My comment. Just in case you were thinking that your Khmer wife is at all problematic, you can remind yourself why you don't have a western wife. I love the implicit assumption that the wife now dictates how the family is run, the husband is there just to do as he is told, or even better anticipate his wife's preferences and act on them without being asked. I witnessed a family in which the 2 year old kid was getting badly out of control and anyone with experience of childrearing could see he desperately needed to be shown his limits (to be done by using discipline but no hitting) Several of us pointed this out to the father, he shrugged as he was not allowed to have any opinion on childrearing. Speaking to the mother, she just stared blankly and ignored us. Years later the kid now has severe behavioural problems and she asked to discuss it with us. She could not even remember our conversation from years before. IMHO, this is leading the western mother into severe stress as she dictates all aspects of childcare with minimal input from older generations (too ignorant, old-fashioned, racist etc) or her husband (genetically incompetent to have any valid input), She knows that if things go wrong, it's down to her as she assumed the role of absolute dictator. This failure to share leads to constant stress.

Sick child in need of Calpol? Bins to take out? My doesband and I are equal when it comes to domestic chores. Why is this still so rare?

The secret to a happier marriage, more laughter, longer life (probably) and less anxious children? You won’t find it in a self-help book or motivational Instagram post. The answer is sitting next to you on the sofa, or snoring gently as you scroll on your phone. The answer might be out with his pals tonight, but he put the kids down before he went so you could finish up at work.
You’ve heard of the “new man” (cooks) and the “hands-on dad” (changes nappies). You might have praised friends’ partners for being “involved” (plays with his own children). In the early Noughties it was the Gen X “house husband” who facilitated his wife’s giant career by running the show at home, but as a millennial mother of two with a hectic job, I can tell you that none of these are the answer to marital bliss.
What women with children (or those who want them) need to thrive in the age of the two-salary mortgage or sky-high rent, £75-per-day childcare, round-the-clock office emails and parents’ WhatsApp groups is . . . a doesband. If you are managing without one, you are a hero.
A doesband has his own hectic job, but still does his fair share at home Without Being Asked. A doesband knows where the Calpol is and when ballet kit is needed and what is about to go off in the fridge. A doesband knows when to do the laundry and book half-term holiday clubs. He puts the bins out before they smell, remembers the present for someone else’s kid’s birthday next weekend. He gets up with the children and does bedtime; he feeds them, bathes them, does the school run; knows when their nails need to be cut and that behind their ears can get gunky.

Sounds a bit much? My own beloved doesband manages it. A doesband is not doing anything his wife is not, nor is she expecting him to do all this stuff all the time. A doesband simply gets on with what needs doing because he understands how his own home runs. He is a small but seismic revolution not because of his actions, but for the fact he Doesn’t Need Reminding.
“We divide all the logistics such as pick-ups and drop-offs totally fairly,” says Natalie, 39, a high-ranking civil servant. “My husband is really good at playing with the kids. But the food shop, the washing — it doesn’t cross his mind. He’s happy to do it when asked, but I’m always directing. My friends’ marriages are much less equal, though, so I do feel lucky.”
There is a phrase that the millennial mums I know use more than any other, including “stop that” or “flat white, please”. The “mental load” is the invisible labour of managing a household on top of one’s job and relationship. No matter how much your partner contributes, if you have to ask or remind him to do it, you are still carrying the bulk of the work — which is not equal.
My husband and I earn roughly the same, which helps us to maintain parity. Yet, according to a US survey, the proportion of marriages where the husband is the primary breadwinner has dropped from 85 per cent in 1972 to 55 per cent today. The ONS estimates that women do 60 per cent more unpaid work — childcare and domestic chores — than men. I know breadwinning mothers who do the packed lunches, bank chats, laundry and birthday presents because it is easier than having to explain it all — as though their life partner is some kind of intern in the family business.

I know how lucky I am to have a doesband. I know because of all the times I have stayed quiet at tables of women sharing appointments missed, bills not paid, washing either not done or unhung and mildewed. Forgotten World Book Day costumes pulled together at 11pm after their own long day at work. I know because those same women are incredulous sometimes if I mention my husband googling baby sleep schedules or arranging playdates, as if these were not things that affected his life too.
“He notices when the house is dirty and I don’t,” says Rachel, 40, a managing director of a creative media firm. She is the breadwinner, and her husband picks up much of the cleaning and childcare; at present he is on parental leave with their youngest. “He doesn’t see it as a sacrifice — there are men out there who’d like to contribute more but aren’t able to.”

In what is thought to be a first, it was announced yesterday that Kristo Kaarmann, the 42-year-old billionaire chief executive of the tech company Wise, will be the first man in charge of a large UK-listed company to take three months’ parental leave, from September. In his native Estonia, every father receives 30 days’ non-transferrable paternity leave. Getting in on the ground floor of parenting means knowing how it works, learning to do it — and all the related chores — instinctively. According to a survey by the parents’ group Pregnant Then Screwed, 97 per cent of dads do not feel the UK’s statutory two weeks is long enough.
My doesband took two months’ solo leave with both our children. He settled them in at nursery too. He squeezes his work around school strikes or them being ill, just as I do. As I write this piece, he is taking our two-year-old for his first haircut and batch-cooking during his lunch nap, then picking our daughter up from school and heading to a swimming lesson. We both work nine-day fortnights so we can have every other Wednesday with our children. Our children call me Daddy more than they call him Mummy. No doubt there are some who will assume I forced him into all this and he is miserable.
“There’s something very patronising about the way my husband is seen by other couples as a mild version of whipped,” agrees Emily, 40, a teacher, whose marriage is similarly balanced. “What equal partnership means for us is that there is no conflict — we don’t have that grating resentment over small things.”
In 2017 Caitlin Moran wrote in The Times that “if she wants children, a woman’s life is only as good as the man she marries” and “the women who have done best . . . and are happiest have partners who do more than 50-50”. In 2012 the writer Gaby Hinsliff posited in her book Half a Wife that dual-income couples needed to divide between them the jobs traditionally done by stay-at-home wives — and the time they take — to stay happily married.
As for my own marriage, I knew I was on to a good thing when, the very first time I stayed over at my husband’s shared house, he told me he was the only one who ever bothered cleaning it. He is still the only person I know who dusts frequently. Some women are envious of the husbands who gift designer handbags, but my friends get that glint in their eye whenever I inadvertently reveal that mine has independently defrosted something. I cannot lie: it goes a long way to keeping the spark alive too.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the- ... -k2sds3hfc

can you please give me a simple summary of the above?
thanks

phuketrichard wrote: ↑Fri May 12, 2023 10:12 am can you please give me a simple summary of the above?
thanks

@phuketrichard

Synopsis for women.
Don't marry a lazy piss artist that goes to work, then directly to the pub, and then comes home at 9am with a take-away and thinks he's 'doing his bit'.

Synopsis for men:
Getting married and having children in the UK is a greatly overrated life path if you value your independence. If I was in the UK, 30ish, single, childless and doing well financially, I would not want to get involved with marriage and breeding.

hanno wrote: ↑Fri May 12, 2023 10:36 am

phuketrichard wrote: ↑Fri May 12, 2023 10:12 am can you please give me a simple summary of the above?
thanks

Apparently, some men pay a lot for that kind of treatment.

Funny responses

I didn’t have the energy to read all that but got the gist from the helpful summaries. I’ll state the obvious - relationships come in all forms. Those getting heard are of a ‘type’

violet wrote: ↑Fri May 12, 2023 11:30 am Funny responses

I didn’t have the energy to read all that but got the gist from the helpful summaries. I’ll state the obvious - relationships come in all forms. Those getting heard are of a ‘type’

True, but there is a powerful social norm in operation now that demands compliance. I believe the article describes it well.

As the name suggests a doesband is someone who does their share of the household chores and child rearing;

A doesband has his own hectic job, but still does his fair share at home Without Being Asked. A doesband knows where the Calpol is and when ballet kit is needed and what is about to go off in the fridge. A doesband knows when to do the laundry and book half-term holiday clubs. He puts the bins out before they smell, remembers the present for someone else’s kid’s birthday next weekend. He gets up with the children and does bedtime; he feeds them, bathes them, does the school run; knows when their nails need to be cut and that behind their ears can get gunky.

“We divide all the logistics such as pick-ups and drop-offs totally fairly,” says Natalie, 39, a high-ranking civil servant. “My husband is really good at playing with the kids. But the food shop, the washing — it doesn’t cross his mind. He’s happy to do it when asked, but I’m always directing. My friends’ marriages are much less equal, though, so I do feel lucky.”

I have similar experiences with my wife (not doing things that are outside her consciousness) although it's usually less effort to do something myself than to nag and fight about it for weeks.
______________

I've also read that doing chores increases your wife's libido because she sees you as an equal who contributes rather than as a dependent who she's caring for.

violet wrote: ↑Fri May 12, 2023 11:30 am Funny responses

I didn’t have the energy to read all that but got the gist from the helpful summaries. I’ll state the obvious - relationships come in all forms. Those getting heard are of a ‘type’

Have you got the energy to explain what, "Those getting heard are of a ‘type’" means?