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[quote=Anonymous]I get that most men will be able to say "no, of course not" to many items on this list. I know my DH would.

The point is that if you then applied the list to me, literally none of these are true. Like does my DH cook about half the time? Yes, it's great! But so do I, plus I am the only person who has ever registered our kids for school, camp, or booked a doctors or dentists appointment for them.

And the whole list is like that. There will be an item that of course doesn't apply to my husband, he's way better than that. But then there will be five items where I'm like "well... yeah."

And it's actually way better than it used to be! The ones that really hit home to me are anything related to pregnancy, childbirth, and caring for a baby. Things were so fundamentally unequal in ways that are clearly outlined on this list. Like I remember begging my DH to be involved in finding childcare for our baby and he just kept saying "I don't know, you're better at this kind of thing, what's the point when you know more about it already, etc." He really did just assume I'd take care of it, and I did, because we needed freaking childcare! I had PPD and he was so checked out on that. The stuff about him not understanding or seeming to care about the physical and mental toll that childbirth had taken on me (I had a traumatic birth) really hit home. He was deeply selfish when I gave birth and in the weeks after that, he did so many of the selfish, entitled crap on this list. I'm glad so many of you are better men or married to better men, but I'm not.

It got better as I talked to him about it, pointed out these inequities, forced him to do things, refused to do other things, etc. Also, our kid got older and he was so uncomfortable with so much of the baby stuff, it's a bit easier with older kids which I think my DH (and other men) find less "emasculating" than caring for a newborn.

Look, I love my husband and there are many ways in which he is a great partner. But going through this list actually hits home for me how many tasks there are that I do without every being asked or taught, and he just... doesn't. Including a lot of tasks that I have tried to shift to him and asked him to do, and had him either refuse or say "I don't know how, you are better at it." As though I was born understanding how and when to book pediatric appointments or have some special internal clock that tells me when our kid needs new shoes. I don't. It's just that I take those responsibilities on as a parent who knows these are things that must be done, and he has the *privilege* of assuming I'll do it.

But apparently you are all in very egalitarian marriages where none of this applies. Good for you, but not all of us are, and trust me, no one is calling out my DH, even in our progressive friend and family circle, for most of it. He is not an outlier. Many men are this way.[/quote]

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