From a comment I posted elsewhere

[ailbhe]

My anecdata indicates that most mothers feel responsible for the well-being of their baby all the time, however far apart they are, and some fathers feel that, eg, they are not responsible for forgetting to feed the child [in their care] because they forgot.

Also, most mothers are too fucking tired to sort it out themselves. There's the whole, well, world and all the people in it, out there, and most of them expect the mothers to do it all - whether or not they also work a 40 or 60 hour week in a paid job - and pay for all the childcare too.

And then there's newspaper headlines: TRAGIC CHILD HORROR ALL MOTHER'S FAULT is one that they needn't even put back in the box between uses, it's so often needed.

And everyone blames the mothers who don't fight this, this, this weight of expectation and pretty much lets their well-meaning but also not fighting it partners off scot free. And if the mother rants about the partner she's a whiny nagging cow.

That's all for now. We now return me to my regularly scheduled blood pressure. Emer is GORGEOUS today and has been enjoying the swing. I have another post about unexpected visitors to post later.

Comments

[the0lady.livejournal.com]

"You're better at logistics" is usually just a cover up phrase for "I think it's women's work". After all, before we married them they were perfectly able to get from day to day without our planning every little detail for them, including quite complicated logistical transactions like buying new cars and going on holiday abroad.

This is by no means a reflection on Tony - I dare say he's better than most - just a reiteration of Ailbhe's point about responsibility. To apply a less personal filter to a similar situation, have you observed how often, at work, it is the person who has responsibility for doing something that finds a way of getting it done? When your bonus is on the line, all of a sudden a lot of these imaginary constraints about who's better at what don't seem so hard to overcome - and that holds for men as well as women.

[rmc28]

Nah, it's not code. I do finance and organisation and logistics because that's what I enjoy doing; Tony does cooking and cleaning up afterwards because that's what he enjoys doing. We have a family joke that we got married so I could do his paperwork and he could feed me. I can cook, and sometimes do; he can organise and sometimes does. Both of us do the laundry; neither of us likes cleaning the bathroom - eventually I got a cleaner to solve this problem.

I'm currently doing more of the housework and childcare but I believe that's because he went back to full-time work sooner than I did; when we both worked part-time it was much more balanced. I expect it to be more balanced again when I return to full-time hours in June.

It made sense for there to be only one of us ringing childminders up and making arrangements for interviews and so on, and it made sense for that person to be me; but I found it all emotionally draining and was generally doing it when Tony was at work.