I was referencing distinguishing between sports teams in a single school that has women/mens or girls/boys teams in some sport. School sports teams shouldn’t have stupid lady-fied mascot names for the women’s teams. So the media report would say “the knight’s men’s soccer team won the Big Hoopla championship” instead of “the knight’s soccer team.” Because the second makes the male team the default. Instead of “the lady knights won the state championship” or such bullshit, “the knight’s women’s team won the state championship.”
I do not know how you jumped from this to women doctors/male acquaintances. My point of using mens and womens is soley to distinguish between two teams playing the same sport at the same school when in the context of media reports or announcements. So the audience knows which team is being discussed without devaluing the women’s teams by naming them “lady mascot” and leaving the men’s team as the default
So your mom got the full time child care, all the housework, and worked every other weekend? Yeah. I can see someone being unhappy with that.
As for her saying the money was “his” money- you ever wonder why she felt that way? Or why her husband didn’t step up and make it clear in action and word that the money was shared? Just b/c she had access to the joint accounts didn’t mean her spending wasn’t monitored or her thoughts on how that money should be budgeted given equal consideration. When two people join their money, the person making more needs to put serious effort into establishing that the money really is shared, equally, and the non-monetary contributions of the person making less are highly valued.
If anything, she is probably doing a lot of managing.
In my household, we both earn money, and are happy with a, “mine, yours and ours” arrangement where we budget and chip into shared accounts for shared things then have whatever is left for our own. A friend is not earning money while starting her business, relying on her husband’s income. They mainly have an “ours” account, but he sets aside a certain amount per month that she can spend with no pressure, and that seems really considerate.
It seems like the latter might’ve been a better set up for the family that kicked off this discussion, since the woman was clearly unhappy.
When they discuss gender specific circumstances of their lives, like pregnancy. And I’m pretty sure that in cases of medical services requiring undressing the patient, perhaps even checking the genitalia, most women and girls would prefer a woman.
This. My wife did the “stay one year at home thing” with our kid, before getting back at part time. Even now that the kid is almost 8 it’s ludicrous to think that I, as a full time software developer, do more work than her and should be able to “relax” after work. To run a three-or-more-person household in 40 hours a week seems to be quite impossible to me. (Unless you pay for services, like a maid, a cleaning crew, get your shopping done, etc, which is a luxury hardly anyone can afford.)
That was my biggest takeaway, as well. Once kids are involved, it’s no longer one of those things that ever stops happening. The idea that a man gets up, goes to work for 8-12 hours, and then after that he gets to come home and do nothing at all to maintain the house is fucking ludicrous.
When I was was doing the primary caregiving, our kid ran hard. 4/5 am wake ups and she sometimes didn’t crash until 9 at night (sleep was always our biggest battle). On top of that, you’ve got to make sure there’s food in the house, food ready to eat, food ready for the family to eat together, being patient with a developing mind, getting out to the park or other activities, and the whole damn place is often expected to be spotless. And that was often on top of being awake for hours in the middle of the night trying to get her back to sleep/just straight up sleeping on the floor to help her stay asleep.
I was useless for the better part of four years because of that. We definitely could have handled things better, but at least my wife stepped up with house work/cooking when she could (unlike a lot of the men around here who wouldn’t put down the Xbox to sooth a crying child when mom is pumping <— and as harsh/judgy as this may seem, I was often the only dad around, except for Saturday mornings. If there other dads around when mom/grandma couldn’t make it, I was the only dad dancing and singing with the rest of the class. That’s on top of the horror stories my wife tells me from the local mommies group, like the example above).
We both earn, though I earn more. Totally mingled finances. We each get an allowance, same amount, for whatevs. Solo take-out, new purse, anything we want that doesn’t fit in a different budget category. It works well for us. Wouldn’t work for other people. What matters is talking it out, figuring out priorities, finding a system that works for all partners, and committing to periodic reassement. Same thing for house chores and child duties. That is how to avoid resentment. Oh, and communcating any resentment when it starts, so things can be changed. It’s hard to do all that but critical
I’m sure you were praised to the heavens by random people too. That drives my husband nuts: “it’s just parenting and it shouldn’t be special when the male parent does it.” He apparently gets a lot of this unwanted praise if he is grocery shopping with our kid. I guess the double domesticity hits people hard.
Child care less stress than a job?! More joy, almost certainly. But not less stress.
But, see wimmins who stay home don’t do real work like men in the work place… /s
Right? We live in a society where only some kinds of labor are valued, and others are seen as a “natural” desire of one half of the population. We’re told that rearing children and keeping house is not work, but just want “we want to do as women” naturally. It’s a heaping pile of bullshit and it’s really distressing to see how many people here are just trying to reinforce that in their own lives.
And now a days, so many women do BOTH that and they have full time jobs. So, it’s double duty.
That’s great and there is often pressure on women to have children, even if they don’t want them. But when we do have them, we’re held to a much higher standard than our male partners for raising them. What we need to do is get rid of the societal pressure to have children for anyone and understand that it’s a choice people should be allowed to make on their own. There is nothing wrong with wanting children and nothing wrong with not wanting children - but whatever choice women make, we’re just subject to criticism no matter what. There just is no right way to be a woman in the world, and part of the problem is that we have to listen to a constant drumbeat that we’re “doing it wrong” whatever choices we make. This thread being a case in point.
Not for everyone, though. I think there is just so much pressure to “be normal” by having a family, that I think a lot of people don’t think about what it is that they want out of life, including having children. And that’s how you get parents who aren’t suited to child rearing (that parents of the Michigan shooter comes to mind).
I’m of the mind that greater social support for mothers would be helpful… and not just a card on mother’s day kind of thing, but actual logistic support for raising children. Other countries have real family leave and childcare for very young children, so you don’t have to worry about losing your job and you know that they you are going to have a place to take them when you DO go back to work that won’t break the bank. We just don’t do this, because we still live in a very patriarchal society, whatever progress we’ve made on women’s rights, which are quickly eroding before our eyes… We’re not a first world country, until we fix this problem.
I think there is a very real stress that the main bread winner feels that is a totally different stress then the person staying at home feels.
It’s the stress of knowing that there are people at home relying on you to keep them living indoors and fed. Most families in this country are just a few paychecks away from being in dire straits.
That’s also a whole lot of pressure on one person.
And the parent at home also feels THAT stress. It’s not just shouldered by the the one who works. And of course, in MOST cases, it’s BOTH partners working now a days. But generally speaking, the care of children and home STILL falls on women. Much like saying “Black Lives Matter” isn’t saying white lives don’t matter… saying that the partner who provides the majority of child rearing and housework experiences stress doesn’t mean that the other partner does not. One of those is considered by many to be the “natural” thing that one gender “wants” to do, which is not the case. And one gets a lot more discussion in our culture of the constructedness of the thing than the other. We’re just expected to “natural” love caring for others, even if we don’t. It’s really fucking oppressive and some acknowledgement is kind of all we’re asking for here.
Much like saying “Black Lives Matter” isn’t saying white lives don’t matter… saying that the partner who provides the majority of child rearing and housework experiences stress doesn’t mean that the other partner does not. One of those is considered by many to be the “natural” thing that one gender “wants” to do, which is not the case. And one gets a lot more discussion in our culture of the constructedness of the thing than the other. We’re just expected to “natural” love caring for others, even if we don’t. It’s really fucking oppressive and some acknowledgement is kind of all we’re asking for here.