And remember that he may need things that are routine and really obvious to you, spelled out for him, and reiterated several times.

Also, remember that shaming him will probably not work - because it is mentally paralyzing. Which for obvious reasons is the last thing someone with executive dysfunction needs. If you have it in you, approach with love and acceptance (of who he is, not the division of labor). I know it’s an unfair ask of you when you are clearly doing everything you can to keep everything running and in order, but that can be so motivating.

I’m sorry if you’ve already tried these things or if they’ve already been suggested, but -
- Can you hire a maid service? Having someone scheduled to come in on a regular basis might prod him into clearing obvious garbage or getting dirty laundry off the floor and into the hamper.
- Sounds like he commutes, so he picks up dinner on the way home. Maybe even just once a week to start, but same day every week.
- Try making one chore habitual for him. For example, ask him every single morning for two weeks to unload the dishwasher. (Note that habits might take him WAY longer than 14, or even the cliche 28 days to form though, so keep at it as long as necessary. I’m saying 2 weeks so you feel it’s manageable.)
- Shared phone calendars, to facilitate the above!!! iCal or Google, set them up and make sure he has the reminders turned on.
- Can he have one single category of “house stuff” that he can take on, and be proud of? It could be cooking. Or yardwork. But like only pick one to start. Something that he could frame as Fun, changeable, challenging, as opposed to a “chore”. Framing household tasks as care tasks as opposed to admin, can make all the difference.

sit down with him and mutually decide an equal dividing of the chores. Then write his up in a chore chart that goes on the fridge and he needs to check off each day. People with ADHD need lists to stay on task (although he is old enough to know this)

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Anonymous wrote:I’d have a conversation about chore division, agree on the division, and then make checklists that you hang on the fridge or wherever it is he goes most and will see it. And completely feel free to remind him after the kids are in bed to go do whatever is on his list.

This is so annoying though. Having to remind someone to do their share of the work is just more exhausting than doing the chores yourself.

Get real! Reminding someone to go shovel the driveway or clean the bathrooms or go buy all the stuff on this list at the grocery store is not even close to being “more exhausting” than doing it yourself.

Some people need to be micromanaged. It’s not ideal but there is no need to be overly dramatic about what a hardship it is for their handler…

Adding “micromanager” on top of everything else is indeed exhausting. Especially when the man never does what he agrees to do then accuses the wife of “nagging” and not “asking”
nicely enough. Then as a last resort claims the wife is being “crazy” for thinking the thing needs to be done.
I would not mind asking at all if DH actually just did the thing. But he does not, and makes it very unpleasant. This is the actual dynamic that ends up with the mom as a default parent - she gives up asking and micromanaging because DH makes it very unpleasant and it becomes easier to just do everything.

This! My DH gets so mad if I tell him to do anything. I MUST ask. But he also views asks as things he can say no to for any reason. "Can you give DD a bath?" "No, I'm playing a video game right now." Dude, it's 6 pm on a weekday and I'm making dinner, this is not an optional request.

Sometimes even when I ask he gets mad. "I feel like you think I work for you." No, you definitely don't work for me, if you did I would fire you for being so freaking lazy. I'm trying to get you to help me out on the shared project we undertook together, but You've decided is my thing for some reason.

Say what now?!?! Please tell me that is not a real story.

I am a guy, work long hours in a stressful job, and my wife is a SAHM, and there is no way in hell I would even think to do that. Maybe it's my age (mid 40s), but I cannot imagine playing video games much at all, much less while my wife is working on getting dinner going. That's crazy.

I have posted before about my issues alone these lines with my husband, who after our child was diagnosed with ADHD agreed he probably also has it but “is doing fine”. No amount of me saying well actually you are fine because you only work and I do 99 percent of everything else gets through and just makes him mad. It’s the unwillingness to get help or acknowledge my perspective that makes me crazy. He does do some of the take a kid here at x time stuff but everything that requires energy is on me. My biggest pet peeve lately is that I will ask him him or one of the kids to do something and he will be like “right now? This is not the time!” and them my suggestion that he can do it or get the kids to do it any time *as long as I don’t have to remind them again* is rude. I am sure it feels rude. But I’m tired of both being in charge of the entire to do list and finding the perfect time for every discussion or task. We have a very busy life and there are very few perfect times. And the vast majority of things I don’t just handle myself are things he wants to be involved in (if only for perception sake - like he wants to be the one to sign certain forms so he look involved). I hate it and what I hate even more is the message it sends to our kids. I’m not ready to divorce over it but I’m try hard to calmly push back against the idea that I have to manage everything including his preferences for how/when something needs to happen. I worry a lot about what my daughter is taking away from these interactions. Like everyone is nice and pleasant to mommy outside the house and mom has a lot of responsibilities at work but when she asks dad to do *anything* it goes badly. What kind of message is that?

You all need to divorce these men. Not the ones who appreciate reminders and do the thing immediately and uncomplainingly. But the ones who get angry about reminders and purposefully ignore them.

1. Once divorced, they will be forced to maintain their own household or else starve/die. You can threaten loss of custody if they send the kids to school unprepared consistently

2. The interaction dynamics between you two have gotten really unhealthy. If they (and you!) get space from that, they may be mentally happier and actually want to set up a system so they get things done. Also, not having kid chaos half the time will give them some mental space too

Anonymous wrote:I took a new job, doubled my salary and guess what happened?

My adhd/asd spouse now diverts a large part of his compensation to invest in startups without telling me.

He literally said: our HHI is the same so I’ll out $300k per year back into my company or others.

And this is after we ran a family forecast with our tax guy on how much WE would save and invest if I took the new job.

I am going to have to hire a forensic accountant to find out wtf happened to a third of this income this year. And he’s so out of it mentally, he doesn’t see the problem. And attacks me if I ask an any basic questions about what happened here with our family cash flow.

That’s financial abuse, deferring your paychecks or diverting them elsewhere into risky endeavors without telling your spouse. Yikes.

This is *not* at all what Op is doing.

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Anonymous wrote:What happens if you assign him a list of chores (doing the executive function piece for him) each night so it’s not just you sitting there catching up while he unwinds?

For me that’s the thing that would just be unacceptable.

“I’m tired, I need to watch tv. I had a long day. I didn’t sleep well again. I was up early, working.”

DP, but this. There is always an excuse.

A lot of this comes down to a game of chicken where my DH is willing to let a lot of things about our kids and our home get REALLY bad before he would step in and actually take the lead on them. And even then, he'd start with "Hey I noticed the kids fingernails are really long and dirty, we should probably do something about that" before actually doing anything -- "we" in this case means me.

I think I'd have to get like a terminal disease before he'd actually rouse himself to do a lot of this stuff, and even then I know he'd panic and be telling me that he just could never in a million years figure out how to sign our kids up for summer camp on his own, can I do it?

I think if I died, he'd get his mom to come live with him. But she's almost 80.

I can't die.

+1000 I think this is the crux of it for a lot of families (and I do not believe that ALL of these DHs have ADHD). I think women generally have higher standards for things like healthy meals, kid enrichment, clean and organized home.

So a lot of these men aren't shirking in their minds; they just think their wives should chill out more instead of they should be stepping up and doing more. And honestly? Sometimes they might be right. Sometimes.

Ok, then what’s a basic baseline for your house, yard, child-raising?

And should only one parent keep to the baseline or both? Or equal amounts of time at baseline and below baseline.

Let’s assume no above baseline so F nutrition, bedtimes, fancy ECs, and supplementing at home. Just let the Tiger Parents win that one.

It's interesting to me that people will write this dynamic off as "well she just has higher standards, that's not his fault" but WHY do so many women have higher standards of cleanliness, nutrition, organization, timeliness, etc., than their husbands? This explanation acts as though women collectively are just unrealistic about what needs to be done or how well it has to be done, but what if, as a society, we just decided to live down to the standards of all these men? What would society look like? Dirty houses, kids late for school 3/5 days, no vacations because nothing gets planned, meals mostly fast food or whatever can be thrown together last minute, schools bare bones and no fundraising or extra programming because no PTA at all (be honest, what percent of your PTA is men versus women, and what percent of the men are there WITH their wives and not in instead of them), and so on.

Like it's easy to roll our eyes at women and say "ugh, chill out, your standards are too high." But then we all collectively benefit from women who decided that the bare minimum wasn't good enough. Do you REALLY want to live in a world designed by a man who thinks most things can be put off or not done at all if it means he gets to spend more time playing video games?

You have just reverse engineered the formerly long-standing idea that women, by nature, are suited towards tending the home and the domestic sphere of influence, which in turn, makes the world a better place to live.

To rail against nature and expect men to act as women is an exercise in futility. As evidenced by all the women in this thread who keep trying, and failing at it. The answer is literally right there in your face.

Are you arguing that the solution is for women to just stay at home and not work? If so, I respect the point of view but it’s not realistic for most families especially now so women should just stop asking for help from men? I don’t think that’s the solution either.

It’s not fair that women are being asked to compensate for broken society. Food system full of junk food? Just plan healthy meals and prep them every day! School rundown? Just join the PTO and plan lots of enrichment.

It never ends. We don’t have a safety net we have women.

No, but a good idea would be to drop the rope on the compulsion to be breadwinner 4 times over just for “fulfillment” and “independence” that leaves a woman burnt out on both ends. It’s certainly a difficult conundrum, but we have to start where we can and work with our strengths, not labor upstream against them. We must deal with the world as it is, not as we dream it could be.

So, are you saying that women should never have time-consuming jobs outside the house? Can men have jobs that bring in 4 times the salary just for "fulfillment" and "independence"?

My husband is exactly as capable as I am of doing everything for our children, house, and pets. Other than giving birth, he's done it all (our twins were formula-fed because of their premature birth). He fed them as babies. I fed them as babies. He feeds them as third graders. I feed them as third graders. He can do laundry. I can do laundry. He can read a calendar. I can read a calendar.

Stop enabling these helpless man babies and stop showing them family dynamics where it's fine if they come home from work and then do nothing else around the house.

Well right there you just mentioned a major inequality—you can give birth and he can’t. You fed them in their infant years, he fed them once they were older and less helpless. The crux of my argument is that it is almost always the case that women will end up with a so-called inequal load, in some way, in the home. It’s just a fact of reality. It’s up to each individual person how they will deal with that fact of reality—some women mommy track, and some women intuitively understand this and avoid marriage and children altogether in order to pursue those time-intensive goals. A valid choice, and IMO better for her than running herself ragged trying to “have it all”.

Life is about tradeoffs for everyone, male and female. I would advise a man who is killing himself working a high-flying job at the expense of the well-being of his wife and children to do the same—take a step back. But that’s a different conversation for another thread.

Sorry, disregard the fed them older thing, I skipped a part reading obviously

DP. Actually it shows why you are making excuses for your preconceived order of things. Because you know quite well that the issues related to birth are so time limited.

I think it’s about power and perception. OP makes 4x her husband; she has much power in her relationship than she is willing to exert. I find that most women are not willing to exert power because they want their husbands to still think of them as nice and feminine. They will take fake harmony over making waves. I don’t worry about such things, so I may be more of a harpy but I don’t have the issues that flood this thread.

No one in a marriage should think they have more power, let alone feel entitled to “exert” that power, simply because they make more money. That is a completely unhealthy and borderline abusive dynamic. And if that’s how you feel relationships should function then you should simply not get married.

+1, it's messed up. It's also fairly useless for most women -- most women do not outearn their husbands, and those that do rarely outearn them by that much. I outearned my DH when we first had kids, but only by may 20% more. I did not view that as leverage for anything -- it simply was what it was.

Now my DH earns twice what I do, and I don't let him get away with trying to say this means he doesn't have to pitch in at home. It's his home, too. They are his kids, too. If he wants to suggest that we as a unit outsource more because he feels his work doesn't leave enough time for him to do his share, I'm all ears -- totally fine with spending some of our joint income on making our lives easier and more efficient.

But no, the higher earner does not have leverage over the other person. That's gross.

Post this krap in a new thread.

This is at all what Op is dealing with not doing to her spouse.

She’s dealing with an unstable, dysfunctional, untreated, abusive ADHD husband who neglects and ignores basic family and household responsibilities.

And yes he is thankless and ungrateful to Op, who is the breadwinner and runs the entire house and cleans up his messes, by herself.

I wonder when the last time he said Thank you for anything large (planning a whole vacation, holiday, school selection) or small (dinner) to OP.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What happens if you assign him a list of chores (doing the executive function piece for him) each night so it’s not just you sitting there catching up while he unwinds?

For me that’s the thing that would just be unacceptable.

“I’m tired, I need to watch tv. I had a long day. I didn’t sleep well again. I was up early, working.”

DP, but this. There is always an excuse.

A lot of this comes down to a game of chicken where my DH is willing to let a lot of things about our kids and our home get REALLY bad before he would step in and actually take the lead on them. And even then, he'd start with "Hey I noticed the kids fingernails are really long and dirty, we should probably do something about that" before actually doing anything -- "we" in this case means me.

I think I'd have to get like a terminal disease before he'd actually rouse himself to do a lot of this stuff, and even then I know he'd panic and be telling me that he just could never in a million years figure out how to sign our kids up for summer camp on his own, can I do it?

I think if I died, he'd get his mom to come live with him. But she's almost 80.

I can't die.

+1000 I think this is the crux of it for a lot of families (and I do not believe that ALL of these DHs have ADHD). I think women generally have higher standards for things like healthy meals, kid enrichment, clean and organized home.

So a lot of these men aren't shirking in their minds; they just think their wives should chill out more instead of they should be stepping up and doing more. And honestly? Sometimes they might be right. Sometimes.

Ok, then what’s a basic baseline for your house, yard, child-raising?

And should only one parent keep to the baseline or both? Or equal amounts of time at baseline and below baseline.

Let’s assume no above baseline so F nutrition, bedtimes, fancy ECs, and supplementing at home. Just let the Tiger Parents win that one.

It's interesting to me that people will write this dynamic off as "well she just has higher standards, that's not his fault" but WHY do so many women have higher standards of cleanliness, nutrition, organization, timeliness, etc., than their husbands? This explanation acts as though women collectively are just unrealistic about what needs to be done or how well it has to be done, but what if, as a society, we just decided to live down to the standards of all these men? What would society look like? Dirty houses, kids late for school 3/5 days, no vacations because nothing gets planned, meals mostly fast food or whatever can be thrown together last minute, schools bare bones and no fundraising or extra programming because no PTA at all (be honest, what percent of your PTA is men versus women, and what percent of the men are there WITH their wives and not in instead of them), and so on.

Like it's easy to roll our eyes at women and say "ugh, chill out, your standards are too high." But then we all collectively benefit from women who decided that the bare minimum wasn't good enough. Do you REALLY want to live in a world designed by a man who thinks most things can be put off or not done at all if it means he gets to spend more time playing video games?

You have just reverse engineered the formerly long-standing idea that women, by nature, are suited towards tending the home and the domestic sphere of influence, which in turn, makes the world a better place to live.

To rail against nature and expect men to act as women is an exercise in futility. As evidenced by all the women in this thread who keep trying, and failing at it. The answer is literally right there in your face.

Are you arguing that the solution is for women to just stay at home and not work? If so, I respect the point of view but it’s not realistic for most families especially now so women should just stop asking for help from men? I don’t think that’s the solution either.

It’s not fair that women are being asked to compensate for broken society. Food system full of junk food? Just plan healthy meals and prep them every day! School rundown? Just join the PTO and plan lots of enrichment.

It never ends. We don’t have a safety net we have women.

No, but a good idea would be to drop the rope on the compulsion to be breadwinner 4 times over just for “fulfillment” and “independence” that leaves a woman burnt out on both ends. It’s certainly a difficult conundrum, but we have to start where we can and work with our strengths, not labor upstream against them. We must deal with the world as it is, not as we dream it could be.

So, are you saying that women should never have time-consuming jobs outside the house? Can men have jobs that bring in 4 times the salary just for "fulfillment" and "independence"?

My husband is exactly as capable as I am of doing everything for our children, house, and pets. Other than giving birth, he's done it all (our twins were formula-fed because of their premature birth). He fed them as babies. I fed them as babies. He feeds them as third graders. I feed them as third graders. He can do laundry. I can do laundry. He can read a calendar. I can read a calendar.

Stop enabling these helpless man babies and stop showing them family dynamics where it's fine if they come home from work and then do nothing else around the house.

Well right there you just mentioned a major inequality—you can give birth and he can’t. You fed them in their infant years, he fed them once they were older and less helpless. The crux of my argument is that it is almost always the case that women will end up with a so-called inequal load, in some way, in the home. It’s just a fact of reality. It’s up to each individual person how they will deal with that fact of reality—some women mommy track, and some women intuitively understand this and avoid marriage and children altogether in order to pursue those time-intensive goals. A valid choice, and IMO better for her than running herself ragged trying to “have it all”.

Life is about tradeoffs for everyone, male and female. I would advise a man who is killing himself working a high-flying job at the expense of the well-being of his wife and children to do the same—take a step back. But that’s a different conversation for another thread.

Sorry, disregard the fed them older thing, I skipped a part reading obviously

DP. Actually it shows why you are making excuses for your preconceived order of things. Because you know quite well that the issues related to birth are so time limited.

I think it’s about power and perception. OP makes 4x her husband; she has much power in her relationship than she is willing to exert. I find that most women are not willing to exert power because they want their husbands to still think of them as nice and feminine. They will take fake harmony over making waves. I don’t worry about such things, so I may be more of a harpy but I don’t have the issues that flood this thread.

It’s hardly my preconceived order of things—it is the stark naked reality that there will always be, to some extent, in some way, an inequality in domestic labor tilted towards women. I don’t have these issues either, because I have acknowledged these realities and made decisions to affirmatively address them in my life.

It did involve letting go of some things. If OP feels like she doesnt have the time/energy to spend on XYZ, and does not want to adjust her load so that she does have time/energy, she will have to let go a bit and accept that her husband might have a lower standard than she, but he can still do it. She said as much in the very first post, it’s not that he won’t do it. Perhaps she needs to let go of the imaginary people in her head judging her for being a McDonald’s mom (to use an example upthread), and let this man fully take ownership of his tasks. And most importantly, not be a perfectionist and pick apart or otherwise minimize or resent his contribution. One cannot have it both ways—if you want it done well, do it yourself; if you want it done, but don’t want to do it yourself, drop the rope. We can only control ourselves.

I took a new job, doubled my salary and guess what happened?

My adhd/asd spouse now diverts a large part of his compensation to invest in startups without telling me.

He literally said: our HHI is the same so I’ll out $300k per year back into my company or others.

And this is after we ran a family forecast with our tax guy on how much WE would save and invest if I took the new job.

I am going to have to hire a forensic accountant to find out wtf happened to a third of this income this year. And he’s so out of it mentally, he doesn’t see the problem. And attacks me if I ask an any basic questions about what happened here with our family cash flow.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What happens if you assign him a list of chores (doing the executive function piece for him) each night so it’s not just you sitting there catching up while he unwinds?

For me that’s the thing that would just be unacceptable.

“I’m tired, I need to watch tv. I had a long day. I didn’t sleep well again. I was up early, working.”

DP, but this. There is always an excuse.

A lot of this comes down to a game of chicken where my DH is willing to let a lot of things about our kids and our home get REALLY bad before he would step in and actually take the lead on them. And even then, he'd start with "Hey I noticed the kids fingernails are really long and dirty, we should probably do something about that" before actually doing anything -- "we" in this case means me.

I think I'd have to get like a terminal disease before he'd actually rouse himself to do a lot of this stuff, and even then I know he'd panic and be telling me that he just could never in a million years figure out how to sign our kids up for summer camp on his own, can I do it?

I think if I died, he'd get his mom to come live with him. But she's almost 80.

I can't die.

+1000 I think this is the crux of it for a lot of families (and I do not believe that ALL of these DHs have ADHD). I think women generally have higher standards for things like healthy meals, kid enrichment, clean and organized home.

So a lot of these men aren't shirking in their minds; they just think their wives should chill out more instead of they should be stepping up and doing more. And honestly? Sometimes they might be right. Sometimes.

Ok, then what’s a basic baseline for your house, yard, child-raising?

And should only one parent keep to the baseline or both? Or equal amounts of time at baseline and below baseline.

Let’s assume no above baseline so F nutrition, bedtimes, fancy ECs, and supplementing at home. Just let the Tiger Parents win that one.

It's interesting to me that people will write this dynamic off as "well she just has higher standards, that's not his fault" but WHY do so many women have higher standards of cleanliness, nutrition, organization, timeliness, etc., than their husbands? This explanation acts as though women collectively are just unrealistic about what needs to be done or how well it has to be done, but what if, as a society, we just decided to live down to the standards of all these men? What would society look like? Dirty houses, kids late for school 3/5 days, no vacations because nothing gets planned, meals mostly fast food or whatever can be thrown together last minute, schools bare bones and no fundraising or extra programming because no PTA at all (be honest, what percent of your PTA is men versus women, and what percent of the men are there WITH their wives and not in instead of them), and so on.

Like it's easy to roll our eyes at women and say "ugh, chill out, your standards are too high." But then we all collectively benefit from women who decided that the bare minimum wasn't good enough. Do you REALLY want to live in a world designed by a man who thinks most things can be put off or not done at all if it means he gets to spend more time playing video games?

You have just reverse engineered the formerly long-standing idea that women, by nature, are suited towards tending the home and the domestic sphere of influence, which in turn, makes the world a better place to live.

To rail against nature and expect men to act as women is an exercise in futility. As evidenced by all the women in this thread who keep trying, and failing at it. The answer is literally right there in your face.

Are you arguing that the solution is for women to just stay at home and not work? If so, I respect the point of view but it’s not realistic for most families especially now so women should just stop asking for help from men? I don’t think that’s the solution either.

It’s not fair that women are being asked to compensate for broken society. Food system full of junk food? Just plan healthy meals and prep them every day! School rundown? Just join the PTO and plan lots of enrichment.

It never ends. We don’t have a safety net we have women.

No, but a good idea would be to drop the rope on the compulsion to be breadwinner 4 times over just for “fulfillment” and “independence” that leaves a woman burnt out on both ends. It’s certainly a difficult conundrum, but we have to start where we can and work with our strengths, not labor upstream against them. We must deal with the world as it is, not as we dream it could be.

So, are you saying that women should never have time-consuming jobs outside the house? Can men have jobs that bring in 4 times the salary just for "fulfillment" and "independence"?

My husband is exactly as capable as I am of doing everything for our children, house, and pets. Other than giving birth, he's done it all (our twins were formula-fed because of their premature birth). He fed them as babies. I fed them as babies. He feeds them as third graders. I feed them as third graders. He can do laundry. I can do laundry. He can read a calendar. I can read a calendar.

Stop enabling these helpless man babies and stop showing them family dynamics where it's fine if they come home from work and then do nothing else around the house.

Well right there you just mentioned a major inequality—you can give birth and he can’t. You fed them in their infant years, he fed them once they were older and less helpless. The crux of my argument is that it is almost always the case that women will end up with a so-called inequal load, in some way, in the home. It’s just a fact of reality. It’s up to each individual person how they will deal with that fact of reality—some women mommy track, and some women intuitively understand this and avoid marriage and children altogether in order to pursue those time-intensive goals. A valid choice, and IMO better for her than running herself ragged trying to “have it all”.

Life is about tradeoffs for everyone, male and female. I would advise a man who is killing himself working a high-flying job at the expense of the well-being of his wife and children to do the same—take a step back. But that’s a different conversation for another thread.

Sorry, disregard the fed them older thing, I skipped a part reading obviously

DP. Actually it shows why you are making excuses for your preconceived order of things. Because you know quite well that the issues related to birth are so time limited.

I think it’s about power and perception. OP makes 4x her husband; she has much power in her relationship than she is willing to exert. I find that most women are not willing to exert power because they want their husbands to still think of them as nice and feminine. They will take fake harmony over making waves. I don’t worry about such things, so I may be more of a harpy but I don’t have the issues that flood this thread.

No one in a marriage should think they have more power, let alone feel entitled to “exert” that power, simply because they make more money. That is a completely unhealthy and borderline abusive dynamic. And if that’s how you feel relationships should function then you should simply not get married.

+1, it's messed up. It's also fairly useless for most women -- most women do not outearn their husbands, and those that do rarely outearn them by that much. I outearned my DH when we first had kids, but only by may 20% more. I did not view that as leverage for anything -- it simply was what it was.

Now my DH earns twice what I do, and I don't let him get away with trying to say this means he doesn't have to pitch in at home. It's his home, too. They are his kids, too. If he wants to suggest that we as a unit outsource more because he feels his work doesn't leave enough time for him to do his share, I'm all ears -- totally fine with spending some of our joint income on making our lives easier and more efficient.

But no, the higher earner does not have leverage over the other person. That's gross.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What happens if you assign him a list of chores (doing the executive function piece for him) each night so it’s not just you sitting there catching up while he unwinds?

For me that’s the thing that would just be unacceptable.

“I’m tired, I need to watch tv. I had a long day. I didn’t sleep well again. I was up early, working.”

DP, but this. There is always an excuse.

A lot of this comes down to a game of chicken where my DH is willing to let a lot of things about our kids and our home get REALLY bad before he would step in and actually take the lead on them. And even then, he'd start with "Hey I noticed the kids fingernails are really long and dirty, we should probably do something about that" before actually doing anything -- "we" in this case means me.

I think I'd have to get like a terminal disease before he'd actually rouse himself to do a lot of this stuff, and even then I know he'd panic and be telling me that he just could never in a million years figure out how to sign our kids up for summer camp on his own, can I do it?

I think if I died, he'd get his mom to come live with him. But she's almost 80.

I can't die.

+1000 I think this is the crux of it for a lot of families (and I do not believe that ALL of these DHs have ADHD). I think women generally have higher standards for things like healthy meals, kid enrichment, clean and organized home.

So a lot of these men aren't shirking in their minds; they just think their wives should chill out more instead of they should be stepping up and doing more. And honestly? Sometimes they might be right. Sometimes.

Ok, then what’s a basic baseline for your house, yard, child-raising?

And should only one parent keep to the baseline or both? Or equal amounts of time at baseline and below baseline.

Let’s assume no above baseline so F nutrition, bedtimes, fancy ECs, and supplementing at home. Just let the Tiger Parents win that one.

It's interesting to me that people will write this dynamic off as "well she just has higher standards, that's not his fault" but WHY do so many women have higher standards of cleanliness, nutrition, organization, timeliness, etc., than their husbands? This explanation acts as though women collectively are just unrealistic about what needs to be done or how well it has to be done, but what if, as a society, we just decided to live down to the standards of all these men? What would society look like? Dirty houses, kids late for school 3/5 days, no vacations because nothing gets planned, meals mostly fast food or whatever can be thrown together last minute, schools bare bones and no fundraising or extra programming because no PTA at all (be honest, what percent of your PTA is men versus women, and what percent of the men are there WITH their wives and not in instead of them), and so on.

Like it's easy to roll our eyes at women and say "ugh, chill out, your standards are too high." But then we all collectively benefit from women who decided that the bare minimum wasn't good enough. Do you REALLY want to live in a world designed by a man who thinks most things can be put off or not done at all if it means he gets to spend more time playing video games?

You have just reverse engineered the formerly long-standing idea that women, by nature, are suited towards tending the home and the domestic sphere of influence, which in turn, makes the world a better place to live.

To rail against nature and expect men to act as women is an exercise in futility. As evidenced by all the women in this thread who keep trying, and failing at it. The answer is literally right there in your face.

Are you arguing that the solution is for women to just stay at home and not work? If so, I respect the point of view but it’s not realistic for most families especially now so women should just stop asking for help from men? I don’t think that’s the solution either.

It’s not fair that women are being asked to compensate for broken society. Food system full of junk food? Just plan healthy meals and prep them every day! School rundown? Just join the PTO and plan lots of enrichment.

It never ends. We don’t have a safety net we have women.

No, but a good idea would be to drop the rope on the compulsion to be breadwinner 4 times over just for “fulfillment” and “independence” that leaves a woman burnt out on both ends. It’s certainly a difficult conundrum, but we have to start where we can and work with our strengths, not labor upstream against them. We must deal with the world as it is, not as we dream it could be.

So, are you saying that women should never have time-consuming jobs outside the house? Can men have jobs that bring in 4 times the salary just for "fulfillment" and "independence"?

My husband is exactly as capable as I am of doing everything for our children, house, and pets. Other than giving birth, he's done it all (our twins were formula-fed because of their premature birth). He fed them as babies. I fed them as babies. He feeds them as third graders. I feed them as third graders. He can do laundry. I can do laundry. He can read a calendar. I can read a calendar.

Stop enabling these helpless man babies and stop showing them family dynamics where it's fine if they come home from work and then do nothing else around the house.

Well right there you just mentioned a major inequality—you can give birth and he can’t. You fed them in their infant years, he fed them once they were older and less helpless. The crux of my argument is that it is almost always the case that women will end up with a so-called inequal load, in some way, in the home. It’s just a fact of reality. It’s up to each individual person how they will deal with that fact of reality—some women mommy track, and some women intuitively understand this and avoid marriage and children altogether in order to pursue those time-intensive goals. A valid choice, and IMO better for her than running herself ragged trying to “have it all”.

Life is about tradeoffs for everyone, male and female. I would advise a man who is killing himself working a high-flying job at the expense of the well-being of his wife and children to do the same—take a step back. But that’s a different conversation for another thread.

Sorry, disregard the fed them older thing, I skipped a part reading obviously

DP. Actually it shows why you are making excuses for your preconceived order of things. Because you know quite well that the issues related to birth are so time limited.

I think it’s about power and perception. OP makes 4x her husband; she has much power in her relationship than she is willing to exert. I find that most women are not willing to exert power because they want their husbands to still think of them as nice and feminine. They will take fake harmony over making waves. I don’t worry about such things, so I may be more of a harpy but I don’t have the issues that flood this thread.

Sorry.

Power is doing exactly what you want, when you want.

And if you wants are always 100% about you- not your kids, spouse or house - you are pretty f’d up and self-centered.

For example, Op does whatever he wants. Everyone and everything else be damned; he doesn’t care and can’t handle it. Everyone else can pick up the prices. Every day.

That’s power. Focusing only on yourself. Not caring about anything else. Not doing anything else for others. Dumping responsibilities on your spouse and kids all the time.

It’s power, and abusive.

Anonymous wrote:All these people whose husbands get super angry about requests have larger issues than ADHD. Their husbands need meds or they should dump him. I’m not living my life with someone that is angry all the time. My husband has ADHD and has never yelled at me.

True but if they have kids the untreated, raging adhd coparent will continue to do just that. Enjoy the same lunatic phone calls, texts, missed emails, forgotten everything, lost goods, smelly kids, school calls as before.