I'm a lady, and think that the expectation that men ought not be too emotional is absolutely damaging and unreasonable and am not sure how it still persists.
The second shift - get yourself a single dad, ladies! And a cleaning service for the biweekly bigger cleaning. I don't have that problem. We do each have half a second shift because that stuff doesn't go away, but it's shared, and I didn't need to explain that it exists.
Housework and mental load, a lot of times guys come home and relax, and don't realize (or don't care) that the reason they can do that is because their female partners are handling so much more of the other work.
It's not true in every M/F relationship, thankfully. But is very prevalent still, the expectation that women take care of getting the kids to appointments, getting supper arranged, knowing when the toothpaste is going to run out, staying home when someone is sick, remembering to call the absent line at school when kids are out, the work outside of work is not usually evenly distributed and when trying to get it evened out guys often have to be reminded which they then interpret as nagging.
Again - this is not every relationship, even my lunatic ex was aware and handled about half of the kid and other stuff, he had a single mom and saw what she did, and I am an indifferent housekeeper at best, which probably has something to do with it. (I saw a joke somewhere about how you could have a girlfriend good in bed or one good at keeping house but not both, so I joke with the husband that he made his choice.)
Thank you for your detailed answer and letting me know of this second shift. It sounds like, the job to take care of things at home, after people get back home from their work outside of home. I read once somewhere that being a good roommate helps long term relationships succeed.
I'm a lady, and think that the expectation that men ought not be too emotional is absolutely damaging and unreasonable and am not sure how it still persists.