Reply to Working Moms and Do It All Expectation

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]On I'm Chicago and I saw the exact same post. It was on Facebook. I am inundated in Facebook with stuff about "overwhelmed moms" and it feels synthetic to me. Also lots of stuff about lazy uninvolved husbands which mine is certainly not.
Somebody out there wants you resentful.
I work half time hours and I am happy and not overwhelmed at all. Of course I don't make DCUM money. [/quote]

Agreed. All I see all around me are wonderful dads who are very, very involved. Why is there a constant narrative about men not doing enough? Go to any playground and it's full of men hanging out with their kids. Men are at all the school events at equal numbers to the moms present.

Honestly I'm glad I'm not a man because of all the constant hate that dads seem to get, despite all the chores they do, plus bringing home 50%+ of the income. My dh absolutely pulls his own weight. Despite all this, boomer women thank him and praise him for babysitting his own kids when he's at the grocery store with them (I haven't stepped into a grocery store in years, that's dh's chore). A relative couldn't get over how dh changed diapers (what?!!?). Millennial men have shown up for their wives and kids. [/quote]

Eh, I'm in the middle on this. My DH absolutely does a ton and I'm so grateful to him for it. And also I do 2-3x more than he does. I'm so glad DH is more modern and not like my dad (or his dad) who did almost nothing even though both our moms worked. But that doesn't mean things are equal in our household at all. I still feel the "do it all" expectation even with a spouse who is an active, involved father.

So much of it is about culture and how men are socialized though. My DH is self aware for the most part but there are still entire swaths of parenting and household work that he is either not aware of at all or just silently leaves for me because he either doesn't know how or simply does not want to do them. He likes to pick his stuff, he wants to clean the kitchen and do drop off/pick up and take kids to the playground and that is it. But he never wants to vacuum or teach kids how to clean up after themselves or deal with all the school paperwork and logistics or figure out summer camp or hire a sitter or talk to a kid about why they got so mad at dinner or notice a kid has shot up over the summer and needs all new pants and figure out where to buy them and make sure the kid likes them and that they are uniform compliant. So he does the stuff he likes to do and I do everything else. It's not equal and it does lead to resentment. We will talk about it and he'll apologize and he'll try harder but we're both working under decades of being socialized a certain way. We don't get to just allocate simply and equally, we have to unpack the reasons why he's resistant to taking on certain stuff and try to overcome that and that's work too.

My DH has shown up for me and our kids but also it's still unequal because society hasn't really shown up for families in general. Everything he does around the house or with the kids is still seen as "extra" and kind of him, and everything I do is seen as expected and also insufficient, even though I also work! DH isn't the problem, but that doesn't mean there isn't a problem.[/quote]

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