“I’m Just A Mummy’s Boy!”: How The Man-Child’s Ineptitude is Destroying Everyone’s Sex Life
The man-child isn’t just bad for society, his immaturity is killing women’s libidos
It’s a word that gets thrown around a lot — man-child — but the implications of being one, knowing one, raising one, have often been swept under the rug. Complaining about one takes the form of jokey comments, ‘He doesn’t even know how to use the washing machine!’, ‘I don’t think he’s ever made the bed in his life!’, ‘He tried to make me dinner and nearly set the flat on fire — I had to take over for both of our safety — ha!’. He makes minor efforts to impress, seeking praise for completing the most simple of chores, he just doesn’t seem capable of doing any more.
He realises his downfalls, understands that adults must complete mundane tasks, he even appears to feel bad about his ineptitude. When you’ve done his washing he mutters a half-hearted thanks, he congratulates you after a spring cleaning session, he appreciates the time and effort that you put into keeping a healthy home — for a while at least. But his laziness, his pitfalls, seem justified to him. Perhaps his parents never expected him to do any chores at home, he’s just ‘so tired’ after that big night out with mates at the weekend, or if he does it you’ll just have to do it again because ‘you’re so much better at it than me’.
This behaviour and the plethora of excuses used to justify it will sound familiar to pretty much anyone who has lived with cisgender heterosexual men; from brothers to boyfriends to roommates to that one guy your friend is seeing and is seemingly always around, the experience is universal.
But what exactly is a man-child? As his name suggests, the man-child can be characterised by a number of child-like traits; helplessness, immaturity, selfishness, irresponsibility, and cluelessness being just a few of the most obvious to see.
The most common portrait of a man-child is one of a cisgender, heterosexual man who is extremely immature for his age. He is someone who cannot understand the consequences of his mistakes and therefore makes poor choices, displaying hurtful actions and behaviour with no thought of how they will impact anyone but himself. The oh so oftenly cited trigger for this behaviour is nurture, not nature. Parents are regularly blamed for smothering their children, not giving them the opportunity to bear the consequences of their mistakes, and forming the eventual man-child through years of coddling and misplaced reassurance.
The supposed cause may make sense but it also further coddles the man-child, taking all the pressure off him for being ‘lazy’ and having to change his behaviour, ‘It’s not my fault, it’s how I was raised.’ Just as the girlfriend/wife/partner is tasked with looking after the man-child, you can’t blame him, a man, for this, you must blame his mother, a woman, for making him such a mummy’s boy.
One key characteristic of the man-child, one that makes him so slimy, is the sneaky way he listens to his partner’s complaints, appears to take them on board as he changes for a short while; cleaning up his crumbs, loading the dishwasher, taking his partner out for a date, before regressing to his former ways with the smug huff, ‘Well, I tried.’ It’s not just that he doesn’t have his life together, he doesn’t even want to have his life together. Why would he when the current way it’s playing out benefits him so much? He’s content to ‘not notice’ the dishes need washing or that the bins need emptying, and he’s more than happy to weaponize his inexperience and incompetence when he does eventually do it. The pattern becomes routine, appreciation for someone taking care of him quickly but subtly transitioning into ungratefulness for what they perceive as the bare minimum.
It’s an issue of responsibility. A man-child refuses to take responsibility for anything, a constant stream of excuses running out of their mouth like honey. As Amanda Chatel put it in her 2016 essay What I Learned From Dating A Man Child, “It’s like watching a little kid say ‘not me,’ when their parents ask them who broke the vase in the living room although it was clearly them. That’s exactly what it’s like dating a man child — ‘not me’ is constantly their answer when confronted with anything that they obviously did.” The victim card is a favourite trick; playing it whenever they do admit to wrongdoing. Somewhere in the lead up to them committing a fault, they can find someone or thing on which to place the blame; capitalism, a dude at work, the rowdy friend, their mother. It’s simply never their fault.
The sexist undertones of the man-child are rampant and impossible to ignore. From the constant blaming of the mother for their behaviour to the reliance on women changing or leaning to deal with their man-child. One writer warns, “Do not be his mum and begin nagging and speaking to him like you’re his parent,” while another encourages to, “Modify his behaviour in small steps.” Nowhere teaches men how to break out of the man-child persona to become a decent human being. And articles detailing How To Stop Being a Man-Child further coddle with ‘expert advice’ preempted with, “I know. It’s not easy to hear,” and the cringe-inducing, “Even special forces call for air support when needed… it’s ok to ask for help.” Ugh.
If you take on the internet’s advice, be warned that all that work trying to fix your childish boyfriend will come with a price. Recent statistics show women do 60% more unpaid work [cooking, childcare and housework] than men, a piece of data that should worry cisgender, heterosexual man-children. Why? Well, inequalities in domestic labour are one of the leading reasons as to why more women file for divorce than men. They’re sick of taking care of everything, including their ignorant husbands, and would rather get up and leave.
It’s unsurprising that they do. Adding to all of the trouble of dealing with a man-child, many women who are partnered up with men also report a low sex drive. This limited libido has been the centre of studies ranging across the decades and has long been thought to be a ‘women’s issue’, with factors like hormones and stress, or general relationship issues like conflict and dissatisfaction, being cited as the root cause. But now, a recent study published in the Archives of Sexual Behaviour journal has found the real reason; and it’s men.
The imaginatively titled study The Heteronormativity Theory of Low Sexual Desire in Women Partnered with Men, not only proved that man-children do indeed exist, but, even worse, they’re actually killing women’s libidos with their ineptitude.
The study found a multitude of evidence showing that when women perform more household labour than their partner, they grow to see them as less of a partner and more like a dependent child. Unsurprisingly, this is a massive turn-off, reducing their sexual desire for that person. The idea of that person as your equal, someone you’re in a partnership with, blurs as you take on caring for them and it grows to be seen as more of a motherly role — which is not sexy. Like at all.
And let’s not forget, this is a much bigger issue for the man-child than it is for his mother-come-partner. The partner may have a lower sex drive and this is awful for her, but it also means that the man-child now gets a lot less sex than his fully formed, well-functioning counterpart — and that must ‘mwake him mwad’. It’s a slippery slope towards an inevitable end. While the girlfriend can get up and leave, listing many, oh so many reasons to do so, the needy, helpless man-child is left to fend for himself, searching for his next caregiver in the dangerous city streets.
While it has only now been confirmed that the man-child is a living, breathing entity destroying our sex lives, research has previously shown the immaturity of so-called adult men and the detrimental impact this can have on their relationships. Back in 2013, a study weirdly commissioned by Nickelodeon UK to mark the launch of their, poorly received and short-lived, show Wendell & Vinnie, found that men don’t ‘completely mature’ until the age of 43 — that’s 11 whole years after women do the same.
The study explained that while women have fully matured by the age of 32, men remain ‘immature’ well into their late 30s and early 40s. Somewhat alarmingly, eight out of ten women believed that men ‘never stop being childish,’ and not in a cute, in-touch with their inner child sort of way, but in an embarrassing, ‘I can’t believe you’ve survived up until this moment’ kind of way. They said that men stay silent during arguments as they’re unable to own up to mistakes and are so childish they’re unable to cook even simple meals for themselves.
As a result, three in ten women said they had ended a relationship because they lost patience with their partner being too immature; 46% of women felt they had to mother their partner ‘a bit too much’; and, on average, women have to tell their partner to ‘act his age’ more than once a month — about 14 times a year.
So is the man-child an issue triggered by women and is up only to women later down the line to fix? It’s the big question: What can be done to fix this? Speaking to Vice, Jordan Dixon, a London-based psychotherapist, hinted that the only resolution is to challenge the view of conventional gender-roles that have been drilled into everyone across the gender spectrum over the decades.
Dixon explains that men often face social pressure to conform to conventional gender-role behaviours. Behaviours which, for them, have historically not included domestic labour. On the other side of the spectrum, women have to grapple with the societal expectations of being ‘nice’, ‘friendly’, and ‘agreeable’, traits which Dixon warns can lead to “emotional and physical burnout, otherwise known as ‘human giver syndrome’.” Human giver syndrome will undoubtedly leave you emotionally depleted and, in the case of looking after a man-child, resentful of your partner as you give, and give, and give, and never receive anything in return.
Although the man-child conversation revolves around cisgender, heterosexual men, the not so exciting term of ‘adult-child’ may be a better fit as both Dixon and the authors of The Heteronormativity Theory of Low Sexual Desire in Women Partnered with Men assure that it regularly occurs in same-sex and gender non-conforming relationships too.
It’s not radical to understand that anyone can be so excessively childish in a relationship, no matter their gender and sexuality, that they earn the title of adult-child. But because the man-child/giving partner dynamic stems from heteronormative gender expectations, we see the scene play out in heterosexual relationships much more frequently. Just as in all fights against injustice, those who benefit from the norms are much less likely to question them, and often actively support them, because their lives are better for them.
There is a distinction to be made. Some people genuinely lack skills and need someone to hold their hand and show them the way when learning how to do basic stuff. That’s fine, annoying sometimes, but fine. It’s when that helping hand morphs into someone seeing an opportunity and taking advantage of you when they realise you’re willing to do things for them, that it becomes a problem. Unless you want to dive into the rabbit hole and spend even more time trying to fix your adult-child, slowly losing your libido as time goes on, the only option is to announce an ultimatum and reconsider the relationship based on the answer to it. You are not a babysitter or a mother, and you should definitely want to have sex with your significant other, not just do their washing and cry as you fall asleep.
