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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The list was definitely illuminating. There's a lot of things that don't apply to my family (I would say my husband is honestly better at solo parenting and solo bedtimes than I am)

I do remember one time I asked my husband to do the birthday party invites and boy did he whine and moan about having to copy and paste some some emails from the preschool directory. [/quote]

This is the behavior that gets me. There's all this stuff I do that DH doesn't do -- arrange childcare, deal with school (registration, supply lists, teacher communication, knowing it's "crazy sock day," telling the school why a kid is staying home, etc.), deal with clothes and shoes, summer camp, etc. I'll try to delegate some of it to DH and he will just be a child about it, complaining about every single step, throwing up his hands in frustration, procrastinating until the very last minute, etc.

So I'm never actually free of these tasks because he makes such a drama out of it if he does it. Often he'll make a huge stink and STILL not actually do it, until the deadline is tonight and I wind up having to help him with it or do it myself in order to ensure the kids get enrolled in camp or they have swim goggles for class or whatever.

The experience is stressful and it makes me think twice before trying to delegate the next time-- do I want to deal with that again? He also just refuses to ever actually own a task. Like I can make him do camp signups with a lot of handholding and moaning one year, but this does not turn into him initiating that process himself the next year, now that in theory he understands the process. I still have to bring it up and ask him to handle it, and if he dies he will need the same amount of help and will complain just as much. He just clearly does not view it as his problem. And the frustrating thing is if I truly dropped the rope and he didn't do it, he also wouldn't view our lack of summer childcare as his problem-- he'd look at me and say "what are we going to do" and wait for me to come up with a solution while taking no initiative.

When I read people in this thread saying "men are better at delegating" I just think about how delegating is a lot easier if you have a competent person with a good attitude to delegate to. It's a lot harder when your "team" is just one guy who acts like spending 5 minutes researching something online or dealing with any paperwork at all is some horrible imposition.[/quote]

So did none of this behavior show itself before you had kids? My husband and I each had a dog when we started dating, so I was aware of how much effort he would put into taking care of an animal. We went on trips together, so I saw how much time he would be willing to spend researching trips with me. We hosted parties, so I could tell how much help he would provide if we did something like that, including if it was for "my" friends. We spent time with family, so I knew how much he would be responsible for in terms of responsibility for things related to gifts/planning/hosting/etc. What exactly did you do when you were dating? [/quote]

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