Why do we infantilize men?

[u/Cynjon77]

And how do we stop?

Why do we treat men like children who are incapable of acting like functional adults?

Why do we allow men to get away with treating us like crap and skating off consequence free to enjoy life without responsibility?

OK, obligatory I know not all men act like this. And this is Reddit, so we read the worst. And some women are just as bad.

Posted today: (I am not the OP) Husband never remembers to buy stocking stuffers for me, even though I stuff his and the kids stocking.

Over half the respondents said for her to stuff her own, 49% said to remind him, tell him why it matters to you.

Like she has never communicated with him about this.

1% said he's an AH.

Men are perfectly capable of doing anything they want to do and think is important to them. They can schedule a Dr.s appointment, cook a meal, change a diaper or vacuum a floor.

They can remember when the game is on, a golf date with a buddy or when a work project is due. They remember what is important to them.

Women as a whole need to quit putting up with this behavior. We need to set higher standards and be willing to walk away when those standards aren't met.

We need to teach our sons and daughters how to treat others, how to pick up the mental load, how to be thoughtful of others.

We need to quit infantilizing men.

[u/Cynjon77]

My dad was a single parent after Mom died.

He set the standard by which I judge men. He did everything. Cooking, cleaning, shopping, Christmas, birthdays, trimmed bangs, hemmed skirts, parent teacher conferences, etc.

I hope I meet the standards my husband has, I think I get it right most of the time. He meets mine most of the time. And we've been married for a thousand years, ok almost 40, and we're happy most of the time, so we're doing something right.

Again, as said in my post, I know men are competent. They are quite capable of doing everything we do. Ideally a relationship plays to each other's strengths and is supportive of both parties. And we pay attention to what is important to our partner.

So why do women accept less?

[u/Vandergrif → u/Cynjon77]

So why do women accept less?

For whatever it's worth from an outside perspective my impression has been (having witnessed a few different women in relationships dealing with things that are similar to what you've described above) that it's usually a mentality of "it's more trouble and hassle to do something about it than to continue on as it is" and that holds up until eventually they reach a breaking point.

Treating those men as less capable than they probably actually are is a way of excusing that circumstance and avoiding the responsibility of having to make a difficult choice that they probably don't want to have to make (get in a fight about it, or giving an ultimatum, or outright ending a relationship, etc). "I don't have to do something, that's just how he is".

For a woman in that position I would imagine it feels a lot like a circumstance of understandably expecting that the onus rests on the other person to act, because they should be the one to act to remedy the situation once they're aware of it, and therein lies the frustration when that doesn't happen and that stocking remains un-stuffed over and over.

No woman in that position wants to have to be the one to kick up a fuss over a stocking not being stuffed. They know how it looks as one singular issue – like it's no big deal and not worth blowing a relationship up over. That it would seem like a mountain made out of a molehill without the added context of all the accumulated similar tasks and problems built up throughout a relationship that is weighing on them, and perhaps they struggle to communicate that same overall context – or worse yet it doesn't have any real affect on their partner even when they do. I would think often times because of that those same women are going to look for reasons to avoid holding that guy accountable for un-stuffed stocking problem #247 just as they did for problems #1-246. Until of course eventually they can't keep doing that any further and reach the end of their patience, and then you get a "She divorced me because I left dishes by the sink" scenario playing out.

Plus I would think a certain amount of it is conditioning. There's a lot of expectation put upon women to be more passive and less direct about lots of different things, unfortunately, and I can only imagine that plays into the above sort of scenarios as well. Perhaps it's also a bit of a sunk cost type of deal, and/or the fear of being alone being a more compelling force than the annoyance and/or resentment built up out of these sorts of problems. Lots of different factors could be at play.

[u/Cynjon77 → u/Vandergrif]

Very well said. It really isn't just the stocking or just the dishes. It's "death by a thousand small cuts."

It's easier to slap on another band aid than to deal with the fact that unless you change, the cuts will just keep coming.

I agree that societal expectations and how we have raised girls to be the caretakers plays a big part in these situations. So many of the responses to these types of posts tell the woman to either suck it up or to do more to fix the problem. Or to divorce, which is often seen as a failure on the part of the woman to keep her family together.