If Men Are Such Good Leaders, Why Can’t They Plan A Birthday Party?
halfpoint | Canva I’m a 34-year-old woman who lives in New York. Needless to say, a lot of my friends are getting engaged. Out of every single couple I know, I can think of one man who actively planned his own wedding. (He’s a gem.)
The rest sat back and waited for direction from their fiancées, mothers, and sisters. When I asked one of them why he was so laissez-faire about the supposed biggest day of his life, he said he “doesn’t care about the details,” and his soon-to-be wife does. “It’s important to her, so I’m letting her take the reins.” But modern men let women take the reins a lot more than they want to admit, which raises the question:
If men are such good leaders, why can't they plan a birthday party?
Among straight couples who live together, women disproportionately decide where they live. What the house looks like. What everyone eats. What everyone wears. Where everyone goes. They also pay the bills, prepare the meals, do the housework, and plan all the social events.
Statistically, men only out-decide their wives in three domestic areas: investing, car maintenance, and yardwork. And before you claim that men are still the real leaders because they make the money for the family, 69% of married moms with children under five also have jobs. Mothers of older kids are even more likely to work, and over a quarter of women now outearn their partners.
Clearly, the man isn’t actually the head of the household
In August, America’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth retweeted an interview with a Christian pastor. This pastor said that families should have one vote, and the man — the “head of the household” — should be the one to cast it.
Meanwhile, he believes that “women are the kind of people that people come out of” (???) and “it doesn’t take any talent to simply reproduce biologically.”
I don’t know what kind of family this dude grew up in, but where I come from, the women are doing absolutely everything. The women are preventing the households from falling apart. Yes, they create life, but they also maintain and sustain that life — for their kids and their husbands.
Exhibit A: This viral video from a dentist who doesn’t know why his male patients aren’t more embarrassed about their child-like dependence on their wives.
“Men will come to their dental visits sometimes without knowing why they’re there. And as a dentist, that’s odd to come face-to-face with when I walk into the room, when I say, ‘It looks like you’re here for a check-up and a cleaning,’ and they say, ‘I don’t know. I didn’t schedule the appointment.’ That does not happen with women. 16 years of doing this, I have never seen a woman arrive at a dental office not knowing what they’re doing there. With men, it happens all the time.”
The comments from other professionals are equally as telling.
- “As a nurse, I can confirm they do the same thing at the doctor’s office. Also, they don’t have any idea what medications they take. It’s always, ‘Oh, she (the wife) fixes my medicine for me.’”
- “Veterinarian here- we HATE when the husbands bring in the pet bc they UNIVERSALLY have no idea what’s wrong with the pet or what meds they’re on.”
- “I used to work in an optometrist clinic, and when dads brought their kids for a check, we asked for full name, including middle names, DOB, and if they had worn glasses previously. One man in my nearly four years there could answer the questions.”
- “Men show up to teachers' meetings without knowing their kid's class or age.”
Before you start typing the phrase 'Not all men,' let me ask you a question: Who planned your birthday parties as a kid?
Was it your dad? What would’ve happened if your parties were solely his responsibility? If your answer is, “Yes, my dad planned all my birthday parties, and they were great,” congratulations! You had a unicorn of a father, and I’d love to hear about him.
My partner is currently planning his 30th birthday by himself, and personally, I think he’s doing a bang-up job. His initiative, attention to detail, and task-management skills are one of the primary reasons I chose him — but unfortunately, statistics show he’s the exception, not the rule.
To those who responded, “If my dad were in charge of my birthday parties, I wouldn’t have had any,” then you get where I’m going with this.
Planning a party is a management skill. It involves a lot of moving pieces. The time, the location, the guest list, the decorations, the music, the games, the food, the drinks, the cake, the dietary restrictions. You’re responsible for tons of people, and you need to make sure they’re all safe, entertained, fed, and not going into anaphylaxis.
Most parties last four hours. Managing a household is an around-the-clock job. Honestly, it’s kind of like owning a company or leading a government. So if men are humanity’s natural-born leaders, the question remains…
Why can’t most men actually lead a household?
The short answer: They can. They just choose not to.
Here’s how I know that men aren’t actually incompetent when it comes to invisible labor: When a man’s at work, he takes initiative. He does tasks without being asked. He remembers important information. He probably doesn’t go up to his boss every day and ask questions he could’ve Googled, or say, “Give me a list of things to do and I’ll do it.”
If he did, he probably wouldn’t have a job for much longer. Men are capable of the labor required to keep a family running smoothly. Many have merely decided that it’s beneath them.
The patriarchy has convinced us that running a household is inferior to running a company, a political campaign, or a country. We’ve been conditioned to believe that cooking, cleaning, childcare, and scheduling are women’s work — and it’s so “easy,” it should be performed for free.
But as Abraham Maslow outlined in his hierarchy of needs, without food, shelter, clothing, safety, love, and belonging, everything else crumbles.
We do not view fulfilling everyone’s basic needs as “leadership,” because that would force us to acknowledge that women are amazing at it. That would require us to admit that women are propping up the entire world.
When asked which qualities make for a good leader, survey participants said, “They take initiative. They unite people. They make a plan and help everyone stick to it. They know how to delegate and develop skills. They’re tuned into everything that’s going on. They’re detail-oriented, empathetic, compassionate, non-reactive, reliable, and trustworthy.”
A true leader would never look at a problem and say, “Tell me how to fix this, and I’ll fix it.” They simply do what needs to be done to keep the people around them surviving and thriving.
Not for nothing, but that describes almost every woman I know.
Maria Cassano is a writer, editor, and journalist whose work has appeared on NBC, Bustle, CNN, The Daily Beast, Food & Wine, and Allure, among others. She's in the process of publishing her memoir.
