job description included everything: Care for children, keep the house clean and orderly, fix the meals.

Today's young women define this role as "SAHM" with the emphasis on the "M." They think their duty is only to look after the children during the hours that their husband is working or commuting but that he should immediately step in for 50% on all of the other tasks. They bristle at the "homemaker" label -- basically they are invested in intensive mothering; so, basically, they want to be a nanny or governess to their own children. The rest of the duties that used to be embedded in the role are beneath them and either need to be outsourced or shared equally.

Uh, women did all the childcare and housework 24/7 (including physically caring for their husbands like they were children -- cooking for them, cleaning them, washing their clothes, running their errands, even bathing and grooming them sometimes) because they were oppressed, had no economic power and no political rights, and were viewed as the property of their fathers and husbands. Not because the really "embraced the role" of homemaker. But because if they failed to perform the role, their husbands might abandon them and they were not allowed to do most jobs or own property or have bank accounts, plus rape wasn't even illegal except as a violation of another man's property rights so they'd be very vulnerable.

The good old days. When women would cook and clean and tend to children all day, and then the second their husbands came home, tend to him while continuing to cook and clean until bedtime, while their husbands with "real jobs" replaced after a hard day of work.

Yeah, it's so weird that women today are not eager to return to that set up, I wonder why.

But ... they want a "shell" of that that set-up. They only want the intensive mothering bit. Which is insanely easy. Easiest job ever. So, really, they're just lazy. The ones who continue to do this when their children are in elementary school are the laziest of them all. It would be different if they embraced the actual job description of a homemaker.

But men want the whole set up. They want to go to work and then come home and do nothing. Men expect this whether their wives work outside the home or not. Whether the kids are toddlers or teens. They do not believe that the work of childcare outside their working hours should be evenly divided. EVEN if both people worked all day (whether that work was for pay or unpaid wiping of butts and preparing snacks and all that).

Women who have husbands with this attitude (which is most husbands) are stuck. If they work, they will still be expected to do the majority of childcare/housework outside of work hours. Sometimes this is justified by "I make more money" or "my job is harder" or "I work longer hours." But usually not.

On the other hand, if they SAHM, they may have more time to do all the tasks they will be expected to do anyway. But they are expected to work 24/7, because men like you think being a SAHM is easy. You don't understand what is so hard about childcare that she can't also keep the house perfectly tidy and do all the administrative stuff too. What's she doing all day? No really, you have no idea, having never cared for kids full time. What IS she doing all day? So even if she spends the entire day working, you still expect her to do the vast majority of the after-work childcare/household responsibilities because, after all, she doesn't have a "real job" like you (nevermind if your job actually involves a lot of sitting, downtime, and socializing with colleagues and clients, things that could easily be called easy when compared to the hardest parts of what even a SAHM of school age kids does).

Which is why the only "solution" anyone has ever found to this is outsourcing a lot of the childcare and housework so that the couple can divide what is left. But most families can't afford that.

Is there ANY situation in which you actually believe that a man should do 50% (or more!) of the childcare/housework/household admin? I bet no. That's women's work.

Um, not most men. My father wasn't like this. My husband isn't like this. I know plenty of men who aren't like this.

I also know men who do more than 50% at home because their wives' careers are more intense or they have other issues going on.

It's comments like the ones you're responding to that make these complaints hard to take seriously. We have data; we know what "most men" do. They don't come home and do "nothing" they come home and do less, but they also work more. The issue, if there is one, is about distribution, not that either party is doing "nothing." Overall, we're all doing about the same amount.

No, we have data showing that men increase women’s domestic labor. Also it’s well known that men hide at work to avoid coming home to take care of kids.

1) We most certainly do have data showing that between paid work, household work, and caregiving men and women do similar amounts of work in a week. You might not like it, but you can just say "no."
2) We do have data that women in married households do more household work than women in other types of households. Some other data showed men doing less, but there's also data that shows that married men do more household work than single men. The 2022 ATUS data showed men doing a bit over 30 minutes more of household activity per day if they were married and living with their spouse than if they were single (or married but living apart from their spouse). Would you call that "data that women increase men's domestic labor"?
3) I know nothing about men hiding at work to avoid coming home to kids. I don't do it, I don't know a man who does it (all the dads at my office check out early to take do school pick up, actually, but it's a small office). I do think it's funny, though, that time use data about women's housework and childcare is reliable, but the same data about men doing paid labor isn't. Convenient.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/husbands-create-extra-seven-hours-of-housework-a-week-a6885951.html

Dude we ALL know men aren’t making it up by actually working more at the office. Maybe “working” but not actually working.

I'm telling you what the data shows, which you seem to admit since you need to create a story of men pretending to work to explain it away. Meanwhile your link shows that women and men both do more housework when they're married, exactly like I said.

I've got nothing personally invested in this particular issue. I'm lucky enough to be a man who doesn't have a job that takes a ton of time, so I do way more than 50% of the housework/childcare without complaint. Organizing stuff for my kids is incredibly rewarding and not very difficult. The real "dad privilege" I have is that I get to make my family dinner, pick camps, drive my kids to music lessons, and help out with their scout troops. I just think we have to be honest about the data, which is not what's happening in this conversation.

DP but the data shows that married men with kids spend the most time on both paid work, unpaid work, and leisure. Which seems impossible-- do these men have more hours in the day? How can they be doing more of both?

One explanation is that some of their extra level sure time is coming AT work, that they are lingering at the office to socialize or engaging in leisure activities on the way home, in ways women do not. The studies don't say this is what is happening, but they also don't clearly say it's not happening.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, all of this is made easier if mom stays home with the children and dad makes more money to compensate. I know it’s an unpopular sentiment, but most women would feel much less resentment if they dropped work to focus their efforts (when the children are young) on raising them and let their DH work harder to cover the bills.

The problem with this is once upon a time when women stayed home, they viewed their role as "homemaker" and that job description included everything: Care for children, keep the house clean and orderly, fix the meals.

Today's young women define this role as "SAHM" with the emphasis on the "M." They think their duty is only to look after the children during the hours that their husband is working or commuting but that he should immediately step in for 50% on all of the other tasks. They bristle at the "homemaker" label -- basically they are invested in intensive mothering; so, basically, they want to be a nanny or governess to their own children. The rest of the duties that used to be embedded in the role are beneath them and either need to be outsourced or shared equally.

Uh, women did all the childcare and housework 24/7 (including physically caring for their husbands like they were children -- cooking for them, cleaning them, washing their clothes, running their errands, even bathing and grooming them sometimes) because they were oppressed, had no economic power and no political rights, and were viewed as the property of their fathers and husbands. Not because the really "embraced the role" of homemaker. But because if they failed to perform the role, their husbands might abandon them and they were not allowed to do most jobs or own property or have bank accounts, plus rape wasn't even illegal except as a violation of another man's property rights so they'd be very vulnerable.

The good old days. When women would cook and clean and tend to children all day, and then the second their husbands came home, tend to him while continuing to cook and clean until bedtime, while their husbands with "real jobs" replaced after a hard day of work.

Yeah, it's so weird that women today are not eager to return to that set up, I wonder why.

But ... they want a "shell" of that that set-up. They only want the intensive mothering bit. Which is insanely easy. Easiest job ever. So, really, they're just lazy. The ones who continue to do this when their children are in elementary school are the laziest of them all. It would be different if they embraced the actual job description of a homemaker.

But men want the whole set up. They want to go to work and then come home and do nothing. Men expect this whether their wives work outside the home or not. Whether the kids are toddlers or teens. They do not believe that the work of childcare outside their working hours should be evenly divided. EVEN if both people worked all day (whether that work was for pay or unpaid wiping of butts and preparing snacks and all that).

Women who have husbands with this attitude (which is most husbands) are stuck. If they work, they will still be expected to do the majority of childcare/housework outside of work hours. Sometimes this is justified by "I make more money" or "my job is harder" or "I work longer hours." But usually not.

On the other hand, if they SAHM, they may have more time to do all the tasks they will be expected to do anyway. But they are expected to work 24/7, because men like you think being a SAHM is easy. You don't understand what is so hard about childcare that she can't also keep the house perfectly tidy and do all the administrative stuff too. What's she doing all day? No really, you have no idea, having never cared for kids full time. What IS she doing all day? So even if she spends the entire day working, you still expect her to do the vast majority of the after-work childcare/household responsibilities because, after all, she doesn't have a "real job" like you (nevermind if your job actually involves a lot of sitting, downtime, and socializing with colleagues and clients, things that could easily be called easy when compared to the hardest parts of what even a SAHM of school age kids does).

Which is why the only "solution" anyone has ever found to this is outsourcing a lot of the childcare and housework so that the couple can divide what is left. But most families can't afford that.

Is there ANY situation in which you actually believe that a man should do 50% (or more!) of the childcare/housework/household admin? I bet no. That's women's work.

Um, not most men. My father wasn't like this. My husband isn't like this. I know plenty of men who aren't like this.

I also know men who do more than 50% at home because their wives' careers are more intense or they have other issues going on.

It's comments like the ones you're responding to that make these complaints hard to take seriously. We have data; we know what "most men" do. They don't come home and do "nothing" they come home and do less, but they also work more. The issue, if there is one, is about distribution, not that either party is doing "nothing." Overall, we're all doing about the same amount.

No, we have data showing that men increase women’s domestic labor. Also it’s well known that men hide at work to avoid coming home to take care of kids.

1) We most certainly do have data showing that between paid work, household work, and caregiving men and women do similar amounts of work in a week. You might not like it, but you can just say "no."
2) We do have data that women in married households do more household work than women in other types of households. Some other data showed men doing less, but there's also data that shows that married men do more household work than single men. The 2022 ATUS data showed men doing a bit over 30 minutes more of household activity per day if they were married and living with their spouse than if they were single (or married but living apart from their spouse). Would you call that "data that women increase men's domestic labor"?
3) I know nothing about men hiding at work to avoid coming home to kids. I don't do it, I don't know a man who does it (all the dads at my office check out early to take do school pick up, actually, but it's a small office). I do think it's funny, though, that time use data about women's housework and childcare is reliable, but the same data about men doing paid labor isn't. Convenient.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/husbands-create-extra-seven-hours-of-housework-a-week-a6885951.html

Dude we ALL know men aren’t making it up by actually working more at the office. Maybe “working” but not actually working.

I'm telling you what the data shows, which you seem to admit since you need to create a story of men pretending to work to explain it away. Meanwhile your link shows that women and men both do more housework when they're married, exactly like I said.

I've got nothing personally invested in this particular issue. I'm lucky enough to be a man who doesn't have a job that takes a ton of time, so I do way more than 50% of the housework/childcare without complaint. Organizing stuff for my kids is incredibly rewarding and not very difficult. The real "dad privilege" I have is that I get to make my family dinner, pick camps, drive my kids to music lessons, and help out with their scout troops. I just think we have to be honest about the data, which is not what's happening in this conversation.

DP but the data shows that married men with kids spend the most time on both paid work, unpaid work, and leisure. Which seems impossible-- do these men have more hours in the day? How can they be doing more of both?

One explanation is that some of their extra level sure time is coming AT work, that they are lingering at the office to socialize or engaging in leisure activities on the way home, in ways women do not. The studies don't say this is what is happening, but they also don't clearly say it's not happening.

It doesn't show that. It shows that men spend more time on leisure and paid work than women and married men spend more time on unpaid work than unmarried men, not that they spend more time on unpaid work than women. Women do more unpaid work and men more paid work.

If we're comparing married men to married women:
Men do more paid work
Women do more housework and childcare
These two numbers combined add up to around the same number of hours in a week
Men spend more time on leisure
Women spend more time on "personal care" (sleeping is a lot of this in terms of gender difference, but so is dressing and grooming oneself, rather than caring for other family members)

Everyone gets the same number of hours, men aren't double counting hours spent at the office as leisure time. The data can't show how actively anyone is working, but it also can't show how actively anyone is doing childcare either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, all of this is made easier if mom stays home with the children and dad makes more money to compensate. I know it’s an unpopular sentiment, but most women would feel much less resentment if they dropped work to focus their efforts (when the children are young) on raising them and let their DH work harder to cover the bills.

The problem with this is once upon a time when women stayed home, they viewed their role as "homemaker" and that job description included everything: Care for children, keep the house clean and orderly, fix the meals.

Today's young women define this role as "SAHM" with the emphasis on the "M." They think their duty is only to look after the children during the hours that their husband is working or commuting but that he should immediately step in for 50% on all of the other tasks. They bristle at the "homemaker" label -- basically they are invested in intensive mothering; so, basically, they want to be a nanny or governess to their own children. The rest of the duties that used to be embedded in the role are beneath them and either need to be outsourced or shared equally.

Uh, women did all the childcare and housework 24/7 (including physically caring for their husbands like they were children -- cooking for them, cleaning them, washing their clothes, running their errands, even bathing and grooming them sometimes) because they were oppressed, had no economic power and no political rights, and were viewed as the property of their fathers and husbands. Not because the really "embraced the role" of homemaker. But because if they failed to perform the role, their husbands might abandon them and they were not allowed to do most jobs or own property or have bank accounts, plus rape wasn't even illegal except as a violation of another man's property rights so they'd be very vulnerable.

The good old days. When women would cook and clean and tend to children all day, and then the second their husbands came home, tend to him while continuing to cook and clean until bedtime, while their husbands with "real jobs" replaced after a hard day of work.

Yeah, it's so weird that women today are not eager to return to that set up, I wonder why.

But ... they want a "shell" of that that set-up. They only want the intensive mothering bit. Which is insanely easy. Easiest job ever. So, really, they're just lazy. The ones who continue to do this when their children are in elementary school are the laziest of them all. It would be different if they embraced the actual job description of a homemaker.

But men want the whole set up. They want to go to work and then come home and do nothing. Men expect this whether their wives work outside the home or not. Whether the kids are toddlers or teens. They do not believe that the work of childcare outside their working hours should be evenly divided. EVEN if both people worked all day (whether that work was for pay or unpaid wiping of butts and preparing snacks and all that).

Women who have husbands with this attitude (which is most husbands) are stuck. If they work, they will still be expected to do the majority of childcare/housework outside of work hours. Sometimes this is justified by "I make more money" or "my job is harder" or "I work longer hours." But usually not.

On the other hand, if they SAHM, they may have more time to do all the tasks they will be expected to do anyway. But they are expected to work 24/7, because men like you think being a SAHM is easy. You don't understand what is so hard about childcare that she can't also keep the house perfectly tidy and do all the administrative stuff too. What's she doing all day? No really, you have no idea, having never cared for kids full time. What IS she doing all day? So even if she spends the entire day working, you still expect her to do the vast majority of the after-work childcare/household responsibilities because, after all, she doesn't have a "real job" like you (nevermind if your job actually involves a lot of sitting, downtime, and socializing with colleagues and clients, things that could easily be called easy when compared to the hardest parts of what even a SAHM of school age kids does).

Which is why the only "solution" anyone has ever found to this is outsourcing a lot of the childcare and housework so that the couple can divide what is left. But most families can't afford that.

Is there ANY situation in which you actually believe that a man should do 50% (or more!) of the childcare/housework/household admin? I bet no. That's women's work.

Um, not most men. My father wasn't like this. My husband isn't like this. I know plenty of men who aren't like this.

I also know men who do more than 50% at home because their wives' careers are more intense or they have other issues going on.

It's comments like the ones you're responding to that make these complaints hard to take seriously. We have data; we know what "most men" do. They don't come home and do "nothing" they come home and do less, but they also work more. The issue, if there is one, is about distribution, not that either party is doing "nothing." Overall, we're all doing about the same amount.

No, we have data showing that men increase women’s domestic labor. Also it’s well known that men hide at work to avoid coming home to take care of kids.

1) We most certainly do have data showing that between paid work, household work, and caregiving men and women do similar amounts of work in a week. You might not like it, but you can just say "no."
2) We do have data that women in married households do more household work than women in other types of households. Some other data showed men doing less, but there's also data that shows that married men do more household work than single men. The 2022 ATUS data showed men doing a bit over 30 minutes more of household activity per day if they were married and living with their spouse than if they were single (or married but living apart from their spouse). Would you call that "data that women increase men's domestic labor"?
3) I know nothing about men hiding at work to avoid coming home to kids. I don't do it, I don't know a man who does it (all the dads at my office check out early to take do school pick up, actually, but it's a small office). I do think it's funny, though, that time use data about women's housework and childcare is reliable, but the same data about men doing paid labor isn't. Convenient.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/husbands-create-extra-seven-hours-of-housework-a-week-a6885951.html

Dude we ALL know men aren’t making it up by actually working more at the office. Maybe “working” but not actually working.

I'm telling you what the data shows, which you seem to admit since you need to create a story of men pretending to work to explain it away. Meanwhile your link shows that women and men both do more housework when they're married, exactly like I said.

I've got nothing personally invested in this particular issue. I'm lucky enough to be a man who doesn't have a job that takes a ton of time, so I do way more than 50% of the housework/childcare without complaint. Organizing stuff for my kids is incredibly rewarding and not very difficult. The real "dad privilege" I have is that I get to make my family dinner, pick camps, drive my kids to music lessons, and help out with their scout troops. I just think we have to be honest about the data, which is not what's happening in this conversation.

You think the data shows that men do their fair share? It absolutely does not.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Honestly, all of this is made easier if mom stays home with the children and dad makes more money to compensate. I know it’s an unpopular sentiment, but most women would feel much less resentment if they dropped work to focus their efforts (when the children are young) on raising them and let their DH work harder to cover the bills.

The problem with this is once upon a time when women stayed home, they viewed their role as "homemaker" and that job description included everything: Care for children, keep the house clean and orderly, fix the meals.

Today's young women define this role as "SAHM" with the emphasis on the "M." They think their duty is only to look after the children during the hours that their husband is working or commuting but that he should immediately step in for 50% on all of the other tasks. They bristle at the "homemaker" label -- basically they are invested in intensive mothering; so, basically, they want to be a nanny or governess to their own children. The rest of the duties that used to be embedded in the role are beneath them and either need to be outsourced or shared equally.

Uh, women did all the childcare and housework 24/7 (including physically caring for their husbands like they were children -- cooking for them, cleaning them, washing their clothes, running their errands, even bathing and grooming them sometimes) because they were oppressed, had no economic power and no political rights, and were viewed as the property of their fathers and husbands. Not because the really "embraced the role" of homemaker. But because if they failed to perform the role, their husbands might abandon them and they were not allowed to do most jobs or own property or have bank accounts, plus rape wasn't even illegal except as a violation of another man's property rights so they'd be very vulnerable.

The good old days. When women would cook and clean and tend to children all day, and then the second their husbands came home, tend to him while continuing to cook and clean until bedtime, while their husbands with "real jobs" replaced after a hard day of work.

Yeah, it's so weird that women today are not eager to return to that set up, I wonder why.

But ... they want a "shell" of that that set-up. They only want the intensive mothering bit. Which is insanely easy. Easiest job ever. So, really, they're just lazy. The ones who continue to do this when their children are in elementary school are the laziest of them all. It would be different if they embraced the actual job description of a homemaker.

But men want the whole set up. They want to go to work and then come home and do nothing. Men expect this whether their wives work outside the home or not. Whether the kids are toddlers or teens. They do not believe that the work of childcare outside their working hours should be evenly divided. EVEN if both people worked all day (whether that work was for pay or unpaid wiping of butts and preparing snacks and all that).

Women who have husbands with this attitude (which is most husbands) are stuck. If they work, they will still be expected to do the majority of childcare/housework outside of work hours. Sometimes this is justified by "I make more money" or "my job is harder" or "I work longer hours." But usually not.

On the other hand, if they SAHM, they may have more time to do all the tasks they will be expected to do anyway. But they are expected to work 24/7, because men like you think being a SAHM is easy. You don't understand what is so hard about childcare that she can't also keep the house perfectly tidy and do all the administrative stuff too. What's she doing all day? No really, you have no idea, having never cared for kids full time. What IS she doing all day? So even if she spends the entire day working, you still expect her to do the vast majority of the after-work childcare/household responsibilities because, after all, she doesn't have a "real job" like you (nevermind if your job actually involves a lot of sitting, downtime, and socializing with colleagues and clients, things that could easily be called easy when compared to the hardest parts of what even a SAHM of school age kids does).

Which is why the only "solution" anyone has ever found to this is outsourcing a lot of the childcare and housework so that the couple can divide what is left. But most families can't afford that.

Is there ANY situation in which you actually believe that a man should do 50% (or more!) of the childcare/housework/household admin? I bet no. That's women's work.

Um, not most men. My father wasn't like this. My husband isn't like this. I know plenty of men who aren't like this.

I also know men who do more than 50% at home because their wives' careers are more intense or they have other issues going on.

It's comments like the ones you're responding to that make these complaints hard to take seriously. We have data; we know what "most men" do. They don't come home and do "nothing" they come home and do less, but they also work more. The issue, if there is one, is about distribution, not that either party is doing "nothing." Overall, we're all doing about the same amount.

No, we have data showing that men increase women’s domestic labor. Also it’s well known that men hide at work to avoid coming home to take care of kids.

1) We most certainly do have data showing that between paid work, household work, and caregiving men and women do similar amounts of work in a week. You might not like it, but you can just say "no."
2) We do have data that women in married households do more household work than women in other types of households. Some other data showed men doing less, but there's also data that shows that married men do more household work than single men. The 2022 ATUS data showed men doing a bit over 30 minutes more of household activity per day if they were married and living with their spouse than if they were single (or married but living apart from their spouse). Would you call that "data that women increase men's domestic labor"?
3) I know nothing about men hiding at work to avoid coming home to kids. I don't do it, I don't know a man who does it (all the dads at my office check out early to take do school pick up, actually, but it's a small office). I do think it's funny, though, that time use data about women's housework and childcare is reliable, but the same data about men doing paid labor isn't. Convenient.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/husbands-create-extra-seven-hours-of-housework-a-week-a6885951.html

Dude we ALL know men aren’t making it up by actually working more at the office. Maybe “working” but not actually working.

I'm telling you what the data shows, which you seem to admit since you need to create a story of men pretending to work to explain it away. Meanwhile your link shows that women and men both do more housework when they're married, exactly like I said.

I've got nothing personally invested in this particular issue. I'm lucky enough to be a man who doesn't have a job that takes a ton of time, so I do way more than 50% of the housework/childcare without complaint. Organizing stuff for my kids is incredibly rewarding and not very difficult. The real "dad privilege" I have is that I get to make my family dinner, pick camps, drive my kids to music lessons, and help out with their scout troops. I just think we have to be honest about the data, which is not what's happening in this conversation.

You think the data shows that men do their fair share? It absolutely does not.

I'm not offering an opinion on what is or isn't a fair share, just stating what the data shows in terms of work done. I'm defining that based on the American Time Use Study's categories, counting paid work, household activities (cooking, cleaning, feeding pets, etc.) and caring for other household members (primarily childcare but there's some time spent caring for adult members, too). This doesn't count leisure time, nor does it count personal care and sleep, which vary by gender, but my original comment in this thread was in response to descriptions of men as "lazy."

Looking at that data, and focusing on households with children where both people work, because this is a parenting site and the thread is about dads.

Households with children under six
Household Activities
Men: 1.36 hours
Women: 1.95 hours
Caring for other household members
Men: 1.48 hours
Women: 2.40 hours
Paid Work
Men: 5.95 hours
Women: 4.82 hours
Total
Men: 8.79 hours
Women: 9.17 hours

Households with children between six and 17
Household Activities
Men: 1.30 hours
Women: 1.82 hours
Caring for other household members
Men: .57 hours
Women: .97 hours
Paid Work
Men: 6.48 hours
Women: 4.96 hours
Total
Men: 8.35 hours
Women: 7.75 hours

As I said, that data absolutely shows that men spend less time on housework and childcare than women, but it also shows they spend more time on paid work. I think it shows overall, that both sexes do about the same amount of work (considering both paid and unpaid work) in households with kids. Women do a little more when kids are younger, men do a little more when kids are older, but neither difference is huge. That's why I think that, if there is an issue, its one of distribution. No one is being lazy; everyone is working.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Honestly, all of this is made easier if mom stays home with the children and dad makes more money to compensate. I know it’s an unpopular sentiment, but most women would feel much less resentment if they dropped work to focus their efforts (when the children are young) on raising them and let their DH work harder to cover the bills.

The problem with this is once upon a time when women stayed home, they viewed their role as "homemaker" and that job description included everything: Care for children, keep the house clean and orderly, fix the meals.

Today's young women define this role as "SAHM" with the emphasis on the "M." They think their duty is only to look after the children during the hours that their husband is working or commuting but that he should immediately step in for 50% on all of the other tasks. They bristle at the "homemaker" label -- basically they are invested in intensive mothering; so, basically, they want to be a nanny or governess to their own children. The rest of the duties that used to be embedded in the role are beneath them and either need to be outsourced or shared equally.

Uh, women did all the childcare and housework 24/7 (including physically caring for their husbands like they were children -- cooking for them, cleaning them, washing their clothes, running their errands, even bathing and grooming them sometimes) because they were oppressed, had no economic power and no political rights, and were viewed as the property of their fathers and husbands. Not because the really "embraced the role" of homemaker. But because if they failed to perform the role, their husbands might abandon them and they were not allowed to do most jobs or own property or have bank accounts, plus rape wasn't even illegal except as a violation of another man's property rights so they'd be very vulnerable.

The good old days. When women would cook and clean and tend to children all day, and then the second their husbands came home, tend to him while continuing to cook and clean until bedtime, while their husbands with "real jobs" replaced after a hard day of work.

Yeah, it's so weird that women today are not eager to return to that set up, I wonder why.

But ... they want a "shell" of that that set-up. They only want the intensive mothering bit. Which is insanely easy. Easiest job ever. So, really, they're just lazy. The ones who continue to do this when their children are in elementary school are the laziest of them all. It would be different if they embraced the actual job description of a homemaker.

But men want the whole set up. They want to go to work and then come home and do nothing. Men expect this whether their wives work outside the home or not. Whether the kids are toddlers or teens. They do not believe that the work of childcare outside their working hours should be evenly divided. EVEN if both people worked all day (whether that work was for pay or unpaid wiping of butts and preparing snacks and all that).

Women who have husbands with this attitude (which is most husbands) are stuck. If they work, they will still be expected to do the majority of childcare/housework outside of work hours. Sometimes this is justified by "I make more money" or "my job is harder" or "I work longer hours." But usually not.

On the other hand, if they SAHM, they may have more time to do all the tasks they will be expected to do anyway. But they are expected to work 24/7, because men like you think being a SAHM is easy. You don't understand what is so hard about childcare that she can't also keep the house perfectly tidy and do all the administrative stuff too. What's she doing all day? No really, you have no idea, having never cared for kids full time. What IS she doing all day? So even if she spends the entire day working, you still expect her to do the vast majority of the after-work childcare/household responsibilities because, after all, she doesn't have a "real job" like you (nevermind if your job actually involves a lot of sitting, downtime, and socializing with colleagues and clients, things that could easily be called easy when compared to the hardest parts of what even a SAHM of school age kids does).

Which is why the only "solution" anyone has ever found to this is outsourcing a lot of the childcare and housework so that the couple can divide what is left. But most families can't afford that.

Is there ANY situation in which you actually believe that a man should do 50% (or more!) of the childcare/housework/household admin? I bet no. That's women's work.

Um, not most men. My father wasn't like this. My husband isn't like this. I know plenty of men who aren't like this.

I also know men who do more than 50% at home because their wives' careers are more intense or they have other issues going on.

It's comments like the ones you're responding to that make these complaints hard to take seriously. We have data; we know what "most men" do. They don't come home and do "nothing" they come home and do less, but they also work more. The issue, if there is one, is about distribution, not that either party is doing "nothing." Overall, we're all doing about the same amount.

No, we have data showing that men increase women’s domestic labor. Also it’s well known that men hide at work to avoid coming home to take care of kids.

1) We most certainly do have data showing that between paid work, household work, and caregiving men and women do similar amounts of work in a week. You might not like it, but you can just say "no."
2) We do have data that women in married households do more household work than women in other types of households. Some other data showed men doing less, but there's also data that shows that married men do more household work than single men. The 2022 ATUS data showed men doing a bit over 30 minutes more of household activity per day if they were married and living with their spouse than if they were single (or married but living apart from their spouse). Would you call that "data that women increase men's domestic labor"?
3) I know nothing about men hiding at work to avoid coming home to kids. I don't do it, I don't know a man who does it (all the dads at my office check out early to take do school pick up, actually, but it's a small office). I do think it's funny, though, that time use data about women's housework and childcare is reliable, but the same data about men doing paid labor isn't. Convenient.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/husbands-create-extra-seven-hours-of-housework-a-week-a6885951.html

Dude we ALL know men aren’t making it up by actually working more at the office. Maybe “working” but not actually working.

I'm telling you what the data shows, which you seem to admit since you need to create a story of men pretending to work to explain it away. Meanwhile your link shows that women and men both do more housework when they're married, exactly like I said.

I've got nothing personally invested in this particular issue. I'm lucky enough to be a man who doesn't have a job that takes a ton of time, so I do way more than 50% of the housework/childcare without complaint. Organizing stuff for my kids is incredibly rewarding and not very difficult. The real "dad privilege" I have is that I get to make my family dinner, pick camps, drive my kids to music lessons, and help out with their scout troops. I just think we have to be honest about the data, which is not what's happening in this conversation.

You think the data shows that men do their fair share? It absolutely does not.

I'm not offering an opinion on what is or isn't a fair share, just stating what the data shows in terms of work done. I'm defining that based on the American Time Use Study's categories, counting paid work, household activities (cooking, cleaning, feeding pets, etc.) and caring for other household members (primarily childcare but there's some time spent caring for adult members, too). This doesn't count leisure time, nor does it count personal care and sleep, which vary by gender, but my original comment in this thread was in response to descriptions of men as "lazy."

Looking at that data, and focusing on households with children where both people work, because this is a parenting site and the thread is about dads.

Households with children under six
Household Activities
Men: 1.36 hours
Women: 1.95 hours
Caring for other household members
Men: 1.48 hours
Women: 2.40 hours
Paid Work
Men: 5.95 hours
Women: 4.82 hours
Total
Men: 8.79 hours
Women: 9.17 hours

Households with children between six and 17
Household Activities
Men: 1.30 hours
Women: 1.82 hours
Caring for other household members
Men: .57 hours
Women: .97 hours
Paid Work
Men: 6.48 hours
Women: 4.96 hours
Total
Men: 8.35 hours
Women: 7.75 hours

As I said, that data absolutely shows that men spend less time on housework and childcare than women, but it also shows they spend more time on paid work. I think it shows overall, that both sexes do about the same amount of work (considering both paid and unpaid work) in households with kids. Women do a little more when kids are younger, men do a little more when kids are older, but neither difference is huge. That's why I think that, if there is an issue, its one of distribution. No one is being lazy; everyone is working.

There are some limits to aggregate data here. It smooths out variation within a group. There are absolutely lazy men. There are also lazy women. This data doesn't really tell us much about how actual families work, nor what happens in a family when one partner or the other is lazy. As a group, men and women are both working. But this obviously might not ring true for individuals because individuals are not statistics.

This is why you are getting push back. Yes, it's worthwhile to "look at the data." But you are looking exclusively at aggregated data that only tells us what "the average" family is doing. That family does not actually exist. If you did a qualitative study and looked at individual family units, would you find that in families where fathers work less (both paid and unpaid work), mothers work more (both paid and unpaid work)? I guarantee you would. And likely the reverse is true as well -- in families where mothers report doing less paid and unpaid work, men likely report more. Now what percent of families have women doing more than men, and what percent have men doing more than women? And how big is the gap? Those are interesting questions but we cannot answer them based on this data.

As this thread has shown, there is quite a bit of variation in terms of how equal the allocation of childcare and household is in a given family. Some people on the thread report that their allocation is completely equal, others report a very unequal division of labor. Factors such as whether both parents work and their financial ability to outsource work play a huge role as well. There is no "average family." Which means it's actually perfectly possible for there to be a problem with equality in families and not be able to identify it using a time use study like the one you are referencing.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I think women just have higher standards and tend to perfectionism. Most of us have a feeling of never being good enough and yes, wanting other women not to judge us. Men don't do that with regard to parenting.
When I took a new job I was crying about being overwhelmed and my husband's idea was to "let it go". "It doesn't matter if the house isn't totally clean, it looks just fine to me." "It doesn't matter if we eat frozen pizza 3 times a week, you don't need to cook gourmet meals all the time." I want my kids to eat healthy dinners and use a clean bathroom! I want him to help me reach my standards, not lower them.

Oh dear. Wanting to eat more than frozen pizza and not having a filthy bathroom is not “perfectionism.” It’s an extremely minimal basic level.

+1, when your excuse for why men don't pull their weight is that when men have "high standards" that equate to basic hygiene and nutrition, you've really lost the plot.

When I hear this, I always wish these men would be forced to actually live down to what they claim are their standards. I think it would last for a little bit and then they'd realize they were depressed and unhealthy, and so were their kids, because it actually sucks to live in a filthy house and eat garbage and not take responsibility for our life.

I know what it looks like based on my xDH’s long vacations with our kid. Fast food or diner food every day, clothes dirty, sunburns (no hats or sunblock), smelling very bad and visibly grimy (no showers for a week).

And I’ll bet the kids have way more fun on vacation with Dad than they do on their carefully curated and controlled educational trips with their uptight mom…

Of course Dad can have fun when he neglects basic everything. Then mom can put it all back together with nutritious meals, haircuts, treating rashes/burns/chapped skin, doing the laundry. THAT is “Dad Privilege,” precisely!

It’s not “Dad Privilege”… It’s a VACATION. It’s SUPPOSED to be a break from normal daily life.

Oh it is 100% Dad Privilege when I pack for them, do all the laundry when they return, deal with whatever weird skin thing resulted. Once he showed up at the airport with our kid’s entire upper lip area from the lip to nostrils caked in dry snot and flaking irritated skin. They have a great time, true, but being the Disney Dad is a trope for a reason, not a defense.

Sorry your picker was broken! No one’s fault but yours.

So it’s not his fault?

He is who he is. You picked him. No, that’s not his fault, that’s your fault.

DP but I hate this argument because it assumes that women know what kinds of husbands and fathers men are going to be. We don't. It's all guesswork. I believe some women have better "pickers" and are better at selecting partners who will show up. But I also don't think it's possible for a woman to fix her picker. I also think a lot of me do an okay job of convincing themselves and the women they marry that the really, actually want an egalitarian marriage, and then later (after kids come along) they are happy to lean into their male privilege to escape doing work. I see it in my husband, my brothers, some of my friends and some of my friends' husbands. It is easy to be like "of course I'll do my share!" when you are 28 and dating a woman you like and being a progressive feminist man makes you seem more attractive. It's very different when you are 48 and you are pretty sure that even if you shirk a lot of stuff, your wife won't leave you because you have two kids together and your finances are all bound up together and she's middle aged too.

Men will woo with "we're equals, baby." They don't always stick with it.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice… why’d you have more than one kid with the guy? Twins?

Blame blame blame. Blame anyone but the actual adult not pulling their own weight.

Blame anyone but yourself for not exercising any agency in your own life. How’s that working out for you?

Sorry dude, you don’t get off the hook that easily. Time to man up.

Eh! Wrong answer, Hans! I’m a happily married woman.

Look I’m not sure what your agenda is here. This clearly isn’t the thread for you since you and your husband are both perfect. Maybe ask yourself what your reason is for hanging out here smugly and $hitting on people?

I don't think there is an agenda. She's clearly far from happy.

Says the woman complaining about her husband incessantly on an anonymous mommy message board.

I’m incredibly happy, but sometimes I DO get bored with all the free time I have not nagging my husband to do pointless busywork or complaining about how it’s SO EMOTIONALLY DIFFICULT to fill out summer camp registration forms once a year. I admit that arguing with dramatic complainers like you ladies is not the most productive hobby, however, I’m just human and I get that dopamine spike reading all your BS.

But I will leave y’all to your victim Olympics now. Good luck in your efforts to change other people!

I actually haven't posted on this thread. Both of my children have special needs, with one child needing a lot of support, and so my spouse and I are actually both very busy trying to keep our heads above water. I'm never sure how much of our experience is normal as a result, but do empathize with a lot of the responses on this thread. What you read as the victim Olympics comes across to me as a lot of people struggling.

I think tone is really hard to get across in an online forum, especially one where so many people are objectively combative. But I do, sincerely, hope that you are happy.

DP but what I see is stereotyping all men into one gross bunch of losers and then people (men and women) being upset that it's an unfair categorization because there are a lot of amazing men (and, conversely, a lot of crappy women) out there. I empathize with the people who are struggling with their spouse. But I'm also not going to let them say that all men are lazy and disgusting and useless because I know many men who are not. THEIR spouse sucks. Their friends may also have spouses who suck. They can cite studies that say that men suck. I'm not dismissing their lived experiences, but I also think it's ridiculous that they are allowed to say that all men suck. There are men and women out there raising men who make/will make great husbands, and there are men and women out there working to make things better (for example, my husband pushed for paternity leave at his company before we had kids, I pushed back when older men at my work treated me like I was their wife even though we had the same degree and title). So maybe it is tone. Or maybe it's just that people who are so unhappy can't see beyond themselves, and I sympathize with that. But the list in the article posted by OP boiled all men down to useless, idiotic creatures, and I don't think that's fair. I feel sorry for the people who are married to people (men or women) who check many of those boxes, but that doesn't mean all men are morons and all women are harpies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I find it funny how MAD this made some people.

I personally think that's because some of it rings true. No one would get this worked up over something that was clearly wrong.

I think it's offensive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For the moms who choose to be SAHM, I feel like this is insulting towards dads. We would feel targeted if there were a list that was the opposite...

"You are a privileged mom if..."
- you don't have a boss
- you don't have to fight DC traffic
- you don't have to juggle kids AND work, always falling short
- you can attend your kids' weekday games
-you can wear activewear all day
- when the kids are preschool/school, you have a few hours
- you can eat lunch at home
- you can grocery shop when it is not crowded
- you get the luxury of going on field trips instead of being stuck in meetings
- you don't have to worry about money, it just appears
- you don't fund your kids college accounts, yet the still exist
- your didn't buy your car, but you have one
- you don't pay for dinner, yet everyone still eats
- you don't have to ask how your husband feels about being the sole provider, because he just does it
- if you husband messes up at work, no one gets mad at you
- you don't have work deadlines to deal with
- etc etc etc

There is something to be said for the division of roles and duties in a healthy marriage. Many women, like myself, love staying home and view it as a privilege. Yes, my husband is privileged too, but in different ways. Let's not attack each other for these roles that we chose.

My husband and I divide certain roles and duties as well, but we both work. Having one parent be responsible for the children while the other spends their time working isn't the only recipe for success.

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Anonymous wrote:Honestly, all of this is made easier if mom stays home with the children and dad makes more money to compensate. I know it’s an unpopular sentiment, but most women would feel much less resentment if they dropped work to focus their efforts (when the children are young) on raising them and let their DH work harder to cover the bills.

The problem with this is once upon a time when women stayed home, they viewed their role as "homemaker" and that job description included everything: Care for children, keep the house clean and orderly, fix the meals.

Today's young women define this role as "SAHM" with the emphasis on the "M." They think their duty is only to look after the children during the hours that their husband is working or commuting but that he should immediately step in for 50% on all of the other tasks. They bristle at the "homemaker" label -- basically they are invested in intensive mothering; so, basically, they want to be a nanny or governess to their own children. The rest of the duties that used to be embedded in the role are beneath them and either need to be outsourced or shared equally.

Uh, women did all the childcare and housework 24/7 (including physically caring for their husbands like they were children -- cooking for them, cleaning them, washing their clothes, running their errands, even bathing and grooming them sometimes) because they were oppressed, had no economic power and no political rights, and were viewed as the property of their fathers and husbands. Not because the really "embraced the role" of homemaker. But because if they failed to perform the role, their husbands might abandon them and they were not allowed to do most jobs or own property or have bank accounts, plus rape wasn't even illegal except as a violation of another man's property rights so they'd be very vulnerable.

The good old days. When women would cook and clean and tend to children all day, and then the second their husbands came home, tend to him while continuing to cook and clean until bedtime, while their husbands with "real jobs" replaced after a hard day of work.

Yeah, it's so weird that women today are not eager to return to that set up, I wonder why.

But ... they want a "shell" of that that set-up. They only want the intensive mothering bit. Which is insanely easy. Easiest job ever. So, really, they're just lazy. The ones who continue to do this when their children are in elementary school are the laziest of them all. It would be different if they embraced the actual job description of a homemaker.

But men want the whole set up. They want to go to work and then come home and do nothing. Men expect this whether their wives work outside the home or not. Whether the kids are toddlers or teens. They do not believe that the work of childcare outside their working hours should be evenly divided. EVEN if both people worked all day (whether that work was for pay or unpaid wiping of butts and preparing snacks and all that).

Women who have husbands with this attitude (which is most husbands) are stuck. If they work, they will still be expected to do the majority of childcare/housework outside of work hours. Sometimes this is justified by "I make more money" or "my job is harder" or "I work longer hours." But usually not.

On the other hand, if they SAHM, they may have more time to do all the tasks they will be expected to do anyway. But they are expected to work 24/7, because men like you think being a SAHM is easy. You don't understand what is so hard about childcare that she can't also keep the house perfectly tidy and do all the administrative stuff too. What's she doing all day? No really, you have no idea, having never cared for kids full time. What IS she doing all day? So even if she spends the entire day working, you still expect her to do the vast majority of the after-work childcare/household responsibilities because, after all, she doesn't have a "real job" like you (nevermind if your job actually involves a lot of sitting, downtime, and socializing with colleagues and clients, things that could easily be called easy when compared to the hardest parts of what even a SAHM of school age kids does).

Which is why the only "solution" anyone has ever found to this is outsourcing a lot of the childcare and housework so that the couple can divide what is left. But most families can't afford that.

Is there ANY situation in which you actually believe that a man should do 50% (or more!) of the childcare/housework/household admin? I bet no. That's women's work.

Um, not most men. My father wasn't like this. My husband isn't like this. I know plenty of men who aren't like this.

I also know men who do more than 50% at home because their wives' careers are more intense or they have other issues going on.

It's comments like the ones you're responding to that make these complaints hard to take seriously. We have data; we know what "most men" do. They don't come home and do "nothing" they come home and do less, but they also work more. The issue, if there is one, is about distribution, not that either party is doing "nothing." Overall, we're all doing about the same amount.

No, we have data showing that men increase women’s domestic labor. Also it’s well known that men hide at work to avoid coming home to take care of kids.

1) We most certainly do have data showing that between paid work, household work, and caregiving men and women do similar amounts of work in a week. You might not like it, but you can just say "no."
2) We do have data that women in married households do more household work than women in other types of households. Some other data showed men doing less, but there's also data that shows that married men do more household work than single men. The 2022 ATUS data showed men doing a bit over 30 minutes more of household activity per day if they were married and living with their spouse than if they were single (or married but living apart from their spouse). Would you call that "data that women increase men's domestic labor"?
3) I know nothing about men hiding at work to avoid coming home to kids. I don't do it, I don't know a man who does it (all the dads at my office check out early to take do school pick up, actually, but it's a small office). I do think it's funny, though, that time use data about women's housework and childcare is reliable, but the same data about men doing paid labor isn't. Convenient.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/husbands-create-extra-seven-hours-of-housework-a-week-a6885951.html

Dude we ALL know men aren’t making it up by actually working more at the office. Maybe “working” but not actually working.

I'm telling you what the data shows, which you seem to admit since you need to create a story of men pretending to work to explain it away. Meanwhile your link shows that women and men both do more housework when they're married, exactly like I said.

I've got nothing personally invested in this particular issue. I'm lucky enough to be a man who doesn't have a job that takes a ton of time, so I do way more than 50% of the housework/childcare without complaint. Organizing stuff for my kids is incredibly rewarding and not very difficult. The real "dad privilege" I have is that I get to make my family dinner, pick camps, drive my kids to music lessons, and help out with their scout troops. I just think we have to be honest about the data, which is not what's happening in this conversation.

You think the data shows that men do their fair share? It absolutely does not.

I'm not offering an opinion on what is or isn't a fair share, just stating what the data shows in terms of work done. I'm defining that based on the American Time Use Study's categories, counting paid work, household activities (cooking, cleaning, feeding pets, etc.) and caring for other household members (primarily childcare but there's some time spent caring for adult members, too). This doesn't count leisure time, nor does it count personal care and sleep, which vary by gender, but my original comment in this thread was in response to descriptions of men as "lazy."

Looking at that data, and focusing on households with children where both people work, because this is a parenting site and the thread is about dads.

Households with children under six
Household Activities
Men: 1.36 hours
Women: 1.95 hours
Caring for other household members
Men: 1.48 hours
Women: 2.40 hours
Paid Work
Men: 5.95 hours
Women: 4.82 hours
Total
Men: 8.79 hours
Women: 9.17 hours

Households with children between six and 17
Household Activities
Men: 1.30 hours
Women: 1.82 hours
Caring for other household members
Men: .57 hours
Women: .97 hours
Paid Work
Men: 6.48 hours
Women: 4.96 hours
Total
Men: 8.35 hours
Women: 7.75 hours

As I said, that data absolutely shows that men spend less time on housework and childcare than women, but it also shows they spend more time on paid work. I think it shows overall, that both sexes do about the same amount of work (considering both paid and unpaid work) in households with kids. Women do a little more when kids are younger, men do a little more when kids are older, but neither difference is huge. That's why I think that, if there is an issue, its one of distribution. No one is being lazy; everyone is working.

There are some limits to aggregate data here. It smooths out variation within a group. There are absolutely lazy men. There are also lazy women. This data doesn't really tell us much about how actual families work, nor what happens in a family when one partner or the other is lazy. As a group, men and women are both working. But this obviously might not ring true for individuals because individuals are not statistics.

This is why you are getting push back. Yes, it's worthwhile to "look at the data." But you are looking exclusively at aggregated data that only tells us what "the average" family is doing. That family does not actually exist. If you did a qualitative study and looked at individual family units, would you find that in families where fathers work less (both paid and unpaid work), mothers work more (both paid and unpaid work)? I guarantee you would. And likely the reverse is true as well -- in families where mothers report doing less paid and unpaid work, men likely report more. Now what percent of families have women doing more than men, and what percent have men doing more than women? And how big is the gap? Those are interesting questions but we cannot answer them based on this data.

As this thread has shown, there is quite a bit of variation in terms of how equal the allocation of childcare and household is in a given family. Some people on the thread report that their allocation is completely equal, others report a very unequal division of labor. Factors such as whether both parents work and their financial ability to outsource work play a huge role as well. There is no "average family." Which means it's actually perfectly possible for there to be a problem with equality in families and not be able to identify it using a time use study like the one you are referencing.

The bolded is awfully convenient, because a dozen pages ago people were crowing about how time use studies proved all of this was true (without any citation to actual data). When the data shows something different, it becomes insufficient. The aggregate data absolutely shows what's true at a societal level; if the types of families that people are complaining about here were common it would show up in the aggregate data. Obviously there will be individual variation, but if we're going to talk about groups we're not talking about individual variation.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Honestly, all of this is made easier if mom stays home with the children and dad makes more money to compensate. I know it’s an unpopular sentiment, but most women would feel much less resentment if they dropped work to focus their efforts (when the children are young) on raising them and let their DH work harder to cover the bills.

The problem with this is once upon a time when women stayed home, they viewed their role as "homemaker" and that job description included everything: Care for children, keep the house clean and orderly, fix the meals.

Today's young women define this role as "SAHM" with the emphasis on the "M." They think their duty is only to look after the children during the hours that their husband is working or commuting but that he should immediately step in for 50% on all of the other tasks. They bristle at the "homemaker" label -- basically they are invested in intensive mothering; so, basically, they want to be a nanny or governess to their own children. The rest of the duties that used to be embedded in the role are beneath them and either need to be outsourced or shared equally.

Uh, women did all the childcare and housework 24/7 (including physically caring for their husbands like they were children -- cooking for them, cleaning them, washing their clothes, running their errands, even bathing and grooming them sometimes) because they were oppressed, had no economic power and no political rights, and were viewed as the property of their fathers and husbands. Not because the really "embraced the role" of homemaker. But because if they failed to perform the role, their husbands might abandon them and they were not allowed to do most jobs or own property or have bank accounts, plus rape wasn't even illegal except as a violation of another man's property rights so they'd be very vulnerable.

The good old days. When women would cook and clean and tend to children all day, and then the second their husbands came home, tend to him while continuing to cook and clean until bedtime, while their husbands with "real jobs" replaced after a hard day of work.

Yeah, it's so weird that women today are not eager to return to that set up, I wonder why.

But ... they want a "shell" of that that set-up. They only want the intensive mothering bit. Which is insanely easy. Easiest job ever. So, really, they're just lazy. The ones who continue to do this when their children are in elementary school are the laziest of them all. It would be different if they embraced the actual job description of a homemaker.

But men want the whole set up. They want to go to work and then come home and do nothing. Men expect this whether their wives work outside the home or not. Whether the kids are toddlers or teens. They do not believe that the work of childcare outside their working hours should be evenly divided. EVEN if both people worked all day (whether that work was for pay or unpaid wiping of butts and preparing snacks and all that).

Women who have husbands with this attitude (which is most husbands) are stuck. If they work, they will still be expected to do the majority of childcare/housework outside of work hours. Sometimes this is justified by "I make more money" or "my job is harder" or "I work longer hours." But usually not.

On the other hand, if they SAHM, they may have more time to do all the tasks they will be expected to do anyway. But they are expected to work 24/7, because men like you think being a SAHM is easy. You don't understand what is so hard about childcare that she can't also keep the house perfectly tidy and do all the administrative stuff too. What's she doing all day? No really, you have no idea, having never cared for kids full time. What IS she doing all day? So even if she spends the entire day working, you still expect her to do the vast majority of the after-work childcare/household responsibilities because, after all, she doesn't have a "real job" like you (nevermind if your job actually involves a lot of sitting, downtime, and socializing with colleagues and clients, things that could easily be called easy when compared to the hardest parts of what even a SAHM of school age kids does).

Which is why the only "solution" anyone has ever found to this is outsourcing a lot of the childcare and housework so that the couple can divide what is left. But most families can't afford that.

Is there ANY situation in which you actually believe that a man should do 50% (or more!) of the childcare/housework/household admin? I bet no. That's women's work.

Um, not most men. My father wasn't like this. My husband isn't like this. I know plenty of men who aren't like this.

I also know men who do more than 50% at home because their wives' careers are more intense or they have other issues going on.

It's comments like the ones you're responding to that make these complaints hard to take seriously. We have data; we know what "most men" do. They don't come home and do "nothing" they come home and do less, but they also work more. The issue, if there is one, is about distribution, not that either party is doing "nothing." Overall, we're all doing about the same amount.

No, we have data showing that men increase women’s domestic labor. Also it’s well known that men hide at work to avoid coming home to take care of kids.

IMHO, we should not generalize and say that "men" do these things. My DH does not do this. My dad did not do this.

In some ways, I wonder if it makes the author of the article feel a bit better to assume that all "men" do these things, instead of saying that "my DH does these things."

I am not a huge fan of Dr. Laura, but I know that, when talking about choosing a spouse, she says "Choose Wisely, Treat Kindly." That seems like sensible advice.

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Anonymous wrote:Also happy to hear responses from dads!

This is my response.

When I started this thread, I was actually hopeful that there might be some decent men who’d read it and be honest enough to acknowledge, in an anonymous setting, that they definitely enjoy dad privilege and have some sense of shame about it when confronted by the issue.

I guess I’m unsurprised by the lack of that type of response and the abundance of hateful misogyny.

I trust the data, and the evidence I’ve observed with my own eyes for 5+ decades now across generations. In the majority of marriage and/or cohabiting committed hetero couples, women are still doing the lion’s share - while the lion naps in the shade.

So how do you feel about a marriage where the woman has agreed to handle all things school-related and the husband has agreed to handle all things house-related. Those two things aren't equal, and, assuming a good partnership, one should be able to ask the other for help, but this list, to me, says that a dad has privilege if he doesn't have to know or worry about what size shoes his kids wears while ignoring the flip side of the mom privilege of not having to know what kind of oil the cars take or when the registration expires.

For the "important" things (or the things we deem important - childcare, pet care, cooking, house management, finances, etc.), my husband and I split them 50/50. For other things, he does 100% and I do 100%. We could each figure out the things the other does all of if needed. For example, I could find one of the gardener's bills and track him down if needed although I have never spoken to them and I have no idea what they are hired to do other than that I see them every once in awhile and our landscaping looks great. And my husband could look at our kids' sports gear and figure out the next size or find somewhere that sells it and take them to get something new if needed (I do the same sport as the kids and the equipment and gear is really specific so I handle it because my husband has no experience with that sport other than taking our kids to practice and competitions). But it's easier for him to handle the gardener and me to handle their sports stuff. However, I don't think his ability (or mine!) to check a box on that list saying that we never have to worry about X means our marriage is out of whack.

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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!

Meh, not really. I'm very Type A and prefer for everything to be perfectly clean and put away all the time, but I understand that while I get joy from seeing a clean countertop, my husband doesn't. I love climbing into a made bed at night when the sheets are all tight and smooth. He couldn't care less if the bed was a rumpled heap. His life is not any better when the bed is made. So I think you're imposing your view that a clean house helps you and expecting everyone else to feel the same. Maybe liberating yourself from that notion will help. And no, I'm not the posted about the Roomba. I have one and happen to think it's a good solution for keeping on top of vacuuming during the week but I also think the above poster was being a jerk. Nonetheless, it's your comment about a clean house helping everyone that I am responding to. I think you're projecting with that statement.

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Anonymous wrote:Side bar about the domestic robotic support mansplained: A $350 roomba just barely makes anyone's life better. It takes about 25% of the time that you'd spend vacuuming to prepare a space for the roomba, rescue it when it's stuck, empty its canister, clean the spot where you tried to neatly empty canister but spilled. Then the Roomba takes 4-5 times longer to vacuum than you would have. Then you set up in another spot.

We returned ours. It was loud, took forever, and did a terrible job. I guess if you are never home and don't care if huge spots get missed, its for you?

Holy sh!t. Not even the robots can meet your standards. No wonder your husbands will NEVER measure up. There is simply no pleasing some of you.

Lol, it is an expensive piece of garbage that does not even do the job for which it is explicitly designed and requires more time maintaining it than you would spend doing the job it's supposed to do "automatically" yourself. But yes, do tell me how freaking roombas are the solution to gender inequality in the home

Exactly. Like the solution of “just use a dishwasher” when everyone *knows* the results won’t be as good. It ignores the larger issue.

Um, get a better dishwasher. Ours does a better job than my husband does if he hand washes something. I am anal about hand washing so I do a great job but it also takes time. I'd much rather put things in the dishwasher. Which he then generally empties.