WHY?

grandadR please can you make us one when yours is finished? My DH is highly intelligent but pretty much the only DIY he does is crooked shelves. He doesn't like it, and will only do any if I get out the hammer/whatever to do it myself (hurts his amour propre I think). The thing he is really bad at is looking - as in, 'where's my.....?' when it would bite him if it had teeth. But he brings me coffee in bed every morning

RRR, very good. My GGD does pink and fluffy TOTAL in her room. I am limited cook - we don't do meat - but I do nice pasta (good with baby spinach or rocket added - always pesto) and hippy brown rice and veg, though I am not patient with it. I think the Chinese have cooking about right - most things take ten minutes or less.
GGD and I designed the sandpit today. It would have a playhouse on stilts over, with a pole slide down and a ladder up, and the cover doors for the sandpit would have large chessboard on top when shut.
R.

grandadR women are nest builders, that's why we like cushions, throws, plants, candles etc. Men tend to like simpler homes [and maybe tidier homes too.] I do ask my DH about most things in the house [maybe not candles though!] so he has his opinion taken into account most of the time.I don't do 'pink and fluffy' and tend to like strong colours which he also likes.If you get a sandpit and lid, there is no problem with cats. Maybe your wife doesn't like hens? My DH doesn't like dogs, so I respect that.My DH knows where everything is in the house and can clean as well as me [although he would rather not do it.]He can also cook, but not bake.

The S.O.sidestepped his own career because his wife had a very good job so he's very much a 'shopping/cooking' sort of guy. Which makes me look back on my mariage and realise that my ex never ever brought me a cup of tea in bed, even when I was pregnant or had just had a baby and I can only remember him cooking one meal [a huge breakfast which I couldn't eat anyway, not being a breakfast eater]. Then again, my ex could fix things and build things.

My son is much better in the kitchen than his wife and although the children are not his, it is my son they tend to go to if they are frightened or hurt. It tends to be him that reads to them when they go to bed as well. Yet he is definitely a man's man (as my Dad would have said) - he's been lifting weights and power training since he was about 16 so he's certainly no wimp either! All his girlfriends have said how loving, romantic and caring he is (when he proposed to his girlfriend, he waited for a full moon and drove her to a beach where he had set up everything for a moonlit bbq and after they had eaten, he popped the question and gave her the ring with a moonlight studded sea for the view). I'm very proud of the sort of man he has turned out to be (he's also very handy around the house) and not bad at all considering he came from one of those society wrecking single-parent families

Our generation of men were brought up by mothers who didn't expect them to be domesticated. How have our sons turned out? Mine are 'new men' on the whole although DS2 can be unthinking when it comes to shopping.

It's the sandpit and chickens that are banned. I am not a gardener, and to be fair our garden is small. I let my horse and goats run through one garden I had, and filled the front garden of a townhouse with courgettes which were very successful due to the seaweed manure. And no, I do not want to go back to living in a barracks - I've already done that at (boarding) school. I just want a few less things In every nook and cranny, that bulge out into the walkways so that you almost have to have to turn sideways to get through. I am quite happy to chuck them out, or re-cycle through eBay if it's worth it. I do like carpets and cushions but I also like space and organisation.
R.

He sounds like my son.

PS he is an engineer and a very intelligent man. I went into the bathroom a week or so ago and found a pair of socks on the towel rail. He had taken a shower and didn't notice that he still had his socks on until he got out.

grandadR after leaving my first husband I lived on my own for a year and managed very well with just 3 saucepans and 2 frying pans.

Then I met Mr P, and after a suitable interval invited him to dinner at my little place. He stayed the night and never really left.

Aaaanyway, the point I was going to make was that I came home from work one day and found every pan I owned on the stove and full of chilli. He had decided to make his "signature" dish and was used to making it for large quantities of people.

The fact that I didn't have an icebox, let alone a freezer seemed to have escaped his attention.

Kitty - same here (well I do have a B.Ed- but I am not clever cloggs or academic ;) )

If I am typical of men I know not, but I really feel that the home is not really my area at all

I think a lot of men feel that way. My husband used to point to a house near us that is really dilapidated and on the verge of collapse and say 'left on my own, that's what our house would end up looking like'! He didn't see the point in scatter cushions, ornaments, pot plants or most pictures on the walls. He saw no point in colour schemes or rugs either (when there is perfectly good carpet down lol). He saw no point in different creams, potions and lotions in the bathroom either. One style of lamp should do the whole house and ditto with bedding. Left up to him, the house would have resembled an army barracks

Viva la difference

Is it the sandpit or the children who are banned? Sandpits are a magnet for cats who think they are very large litter trays, but if there's a lid to put over them at night, they should be safe enough. I'd have thought that chickens would be a harmless enough hobby for you and a great saving on eggs if you save up household scraps for them.

I can relate to both sides! Knowing what is practical in a kitchen, and needing somewhere in which you feel at home as you will spend half your day in it, is a very fine balance. I know I should go for easy-to-clean, but cannot bear the sterility of such an existence.

Your DGC are banned

If I am typical of men I know not, but I really feel that the home is not really my area at all. If it were, I would have 3 saucepans in the kitchen cupboard, not 15, the walls would be painted white, and the window sills devoid of pot plants, which they are not (and that is just the start). I would have a sandpit in the garden (for ggd), and probably chickens - both of which are irredeemably banned.
So, I do not fully engage, I do what I see as making sense to keep things going (which is quite a lot), and only sometimes, what I am told.
R.
PS, I'll also shut the lid on my keyboard........

DH has two degrees and no common sense! I have no degrees and plenty of common sense! Works quite well in my opinion -.so long as he does what he is told!!

Oh well, the gender based and stereotyped divisions of labour goes on un-abated. I think that maybe there is an element of if you treat someone like a child (eg: "I only had to repeat myself a few times /grin/") then they start to behave like one - in the worst possible way. I used to have a male friend who said that whenever he was asked to do the washing up he always made sure he broke a few plates so he didn't get asked again.
I know I can be very brain dead at home sometimes - maybe I just don't want to add the re-cycling to my list of tasks, and would like to just dump it in the trash can like we used to (and don't try to tell me that driving 2 extra miles to put 3 cardboard boxes in the right place is saving the planet).
R.

JackyB - he probably insists on soaking your burnt pans because it's what his mother always did.

Yes yes yes - my DH does things like this all the time and in the words of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Planet - has ' a brain the size of a planet' but he is so impractical - makes me scream. Do have to laugh when he licks a dish I have sprayed with Fairy Power spray though - does it everytime!

I am always shocked at the lack of general common sense and basic physics, chemistry and biology my otherwise well-educated husband displays. For example, if a saucepan or frying pan has really badly burnt on gunge to get off and I spray some oven cleaner or other strong stuff on it to dissolve this, he will insist on adding water to "soak" it.

All the explaining I can do to make it clear to him that diluting the stuff will make it less effective just doesn't get through to him. And egg and meat, if burnt on, will not be affected by more water any more than burnt on rubber or plastic would. Is it that hard to comprehend?

Is the next generation any better? DS2 is (sometimes) as daft as my ex. He will fill up the fridge with items that don't need replacing and push all the things currently in use to the back. His brother is quite different.

Oh no, DH has learned not to feed the birds anywhere in the garden when the washing is out.
I only had to repeat myself a few times

Just more proof that men can't mentally multi-task perhaps - think + action + consequence

Sparrows fine roses... it's the greedy pigeons and what they do after they've hoovered up the seed that bothers me #toomuchinformation