Anonymous wrote:One complaint you sometimes hear from dads is that they feel like the wife's employee or junior partner in childcare. I've always wondered exactly what is meant by this or what is involves in practice. Is it about not knowing what to do? Not feeling sufficiently involved in decisions? Not being around enough? If you're a man who feels this way (or a wife whose DH complains about it) can you explain what it means?

Some are only casual observers but instead of complaining, they need to step up and do it as equal partners.

Anonymous wrote:I’ve never heard anyone use this phrase. But, it isn’t hard to figure out what they mean.

Agree, but I call troll. No man is ever sitting there complaining he doesn’t get to do a large enough share of the childcare duties

Anonymous wrote:Listen. One parent reads books and learns about how to grow while raising kids.

One parent doesn’t read a word.

Not that reading books makes you good. Lots of people don’t read, but you talk to them, and they have a solid philosophy, or took related college classes, or had a preschool teaching experience, etc etc etc. It’s the effort.

The person who doesn’t learn is the junior partner. And they can’t say crap to the senior partner unless they jump in and work at it.

This. It's not about reading books, it's just about putting in the effort and actually focusing on parenting as a valuable undertaking.

Someone upthread talked about how if you value something, you'll invest time and energy in it. I think about the effort some men I know put into buying a road bike, a car, following bands, traveling, etc. They do research. They spend time online investigating what experts say, weighing options. They try out different things and see what they like and what they don't. They can talk for hours on these subjects and it's clear they are passionate and invested.

I have met a couple men who are like this about parenting. Seriously, like two. But that is the kind of energy a lot of women put into parenting. Not controlling or obsessive, but just like "this really matters to me, I want to do it right." That might mean reading parenting books and trying out some of the techniques, or it could just mean putting in the hours with their kids to learn what works and what doesn't, or just to be present for their kids because they really value the role of parent.

Anonymous wrote: Men who pretend they can’t handle kids are playing you. In our relationship due to my job, my husband handles all aspects of child rearing. Just because someone is a man doesn’t mean they can raise a kid. The person who married the guy who waits for them to come home at 9pm is married to an a-hole and I’d leave that marriage asap.

So that you can split custody with him where he will continue to shirk parenting duties only the consequences for your kids will be much worse? Or so he can torpedo his relationship with your kids, which will have serious repercussions for them as adults? This is why many women stay in marriages with men you are terrible partners but aren't abusive.

I don't think anyone here is saying that men can't handle kids. But the PP who talked about "playing chicken" with parenting was spot on. Men play a game of chicken with their partners regarding parenting duties, and women are far less willing to play that game when it comes to the well-being of their kids. I think it's several factors. Women tend to develop stronger bonds with children earlier in life because of pregnancy and sometimes breastfeeding, and that makes them less willing to neglect their kids in the hopes their partner will pick up the slack. There are also social consequences for women who push back on parenting duties that don't exist for men. To use the example from this thread, a woman who chose not to feed her kids dinner until 9 or 10 at night would probably get CPS called on her (or the threat would be there). But in this thread you can see what the consequences are for a man who does this -- his wife gets blamed, or he gets defended as simply "doing it differently." For a mom, that's neglect. For a dad, it's okay.

Women are truly in a bind on this. If they divorce, they hurt their kids. If they stay and play chicken, they hurt their kids AND risk social/legal repercussions. But if they stay and just go ahead and do 80% of the parenting, they're a "control freak."

You can't win, so you just figure out which of these terrible options is most palatable. For me, and a lot of women, it's to accept that people will accuse me of being controlling because at least in that scenario, my kids get what they need.

Listen. One parent reads books and learns about how to grow while raising kids.

One parent doesn’t read a word.

Not that reading books makes you good. Lots of people don’t read, but you talk to them, and they have a solid philosophy, or took related college classes, or had a preschool teaching experience, etc etc etc. It’s the effort.

The person who doesn’t learn is the junior partner. And they can’t say crap to the senior partner unless they jump in and work at it.

Men who pretend they can’t handle kids are playing you. In our relationship due to my job, my husband handles all aspects of child rearing. Just because someone is a man doesn’t mean they can raise a kid. The person who married the guy who waits for them to come home at 9pm is married to an a-hole and I’d leave that marriage asap.

Here are some books I recommend

https://www.amazon.com/Control-Freak-Parrott-III/dp/0842337938/ref=sr_1_1?adgrpid=1345802795429998&hvadid=84112745564949&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=91813&hvnetw=o&hvqmt=e&hvtargid=kwd-84113015467361%3Aloc-190&hydadcr=22564_10446056&keywords=books+for+control+freaks&qid=1692876157&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/Losing-Control-Finding-Serenity-Hurts/dp/0982893000

https://www.amazon.com/Control-Freak-practice-allowing-co-creating/dp/1925900916

https://www.amazon.com/Get-Out-Your-Own-Self-Defeating/dp/0399519904/ref=asc_df_0399519904?tag=bingshoppinga-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=80539280274815&hvnetw=o&hvqmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=c&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=&hvtargid=pla-4584138866828654&psc=1

Also so you don't totally mess up your kids:

https://www.amazon.com/Gift-Failure-Parents-Children-Succeed/dp/0062299255

https://www.amazon.com/Blessing-Minus-Teachings-Resilient-Teenagers/dp/1416542043

https://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Carol-S-Dweck/dp/0345472322

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Anonymous wrote:These whine-fests are never ending. Have you never left your children at home for a weekend with your husband in charge? If not, why not? When you arrive home and all the kids are accounted for and no one had to go to the ER, it’s all good. His way might not be YOUR way, but isn’t that okay? To the super planners who posted…You need a “plan” to go out to dinner? What’s the problem with, “Kids, grab your coats, we are going out for dinner tonight.”

It’s like: I arrive home after a night out and its 9pm and kid hasn’t eaten dinner and DH is expecting me to make it.

Or I arrive home and its 10pm and kid isn’t in bed (guess who gets to handle the fallout)

Or I arrive home and there are dishes everywhere that nobody else will do.

Just go to bed.

So it's like a game of chicken as to who's willing to neglect the children the most?

+1 wtf is wrong with this poster? if you didn't want kids, you shouldn't have had kids.

-1 If you can't go out and come home at 9pm and go straight to bed and have your H handle parenting you are a terrible parent and a f'd up person.

If you want kids you need to let their father parent them, stop being such an insane control freak.

Wanting a kid to have dinner before 9 (or dinner at all) is being a control freak? Wow.

Yeah, either that poster is a troll or is projecting. Like, if you come home and rant at your DH because the kids had cereal and ice cream for dinner that night, I'd say unclench. But she said her DH hadn't fed them and it was 9 (presumably several hours after their normal dinner time). To the PP with this DH -- that's not junior-partner parenting, that's just being an utterly selfish a-hole. There were no indications you were marrying this kind of person?

I don't believe this. No kid would let it get to 9 without demanding dinner or something to eat.

If they’re scared of their dad or have already asked and he didn’t give them anything, it’s entirely plausible.

Right. Or “in a minute”. Or “as soon as I finish this”. Or whatever excuse.

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Anonymous wrote:I'm so confused by posts like these. Was there really no inkling that your husband was going to be like this?

I am too-- I vetted young men very hard for this when dating. Any trouble with motivation, executive functioning, desire to be an active parent, laziness about chores, irresponsibility or unreliability or entitlement to women's caregiving and they were dropped like a stone.

This. I mean yes of course there are guys who probably did a complete 180 but I find it hard to believe there weren't glaring red flags for most of these guys. Like the guy who let his kid stay in the same clothes for 5 days straight.

The 180 is rare unless they're cheating. It does sometimes happen that they have depression or some other health problem and refuse to do anything about it. Or that they are punishing their wife for some real or perceived injustice by treating the kids badly. Or that they have more kids than they wanted or can handle, or they agreed to just one more kid and it turns out to be really high maintenance or twins.

Yes, but in real life it’s rare for any of these things to happen. The ‘young man’ that you properly vetted while dating, will turn into the equal partner DH and split parenting duties 50-50.

I hope to god the extreme examples of shitty dads on here are rare. My husband would not forget to feed the kids or have them wear the same clothes for 5 days. No way. But when we were dating he was really excellent at most things he did - excelling in grad school and early career, very good with money and budget when we didn’t have a lot. He did not know how to cook a single thing or do any basic chores (his mom did absolutely everything) but seemed willing to learn to do basic laundry and learn to cook a few simple things. We did get married relatively young but all early signs were of some one who would do a great job on the things that were important to him.

It’s been the surprise and disappointment of my life that he doesn’t bring that energy to parenting 90 percent of the time. He loves our kids but he uses himself up at work keeping everybody happy and chasing awards and making sure his work product is flawless and he has nothing left. So he does bare minimum and sometimes it’s really better to do it myself. Our youngest needed an appointment and he promised to be in charge of it and just didn’t. I didn’t nag but eventually I just dealt with it myself. And guess what- the delay caused a lot of problems and a lot of remedial efforts. There are enough examples like this that I just handle the stuff that is important and we have more than some others because of our kids special needs. Things that we might agree as parents are important but then he calls me a worrier and assumes things will magically happen. And I guess they do (to him) because I don’t play chicken with things that affect my kids. I don’t regret having a second even though I knew this was going to be mostly on me- I would do it again. I’m not going to get divorced either. It’s just a really disappointing thing I wish were different.

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Anonymous wrote:These whine-fests are never ending. Have you never left your children at home for a weekend with your husband in charge? If not, why not? When you arrive home and all the kids are accounted for and no one had to go to the ER, it’s all good. His way might not be YOUR way, but isn’t that okay? To the super planners who posted…You need a “plan” to go out to dinner? What’s the problem with, “Kids, grab your coats, we are going out for dinner tonight.”

It’s like: I arrive home after a night out and its 9pm and kid hasn’t eaten dinner and DH is expecting me to make it.

Or I arrive home and its 10pm and kid isn’t in bed (guess who gets to handle the fallout)

Or I arrive home and there are dishes everywhere that nobody else will do.

Just go to bed.

So it's like a game of chicken as to who's willing to neglect the children the most?

+1 wtf is wrong with this poster? if you didn't want kids, you shouldn't have had kids.

-1 If you can't go out and come home at 9pm and go straight to bed and have your H handle parenting you are a terrible parent and a f'd up person.

If you want kids you need to let their father parent them, stop being such an insane control freak.

Wanting a kid to have dinner before 9 (or dinner at all) is being a control freak? Wow.

Yeah, either that poster is a troll or is projecting. Like, if you come home and rant at your DH because the kids had cereal and ice cream for dinner that night, I'd say unclench. But she said her DH hadn't fed them and it was 9 (presumably several hours after their normal dinner time). To the PP with this DH -- that's not junior-partner parenting, that's just being an utterly selfish a-hole. There were no indications you were marrying this kind of person?

I don't believe this. No kid would let it get to 9 without demanding dinner or something to eat.

My kid with ADHD would do this. She'd get involved in playing on her own in her room and just not pay attention to the fact that she was hungry, getting tired, and probably needed to go to the bathroom. She really does need the external cue of being called to dinner to initiate getting those needs met.

Lots of kids need that structure. That's why in most families, the parents dictate when mealtimes happen and call kids to eat, instead of just waiting until kids say they are hungry and seeing how that goes. It takes very little trial and error to discover that waiting for kids to identify their needs and then vocalize them clearly is a good path to meltdowns and frustration. Kids, especially younger kids or those like mine with executive functioning issues, are still learning how to identify and articular needs. Parents are supposed to be helping them do that, not simply hoping they figure it out on their own.

My H fell into some “junior partner” tendencies after our first kid, but I nipped that in the bud by actually leaving the house - like visiting a friend over a long weekend - and letting him figure stuff out. Maybe there were a few more chicken nuggets involved then I’d prefer, but he figured stuff out and gained confidence and our kid was fine.

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Anonymous wrote:I'm so confused by posts like these. Was there really no inkling that your husband was going to be like this?

I am too-- I vetted young men very hard for this when dating. Any trouble with motivation, executive functioning, desire to be an active parent, laziness about chores, irresponsibility or unreliability or entitlement to women's caregiving and they were dropped like a stone.

This. I mean yes of course there are guys who probably did a complete 180 but I find it hard to believe there weren't glaring red flags for most of these guys. Like the guy who let his kid stay in the same clothes for 5 days straight.

The 180 is rare unless they're cheating. It does sometimes happen that they have depression or some other health problem and refuse to do anything about it. Or that they are punishing their wife for some real or perceived injustice by treating the kids badly. Or that they have more kids than they wanted or can handle, or they agreed to just one more kid and it turns out to be really high maintenance or twins.

Yes, but in real life it’s rare for any of these things to happen. The ‘young man’ that you properly vetted while dating, will turn into the equal partner DH and split parenting duties 50-50.

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Anonymous wrote:I'm so confused by posts like these. Was there really no inkling that your husband was going to be like this?

I am too-- I vetted young men very hard for this when dating. Any trouble with motivation, executive functioning, desire to be an active parent, laziness about chores, irresponsibility or unreliability or entitlement to women's caregiving and they were dropped like a stone.

This. I mean yes of course there are guys who probably did a complete 180 but I find it hard to believe there weren't glaring red flags for most of these guys. Like the guy who let his kid stay in the same clothes for 5 days straight.

Even if there were zero red flags, I don’t understand women who go on to have MULTIPLE children with these manbabies.

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Anonymous wrote:These whine-fests are never ending. Have you never left your children at home for a weekend with your husband in charge? If not, why not? When you arrive home and all the kids are accounted for and no one had to go to the ER, it’s all good. His way might not be YOUR way, but isn’t that okay? To the super planners who posted…You need a “plan” to go out to dinner? What’s the problem with, “Kids, grab your coats, we are going out for dinner tonight.”

It’s like: I arrive home after a night out and its 9pm and kid hasn’t eaten dinner and DH is expecting me to make it.

Or I arrive home and its 10pm and kid isn’t in bed (guess who gets to handle the fallout)

Or I arrive home and there are dishes everywhere that nobody else will do.

Just go to bed.

So it's like a game of chicken as to who's willing to neglect the children the most?

+1 wtf is wrong with this poster? if you didn't want kids, you shouldn't have had kids.

-1 If you can't go out and come home at 9pm and go straight to bed and have your H handle parenting you are a terrible parent and a f'd up person.

If you want kids you need to let their father parent them, stop being such an insane control freak.

Wanting a kid to have dinner before 9 (or dinner at all) is being a control freak? Wow.

Yeah, either that poster is a troll or is projecting. Like, if you come home and rant at your DH because the kids had cereal and ice cream for dinner that night, I'd say unclench. But she said her DH hadn't fed them and it was 9 (presumably several hours after their normal dinner time). To the PP with this DH -- that's not junior-partner parenting, that's just being an utterly selfish a-hole. There were no indications you were marrying this kind of person?

Yes, it’s controlling. Do you control freaks it sounds completely normal to come home at 9 o’clock and start in on your husband… Have the kids eaten? Did they do their homework? Did you do spelling words? Do they have their pajamas on? How much TV did they watch? Did they brush their teeth? Did you wipe down the counter?

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah… give it an effing rest

If you think doing a good job as a parent is the same thing as being controlled, I don't know what to tell you. Ideally a father would motivate for nutrition, academics, health, and sleep on his own. If he doesn't, that's junior partner behavior and he deserves to be treated that way.

This is very toxic thinking.

She doesn’t get it. She won’t for a long time.

She thinks if she can control every single solitary aspect of her child’s life. It will all turn out great when in actuality, it’s exact opposite.

hmm yeah, famously, kids don’t need to eat, sleep, exercise or go to school

Maybe you can chip them a measure every movement and calorie.

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Anonymous wrote:If you come home at 9 and your child is awake and hungry and DH asks you to make dinner...yeah DH is an a-hole and I don't know how anybody can argue otherwise with a straight face. Those who are arguing it's bc the wife is controlling are not being serious. They are trying to get a rise out of folks.

If anybody who comes home at 9 o’clock and starts questioning their husband about everything that happened that night. Yeah you’re a control freak.

You need to find a better hobby lol

Like badgering my H over every little thing.