THE HOUSE DAD

Stay at home dads are three to four times more likely to get divorced. Usually this is instigated by the mother. The number one reason given is that the mother does not like going against the non-breadwinner societal-stereotype of the male partner.

It matters not one bit whether the female partner earns more, whether the male partner does more of the housework, the bulk of the childcare, the bulk of the physical labor in the house or puts themselves in physical danger as required. In my own experience you can even make more than your female partner outside of a traditional job, be the best house-dad you can be, you can give up your career, your friends, in order to make sure your family thrive. You can endure the puzzled looks, the hushed mutterings about “Oh, he’s just a house dad.” Or “There must be something wrong with him.”

And still you will have a strong chance of being made an outcast. Or worse yet, stay in a relationship where you are made to feel it every day.

Back when I did this I had more in common with the grandmothers I met looking after their grand-kids. They came from a generation where there was neither maternity or paternity leave. One of you had to give up your job if you chose to have kids.

Back then dads who belittled, shamed or held the mothers in contempt for doing the right thing were in my eyes less than men. They are not the strong men they claim to be.

In my experience women who belittle, shame or hold fathers back in this new dynamic are also less than women. They are not the strong women they claim to be.

They are both exploitative children too scared to stand up for what is right.

This goes for wider society too. I remember the year paternity leave was brought in as law in my country. A few months off – unpaid – to spend with your new child and your partner. Not much really, is it?

However, a friend who ran a law firm was publicly shamed and humiliated by everyone at his firm – and he was the boss.

The myth of the patriarchy is that it was set up to solely benefit men. When in fact the anthropological truth is it also evolved to serve women who needed someone bigger, stronger, more violent, more willing to die and more resource-getting than other chimps in the jungle.

Professor Alexandra Killewald of Harvard University commented on this in a recent article: 'While contemporary wives need not embrace the traditional homemaker role to stay married, contemporary husbands face a higher risk of divorce when they do not fulfill the stereotypical breadwinner role by being employed full-time.

'Often when scholars or the media talk about work-family policies or work-family balance, they focus mostly on the experiences of women.

'Although much of the responsibility for negotiating that balance falls to women, my results suggest one way that expectations about gender and family roles and responsibilities affect men's lives, too: men who aren't able to sustain full-time work face heightened risk of divorce.

'Expectations of wives' homemaking may have eroded but the husband breadwinner norm persists.'

It’s understandable from a mindless evolutionary-advantage perspective. But hardly laudable from a human one.

So, would I change anything about what I have done?

No, because then I wouldn’t have my wonderful children. But I would like to see a world where the culturally underappreciated role of child-rearing is fully appreciated, for both men and women.

No virtue-signalling. This isn’t an us-vs-them trope. That is idiotically reductive. We're truly all in this together.

Back in the days before the house-dad gap in my CV made me virtually unemployable I used to look for businesses or projects to be involved in that had a quest at their heart and made every employee a hero or heroine. Companies that made people believe in what they were doing and felt secure in that wisdom.

Every bread-winning man or woman on a quest to support their partners to be secure and raise secure emotionally-aware children is a hero in my eyes.

The culture we live can be damned if it can’t keep up with the reality of what it takes to create a secure, stable, and emotionally well-rounded family.

The future of parenting is this: Insecure blame-culture bread winners need not apply.