Learning & Adapting: Changing Men's Roles (Part 4)

My Family Care asks Oliver: With Gender Equality always a subject of interest, it is usually women who are in the spotlight. However with changes to Paternity leave and women climbing the corporate ladder, how is the role of a father in the workplace changing? What differences are you noticing as the balance of traditional roles changes? And how can both men and women learn to adapt to these changes?

It's well documented that today, women make up almost half of the total UK workforce - a hard fought victory in the battle for gender equality, tempered by stubbornly persistent pay disparity and continued under-representation at senior management levels.

Less well documented has been a recent, some would say seismic, shift in the role men play in the workplace. What's remarkable about this shift is how much it has been led by the very group that has always benefited most from the gender balance status quo: men themselves.

Sacrifice?

I think it's because we're no longer quite so willing to sacrifice everything on the altar of ambition. We're no longer happy working all hours to get ahead - only to see our most cherished relationships falter then fail as we become strangers to our nearest and dearest.

Writing at my desk in a smart, professional office made up of 80% women, where my boss is a woman and the team I manage are all women, the once-cherished 1950s family ideal where the man is the breadwinner and the woman the homemaker seems a dim, distant memory.

And yet, it's only recently that my own family has moved out of the shadow of this enduring cultural meme. It's only recently that I've had first-hand experience of what that change of balance in traditional gender roles really means.

When my partner became pregnant you could say she'd been double-whammied by the job market. As a freelancer on a fixed term contract covering someone else on maternity leave, she had no right to such leave herself. So no job to go back to; stay-at-home mum it was. We were so happy with the pregnancy that we saw this as a minor hurdle to be overcome.

Reality

Fast forward two years and my partner has finally returned to full-time work. At a stroke we have doubled our income and then some (it's with a strange kind of pride that I tell you she earns a bit more than me). And while this gain is somewhat offset by the stratospheric costs of childcare, we are undoubtedly much better off financially.

It goes without saying that I'm hugely pleased for my partner. She's always had bags of confidence but you can see in her bearing and other body language the positive effect that winning this new role has had on her self esteem.

As for me, I've fully signed up to the new status quo; the new gender politics; the new joint enterprise. So everyone's a winner, right? Wrong.

The painful truth is that life in this brave new world - we're both breadwinners now; we're both homemakers now - has bought into plain and ugly reality my own deficiencies. Deficiencies I wasn't even aware I possessed.

Juggling act

When it comes to getting my daughter to and from nursery; to getting her fed; bathed; dressed; undressed; asleep; awake; and everything else in between; it's like watching a game of mixed doubles in tennis where one team mate is clearly carrying the other... and I am not the former. Ok, my partner has had a great deal more experience doing all this but I'm hardly new to the game either.

And what of work? As her star rises, mine fades. I've belatedly realised that I'm not quite as efficient as I've always imagined myself to be. Leaving the office at dead on five in order to collect my daughter from nursery each and every day has deprived of me a crucial weapon in my armoury: time. And my performance has dipped as a result. The journey from hero to zero (perhaps not quite that bad but you get my point) has been a difficult one.

Adaptation

So I'm learning to adapt to my changing roles at home and work. For example, I work far better at a desk using a 'proper' keyboard - but I'm adjusting to using the laptop at home, once my daughter is safely asleep and the various other mundane yet essential homely chores have been completed.

I strongly suspect I'm not the only man struggling to adapt. But I'm keeping the faith - I'll adapt because I have to, because my family needs me to. After all, if my partner can successfully assume both roles then surely so can I?

Oliver, Team Manager, Father of one