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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Some of the stuff on the list was petty or extra or an example of moms doing too much that they really just need to let go. Some of it is stuff that you can very easily delegate to your husband and even if he does it imperfectly the first few times, it’s not life or death. If dad forgets the kids water bottles when you go on an outing, you can buy water at Starbucks or whatever. You just have to be more flexible.

But honestly - a lot of it rings true and it’s uncomfortable. All the women in my circle are the planners. Without mom planning it, no one would go on vacations/trips out of town. Moms research and plan the hotel, the flights, the activities while you’re there.

Moms do all the clothes shopping, if dad notices that a kid’s shoes are getting too small it’s mom who finds and buys new shoes. Mom does all the summer camp/activity research and planning. Mom keeps the family social and events calendar and knows when all the after school stuff is happening at school (the Bingo nights, the Trunk or Treat, the spring festival …) and makes sure to pay ahead to reserve a pizza order to have some dinner to eat at the event. The school registrations, the yearly (or more than yearly, if you have an under 3) checkups, remembering to bring the school health form to the yearly checkup, the thing about the Halloween costumes - yep that all rings true. [/quote]

I'm curious about where you live, what the average HHI is, and how many SAHMs there are in your circle.

I live in a VA suburb, average HHI is probably around $500-750K and only one mom in our group of about 20 families in our neighborhood is a SAHM. We have no SAHDs. I would say income between the two spouses is generally pretty close, so just say it's 50/50.

The texts in our group involving planning of things are at least 50% dads responding, if not more. We went on a trip with two other families for spring break and the dads planned it all. And by the way, us moms are also very good planners, we just don't do it all because why would we? We married men who are functional adults so they can do the planning for things as well. [/quote]

Again, congratulations.

Some of you are very determined to claim that IF anyone even experiences this kind of inequality in their marriage (and certainly you are reluctant to believe that's the case), then it MUST be because a handful of bad women chose unusually low performing men.

It could not possibly be that many families lean on the the women as the default parent and that, built into social attitudes about how is best at parenting and housework and how more naturally fills that role, many marriages are inherently unequal and men enjoy a good amount of "dad privilege" that exempts them from expectations regarding childcare and household management. That's not possible. Because after all, in your subdivision all the men are 50/50 partners and all the women work. If that's true for you and 10 other families in the same community, it must be universally true, correct?

Apparently if there are men not pulling their weight in families, they must exist in a few tiny small towns in the midwest maybe? Or is it perhaps a southern thing? After all, apparently every dad you've ever met is a 50/50 partner. It is simply not possible that anything else might be going on in the world outside of whatever NoVa suburbs you apparently live in.[/quote]

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