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By Debra Waters October 4, 2013
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Word of Mum Blog Family Life
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Men Aren’t Having It All, Either
Comments (0)
I’ve been so busy studying for a further
education, establishing a career, maintain-
ing important female friendships, then sim-
ultaneously juggling a family, running our
social diary and the home, and continuing
aforementioned career, that I seem to have
neglected to check on how the man in my
life is getting on.
(Kind of) joking aside, there’ll never be true
equality in our house because I’ll never be
the breadwinner (I write for a living, for
gawd’s sake) but I wouldn’t expect there to
be. Whilst I’m a working mum – which my
husband respects – his job pays the bills.
However, according to a report from the
Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) 2.2 million women are now the breadwinners in
UK families, which is almost a third of working mums and an increase of over 80 per cent
since 1997. That’s a huge cultural shift in a small period of time. A new book, Getting to
50/50: How Working Parents Can Have It All, is representative of the zeitgeist, and it’s a
step closer towards it becoming the norm that working parents go dutch on everyday tasks.
So we’re getting there, ladies, but achieving a decent work-life balance that makes having it
all worthwhile isn’t just our problem, it’s a family one that includes the men in our lives. As
women’s lives become more progressive, the status of men is being challenged and we need
to appreciate this.
As we do more, we expect our partners to do more. And they are, to some extent. A study
from the Pew Research Centre in Washington found that men have tripled the amount of
time they spend with their children since 1965. Stay-at-home dads, whilst still a minority, are
on the increase. Housework remains a sensitive subject, with women, even working ones, do-
ing the lion’s share.
Since starting a family, my husband and I have slowly
rediscovered harmony, but it’s been a bumpy, busy road. He
helps with childcare when he can (he works longer hours
than me), and we share the cooking but not the housework
– at a push, he’ll do manly tasks like unload the dishwasher
and put the bins out. This used to cause arguments until I
got real: I was so obsessed with holding on to some
remnants of my pre-child life that I’d disregarded that my
husband’s life had changed too.
Over many discussions I came to see that his responsibilities
were now greater – his concerns about keeping up with
mortgage payments and giving us a good life; wanting to spend time with our son but being
too busy; missing milestones that I delight in; sacrificing seeing friends to get home to us.
He, too, has struggled to have it all and his absences (which I resented, seeing his freedom as
less diminished than mine) is time spent away from bonding with his child.
Equality, it seems, has turned out to be a bit of an illusion; neither is it as important as I’d
given it credit for. As a team, we have a bigger challenge than establishing parity – we have a
family and home and need to make enough money to afford it all. We’ve both made sacri-
fices.
My husband now has to earn enough to maintain a decent standard of living but also find the
time expected by both society and his wife to be a regular presence in his son’s life. This
wasn’t required of his father.
Modern expectations affect us all – male and female – especially families with two working
parents who struggle to find enough hours in the day to work, rest and play. As society
evolves, equality is a progressive dream that’s slowly becoming a reality but let’s be realistic
– if we women have it all, we have to have smaller portions of it all. And that applies to our
partners too.
Read more in Word of Mum.
Comments (0)
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About The Author
Debra Waters
Debra Waters is a London-
based lifestyle writer and
editor, and mum to a
spirited toddler.
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