Reply to Extreme resentment over mental load

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous] Your kids who take the SAT should be signing themselves up. You guys make your own problems.[/quote]

DP. No, parents have responsibility here. A husband should be capable of knowing this and assigning himself the task. If the husband is too incompetent or cannot be asked, its on the other parent and there is a case for resentment here.

The Venmo for the teacher gifts is optional. Tell the teacher your husband is too incompetent to parent and for the sake of your mental load, you needed to take responsibility for the SAT. They'll understand. [/quote]

At least in my kids' classrooms, classroom arrangements, signup genius links, venmo requests, etc. are all done through a group chat via the school's app. All classroom parents are added. Emails are also sent to all classroom parents. Not ONE husband responds to chats, emails, signup genius. It's 100% moms. On the class party day there's decent dad turnout, so I know they're aware. And I know the majority of moms are working moms. It's been like this since daycare!

I also handle most kid admin in my house. My husband is no slouch otherwise, but there are times when I'm underwater and need help and he is completely blind to this kind of work no matter how many app notifications/emails/paperwork are sent. I have to directly ask. Yes, some of it's fluff, no one will die if we forget cookies for the teacher cookie exchange, but we DO need to get the required class shirt, recorder, contribute to group activities, pay for field trips, sign online permission slips, check grades and homework, update parental settings on devices, and on and on. I truly believe the idea that planning around children's lives is "women's work" is so pervasive, the vast majority of men will not change, even if it's subconscious and they present a flexible, equitable mindset.

Do not get me started on Christmas.[/quote]

Same for us regarding all dads being on these chats and it being totally moms dealing with it. There are two dads (out of 40-some families across two classes) who participate.

And ALL the moms work, and many have jobs every bit as challenging as their husband's. Some are fily breadwinners.

Also, the two dads that participate -- their wives also participate. But for a lot of other families, the dad has zero involvement.

This is a UMC public school in DC. Also, some of the class and PTA stuff is dumb make work (I don't do that) but a lot of this is just necessary stuff -- making sure kids have supplies, knowing deadlines, ensuring there are sufficient chaperones for school trips, disseminating info about aftercare, administrative deadlines, etc.

That's how I know that the women in this thread saying "it's unequal" are not BSing. It's not! And it's not because all the women are bad communicators or just live feeling resentful or whatever. It's because it's just not equal. Most moms work, but few dads do as much parenting/household admin as moms. And that's just the truth. It's no wonder women sometimes complain. It is a testament to our fortitude that we don't complain more.[/quote]

This is because MEN DON’T CARE about this pointless make-work pissing contest that WOMEN initiate and WOMEN expect other WOMEN to engage in! Even if you ask your husband if he thinks it’s important and he says “yes” he probably doesn’t.  You can test this by not doing it - if he doesn’t do it himself, [b]it’s because he simply DOES NOT GIVE A CRAP[/b].[/quote]

Ok, but when his wife DOES give a crap, or his kids do, [b]you're saying his line is still well I don't care about it?[/b]

When we host parties in our house we have a list of things to do/clean beforehand. I'm way more Type A and anal than my husband, so I bet he could name multiple things on the list that he wouldn't do if he were throwing the party himself. But he knows they're important to me, so he does them. Because, you know, he loves me. The reverse is also true, there are things I participate in because they are important to him but not to me because that's the kind of thing you do for the person you married. Of course there are boundaries, and I'm not suggesting that everything is important, but when your spouse or child deems something important and you don't, it's worth looking into. You seem to think that because the husband doesn't care it must be meaningless. [/quote]

No.  That’s not what’s being discussed here.  Because the men being excoriated in this thread [b]do what their wives ask them.  [/b]But it’s unreasonable to expect someone who thinks what their spouse is asking them to is a waste of time to take over the “mental load” of doing that task and then complain about how they do it (which, to be clear, is to allow said time wasting task to go undone and the mental load associated with it to slip away into the ether…)[/quote]

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