Why can't men [my DH] multitask????

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My advice is: get out of the house.

You will always be stuck holding the bag if you are around. So when we staggered our schedules for work pre-COVID, i.e. only one parent responsible for getting kids out in the morning, my DH could do it, and decently. When we went remote, and we were both available to get kids ready, suddenly, even as I sort of tried to hold the line, more and more tasks just "naturally" fell to me. Sure, I can and did, discuss and shift some things, but it is remarkable how a fair(ish) division of labor unravels when the DW is available. So I often try to structure things to be actually or constructively absent - and then I don't care (and really don't) how exactly things shake out as long as basics needs are met...

^^this. this is an essential tactic in my armament. if I wasn't abset or "constructively absent," I would literally do everything. COVID makes it much harder because I can't just stay late in my office on days I need to work late.

[Anonymous]

I know some posts are excusing this type of behavior as DW having too high of standards but feeding your child and then cleaning the dishes or putting them in the dishwasher is hardly an unrealistically difficult request. It’s one thing if you want the house vacuumed and baseboards cleaned every day but adults really should realize that not letting dishes pile up all day is a fairly low bar.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Same. I truly don’t understand it but I can get the whole house looking clean in the time it would take him to make breakfast and load the dishwasher.

I think a lot of men don’t have the practice to do it and they don’t feel they have to since someone (their wife) will do it later. I’m so used to picking up and cleaning as I go, it’s an unconscious part of my routine. For DH, it seems to take more mental energy to figure out what needs to get done and then do it.

They know how to get the house "clean enough" for their satisfaction. If you are not satisfied with that level of cleanliness, then it's on you to do the work to satisfy yourself.

There is no reason to believe that clean enough to satisfy him is "incorrect" and clean enough to satisfy you is "correct". Nobody's going to die if there are some dirty plates in the sink.

This is just false. It's not that someone will die if there are dirty dishes in the sink. It's that at some point, someone has to do those dishes. And the longer they sit there with food caked to them, the harder it will be to wash them. What could have been a 20 second task (rinse plate, place in dishwasher) becomes a whole chore. Plus while the dirty dishes sit in the sink, now the sink can't be used to prep vegetables or fill a pot with water.

This isn't just a question of personal preference. I'm probably naturally messier than my DH. My closet is always a mess, for instance. So are my drawers in the bathroom. But that doesn't impact him in anyway. It impacts me sometimes, but that's my business. But when it comes to shared household spaces and tasks, and definitely when it comes to childcare, no one is being unreasonable by expecting things to be done to a kind of baseline standard in a timely fashion. If you want to live in a house full of dirty dishes, don't get married and don't have kids and don't have roommates either. That's not a reasonable thing to expect someone to deal with.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know some posts are excusing this type of behavior as DW having too high of standards but feeding your child and then cleaning the dishes or putting them in the dishwasher is hardly an unrealistically difficult request. It’s one thing if you want the house vacuumed and baseboards cleaned every day but adults really should realize that not letting dishes pile up all day is a fairly low bar.

I agree, but I’m a wife that is way too tired to load the dishwasher after dinner so it gets done the next morning. If my husband were pissed about that, he would be welcome to load them at night.

I think part of the problem on these types of posts is that there are a range of husbands being described and a range of wives. Ultimately, we have a societal problem, but it then plays out for each of us.

Some of the women in this post likely care too much about too many things on the home front. Some of these husbands are total jerks and they don’t deserve to be married. And then, there is a range in between. I spent about 18 months of a 15 year marriage being ticked off at my husband about division of labor. He has ADHD and cannot executive function well. We have now hit a balance where he does more of the physical labor while I handle paperwork and scheduling. But he isn’t letting the dishes pile up until there are roaches — he is actually cleaner than me and cleans up after me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is so petty but omg the 3- 30 minute long poops drive me insane. Kids will be tearing through my house, begging for breakfast or lunch and he’s just pooping away blissfully. Not only can he not multitask, but he can actively ignore issues when he wants to. It’s like he has blinders on.

we must married to the same person.

[Anonymous]

Outsourcing will save your marriage. Get a nanny, clean, cooking service.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know some posts are excusing this type of behavior as DW having too high of standards but feeding your child and then cleaning the dishes or putting them in the dishwasher is hardly an unrealistically difficult request. It’s one thing if you want the house vacuumed and baseboards cleaned every day but adults really should realize that not letting dishes pile up all day is a fairly low bar.

I agree, but I’m a wife that is way too tired to load the dishwasher after dinner so it gets done the next morning. If my husband were pissed about that, he would be welcome to load them at night.

I think part of the problem on these types of posts is that there are a range of husbands being described and a range of wives. Ultimately, we have a societal problem, but it then plays out for each of us.

Some of the women in this post likely care too much about too many things on the home front. Some of these husbands are total jerks and they don’t deserve to be married. And then, there is a range in between. I spent about 18 months of a 15 year marriage being ticked off at my husband about division of labor. He has ADHD and cannot executive function well. We have now hit a balance where he does more of the physical labor while I handle paperwork and scheduling. But he isn’t letting the dishes pile up until there are roaches — he is actually cleaner than me and cleans up after me.

I leave a few dishes in the sink after dinner and do them in the morning, too. Honestly, I don’t think this would be a big issue for most women. The problem is more that the dishes aren’t done in the morning, then breakfast is made and those dishes aren’t done and on and on until, come dinner, the sink is completely full of dirty dishes that DW has to take care of so she can make dinner. I think it’s fine to clean up your mess a bit later but it is frustrating when that “later” never comes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Outsourcing will save your marriage. Get a nanny, clean, cooking service.

There you are. What took you so long?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Same. I truly don’t understand it but I can get the whole house looking clean in the time it would take him to make breakfast and load the dishwasher.

I think a lot of men don’t have the practice to do it and they don’t feel they have to since someone (their wife) will do it later. I’m so used to picking up and cleaning as I go, it’s an unconscious part of my routine. For DH, it seems to take more mental energy to figure out what needs to get done and then do it.

They know how to get the house "clean enough" for their satisfaction. If you are not satisfied with that level of cleanliness, then it's on you to do the work to satisfy yourself.

There is no reason to believe that clean enough to satisfy him is "incorrect" and clean enough to satisfy you is "correct". Nobody's going to die if there are some dirty plates in the sink.

This is just false. It's not that someone will die if there are dirty dishes in the sink. It's that at some point, someone has to do those dishes. And the longer they sit there with food caked to them, the harder it will be to wash them. What could have been a 20 second task (rinse plate, place in dishwasher) becomes a whole chore. Plus while the dirty dishes sit in the sink, now the sink can't be used to prep vegetables or fill a pot with water.

This isn't just a question of personal preference. I'm probably naturally messier than my DH. My closet is always a mess, for instance. So are my drawers in the bathroom. But that doesn't impact him in anyway. It impacts me sometimes, but that's my business. But when it comes to shared household spaces and tasks, and definitely when it comes to childcare, no one is being unreasonable by expecting things to be done to a kind of baseline standard in a timely fashion. If you want to live in a house full of dirty dishes, don't get married and don't have kids and don't have roommates either. That's not a reasonable thing to expect someone to deal with.

Agreed. Yes, people have different standards but there are a few things that must get done so that the household can continue functioning. It would be difficult to wait days to do the dishes as the household needs access to the sink and you need to use some of the dirty dishes for cooking and serving new meals. Laundry must be done at some point so that the family has clothing to wear. In a lot of these cases I think DH and DW actually have similar standards, DH just doesn’t feel as personally responsible for meeting these standards.

[Anonymous]

I had a roommate in college that would always save his dirty dishes to do “later” and later never came. Then he would complain that there were no clean dishes. Looks like he got married!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband has ADHD and he could not empty a dishwasher and watch a toddler at the same time. He is however highly functional at work. People are wired differently.

Interesting that your DH is "wired" to be able to multitask and do his job properly, but somehow magically not "wired" to watch a child while doing some very light cleaning. It's funny how many men are just magically not "wired" for these things, and yet very functional in their work life. Do they all have this very specific version of ADHD?

Do you have ADHD? Are you a psychologist? I'm a DP with ADHD and I cannot speak for PP's husband (who may be conning them or genuinely being lazy, for all I know), but that's actually a big part of how ADHD works. It's not a "specific form" of ADHD-- it's all forms. We can hyperfocus on things that interest us and struggle and fail miserably at those things that don't. A very extreme version of how everyone does better jobs at the things they enjoy-- we can be truly fantastic at those key things, but awful at a lot of other things that superficially seem to have the same requirements.

Now-- as a parent, you have to suck it up and find coping mechanisms that allow you to do a decent job of it, regardless of interest. But it is genuinely harder for those of us with ADHD. The moms with ADHD usually step up and find ways to make it at least halfway work, whereas the dads with ADHD are often let off the hook-- or let themselves off the hook. So I do get the skepticism, and I'm sure patriarchy and whatnot plays a role. But it's literally true that if you have ADHD, what seem to be your fabulous focusing and multitasking skills can fall off a cliff when you're presented with something that your brain is not interested in. It actually sucks.

[Anonymous]

No one can multitask. You may think you are multitasking but you are not.

Based on over a half-century of cognitive science and more recent studies on multitasking, we know that multitaskers do less and miss information. It takes time (an average of 15 minutes) to re-orient to a primary task after a distraction such as an email. Efficiency can drop by as much as 40%. Long-term memory suffers and creativity — a skill associated with keeping in mind multiple, less common, associations — is reduced.

We have a brain with billions of neurons and many trillion of connections, but we seem incapable of doing multiple things at the same time. Sadly, multitasking does not exist, at least not as we think about it. We instead switch tasks. Our brain chooses which information to process. For example, if you listen to speech, your visual cortex becomes less active, so when you talk on the phone to a client and work on your computer at the same time, you literally hear less of what the client is saying.[/quote]

https://hbr.org/2010/12/you-cant-multi-task-so-stop-tr

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No one can multitask. You may think you are multitasking but you are not.

Based on over a half-century of cognitive science and more recent studies on multitasking, we know that multitaskers do less and miss information. It takes time (an average of 15 minutes) to re-orient to a primary task after a distraction such as an email. Efficiency can drop by as much as 40%. Long-term memory suffers and creativity — a skill associated with keeping in mind multiple, less common, associations — is reduced.

We have a brain with billions of neurons and many trillion of connections, but we seem incapable of doing multiple things at the same time. Sadly, multitasking does not exist, at least not as we think about it. We instead switch tasks. Our brain chooses which information to process. For example, if you listen to speech, your visual cortex becomes less active, so when you talk on the phone to a client and work on your computer at the same time, you literally hear less of what the client is saying.[/quote]

https://hbr.org/2010/12/you-cant-multi-task-so-stop-tr

I agree. You are not multitasking. You are just accomplishing more and organizing your time more effectively.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No one can multitask. You may think you are multitasking but you are not.

Based on over a half-century of cognitive science and more recent studies on multitasking, we know that multitaskers do less and miss information. It takes time (an average of 15 minutes) to re-orient to a primary task after a distraction such as an email. Efficiency can drop by as much as 40%. Long-term memory suffers and creativity — a skill associated with keeping in mind multiple, less common, associations — is reduced.

We have a brain with billions of neurons and many trillion of connections, but we seem incapable of doing multiple things at the same time. Sadly, multitasking does not exist, at least not as we think about it. We instead switch tasks. Our brain chooses which information to process. For example, if you listen to speech, your visual cortex becomes less active, so when you talk on the phone to a client and work on your computer at the same time, you literally hear less of what the client is saying.[/quote]

https://hbr.org/2010/12/you-cant-multi-task-so-stop-tr

That's fine. Call it "being productive" then. Some people are demonstrably better at completing more tasks in a short period of time than others. And it's clear that fathers seem to have a harder time with this than mothers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No one can multitask. You may think you are multitasking but you are not.

Based on over a half-century of cognitive science and more recent studies on multitasking, we know that multitaskers do less and miss information. It takes time (an average of 15 minutes) to re-orient to a primary task after a distraction such as an email. Efficiency can drop by as much as 40%. Long-term memory suffers and creativity — a skill associated with keeping in mind multiple, less common, associations — is reduced.

We have a brain with billions of neurons and many trillion of connections, but we seem incapable of doing multiple things at the same time. Sadly, multitasking does not exist, at least not as we think about it. We instead switch tasks. Our brain chooses which information to process. For example, if you listen to speech, your visual cortex becomes less active, so when you talk on the phone to a client and work on your computer at the same time, you literally hear less of what the client is saying.[/quote]

https://hbr.org/2010/12/you-cant-multi-task-so-stop-tr

I agree. You are not multitasking. You are just accomplishing more and organizing your time more effectively.

+1. I’m not changing the baby’s diaper and packing up lunch at the same time. But I can quickly run down the list of things I need to accomplish and get to work. I think DH gets more easily overwhelmed by household tasks. Not sure why this is.