Anonymous wrote:I always got a creepy vibe from the breastfeeding zealots. I don't think it was solely about the benefits over formula. Their passion and dogmatism on the subject always seemed to vastly outweigh the marginal benefits. So, I think there was some extra baggage being carried -- whether that was something to do with gender roles or something like the antivax crusaders with their autism hysteria, I don't know.

Same. It's interesting because the people I know who are hard-core breastfeeding advocates are on opposite sides of the political spectrum... same with the home birthers.

Anyway IMO we have gone too far with feminism to the point where it's actually not a positive for women. So many men (and women) expect women/mothers to do it all under the guise of 'equality' when the expectations now are not equal at all.

I always got a creepy vibe from the breastfeeding zealots. I don't think it was solely about the benefits over formula. Their passion and dogmatism on the subject always seemed to vastly outweigh the marginal benefits. So, I think there was some extra baggage being carried -- whether that was something to do with gender roles or something like the antivax crusaders with their autism hysteria, I don't know.

Anonymous wrote:We should counter the "breast is best" campaign with a "formula is fine" campaign.

Well it is fine, and I DO think breastfeeding is bad for dads, on the whole. But that doesn't really have anything to do with the benefits of breastfeeding or why it's encouraged. I think it just means we need to have more conversations about the impact on dad and study strategies for helping.

For example I hated pumping, but I always pumped one bottle a day for my husband to do at night. This helped with my sleep, for sure, and also was VERY important imo for their bonding and my husband's sense of...not "ownership" but I'm struggling to find the word. If we do it again, I might make that at least two bottles and do combo feeding so I didn't have to pump. But for the first one that was all very fraught for me because I was so worried about supply, mastitis, etc.

Something I've realized about my DH is that he is really a terrible cohabitation partner. He is so lazy and selfish around the house. I really hate it. But it's my only complaint. As soon as we are away from the house, I can mostly put it behind me. So I'm trying to frame it that way in my head, and focus on outsourcing. It is tough though.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gen X says hold my beer.
Did I use that right? Probably not, I’m old. Anyway, we also definitely were sold the same bill of goods by guys who purported to be feminists who were looking for career women who would be equal partners yada yada. Fast forward 20 years and they still don’t know where to put away the colander or check the school schedule to find out which days the kids will be off, or know how to check the kids grades online.
From where I sit, you millennials aren’t doing somewhat better. Each generation is a slow grind towards progress.

Amen! Exactly.

When we had a two month old (who I stayed home with) my Gen X husband told our friends he wished he could stay at home with her so he could PLAY HIS ELECTRIC GUITAR ALL DAY. The fact that he had been a father of a newborn for two months living in a little rambler and still thought he would have been able to play his loud guitar a lot made me want to burn his guitar in the fireplace.

There it is: “little rambler”

The real complaint always comes out, even when not intended.

JFC. You’re like a dog with a bone, and you continue to be wrong.

Let me type slowly for you, to aid you in reading comprehension.

The fact that their house is “a little rambler”
Is 100% relevant
Because her idiot husband
Thought he could play a loud electric instrument in it
All day
In close proximity
(by virtue of the size of the house)
To his infant

DP. But I doubt the PP referencing the rambler would've thought it was a good idea to play the guitar in a bigger place. The rambler reference was a gratuitous swipe.

We should counter the "breast is best" campaign with a "formula is fine" campaign.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe men do a ton, an equal share let’s say, but are simply less vocal about their contributions and, especially, their complaints. Women, biologically, are programmed to be more emotional. They’re more chatty. They initiate 70% of divorces and 90% if they’re college educated. They’re more flighty, and variant in temperament, and neurotic in general as has been reported by top scientists. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/

So a woman might complain a lot about feeling the emotional burden of parenthood, and a career, but perhaps that’s just her subjective, emotion-based, rather than a fact-based, objective assessment of her situation, we’re outside observers able to quantify her particular case.

They initiate 70% of divorces because men suck and women tire of putting up with their BS, but then, you already knew that.

It’s actually because men punt doing the paperwork so their wives take on one last bit of administrative function.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I say this as a woman who breastfed (for a while): If you do exclusive breastfeeding you are setting yourself up for a "Mom does everything" dynamic from the get-go.

This right here.

In terms of “what happened?” I’d argue a push to breastfeed is one of main drivers of inequality. The mom is the only one who can feed the baby and is in charge of feeding the baby. Meaning she takes on the emotional labor of when to feed.

This is such BS. As Ive stated before, if you are nursing then Dad can do everything else. But most men don't - why? Its not because of breastfeeding.

Because the hardest and most time consuming job is breastfeeding. Breastfeeding a newborn can take hours and hours every day and throughout the night. It’s all consuming the first few weeks and maybe months. Not the same as changing diapers or whatever else there is to do. Even if dad IS doing other stuff in the house, it’s enforced that mom is in charge of the baby. It’s mom’s baby. Surely you understand that only the mom knows when her breast feels full and that the baby wants mom in order to eat, right?

It’s awesome if you’re someone who was able to breastfeed and not be the primary parent. But most moms cannot pull that off.

Our twins were slightly premature and my milk never sufficiently came in so they ended up both being bottle fed with formula. I agree that it was awesome. It meant that basically since the day they were born there was nothing that I could do for them that my husband couldn't. He is a total 50/50 dad. When they were five months old we took a trip to OBX with his family and I had to leave early for a work meeting. He had them without me for two days and then drove home with them from OBX and had them at home for two days. No problem. They are now almost 10 and turn to us equally for things. They've never thought mom does X and dad does Y. We both do X and Y.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You're not mad because they don't help more.

You're mad because they don't earn more.

I wrote the OP and it’s very bluntly about men who earn well. What are you talking about?

This was how I read your OP as well. I actually don’t think it really even applies to couples who don’t earn a lot.

Many, many women don’t want our husbands to work as much or earn as much! We want to earn money. We like our jobs. We want our husbands to stop working so much, come home, and be the life partners they promised to be.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a very privileged conversation. If this is the kind of thing that families with top flight professionals with HHI of $300k+ are going through, what the hell are the nannies, housekeepers, and contractors who work for these people experiencing in their own roles as mothers, fathers, and spouses?

They are doing shift work, don’t have young kids or are married to someone who does shift work.

This. They also don’t tend to move away from their entire support network.

Yup. They also don’t claim they had “no choice” but to move away from their extended family (somehow the fact that they CHOSE their major in college that would require living in certain areas never crosses their minds) and they don’t have the luxury of 90% of them claiming they have Narcissistic Moms Who Couldn’t Be Around My Children Anyway (there is absolutely zero chance that the amount of people who claim this here can statistically be true).

And no, before you bother, I’m the furthest thing from a narcissist and my children aren’t adults. And please don’t bother being predictable and coming back with sOuNdS LiKe wHaT a NaRcIsSiSt wOuLd sAy” because you’re terminally dim.

I have no idea what you are talking about. Most housekeepers and contractors did not go to college, and if they did, they didn’t major in anything that led them to these jobs.
I haven’t found that the percentage of people who claim to have a Narcissistic Parent Who Can’t Be Around My Children Anyway varies with income level or profession.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I say this as a woman who breastfed (for a while): If you do exclusive breastfeeding you are setting yourself up for a "Mom does everything" dynamic from the get-go.

This right here.

In terms of “what happened?” I’d argue a push to breastfeed is one of main drivers of inequality. The mom is the only one who can feed the baby and is in charge of feeding the baby. Meaning she takes on the emotional labor of when to feed.

This is such BS. As Ive stated before, if you are nursing then Dad can do everything else. But most men don't - why? Its not because of breastfeeding.

Because the hardest and most time consuming job is breastfeeding. Breastfeeding a newborn can take hours and hours every day and throughout the night. It’s all consuming the first few weeks and maybe months. Not the same as changing diapers or whatever else there is to do. Even if dad IS doing other stuff in the house, it’s enforced that mom is in charge of the baby. It’s mom’s baby. Surely you understand that only the mom knows when her breast feels full and that the baby wants mom in order to eat, right?

It’s awesome if you’re someone who was able to breastfeed and not be the primary parent. But most moms cannot pull that off.

Have to disagree on the breastfeeding. It's a matter of luck whether it works out or not for you but after powering through the first couple of weeks I enjoyed breastfeeding, the convenience of it and also the ability to just sit there and not feel obligated to be Doing Something, while still chilling and just letting the kid feed. And you can leave a conversation, go hide somewhere private and quietly scroll your phone while you feed instead of having to be 100% on in social situations.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gen X says hold my beer.
Did I use that right? Probably not, I’m old. Anyway, we also definitely were sold the same bill of goods by guys who purported to be feminists who were looking for career women who would be equal partners yada yada. Fast forward 20 years and they still don’t know where to put away the colander or check the school schedule to find out which days the kids will be off, or know how to check the kids grades online.
From where I sit, you millennials aren’t doing somewhat better. Each generation is a slow grind towards progress.

Amen! Exactly.

When we had a two month old (who I stayed home with) my Gen X husband told our friends he wished he could stay at home with her so he could PLAY HIS ELECTRIC GUITAR ALL DAY. The fact that he had been a father of a newborn for two months living in a little rambler and still thought he would have been able to play his loud guitar a lot made me want to burn his guitar in the fireplace.

There it is: “little rambler”

The real complaint always comes out, even when not intended.

JFC. You’re like a dog with a bone, and you continue to be wrong.

Let me type slowly for you, to aid you in reading comprehension.

The fact that their house is “a little rambler”
Is 100% relevant
Because her idiot husband
Thought he could play a loud electric instrument in it
All day
In close proximity
(by virtue of the size of the house)
To his infant

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:IMO It’s because people are specifically socialized *out of* traditional relationships and buy into utopic visions of egalitarianism. Then real life hits and nature reveals herself to be uncompromising, thus the gender roles revert to the old fashioned no-fun way that things have been for thousands of years.

What a steaming pile of nonsense. Take this crap back to 1955 where it belongs, fossil.

DP. It’s true if you think about it. There was NO push for equality until birth control became wildly accessible.

Now it seems there is equality until kids come along. There’s no magic pill that can force men to desire to do things that are against their very nature. Yes there are outliers but most men don’t operate like women. None of this matters until kids come into the picture.

This is just tired sexist garbage. It’s not their “nature.” They’re just lazy and socialized to weaponize incompetence.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is a very privileged conversation. If this is the kind of thing that families with top flight professionals with HHI of $300k+ are going through, what the hell are the nannies, housekeepers, and contractors who work for these people experiencing in their own roles as mothers, fathers, and spouses?

They are doing shift work, don’t have young kids or are married to someone who does shift work.

This. They also don’t tend to move away from their entire support network.

Yup. They also don’t claim they had “no choice” but to move away from their extended family (somehow the fact that they CHOSE their major in college that would require living in certain areas never crosses their minds) and they don’t have the luxury of 90% of them claiming they have Narcissistic Moms Who Couldn’t Be Around My Children Anyway (there is absolutely zero chance that the amount of people who claim this here can statistically be true).

And no, before you bother, I’m the furthest thing from a narcissist and my children aren’t adults. And please don’t bother being predictable and coming back with sOuNdS LiKe wHaT a NaRcIsSiSt wOuLd sAy” because you’re terminally dim.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe men do a ton, an equal share let’s say, but are simply less vocal about their contributions and, especially, their complaints. Women, biologically, are programmed to be more emotional. They’re more chatty. They initiate 70% of divorces and 90% if they’re college educated. They’re more flighty, and variant in temperament, and neurotic in general as has been reported by top scientists. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/

So a woman might complain a lot about feeling the emotional burden of parenthood, and a career, but perhaps that’s just her subjective, emotion-based, rather than a fact-based, objective assessment of her situation, we’re outside observers able to quantify her particular case.

your "study" was self-reported.

Sorry you’re not happy with the results. There are a lot of other studies that show women always score higher than men in levels of neuroticism. That definitely correlates to a perception of disparate levels of domestic contributions between married men and women.

It’s not that they’re “not happy with the results.” It’s that your self-reported “study” is meaningless.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe men do a ton, an equal share let’s say, but are simply less vocal about their contributions and, especially, their complaints. Women, biologically, are programmed to be more emotional. They’re more chatty. They initiate 70% of divorces and 90% if they’re college educated. They’re more flighty, and variant in temperament, and neurotic in general as has been reported by top scientists. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3149680/

So a woman might complain a lot about feeling the emotional burden of parenthood, and a career, but perhaps that’s just her subjective, emotion-based, rather than a fact-based, objective assessment of her situation, we’re outside observers able to quantify her particular case.

They initiate 70% of divorces because men suck and women tire of putting up with their BS, but then, you already knew that.

It’s actually because men punt doing the paperwork so their wives take on one last bit of administrative function.