BellaOnline Forums Relationships Married No Kids Division of Labor

I work with a woman who has two kids and she is always talking about having to get home to stay with the kids so her husband can go out and do his thing (his hobby). She never says anything about HER going out with the girls or doing something for herself. No balance there at all!

These women need to stand up for themselves. My friend would tell her husband that she was meeting the girls for coffee or whatever on a certain night. That night would come and she would walk the baby over to husband and say I will be home in a couple of hours. We both firmly believe that...people treat you the way you allow the to treat you.

i totally agree jzel. i have a hard time with this issue and find that i get really frustrated with the women who don't stand up for themselves. we teach people how to treat us, indeed! our friends have 2 kids and the husband gets to go snowboarding on a regular basis b/c the wife is willing to stay home with the kids. she acts like a martyr about it, but then never asks to do HER own thing. in this case, it's not like her husband wouldn't do it for her. she just plays this submissive, martyr role and then complains about being "stuck" taking care of the kids all day while he does whatever else. SPEAK UP FOR YOURSELF. CHOOSE DIFFERENTLY. it's YOUR life!!!

My husband is a "this is my time" kind of guy. I try not to put up with it, but it just leads to arguments that he does most of the work around here (SO not true) and I get sick of arguing with him.

I blame his parents 100%, his mom for never making him do anything and his dad for sitting around doing nothing while his mom slaved i the kitchen.

i think it's okay if both partners get to have "their time."

ingilbert, i definitely think how we're raised has everything to do with it! we learn gender roles from what we see. sometimes we reject what we see, but it can be easy to fall into a pattern.

Oh, and also, the division of labor regarding children will NEVER EVER be equal between men and women. Women will ALWAYS be the primary caregiver, and will ALWAYS be expected to be the ones to make the biggest sacrifices (notice I didn't say all the sacrifices, just the biggest.)

I think part of it is that men will never bond with their child the way a woman will.

I'm not sure I agree with that - I know several men who are the primary caregiver and the women really don't pay much attention to the kids.

The thing a lot of moms tell me is, when the husband has to watch the kids for an hour, he whines about having to "babysit." You never hear moms use the term babysit, they just call it parenting.

One of my friends who had a kid got tired of doing all the chores around the house as well as taking care of the baby, wanted her finacee to help her out. He pointed out that he's working all day earning money, so she didn't push him on it. Later on, SHE's working, and he doesn't have a job. Guess what? She STILL had to do all the chores! Plus he'd conveniently "not notice" that the kid's diaper was full (even if he does have a bad sense of smell, you'd think that you'd make sure to check that regularly) so she had to do THAT as well. When she would finally get fed up with it and point out how unfair it was, he'd act all [censored], MAYBE do some of the chores, and fall back into his old routine. She's learned to be a pushover on stuff like that because her dad would do the same thing, act like a big jerk if something was asked of him so she'd just give in. DON'T give in! Dig in with teeth and claws and MAKE them see it if they're being a hypocritical twerp!

What bugs be about these situations is that if the division of labour is not fair prior to having a child, what will magically change that after adding another full workload to the equation?

You only get stuck with what you accept.

Yep, this is one of my MAJOR reasons. How can the relationship be equal once you have a kid? Nothing the man can do will make up for pregnancy, but then even after that it continues...the woman is the primary caregiver. She has to breastfeed (YUCK! or suffer guilt for not doing it) she has to "choose" how much of her life to give up whereas the man is expected/even encouraged to work harder and become more personally successful so that he can 'put bread on the table.' I know this is an old-fashioned way of looking at it, but I don't think we've really come that far when it comes to parenting.

Stay at home dads? People talk about it but it is very uncommon. And after being sick for 9 months and then needing time to physically recover you'd need the husband to work at least while you are going through that, because you might not be physically able to! Most women can work through pregnancy but not all, and then you'd need some recovery time (of course how can you focus on recovering when you have to tend to a screaming infant??)...so it is a pipe-dream at this point to say Oh I'll be the worker and my husband will take care of the baby...you can't win! I really think I'd be on anti-depressants for the rest of my life after something like that.

And then if the husband puts in some childcare effort people are like Oooh what a great guy. She's very lucky....A nice pat on the back for doing 1/8th of what the woman does.

No way. I would be divorced in a second...I couldn't take the unfairness.