Reply to Need to know if I'm expecting too much, tell me what makes your DH a "Great DH" and "Great Father"?

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Reply to "Need to know if I'm expecting too much, tell me what makes your DH a "Great DH" and "Great Father"?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The language police who are always ready to decry "help" as a four letter word are getting tiresome. We get it. My wife doesn't "help" with the bills. When she contributes 30% to the bill paying effort, she's a full partner and, even if she contributed 0%, she has full responsibility for paying the bills.

But here's the thing - running a household has a lot of components. Spouses are going to take the lead on different components - based on time, inclination, skill level, happenstance, tradition, gender prejudice, or some combination thereof. If you and your spouse do every single component on a strict 50/50 basis, congratulations to you but you're probably doing it wrong. And if the spouse who is not leading on a component contributes to the effort, it's an acceptable linguistic shorthand to say they are "helping." My wife "helps" with the lawn sometimes. Sure, it's both of our responsibility. But I mow the lawn 90% of the time. When she kicks in 10% of the time, she's "helping."

[/quote]

You have a point, but I also think you are missing the boat a bit on some things. Child rearing has for quite some time been seen as the job of the woman, and too many men (at least judging from frequent discussions in these forums) think that means they bring home a paycheck and otherwise do the bare minimum. They see themselves as helping and society backs them up by making them feel super special for doing what women are expected to do, or for even changing any diapers at all. That is why framing it as help is a problem, in my book. Luckily my husband doesn't see it that way and shares the load, but he was really struck by the reaction from people when he took some paternity leave to stay home with our son. He said it was like people thought he was a saint for spending time with his kid, whereas while I was on leave no one batted an eye. At least he agrees it is a sucky double standard![/quote]

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