The Dad Privilege Checklist

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To the PP with the messy DH who tracks mud through the house etc-- that does not mean that all men are messy. That just means that your DH is that way.

My DH (age 53) keeps things clean, and always picks up after himself. When he cooks, he washes the pots and pans along the way. His mom taught him all of these things when he was growing up.

If a man is really messy, it's possible that he might have a learning disability such as ADHD that impacts motivation (as I have a son like that . . even though he was raised in a clean house where everyone picks up after their own messes).

In the college dorms where my kids have lived, I've noticed that the students from foreign countries can be much neater than the average American student, many of whom seem content to live like slobs.

+1

My husband is the one who cleaned the house during COVID. I think I wiped down a bathroom once or twice, but he cleaned the whole house weekly. He also handled the kids' school. My job happened to be busier than his during that time so he did far more than I did with the house and kids for a few years. Now we're back to an even split.

[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.

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.

PP here and I wasn't one of them. These time use studies are most useful in terms of showing us aggregate trends in populations over time. So comparing time use of men and women in the 1990s versus 2020s might tell us some things about social shifts. And even there they are limited. Social trends can vary based on socioeconomics, geographies, professions, etc. An aggregated study will not show any of this.

I think some segments of the populations have made great strides in gender equality in marriages, and others less so.

[Anonymous]

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

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

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

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

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

Ok, but these people are also my friends, so I know more than what I see at the bus stop. We have at least two families in our group where the dads are the primary parent. Both spouses in those families work (in fact, pretty much all our friends have two working spouses). I mean, if you're going to argue that the only family I can really know is my own, then fine. My husband is an equal partner and nothing like the dads envisioned in that article.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the PP with the messy DH who tracks mud through the house etc-- that does not mean that all men are messy. That just means that your DH is that way.

My DH (age 53) keeps things clean, and always picks up after himself. When he cooks, he washes the pots and pans along the way. His mom taught him all of these things when he was growing up.

If a man is really messy, it's possible that he might have a learning disability such as ADHD that impacts motivation (as I have a son like that . . even though he was raised in a clean house where everyone picks up after their own messes).

In the college dorms where my kids have lived, I've noticed that the students from foreign countries can be much neater than the average American student, many of whom seem content to live like slobs.

+1

My husband is the one who cleaned the house during COVID. I think I wiped down a bathroom once or twice, but he cleaned the whole house weekly. He also handled the kids' school. My job happened to be busier than his during that time so he did far more than I did with the house and kids for a few years. Now we're back to an even split.

It's fair to point this out, but also: just because your spouse took on more cleaning and childcare during COVID does not mean this was the norm or that there aren't many more families where the opposite situation was the case.

[Anonymous]

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

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

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

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

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

Ok, but these people are also my friends, so I know more than what I see at the bus stop. We have at least two families in our group where the dads are the primary parent. Both spouses in those families work (in fact, pretty much all our friends have two working spouses). I mean, if you're going to argue that the only family I can really know is my own, then fine. My husband is an equal partner and nothing like the dads envisioned in that article.

OK? My husband is not an equal partner. We are UMC, I have a graduate degree, and he attended an Ivy. Among our friends with similar jobs and education, I can only think of one where the man is the primary parent. I can think of several where the woman has a higher paying and more demanding job and she is STILL the primary parent. I know tons of well educated, professionally ambitious women who struggle with balance in their marriages, and whose husbands still kind of claim that their job is more central and important despite zero evidence. On balance, the families who can outsource more seem to have better marital harmony, because they are paying someone (in most cases a woman) to do the work that they might otherwise argue over.

The most egalitarian couple I know is divorced. But they split everything 50/50!

Your experience is not everyone's experience.

[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.

The push back in this thread almost entirely takes the form of "Well I/my husband are not like this, so it's offensive to even SUGGEST that this is a problem."

So since you personally know men who pull their weight at home, it is "offensive" to point out that there are lots of men who don't, and that often their behavior is socially condoned?

Why is it so hard to just say "I'm glad my marriage is not like this and I know plenty of men who aren't like this, but I believe that there are still men who have this kind of 'dad privilege' and support working to get rid of it because I know first hand that a more egalitarian marriage tends to work better."

Like why jump right to "Lies! This never happens! Men and women are totally equal and there's no such thing as dad privilege despite literally millennia of women being made subservient to men! We fixed it! Stop complaining!" Why assume this is BS just because it does not describe YOUR specific situation. Maybe you have an unusually evolved spouse, but not everyone does.

[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.

+1

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

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

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

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

You can dismiss the actual labor of dropping kids off at camp if you want, but I prefer to take that into consideration. How much time does it take to research and sign up for camps? Let's say 10 hours. How much time does it take to drive the kids roundtrip to and from camp? Let's say both parents work from home and camp is 15 minutes away. That's an hour of driving each day. So after two weeks of camp, you have both spent 10 hours on "camp." If you also spent another 10 hours doing the camp paperwork and researching and buying supplies, ok. So if your husband continues dropping the kids off and picking them up for another two weeks, then you've both spent 20 hours on camp. I'm not dismissing the labor related to signing kids up for camps or preparing them for it. But you seem to be dismissing the labor of dropping them off and picking them up. Is it mentally less work? Probably yes, although sitting in carpool pickup lines is hardly anyone's idea of fun. But if you want to dicker about whose 20 hours of work were "harder" then you're never going to be satisfied.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Again, congratulations.

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

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

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

It's so funny to me that you don't actually see what is going on here.

First PP says ALL THE WOMEN IN MY CIRCLE DO EVERYTHING. Second PP says, not all the women in my circle do everything. And you scream at the second PP that that version of reality must be untrue. Ok...

[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.

+1

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ok, that's your family. It's #NotAllMen.

If most families worked the way yours did, I bet we'd see a lot less commentary on unequal division of labor in marriages.

Not sure why the people with good, equal marriages are so determined to tell everyone who doesn't have an equal or fair marriage on this thread that they are simply wrong about their own experience. After all if YOU book all your kids dentist appointments and enroll them in camp, then there is simply no way that MY husband has literally never done either of those things, ever.

It's just odd that you would feel so certain that I am wrong about my lived experience. I bet if I told you my husband absolutely does 50% of everything you'd believe that. So why won't you believe when I tell the truth, which is that he's barely eking out 20%?

You're reading those posts wrong.

[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.

The push back in this thread almost entirely takes the form of "Well I/my husband are not like this, so it's offensive to even SUGGEST that this is a problem."

So since you personally know men who pull their weight at home, it is "offensive" to point out that there are lots of men who don't, and that often their behavior is socially condoned?

Why is it so hard to just say "I'm glad my marriage is not like this and I know plenty of men who aren't like this, but I believe that there are still men who have this kind of 'dad privilege' and support working to get rid of it because I know first hand that a more egalitarian marriage tends to work better."

Like why jump right to "Lies! This never happens! Men and women are totally equal and there's no such thing as dad privilege despite literally millennia of women being made subservient to men! We fixed it! Stop complaining!" Why assume this is BS just because it does not describe YOUR specific situation. Maybe you have an unusually evolved spouse, but not everyone does.

Nobody is pushing back against the statement “lots of men” they are pushing back against the statement that “men” without an attached qualifier. “Dad privilege” implies that almost all men do this when clearly that is not the case? I can’t believe that has to be explained to an UMC college educated audience. I suspect it’s intentional and biased rather than an innocent mistake of language.

[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.

+1

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ok, that's your family. It's #NotAllMen.

If most families worked the way yours did, I bet we'd see a lot less commentary on unequal division of labor in marriages.

Not sure why the people with good, equal marriages are so determined to tell everyone who doesn't have an equal or fair marriage on this thread that they are simply wrong about their own experience. After all if YOU book all your kids dentist appointments and enroll them in camp, then there is simply no way that MY husband has literally never done either of those things, ever.

It's just odd that you would feel so certain that I am wrong about my lived experience. I bet if I told you my husband absolutely does 50% of everything you'd believe that. So why won't you believe when I tell the truth, which is that he's barely eking out 20%?

You're reading those posts wrong.

It’s intentional. It’s classic misandry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

+1

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

It’s a real d*ck move not to even attempt to host your own mother via (checks notes) providing a hot meal - and moreover to call your wife “crazy” for wanting to do so. y’all are being either truly dysfunctional or totally dishonest.

I'm the PP to whom you're responding and I don't understand your post.

I'm a woman and I absolutely would not take on the extra burden of hosting my MIL by default. She can take her issues up with her son.

I'm not a jerk, so if my husband were busy and asked me to help with something, like washing the sheets for the guest room bed, I would do it. If he just assumed I'd do it because I have a uterus, then his mom would be coming to a dirty bed. Not my problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

+1

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

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

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

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

You can dismiss the actual labor of dropping kids off at camp if you want, but I prefer to take that into consideration. How much time does it take to research and sign up for camps? Let's say 10 hours. How much time does it take to drive the kids roundtrip to and from camp? Let's say both parents work from home and camp is 15 minutes away. That's an hour of driving each day. So after two weeks of camp, you have both spent 10 hours on "camp." If you also spent another 10 hours doing the camp paperwork and researching and buying supplies, ok. So if your husband continues dropping the kids off and picking them up for another two weeks, then you've both spent 20 hours on camp. I'm not dismissing the labor related to signing kids up for camps or preparing them for it. But you seem to be dismissing the labor of dropping them off and picking them up. Is it mentally less work? Probably yes, although sitting in carpool pickup lines is hardly anyone's idea of fun. But if you want to dicker about whose 20 hours of work were "harder" then you're never going to be satisfied.

Here's a hypothetical for you. Say there's a sandwich business. There are two workers in the business. Both workers make the same amount of sandwiches and that work is divided equally.

But Worker 1 does all the logistical planning for the business. They figure out how to sell the sandwiches, do the budgeting to make sure they are turning a profit, solve problems related to the business's website or figure out what to do when their distributor is out of certain ingredients.

Worker 2 delivers the sandwiches.

They spend the same amount of time on these different jobs. Is one harder than the other? Could the two workers switch jobs easily, and if they did, would they both know how to do the other's job?

Now imagine that that an outside observer to this business sees Worker 2 delivering these sandwiches every day and was like "Wow, you are amazing at running a sandwich business! You work so hard! You deserve a reward." But the same observer sees Worker 1 sitting at a computer doing their job and is like "what do you even do? ordering supplies? processing orders? that's not even hard."

This is basically what you are arguing. The person using critical thinking, problem solving, and logistical skills to get kids signed up for summer camp and ensure they have camp for the weeks they need it and that the kids are enrolled in the right programs (and that they are signed ups early enough that they aren't sold out, which means they though all this through months ago before summer travel plans were firmed up or their spouse had even spent a moment's time thinking about the summer) and also making sure all the forms are filled out and that the kids have all the right clothes and supplies for those camps, is the SAME as the person who delivers the kids from home to camp.

But are they? Are those equal?

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Anonymous wrote:My husband does not do 50% or even close to it. He's not a terrible person but he often defaults to doing nothing, procrastinating, or claiming he can't do things that are child or household related because he doesn't know how, or work is busy right now (I also work, I also get busy).

Some of DH's reluctance to do things absolutely comes from a sense of privilege. He considers certain activities feminine (or at least not masculine) and won't do them. A lot of cleaning activities fall in this category. It's frustrating because he absolutely agrees these activities must be done, but he doesn't like to do them and won't. He is always grateful when I do them. He knows some of them are simply required for basic hygiene. But he will not do them. It is very frustrating. I would love to simply outsource cleaning more often to take the burden off of me but we can't presently afford that without really cutting back somewhere else. So I do like 90% of the cleaning. It's hard and absolutely leads to resentment. We have conversations about it periodically, where I say explicitly that I sometimes feel like I am the family maid or housekeeper (we have small children so this feeling is exacerbated because I am quite literally cleaning up after everyone as I am the only family member who cleans at all). I also hate the example this sets for our kids. Already our oldest has said things like "mommies like to clean" or "we'll get out of the way so mommy can clean" and I HATE IT.

DH also presumes his job is more important than mine even though we make the same amount. When we had kids, we both talked about seeking out more flexility in our jobs, but only I followed through. This is also a source of resentment. I think he likes the idea of being a full parenting partner but when push comes to shove, he is afraid of the judgment of other men when he prioritizes his family over work. He says it's easier for me but it's not -- I get tons of pushback and there has been resentment at times when I've made arrangements to shift my schedule for daycare pickup or taken time off for a sick kid. I absolutely pay a professional price for being the default parent. When I'm also the only one cleaning, this really compounds the feeling that I am alone in making our family work while he benefits from it.

I don't think my situation is that unusual. I'm sure there are people with more equal marriages, but when I talk to friends about my frustrations, they share many of them. I even have friends who are absolutely the breadwinners in their families but still don't feel their husbands do as much as they do with the kids or maintaining the house. These are very common problems.

If my DH were to read this, he'd have a lot of excuses for why things are the way they are. Some of them would align with comments on the thread. But he would not claim that things are 50/50. In fact we recently had an argument about this and he said, "I feel like you won't be happy until we are splitting childcare and household duties 50/50." And I said yes, that sounds right, and he threw up his hands like this was an impossible expectation. Again, we both work FT.

Dad privilege is absolutely real. If I were to really get fed up and divorce him, he'd still have it. Society expects less from men when it comes to kids and the home. And society expects women to fill in the gap without complaint. Even if your specific marriage is different, I don't see how you can argue otherwise.

These dynamics in my marriage play out in millions of marriages in this country all the time. People who are truly 50/50 are the exception, not the rule. There is still a lot of work to be done in changing the expectations of others, the attitudes of men, etc. This is so obvious

The one where the man acts like his job is more important (even though his wife earns as much or more) is classic dad privilege.

Is it possible for one to have a job that earns less but is simultaneously more important? What if mom is a successful influencer making half a million dollars a year and dad is a home healthcare worker making 50K who needs to deliver oxygen tanks to his elderly patients, for example? Is he just exercising his “dad privilege” when he insists that actually he really DOES need to work right now and doesn’t have time to scrub the grout with a toothbrush?

If you can find a family where this is actually the jobs they do and the mom is actually requesting that he scrub grout with a toothbrush and not some much more mundane and realistic chore like laundry, then I will give you $10,000.

The example is (obviously) hyperbole but the question stands:

Is it possible for one to have a job that earns less but is also more important?

DP. I'm not sure the importance of the job is relevant in any setting. The level of work required, however, would be.

My best friend is a teacher. She makes $55K a year. I am a lawyer. I make a quarter of a million dollars more than she does. Hands down her job is harder than mine and she works harder than I do. (Her job is also more important, but again, I don't think that matters).

My husband and I have taken turns being the top earner in our family over time. We've also taken turns being busier/more stressed out by work (and life) over time. The size of our paychecks is irrelevant to me. What matters is what that person is going through. So when he's being yelled at and stressing about a major issue at work, I will see what I can do to make his life easier. When COVID hit and my job became a nightmare, he took on more than his usual 50% of childcare.

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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.

The push back in this thread almost entirely takes the form of "Well I/my husband are not like this, so it's offensive to even SUGGEST that this is a problem."

So since you personally know men who pull their weight at home, it is "offensive" to point out that there are lots of men who don't, and that often their behavior is socially condoned?

Why is it so hard to just say "I'm glad my marriage is not like this and I know plenty of men who aren't like this, but I believe that there are still men who have this kind of 'dad privilege' and support working to get rid of it because I know first hand that a more egalitarian marriage tends to work better."

Like why jump right to "Lies! This never happens! Men and women are totally equal and there's no such thing as dad privilege despite literally millennia of women being made subservient to men! We fixed it! Stop complaining!" Why assume this is BS just because it does not describe YOUR specific situation. Maybe you have an unusually evolved spouse, but not everyone does.

Nobody is pushing back against the statement “lots of men” they are pushing back against the statement that “men” without an attached qualifier. “Dad privilege” implies that almost all men do this when clearly that is not the case? I can’t believe that has to be explained to an UMC college educated audience. I suspect it’s intentional and biased rather than an innocent mistake of language.

Dp. It don't feel it does imply that all men do everything on the list. It implies that men can get the benefit of this privilege, not that they all use it.

Another poster commented that women have the privilege to SAHP without negative implications. I disagree with that poster---I think the mommy wars over SAHMs show this not to be true---but that statement, if taken to be true, would still not imply that all women SAHP.