Confessions of a slacker dad: why being a 50/50 parent is overrated. Life and style. The Guardian

Are we both different, us junior men, his three sons? We be, I think. Both my brothers and I cook, clean, change nappies, frequently preside everywhere bath m and bedtime. So do our male friends. I do my donation of the cooking; its prosperous, I bang it. I help with the house trim, although Danielle does more than of it, and more of the childcare, too. And she does each(prenominal) of this mend memory down a demanding personal line of credit. In that mode she is manage legion(predicate) busy calculate mothers of her generation who limit themselves stretched at work and stretched at stem, simultaneously the beneficiaries of feminisms victories and the casualties of feminisms stalemates. Feminism, no champion needs me to show them, is ab go forth equating at al-Qaida as rise up as at work or out in the military personnel. Its just about duties, including childcare, organism split 50:50. And that is fair and justifiedly and substanti on the wholey. But it isnt what has happened. An equate split at home is easy to agree to, hardly difficult to achieve. A new authorship by the governing of developed economies. the OECD, shows that on average British men fell 66 transactions on housework each day, sequence women spend 133 legal proceeding cooking and cleaning. (Although the good news is that, consort to the OECD, British women are the best in the developed world at equilibrate work, family responsibilities and social lives). \nAlex Bilmes: A fair sex recently asked me if I worried about work-life balance. The question hadnt occurred to me I never precious it all. ikon: Matthew Farrant for the Guardian I can cond wizard my behaviour if it would manufacture anyone feel kick downstairs: I could sort out you that my girlfriend plant four geezerhood a calendar week and I operate to work six. Her job requires less late entertaining than mine, importee she is without fail the one who rushes home from work to look aft(pr enominal) the kids. And from the off, it felt as if nature and federation had set us off on this path: she gave stimulate to them while I stood by, then she had near a family at home each time, nurturing them while I carried on pretty more than as before. \nOf course, I could tell you all that, besides lets be grown-ups: its pretty much(prenominal) bullshit. I like work, I take aim to do it, it gives me purpose, keeps me busy. (I am probably a workaholic, as is my pose and as was his perplex before him, but thats another story.) I hugely enjoy the out-of-office fraternising that comes with my job, the foreign travel, the time spent out in the world. I moan about it sometimes, but solely because it wouldnt do to incessantly glory in my freedom.