Reply to Wife wants to be "alone" so this means we divorce?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote] Most men aren't zipping up dinners, calling girl scout leader, and signing up for camps online. Most parenting falls on the mother. She can, and should however, delegate to you more "defined tasks." Maybe you can take ownership over washing dishes, emptying dishwasher, washing towels, and on weekends, driving around kids while she quarterbacks. [/quote]

Incredibly dumb and condescending.

I am a man and I do ALL the parenting, period. Oh yeah, and I also do the cooking, the dishwasher, the laundry, and driving kids around on weekends. It really isn’t that hard. All this prima donna whining about “emotional labor” and uncompensated work at home is an effort to guilt trip men and should be ignored.[/quote]

Well, are you a single dad? Or do you need to discuss with your spouse a more appropriate division of labor?[/quote]

DP. I'd still like an answer to this, for the sake of understanding generalizability.

"I am a man" PP -- are you a man married to a woman without significant mental or physical disabilities, and this is your division of labor? Or are you effectively kind of forced into it, because there is nothing else you can do about it right now?

If it really were not "that hard," I'd be surprised that few men who could be stepping up to the plate, don't. If it doesn't take a lot of energy or time on top of an otherwise busy life, we shouldn't be seeing parents who don't automatically chip in and do it,a s part of being partners and full parents. But we don't.[/quote]

I am that PP. I am a single dad now with 50/50 custody. First I should note that I did all that stuff when we were still married. The only household thing she did when we were married was clean the bathrooms once a month - and to be sure, I appreciated that because I hate doing that (just did it yesterday). I did the cooking, the dishwasher, the laundry (except for hers), and arranged all the kid activities (doctor visits as well as fun stuff) and many other things. At least in the last couple of years when she had, for all practical purposes, already decided to move out, she gave up on household tasks and kid stuff because she was (in my opinion) depressed. She did nothing when she was home but write incessantly in her journal. When she said anything about it, she snapped at me. If I didn't do that stuff, it simply wouldn't happen.

Right now, we have separate households. If I did not arrange the kid doctor visits, if I did not arrange kid birthday parties and extracurricular activities, if I did not buy them clothes, if I did not help them with their homework and school projects, if I did not take them outside to exercise, [i]none of that stuff would ever happen[/i]. When she has them, all they do is sit and play on their iPads all day. She is completely lazy and useless. Geez she's not even the "fun" co-parent, I am in charge of fun things as well as boring things. The most that can be said is she will take them to/from the summer day camp (that I arranged and paid for) when she has custody, but it's not even 100% guaranteed that she will get off her ass and do that. I can't make her do anything, and if I don't do it nothing would happen.

I am sure I am not the only divorced parent in this situation. It is what it is...[/quote]
DP. PP, my hat is off to you. But to a certain extent you are more or less proving the point of OP’s wife in that a marriage where one partner completely is uninvolved in the household management the logical endpoint is decline of the relationship and divorce. [/quote]

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