Sex war! Surrender?

Enter the debate: add your comment at the end of this article.

It’s time to call a truce. The sex war has gone on long enough. The only casualties from continued hostilities will be our children.

Everytime mums meet – whether at the school gates or online – pretty soon the conversation is likely to turn to some variation on standard theme: Why My Other Half is So Useless.

While mothers are, typically, the ones who heroically hold the fort at home, fathers are some combination of late, lazy, forgetful, irresponsible and ungrateful.

The evidence

But the data from the Equal Opportunities Commission on how mums and dads spend their time explodes the myth of the slack Dad. To cut to the chase: fathers work at least as hard as mothers.

• Mums, dads and time: who does what?

The survey shows that although men are doing a lot more childcare than in the past, there is still a big divide in the kind of work being done. Dads do more paid work, and more DIY. Mums do more childcare and housework.

Dads have a bit more leisure time than mums at the weekend – Mums have a bit more on weekdays. But there is now no disputing that we are – dads and mums - pulling our weight.

Competetive exhaustion

I think one of the problems is that ‘work’ now quite often seems like more fun than being at home with pre-schoolers. It is only through clenched teeth that the stay-home parent can ask their spouse: “So darling, how is the three-day conference in Barcelona?”

It is easy for mums to think that meetings in air-conditioned offices or lunches in Soho restaurants are less hard work than the slog of caring for a one year-old and three year-old.

In the same way, fathers are often guilty of coming home after a ‘real day’s work’ while imagining their other halves have been sipping coffee with their friends and snoozing in front of daytime TV all day.

Indeed, sometimes we resort to pretending to have had a harder day than in truth, for fear that this will be seized on by "the enemy" and used as a reason to shirk their duties.

Instead we complain at how shattered we are in a game of what one writer has called ‘competitive exhaustion’. Be honest – you’ve done it too?

Let's surrender

It has long been understood in business that a sense of ‘felt fairness’ is important in any organisation. If people feel that someone is overpaid, or not doing their bit, they become resentful.

The same happens in our kitchens, living rooms and bedrooms.

If mums think that their situation is unfair – or vice versa – this spells trouble for the relationship. It looks, from Swedish evidence, as if Dads who do a spell of solo childcare are are less likely to end up divorced from their wives.

Maybe this is because both parents have experienced the joys and pains of being the carer, and the breadwinner – in other words, they’ll have more empathy.

Look. We’re bound to argue, and disagree some of the time. But we’ll be better parents if we accept that each of us is contributing, and equally, to the most vital institution in society, and the incubator of the next generation: the family.

So, pax? As a working father, I’ll run up the white flag first – how about it, mum?

 The Author

Richard Reeves is a writer, commentator and speaker. His latest book is John Stuart Mill – Victorian Firebrand, an intellectual biography of the British liberal philosopher and politician. Richard’s other principal areas of current interest are the economics and politics of wellbeing; trends in British politics; and the future of the workplace. He's just been appointed Director of Demos.

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