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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think women just have higher standards and tend to perfectionism. Most of us have a feeling of never being good enough and yes, wanting other women not to judge us. Men don't do that with regard to parenting.
When I took a new job I was crying about being overwhelmed and my husband's idea was to "let it go". "It doesn't matter if the house isn't totally clean, it looks just fine to me." "It doesn't matter if we eat frozen pizza 3 times a week, you don't need to cook gourmet meals all the time." I want my kids to eat healthy dinners and use a clean bathroom! I want him to help me reach my standards, not lower them. [/quote]

Oh dear. Wanting to eat more than frozen pizza and not having a filthy bathroom is not “perfectionism.” It’s an extremely minimal basic level. [/quote]

+1, when your excuse for why men don't pull their weight is that when men have "high standards" that equate to basic hygiene and nutrition, you've really lost the plot.

When I hear this, I always wish these men would be forced to actually live down to what they claim are their standards. I think it would last for a little bit and then they'd realize they were depressed and unhealthy, and so were their kids, because it actually  sucks to live in a filthy house and eat garbage and not take responsibility for our life.[/quote]

I know what it looks like based on my xDH’s long vacations with our kid. Fast food or diner food every day, clothes dirty, sunburns (no hats or sunblock), smelling very bad and visibly grimy (no showers for a week). [/quote]

And I’ll bet the kids have way more fun on vacation with Dad than they do on their carefully curated and controlled educational trips with their uptight mom…[/quote]

Of course Dad can have fun when he neglects basic everything. Then mom can  put it all back together with nutritious meals, haircuts, treating rashes/burns/chapped skin, doing the laundry. THAT is “Dad Privilege,” precisely![/quote]

It’s not “Dad Privilege”… It’s a VACATION.  It’s SUPPOSED to be a break from normal daily life.[/quote]

Oh it is 100% Dad Privilege when I pack for them, do all the laundry when they return, deal with whatever weird skin thing resulted. Once he showed up at the airport with our kid’s entire upper lip area from the lip to nostrils caked in dry snot and flaking irritated skin. They have a great time, true, but being the Disney Dad is a trope for a reason, not a defense. [/quote]

Sorry your picker was broken!  No one’s fault but yours.[/quote]

So it’s not his fault?[/quote]

He is who he is.  You picked him.  No, that’s not his fault, that’s your fault.[/quote]

DP but I hate this argument because it assumes that women know what kinds of husbands and fathers men are going to be. We don't. It's all guesswork. I believe some women have better "pickers" and are better at selecting partners who will show up. But I also don't think it's possible for a woman to fix her picker. I also think a lot of me do an okay job of convincing themselves and the women they marry that the really, actually want an egalitarian marriage, and then later (after kids come along) they are happy to lean into their male privilege to escape doing work. I see it in my husband, my brothers, some of my friends and some of my friends' husbands. It is easy to be like "of course I'll do my share!" when you are 28 and dating a woman you like and being a progressive feminist man makes you seem more attractive. It's very different when you are 48 and you are pretty sure that even if you shirk a lot of stuff, your wife won't leave you because you have two kids together and your finances are all bound up together and she's middle aged too.

Men will woo with "we're equals, baby." They don't always stick with it.[/quote]

Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice… why’d you have more than one kid with the guy?  Twins?[/quote]

Blame blame blame. Blame anyone but the actual adult not pulling their own weight. [/quote]

Blame anyone but yourself for not exercising any agency in your own life.  How’s that working out for you?[/quote]

Sorry dude, you don’t get off the hook that easily. Time to man up. [/quote]

Eh!  Wrong answer, Hans!  I’m a happily married woman.[/quote]

Look I’m not sure what your agenda is here. This clearly isn’t the thread for you since you and your husband are both perfect. Maybe ask yourself what your reason is for hanging out here smugly and $hitting on people?[/quote]

I don't think there is an agenda. She's clearly far from happy.[/quote]

Says the woman complaining about her husband incessantly on an anonymous mommy message board.

I’m incredibly happy, but sometimes I DO get bored with all the free time I have not nagging my husband to do pointless busywork or complaining about how it’s SO EMOTIONALLY DIFFICULT to fill out summer camp registration forms once a year.  I admit that arguing with dramatic complainers like you ladies is not the most productive hobby, however, I’m just human and I get that dopamine spike reading all your BS.

But I will leave y’all to your victim Olympics now.  Good luck in your efforts to change other people![/quote]

I actually haven't posted on this thread. Both of my children have special needs, with one child needing a lot of support, and so my spouse and I are actually both very busy trying to keep our heads above water. I'm never sure how much of our experience is normal as a result, but do empathize with a lot of the responses on this thread. [b]What you read as the victim Olympics comes across to me as a lot of people struggling.[/b]

I think tone is really hard to get across in an online forum, especially one where so many people are objectively combative. But I do, sincerely, hope that you are happy. 
[/quote]

DP but what I see is stereotyping all men into one gross bunch of losers and then people (men and women) being upset that it's an unfair categorization because there are a lot of amazing men (and, conversely, a lot of crappy women) out there. I empathize with the people who are struggling with their spouse. But I'm also not going to let them say that all men are lazy and disgusting and useless because I know many men who are not. THEIR spouse sucks. Their friends may also have spouses who suck. They can cite studies that say that men suck. I'm not dismissing their lived experiences, but I also think it's ridiculous that they are allowed to say that all men suck. There are men and women out there raising men who make/will make great husbands, and there are men and women out there working to make things better (for example, my husband pushed for paternity leave at his company before we had kids, I pushed back when older men at my work treated me like I was their wife even though we had the same degree and title). So maybe it is tone. Or maybe it's just that people who are so unhappy can't see beyond themselves, and I sympathize with that. But the list in the article posted by OP boiled all men down to useless, idiotic creatures, and I don't think that's fair. I feel sorry for the people who are married to people (men or women) who check many of those boxes, but that doesn't mean all men are morons and all women are harpies. [/quote]

The push back in this thread almost entirely takes the form of "Well I/my husband are not like this, so it's offensive to even SUGGEST that this is a problem."

So since you personally know men who pull their weight at home, it is "offensive" to point out that there are lots of men who don't, and that often their behavior is socially condoned?

Why is it so hard to just say "I'm glad my marriage is not like this and I know plenty of men who aren't like this, but I believe that there are still men who have this kind of 'dad privilege' and support working to get rid of it because I know first hand that a more egalitarian marriage tends to work better."

Like why jump right to "Lies! This never happens! Men and women are totally equal and there's no such thing as dad privilege despite literally millennia of women being made subservient to men! We fixed it! Stop complaining!" Why assume this is BS just because it does not describe YOUR specific situation. Maybe you have an unusually evolved spouse, but not everyone does.[/quote]

Nobody is pushing back against the statement “lots of men” they are pushing back against the statement that “men” without an attached qualifier. “Dad privilege” implies that almost all men do this when clearly that is not the case? I can’t believe that has to be explained to an UMC college educated audience. I suspect it’s intentional and biased rather than an innocent mistake of language.[/quote]

+1[/quote]

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