Reply to What is with DCUM women and "mental loads?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Superdad, the reason people are hostile is that their husbands don’t go any of that. They do nothing. Dead weight. Many women are married to men who don’t engage with their kids, don’t handle any finances, don’t cook or clean, don’t help with picking pediatricians or therapists or summer camps or whatever. You sound like a great dad. Surely you must know it’s not the norm.

You say your wife was a SAHM for a time when the kids were little, that she probably handled potty training. Well another thing you must realize about the posters being hostile is that they are in that phase now, or close to it. They might be SAHMs who don’t feel appreciated (presumably you appreciated your wife when she did this, you sound like someone with good relationships skills). Many of the hostile posters are working moms who are doing a lot of the SAHM stuff, have deadweight husbands, and have jobs. It’s a lot. It’s different when kids are older. Yes, there’s a mental load but as you demonstrate, you can share it with your kids if you e done a good job giving them independence. It’s been a while since you experienced young kids, and it sounds like your wife handled a lot of that. So people are annoyed by the “it’s not hard” comments from you — you are comparing apples to oranges.

Also, some husbands are not only dead weight but an added burden. They have undiagnosed ADHD or personality disorders or just… issues. And their wives are accommodating that while also doing most/all the housework and childcare. If you’ve never been married to someone like this it’s hard to explain. It increases the mental load in exponential ways. Your spouse becomes like another child, only one who is hostile to your attempts to help because he often is embarrassed and defensive about his issues and wants to pretend they aren’t happening.

Again, you seem like a great dad. Your girls are lucky. I’m sorry your wife passed. You should be proud of the family you’ve built. But you don’t know what others are going through. You don’t understand because you’ve not been in the same situation. Not all parenting experiences are the same. Sometimes you just have to listen and realize you only have the answers for your questions. You haven’t solved marriage, or parenting, or life. Accept that others may struggle in ways that seem foreign to you, and that does not automatically mean they are doing it wrong. [/quote]

[b]Be that as it may, the point remains that a lot of this whining about “mental loads” is self-inflicted dysfunction, likely internalized by what they think they *should* be doing.[/b]

I also reject your assertion that the disengaged dad is the norm. I will not concede that for a minute. It certainly isn’t my experience with my circle of
Dad, ie my poker buddies. It’s actually more of a cliche and a trope. You hear it here because people with axes to grind are whining — do not confuse that with the norm. Sucks to be them, but they are the ones having deviances from the norm.

Also, there is a heavy bias toward what contributions to family life should be valued or “count” as mental load.  But you are insane if you are going to assert with a straight fact that the mental load of remembering to send a nephew a gift is the same as being sure the mortgage is paid or retaining job security more broadly. Or the mental load of many other things martyr moms don’t value but are every bit as important if not more so than the relatively insignificant things they obsess about, often because they feel pressure to be in competition with other women in their communities. [/quote]

Exactly.[/quote]

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