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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]I agree a lot of this list is super condescending but there’s some real truth to it. In my marriage, and the marriage of most of my friends the saying “he does his best and I do the rest” is 100 percent the case. It’s not that the dads don’t do anything, it’s that they view virtually everything as optional or extra credit. If my husband gets busy at work or wants to travel, he does that. If one of our kids has extra needs, that’s a problem mom will solve regardless of whether she also works or what else she has going on. My husband is not a bad guy and will laugh about both our moms raving how wonderful he is for taking a child to a physical (scheduled by mom, Who is at work and needs to be there because she handled the sick days last week because dad “can’t” reschedule any meetings) but he is still totally guilty of kicking anything hard or inconvenient to me. He knows that I will always always always find a way to do the things I think are important for the kids so he can just say “I can’t” guilt free.

Also this one reminded me of DCUM:
If I do a task incorrectly, people will tell my partner to praise me for trying.
[/quote]

Totally agree. "He does his best and I do the rest" is absolutely how my marriage and those of pretty much all my friends work. "His best" can vary a bit, but I only know one marriage where I genuinely think the dad is the primary parent and is doing "the rest" and he's a SAHD and his wife is an executive and they have one kid.

I think this is the dirty secret of most dual income couples. It looks pretty equal from the outside -- both partners work, they say the right things, dad is visibly doing stuff like taking kids to activities, cooking, seems engaged. But if you open things up and really look at what is happening, dad is taking kids to activities that mom (who also works) researched, arranged, and provided dad with the schedule for. Dad is cooking but so is mom, and mom is also thinking a week ahead to when her MIL is in town and suggesting they make and freeze an extra casserole so they have a quick dinner for the night she arrives. Mom doesn't always seem engaged, because she's exhausted and has a laundry list of things in her head to keep track of (including laundry).

But the veneer of "things are pretty equal!" is there because it's easier on everyone's ego and it keeps the ship afloat. You could nag and nitpick dad to death but he's never, ever going to do as much as mom. Ever. If you don't want to ruin your marriage and get a divorce, which most of us don't, you just accept the inequity and move on. But it's unequal. Very, very unequal. [/quote]

“I’m oppressed because DH doesn’t think a week ahead to freeze a casserole for MIL” isn’t quite the own you think it is.  That is you concerned about appearances and looking on top of things lest MIL judge you.  [/quote]

Such a great example. Yet what happens when MIL arrives at dinner time on a Tuesday? Has “DH” come home early from work to tidy the house, make up the guest bed, then figured out a nice dinner that allows MIL to feel welcomed while DIL isn’t overly stressed? Lololol. I think we ALL know the answer to that one. Here’s how it really goes:

(Saturday) DW, my mom wants to come stay for a few nights on Tuesday. Is that ok?

DW: of course! your mom is always welcome.

DW: OK, Tuesday I have that presentation at 2 so I won’t have any time to get the house ready on Monday. I think I can get home Tuesday around 5 - that gives me an hour or so to tidy up and put clean sheets on the guest bed. But that doesn’t leave time to make dinner. I think I could put a lasagna together today so I can pop it in the oven Tuesday. Do you think you can do pickup and dropoff on Tuesday so I can make that work?

DH: Why do you have to do any of that? Mom just wants to see the kids, she doesn’t care.

DW: Well the guest bed sheets haven’t been changed since your brother stayed here, the house will be messy, and we do need to eat dinner. I’d like to have something a bit nicer than frozen meatballs for your mom.

DH: Why do you make up all this stuff? None of that needs to be done.
[/quote]

So don't make the dinner. Don't change the bed sheets. Don't clean the house. If YOU want it done, do it. If you don't care, then don't. It's really not that complicated. [/quote]

So to be clear, the options are:

(1) Make dinner, change the sheets, and clean the house yourself.
(2) Greet a houseguest with a dirty house, dirty sheets, and no food.

Okay, what if the houseguest is a mutual college friend of both people. So if the wife thinks they should do some basic stuff to prepare for the guest, because it's just good manners and will also help the visit to go better, but the husband doesnt care, again, her choice is to do it all her self or just treat the houseguest (who is equally a guest of both partner) poorly?

It just doesn't make sense to run a marriage this way. It would be one thing if we were talking about one partner wanting to just change the sheets and order a pizza, and the other is like "no we have to clean the house top to bottom and make a 5 course meal, nothing else will do." That would be an example of one partner having unreasonably high standards and needing to either do the extra work she's created herself or accept the bare minimum that her partner is advocating for (or even better, have a productive conversation and meet somewhere in the middle).

But we're talking about situations where a wife is advocating for the bare minimum and the husband is like "I simply do not care about incredibly basic home care, hosting, or hygiene, if you want that stuff done do it yourself." This is such childish, petulant BS I simply cannot believe anyone would advocate for it. You can't discuss a meal a few days in advance to ensure you don't have to cook or come up with something last minute when you own mother is coming to visit? What kind of idiot, irresponsible, man child nonsense is that? You can't take 5 minutes to change some sheets or just make sure the guest bathroom is presentable? For your own mother? Again, this is such bare minimum stuff.

What is really happening is that the men in these scenarios KNOW they are fighting against doing the bare minimum, but they are depending on the fact that society judges women much more harshly for this stuff than men (and will blame the wife for a messy house or no dinner even when it's his mom who's coming to visit) to incentivize his wife to just go ahead and do it. So... dad privilege.[/quote]

Maybe it's your binary thinking that's the problem. If my husband said his mom was coming to visit I'd probably ask what I could to do help him get things ready for her. If it was a mutual friend, I would probably approach it differently and say what can we each do to get ready for this visit, assuming we are both equally responsible for the visit.

We throw a big party every year in December. My husband would probably be fine if we didn't throw the party from his own perspective, but he appreciates that our kids enjoy it. So we sit down and discuss all the things that need to happen for the party and then decide who is doing what. If one person's tasks end up being easier, than that person will help the other with their list.

But if my MIL comes to visit, I am absolutely not taking on being the default planner for that. I can offer to help or my husband can ask me to help, but I'm not going to begrudgingly do it all because "society" thinks it's my fault if we don't have a nice dinner when she arrives. [b]Who is this "society" anyway? Are they sending you postcards chastising you for the house being messy when your MIL showed up?[/b][/quote]

This is the $64,000 question.[/quote]

Are you really going to the mat to claim it’s acceptable to host your child’s grandmother on dirty sheets with no food? [/quote]

I am going to claim that if other people do that I would not even know about it and I certainly don’t care.

So who DOES care?  What are the consequences if one hosts granny in an “unacceptable” manner?  Who imposes those consequences?  Who or what are you so afraid of?[/quote]

Granny cares. Kids notice. Mess and lack of food and lack of planning tend to put people in bad moods and cause unnecessary stress a disrupted schedules. I think women are afraid of having a crappy visit with grandma because no one put in a modicum of effort to prepare for the visit, and if you line up a crappy visit with grandma next to a bunch of other crappy days because no one cleaned or planned ahead or thought about what people were going to eat, you have a crappy life.

It's not about feeling judged by others, it's about wanting to live a functional, enjoyable life by putting in some effort to making it that way, and expecting the person who took vows that you would support and love each other to participate in making that life.

If you don't understand this, DO NOT GET MARRIED.[/quote]

So the societal judgement boils down to the judgement of your own MIL, your own kids, and yourself.  This sounds like a “you” problem.[/quote]

You behave like this on the internet because if you talk to people IRL this way, they would commit acts of violence against you.

I just want to make sure you understand this.[/quote]

Honestly I don’t understand.  Behave like what?  Engaging in conversation?[/quote]

You are willfully refusing to actually engage with the argument. No, it is not about the judgment if the MIL. Or anyone's judgment. When I plan visits, clean my house, take care of my kids, I'm not doing this to impress anymore me or satisfy judgment. I'm doing it because life is objectively better when you do these things. Everyone is happier, more relaxed, more cared for. Grandma, the kids, me, my DH.

If my DH fundamentally refuses to share those responsibilities, claiming it doesn't matter or he doesn't care, he is making my life worse, regardless of what his mom thinks. It doesn't matter if it's his mom visiting or mine or a mutual friend. It's about taking responsible for your life and relationships and putting baseline effort into family life.

It's not about impressing my MIL.[/quote]

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