The Infantilizing of Men
on expecting fathers to be able to pick up the slack
The other day, I was finishing the novel All This Could Be Different, by Sarah Thankam Mathews, a beautiful tale of an immigrant lesbian of Indian origins finding her way in America. While it touches on lots of issues, it describes the narrator’s desire to please her parents who have sacrificed so much for her, and their worry that she does not have anyone with whom to partner. That this is their inherent issue with her sexuality, that it will not provide her with the stability that a heterosexual partnership would. Her mother says to her over a video call:
“…we do not know what to do with all this. But we can tell you this: we do not want you to end up alone, end up by yourself. We would like to see you settled, in some way, before we die. We want you to have somebody who will take care of you, okay? Because we all are brought to our knees at some point in this life. The idea that no one will be there for you when that happens - my heart cannot take that. We want you to have family, to have somebody.”
I understand her parents' concern. Our society is so individualistic, with no governmental support, that you practically NEED a relationship to survive in this world. But the romantic love, happily-ever-after solution is flawed when more than 50% of marriages end in divorce. I have noticed a spike in interest in other structures for support (see my previous Substack or blog post over at Not Safe For Mom Group on “mommunes.”) This seems to be the angle that the author of All This Could Be Different was taking, too. Friends as family. Communal living instead of siloed lives.
Yet I’ve also been reflecting on our societal obsession with romantic love (naturally). Why are we so enamored with the concept? Why do we expect that this kind of love is the one we should pursue above all others? Why do we identify people with their relationship status? (For example, why should I be called a “single” mom, now that I am getting divorced? Why focus on my romantic status? I know some people use the term “solo,” but even that feels like an unnecessary modifier. Why can’t I still just be a “mom?”)
I also wonder if this societal expectation that we are all headed toward the altar, that we will all be partnered with someone of the opposite sex one day, is what allows men to get away with not developing certain skills. That they expect to be taken care of by their moms, then bachelor it up for a few years (and we all have a visual of what that apartment looks like) and then they get married and have a wife to take care of household stuff. That it is this cultural narrative that allows them to get a pass, claim incompetence, or shirk off certain “adulting” responsibilities.
You see stories of this kind of “boys will be boys” and “men will be men” attitude everywhere. It is what allowed us to elect a president who got caught on tape being egregious. Luckily, we are starting to be less tolerant (see the “Beef” scandal that mired an otherwise lovely show with the misdeeds of its creator). But when are we going to start expecting more from half of the population? When are we going to stop infantilizing men?
Laura Danger of ThatDarnChat recently posted a clip from “The Steve Harvey Show.” On it, a male divorce lawyer, James Sexton, is answering audience questions. We see a video of a woman speaking:
“I’ve been married for six years. My husband is wonderful. He’s a great man. And I’m not ungrateful. But I have to tell him to do everything. Like if I want a hug, I have to say “hey come over here and hug me,” or if I want to go out on the weekend I have to say: “why don’t we go out on the weekend?” And it’s kind of a little unromantic to have to tell him all the time and I was hoping that maybe he’ll think of it on his own. I don’t want him to be a mind reader but you know, am I being unfair by wanting that?”
This is Sexton’s response:
“I don’t think you’re unfair for wanting it, but what I would definitely say is: you married a man. He hears about 25% of what you say. He hears nothing that you don’t say. And even of the 25% that he hears you say, he kinda gets 5% of that. Any man who's ever been in a relationship sitting next to a woman: what’s wrong, babe? Nothing. Oh, okay! We don’t talk to each other like that. So getting used to talking to a woman and speaking your language and hearing behind the lines of what you’re saying. That is so far beyond… once you tell him what you want? He’s going to remember it and he’s going to try and give it to you.”
Watch the clip to see Laura eviscerate this answer. Because there are SO. MANY. PROBLEMS. But the tenor of this answer is familiar. It appears in countless social media posts:
Take this one where it implies that the first time a husband hears his wife tell him anything, it goes straight into the shredder.
Or this one that shows the difference between a husband going up a staircase littered with items compared to his pregnant wife.
Or the one below in which a female comic asks how many husbands have already texted their wives in the thirty minutes that they have been gone to help them find something:
Ha. Ha. Ha. Men can’t be expected to do anything!
Except it isn’t really funny.
One of the commenters on this last post shared this story:
My husband is in the USAF as a LtCol and I’m not even freaking kidding you, his work got a group message from another LtCol, asking for food to be dropped off every evening (a meal train) because his wife went out of town for 5 days, and he “needed” help with dinners so he and his 3 kids could eat (and would anyone’s wife be willing to help with that.) Not only did this dude not know how to make food for his kids, it didn’t freaking occur to him to take them to McDonalds for a week. This helpless man baby needed to ask at work if there were other wives that would also baby him.
Wowza. And yet, I can also kind of see it happening?
The messages behind these clips: Men aren’t expected to provide care. Of their wives or their children. Men are incompetent in these areas. Men aren’t women. Don’t expect them to be! So just tell them what you want! Give them a list! Hand them a task!
“Helping means ‘this is not my job.’ Helping means ‘I’m doing you a favor.’ Helping means ‘this is your responsibility.’ Helping implies that the helper is going above and beyond…full partnership means turning away from the idea of help entirely and taking on responsibility in an even manner.”—Gemma Hartley, FED UP
Sommer Tothill has a great post about this. She says if men can be expected to learn complex processes and expectations at work, that same expectation should carry over to the household. “It is only the cultural narrative that men are somehow inherently less able to learn how to take care of children or take care of a household. This is deliberate because it lets them off the hook from having to do those things. We have a term for this. It is called weaponized incompetence.”
Let’s note that this comes up in heterosexual partnerships because if a man is single, he has to cook and clean for himself (or hire someone to do so). With two gay men, men have to step up and provide this kind of care for each other (and presumably their kids). It is only in hetero partnerships that men get a pass.
SNL recently did a skit on Weekend Update that illuminates a bit of where this problem originates. An overprotective mom is obsessed with her baby boy (who is 38). She has four daughters and is here to talk about motherhood, but instead just fawns over her son. Talks about how he steals food right out of her fridge. How funny! Talks about how he takes her money! What can you do?
I’m not exactly sure what the goal of that SNL skit was. To show how even women still prioritize men over women? To just get a laugh? In the comments on YouTube, most say how relatable this is. How they know someone like Gina. How this is still happening today, in 2023.
This narrative that men are helpless is hard to push back against when the concept of the #honeydo list and the #nagging wife are ubiquitous. It is in ads for paper towels with a dad left at home with the baby and the wife comes back to an utter mess. Or lately, the Kia commercial featuring #BinkyDad where the dad doesn’t remember the binky when they go on vacation and has to rush home to get it. But then he shows up with the green one. The baby only likes the blue one.
Oh, clueless dad, trying to be helpful! But a true hero of a dad would have not only remembered the binky originally, but have known which color the infant preferred.
When men are given a pass because of this infantilizing, it leaves women overburdened and exhausted.
Going back to that lawyer on “The Steve Harvey Show” who puts the onus on this wife to tell her husband what she wants (even though evidently he will only hear 25%). You see this idea pop up all over the place; wives, stop complaining, just tell your husbands what to do! But this is the opposite of what mothers are looking for today. Mothers do not want to be the only one carrying the mental load. They are tired of doling out tasks. Even with Mother’s Day, a celebration right around the corner, fathers sometimes defer to mothers, wanting to celebrate her in the way that she wants, but it ends up putting more on her mental plate. See Zachary Watson unpack that below.
We need to expect more of men across the board. We need to expect our boys to be tuned in to others’ needs. To learn what it means to tidy and clean a house. To cook or order take out. To know what kinds of foods their kids prefer (pasta that is a tube, not a spiral! The white mac and cheese, not the orange!). To figure out what makes someone feel special on their special day, and do the work to ensure they feel that way!
Obviously I am not speaking about all men. I know men who are the primary caretakers, who carry their half of the mental load (or all of it!), who are not helpless when their wives leave town but handle it all with finesse. But they are the exception, rather than the rule. What is more typical are messages like the one in the video below, where someone fawns over a father who works full time and cooks when he gets home. Honey, you hit the jackpot! it says.
When our expectations of fathers are so low, then a father doing his fair share is treated like the holy grail.
So let’s stop with the infantilizing. Let’s challenge all the ways in which men get to be emotionally immature, stunted, creatures that just don’t know better. Let’s stop making excuses. Let’s raise our boys and girls to see household management, emotional caretaking, and raising children as part and parcel of being an adult.
GOING DEEPER:
“The Case Against ‘BoyMom’,” Rachel Verona Cote, The Washington Post.
Fed Up: Emotional Labor, Women, and the Way Forward. Gemma Hartley.
How to Raise a Feminist Son: A Memoir & Manifesto. Sonora Jha.
“Chronicles of a Clueless Husband, Part I.” TikTok.
Don’t miss my blog on “mommunes,” over at Not Safe for Mom Group in which I touch on all these concepts and include fascinating research from
and her post called "He'll never see it."P.S. I did a voiceover of this post for the first time. Please excuse that I am still getting over a cold so my voice sounds a little funky!
Yep! And Bandit from Bluey totally reinforces this stereotype of the hopeless dad -- granted he is quite hands on as a dad but still the mum is the hero that gets everything done. My husband was actually the one to point this out to his parents.
I am liking this but am conflicted with how I feel about it. Ultimately, I think, this infantalizing of men is one small part of the picture and conversations that can be had.
Other factors I thought of are: people marry into familiar patterns; people grow when in a relationship then get resentful of the patterns they married into; there is no one who is going to read a person's mind or always have the same ideas as to what would constitute romance/fun/care; effective communication can solve a lot.
And, for the record, this piece helped me remember how damn lucky I got with my husband. I followed familiar patterns but got lucky. Phew.