Attitudes in young people

SpekySquarehead

My tuppence worth as a 26 year old male.

I love being independent and doing everything myself. I enjoy cooking and happy do it for others. I like my home to be clean so I keep on top of it - first thing I do when I wake up is make my bed for example. I split my washing by colours and iron them all and put them away.

My gran is very much O/S. She believes a woman should do all that a man should come home from work and have his dinner ready. When I tell her about any potential girlfriends, her first question is, "can she cook?".

My peers are becoming more and more O/S. Things have changed for this generation and finding people like those mentioned in the OP are in my experience few and far between.

paddy's_mum

Ames wrote: »

Feminists fought (do fight) for women to have choices.

I agree.

However, I would add that the husband and sons in the opening post also have choices .... they could look at other families way of conducting themselves to ensure fair play but they CHOOSE not to and for that I feel perfectly entitled to judge them as lazy, selfish takers...

More fool the mother for ACTIVELY TEACHING them such a grossly dishonourable way of living.

(PS Anyone would think reading some of this thread that pushing a hoover round or adding Fairy to a bowl of hot water or hanging a sheet on the line is rocket science and therefore by its very nature waaaay beyond the intellectual abilities of most human beings, especially men! )

Siebrie

I like the idea that was mentioned in The Tightwad Gazette: both partners put in the same amount of hours. If one works outside the house for 8 hours a day, the other puts in that many hours at home. If both work outside the house for 8 hours, then both put in the same number of hours at home after work and during weekends. (Which is what I think you do, fuddle, and which is a balanced family life.)

In the picture the OP painted, both partners seem to have equal hours outside the house, and then one contributes nothing at home. The posters seem to agree that that is the way the couple may have decided (however consciously) to do things. The problem is not with the couple, but with the next generation. The children should have been taught how to 'household'. If they then decide, with mum's co-operation (or insistence), that they do not have to actually do any of the household stuff, that is their family dynamics. To not teach them at all is a big failure.

fuddle

Freyasmum 'she doesn't appear to have taught her son's any life lessons' is what you've said.

This is my point about this discussion. This thread, on the whole, is bashing a woman over what someone else has observed or thinks goes on in the household.

Bashing a woman with tone of women's rights and equality while blaming her for not teaching her son's life lessons. See the irony? Man person in there somewhere who is also not contributing to teaching their sons skills... or is that because it's a woman's role to do so?

For all the OP knows there are nightly arguments about the woman not coping, tears, breakdown and inaction of the males to change. Her fault, or the way her husband was brought up when maybe choice wasn't as it is for women now.

My point being we don't know and we're slagging this woman off as being inadequate. For all we know she could be in a rut and trying to hide her misery to the OP pretending, as women do, to be supernum, loving wife and all round wonderwoman.

paddy's_mum

Fuddle - I do agree with the justice of the view expressed in your posts.

However, it is the nature of forums that readers have to take the information given at face value. The OP related what she had been told and unless readers choose to believe that every poster is a liar, her version must stand as truthful and that is what the Mother had to say. We have no room to doubt it.

However, if there is any parent reading this that thinks the same way, perhaps they should consider this viewpoint - our role as parent is to teach our children to live as independently as it is possible for that child to be, in the world as it is not as we would like it to be, and the mother or father who fails to teach this has failed in the most important parental role there is, in my opinion.

fuddle

I know that paddy's mum.

There's also opposing views within a forum. There has been plenty of reading between the lines and surmising already, I think the thread can cope with me doing the same in the opposite direction.

bouicca21

This thread rather reinforces my view that women's rights are also men's rights. Men have a right to be involved in domestic tasks including childcare, to choose what they wish to contribute to the household - in discussion and negotiation with their partners (male or female) of course.

Deliberately infantilising your husband and children is a power play. It's just as bad as a power play the other way - where a husband infantilises the wife by treating her as the little woman with an empty space for a brain. But in many ways 'queen of the hearth' is actually a much more clever and successful power play.

monnagran

I have to laugh.

Yes, I do believe that all children should have to learn basic life skills to enable them to cope on their own when the time comes, as it surely will, that they have to do just that.
No one has to be able to do everything, just survival techniques. How the chores are allocated in a family is a matter for that family alone. It all depends on circumstances and the willingness of the members of that family to play fair.

When my children were small they actually wanted to "help" which took a lot of time and patience on my part. Obviously as adolescents they didn't want to know but by that time there was no choice as I was working and we all had to pull our weight.
Thankfully, by that time they had the skills under their belts although my eldest son says that he has never recovered from the embarrassment of winning a prize at Junior school for doing the neatest hemming.

I agree with all this in theory.

However, I have been guilty of telling my sons that I did not bring up two boys in order to service my own car.

Mea culpa.

I do not always practise what I preach.

Pollycat

fuddle wrote: »

Freyasmum 'she doesn't appear to have taught her son's any life lessons' is what you've said.

This is my point about this discussion. This thread, on the whole, is bashing a woman over what someone else has observed or thinks goes on in the household.

Bashing a woman with tone of women's rights and equality while blaming her for not teaching her son's life lessons. See the irony? Man person in there somewhere who is also not contributing to teaching their sons skills... or is that because it's a woman's role to do so?

For all the OP knows there are nightly arguments about the woman not coping, tears, breakdown and inaction of the males to change. Her fault, or the way her husband was brought up when maybe choice wasn't as it is for women now.

My point being we don't know and we're slagging this woman off as being inadequate. For all we know she could be in a rut and trying to hide her misery to the OP pretending, as women do, to be supernum, loving wife and all round wonderwoman.

That is the nature of the beast that is public fora.
All we have to go on is what a poster writes.
Quite often someone will post about something that they think might be happening with/to another person.

However, when the OP posts this (in bold):

downshifter wrote: »

Over the past years I know there have been discussions about encouraging our offspring to develop more old style ways to save money, eat more healthily, be more creative etc etc and I must say my 2 are fairly good, one more than the other. However I was talking to someone today who's around mid 40s and was really shocked at her old-style attitudes.

She believes that boys should stay out of the kitchen (she has a 15 yr old and a 20 yr old who works 2 days a week so is at home most of the time) so although she works full time, she cooks, cleans, gardens, does anything that needs doing with the car, paints the house top to bottom every year, goes to school open nights and so on. She doesn't think its right that either they or her husband should do anything in the home. Her husband comes in at night after work, sits down in front of the tv and that's it. Her argument is that it's how she shows her love to them all and anyway, they'd be no good at it and she'd have to redo anything they do. It's how her mum and her gran did things (and my gran too apart from the car!) - but they didn't work outside of the home.

I was horrified - have we not moved on since those of us in the 60s/70s burned our bras and looked for 'New Man' (never found him but still looking!!). I've jokingly asked how her boys are going to manage when they find a partner as most girls won't put up with that, but she just laughs it off.

Obviously it's up to her how she runs her life but I was really disappointed and it set me wondering, are there other young people out there with these old-style attitudes still or is she just a one-off? Maybe there are lots of girls who will partner up with these lads and carry on in the way their mum does and I'm wrong. I'd be interested to know what others think.

DS

I think it's more than her just 'observing' or 'thinking' what goes on.

It sounds to me - and you are free to disagree - that the OP knows this woman well and has had conversations about her family doing nothing in the house.
It certainly doesn't sound like there are 'nightly arguments about the woman not coping, tears, breakdown and inaction of the males to change.'

I don't think there's been much (if any) 'reading between the lines and surmising'.

Your situation sounds very different.
I think if you'd started a thread about giving up work to do the housework, cooking etc you would have probably got a totally different response because you've taught your family to fend or themselves.

In the circumstances, I think it's perectly OK for women (and) men who don't share the same attitude to voice their opinion - and if that comes across as 'bashing' to you, well maybe it's justified.

VfM4meplse

GreyQueen wrote: »

Her DiLs will probably hate her guts.

Ain't that the truth.