Reply to Millennial women are saying no thanks to parenthood

Forum Index » General Parenting Discussion

Reply to "Millennial women are saying no thanks to parenthood"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Millennial men expect their millennial wives to have solid careers and to keep working after kids, without skipping a beat.  The women are saying no thanks to that particular type of parenthood, because [b]they know their husbands aren't going to take on 50% of domestic labor and childcare.[/b]  And also because, outside of the DCUM bubble, most women aren't all that career-driven, especially after kids.  They just aren't.  If SAHM was a realistic option for more millennial women, we'd see more of them saying yes to parenthood.  [/quote]

So are millennial men resorting back to 1950s men? I'm young Gen X (late 40s) and the men I know are really, really involved fathers.[/quote]

My DH is much more involved than my dad was (or than his dad was) but that's an extremely low bar.

One thing about my DH that drives me crazy and that seems to be an issue with other millennial men as well is that he has a real unwillingness to figure something out. 99% of what I know about parenting I've just figured out by trying stuff and experimenting, looking stuff up online for ideas, consulting experts when necessary, and just kind of treating it like a job with little to know training.

My DH wants to be told exactly how to do stuff and if you can't give him clear instructions, he gets overwhelmed and won't do it. So that includes lots of logistical tangles, like signing kids up for summer camp when summer is still months away and we don't know our exact schedule yet and we have budget constraints. But it also applies to for to the finesse aspects of parenting where you have to deal with a kid who doesn't want to do something or is trying to get you to agree to something that you absolutely cannot say yes to. In both these situations, my DH will just kind of throw up his hands and walk away, instead of just hanging in there until he figures it out.

The result of this is that the gap between our parenting ability has grown over the years because I hang in there and he doesn't. So I've gotten better and better at the logistical stuff, or dealing with other parents or the school, because I just suck it up and do it and don't bail. And I've also developed more strategies for dealing with the day-to-day parenting stuff, and I get less frustrated or angry at my kids even when they are being objectively really difficult, because I've seen it all before and have learned not to take it personally and just get in there and problem solve.

I think some of it is personality but I see it in enough millennial couples that I also think there's a fundamental difference between millennial men and women in terms of having some basic skill sets to just figure things out when you don't know for sure what to do. I've also noticed similar parallels with careers and finances, with millennial women having a bit more "can do" spirit and men being a bit more easily flustered or just giving up. And I think this might reflect different parenting styles for boys and girls, with girls being told "you can do anything!" and boys being told "here let me do that for you" or "no, don't do that, it's for girls." I think it made a lot of millennial boys kind of incompetent as adults.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics