A Diary of Unsolicited Advice From Men

Things men tell women but would never say to each other.

Via Pexels

Women are no strangers to responsibility. You’ve seen the stories about women being responsible for the mental load of running an entire household regardless of their employment status. Let’s face it. Our society expects that women be the child bearers, child rearers, housekeepers, family cooks, career women, personal assistants, and personal shoppers. On and on it goes.

This Comic Perfectly Explains the Mental Load Working Mothers Bear

We’re stressing ourselves out with everything — like making sure our baby has pooped today, and that everyone gets their dentist appointment scheduled, and wait — do we have enough toilet paper in the closet? Soap for the bathroom and kitchen? We’re busy planning birthday parties and holiday get togethers, doing the laundry and making sure our kids have the right shoes and wardrobe for each season.

Across the country, women are doing all of these things — and more — in addition to their own careers and volunteer service. We’re multitasking mavens.

And single women or single moms? They’re doing these things too. There’s definitely no one else to do them.

As all of this is happening — a.k.a. the world keeps turning — we women are told that we can be anything we want to be. Which sounds like a pretty sweet deal until we grow up and discover we’re more or less under the pressure to be everything everyone else wants us to be. As it turns out, anything we want isn’t even enough. We’re supposed to be even more than what we want!

But men? Oh, we give a man a medal for taking his kids out for ice cream. Dads get a freaking parade for braiding their own child’s hair.

Sadly, this is just the setup of our world. I don’t think most men even realize the disparity between our life experience and their own.

And I certainly don’t mean to downplay a dad’s importance to their children and household. Nor do I mean that every single family is setup this way. It’s just that… many…