AN ALPHA WOMAN'S BETA HALF | December 22nd 2007

All photographs by Fergus Greer

Miranda Green talks to middle-class men who have given up other jobs to concentrate on child-care, and discovers a fine balance of happiness and frustration behind their masculine reserve ...

From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, December 2007

A sunny morning in the affluent London suburb of Wimbledon, and the atmosphere in the playgroup is jolly, but a good deal quieter than you would expect with 13 children and 12 adults milling around a church hall. The reason isn't hard to spot: the parents are all men, and there is a certain masculine reserve in the air. Welcome to Dads and Little'Uns.

Chatting over coffee and an impressive array of biscuits, the ten or so fathers maintain a low hum of conversation, breaking off every so often to rescue a toddler from underneath a fallen toy or to redirect an off-target crawl. The men bring their children here every Monday and Friday, all year round (£4 a week into the kitty to cover costs). Theirs appears to be the first and perhaps only regular group for stay-at-home fathers in London. They are part of a growing trend for husbands to move on to traditional female territory, taking care of home and children while their high-powered other half is out hunting and gathering.

Most of the fathers are in their 30s. There's a lot of baggy denim and fashionable facial hair and a bit of joshing about the latest sports results. The playgroup has spawned other, reassuringly male activities—a weekly football game, beer and poker nights, and day trips to an outward-bound centre in the forest. "All very macho," jokes Matt Lowe, playgroup co-ordinator, former advertising account-manager and now full-time father to two young daughters.

The most noticeable thing is how healthy and happy the fathers look. They keep calling themselves "lucky", lucky to be playing a big part in their children's crucial early years, and lucky to be able to afford it. But there are complications and consequences for the parents who defy convention in this way. And although couples willing to talk about their role-reversal tend to accentuate the positive, internet chatrooms and fathers' networks give glimpses of the stresses of becoming a house-husband.

The Wimbledon playgroup started about five years ago as a get-together, almost a refuge, for men who had felt unwelcome at the standard woman-and-toddler meetings. As Matt describes it: "There were stories about the room going quiet, staring, the mothers on one side and the nannies on the other, neither wanting to speak to the father." Matt doesn't feel comfortable at his daughters' swimming lessons, surrounded by women in swimsuits. Another father says he has been on the receiving end of suspicion from husbands who find him chatting to the mothers in Starbucks.

Peter Baylies, a former news photographer from Massachusetts, launched At-Home Dad, a website and newsletter, in the early 1990s (slogan: "men who change diapers change the world"). He remembers feeling outnumbered and intimidated when he was pushing the pram, aware of a "Mr Mom" stigma: "I knew the dads were out there, but pretty much hiding in their homes."

Tensions can also arise between a couple. Psychologists say the men can become timid and even experience sexual problems, whereas some of the women miss time at home with their children, particularly the very young ones. Baylies suggests that conflict is often caused by confusion about who does what and by an unwillingness on the part of the woman to give up female territory. "It is difficult for the man at the beginning-you are on her turf." The experiment works, he says, in "families where the wife is level-headed and logical and says ‘ok, you do it'." Trouble between Peter and his wife in those early months arose from their different definitions of cleanliness; nothing, it seems, except domestic staff can spare couples from arguments about the state of the toilet. For a while, Peter simply refused to clean it: "Yes, I was that male chauvinist pig saying ˜why should I clean the bathroom?' It didn't bother me but it did bother her."

Baylies advises couples to write out a schedule of responsibilities, and says there are ways to avoid tussles during that difficult hour when the working partner re-enters the domestic sphere. "I would light a candle in the evening and turn off the lights, so she couldn't see the mess. You know, there's a bowl of fruit and I'm reading to them."

A post on At-Home Dad suggests that working women will give more sex to men who have the house clean and dinner ready when they get home a strange, refracted version of the advice in women's magazines from decades ago. And many of the men now immersing themselves in the world of nappies and parent-teacher associations understand more about the lives of women who stay at home, especially if they have given up the ego-buffer of a good job.

The Wimbledon fathers resist any suggestion that they have lost status though the very question brings a brief pallor to their cheeks. Only one man I meet later admits to feeling "emasculated, if that's the word" and he's a writer, given, perhaps, to deeper self-examination than the others. But they will all talk about adjusting to a life devoted to others' needs, a shift that women have long made. Paul, a former video editor, dapper in his Fred Perry shirt, reflects: "At first you don't think about that, but there is the stereotype of the discontented stay-at-home mum, and I can see now why women get so frustrated. You don't always get the rewards, other than the obvious ones of seeing your children grow up and being with them all the time...And there's the repetitiveness—that you have to get used to. You're not going to get much back."

Matt has noticed that at dinner parties he now feels unable to join in male conversation about work. He often feels he is operating "in a vacuum. At work you become used to having an appraisal and feedback," he observes. Not so at home. And there is the identity question: "A lot of people are defined by their employment, it provides you with a label...and now the label you've got is an unusual one that most men can't identify with."

The overwhelming trend is for families to juggle the demands of two jobs, even if one is part-time. In Britain the Office for National Statistics found in 2004 that the mother is the sole earner among only 3% of married or cohabiting couples with children. Just under 139,000 married or cohabiting men gave looking after family or home as their reason for economic inactivity. America's Bureau of Labour Statistics found that a mere 5% of fathers stayed at home while their partners worked. Earlier American surveys estimated that only 147,000 fathers were married or cohabiting with no outside earnings.

But the figures probably underestimate the importance of stay-at-home fathers. In Britain they count those caring for parents or other relatives, but not part-time workers (and at least 15% of working fathers in the survey said they had flexible employment). In America Baylies thinks the real number is nearly 2m-"America's best kept secret," he calls it. Academics say they detect a slight trend towards more such couples.

This partly reflects a new economic reality. America's Department of Labour says a quarter of working women out-earn their men. The OECD reports that the share is even higher elsewhere-29% in Canada and New Zealand, and a third in Portugal. A survey in Britain, which has no official study, reported that 39% of full-time working women believed they were earning more than their husband or partner.

Those men who swap roles fall into two broad categories: the yummy daddies, taking a few years out to look after the children while their higher-earning wife toils on; and the nest-builders, who stay at home to support women executives consumed by what Sylvia Ann Hewlett, an American academic and campaigner, has called "extreme jobs". Some very well paid careers at the top of banking, the law, politics and business demand a 70- to 80-hour working week. Alpha partners need spouses willing to look after them between international trips and to take responsibility for the children and the household. "In New York and London there is now a small group of people who are earning megabucks and that changes the incentives for the other partner to work," says Hewlett, speaking from the Centre for Work-Life Policy at Columbia University in New York. "There is weird stuff going on, because of the sheer heft of the remuneration packages."

Among the highly educated in America the enormous earning power of one spouse, usually the man, domesticates the other. Surveys of female graduates of Harvard Business School show only 38% in full-time work. Hewlett observes that they have married their successful male peers, put down their briefcases and picked up an apron. "Given the fact that the family did not need her income and given his hours and the demands of his job, she's at home."

Hewlett is at pains to point out that when the high-earner is female, a supportive spouse is rare. But some high-achieving women do manage to swap and some of their men spend all their time looking after the home. Juliet Blanch, head of international dispute resolution at McDermott Will & Emery, an American law firm, has a family that she sees only on weekday mornings before she catches the train from Surrey into her London office. When we speak, she is looking at a schedule that has her away for three of the next six weekends, leaving her husband John, a former lawyer, in sole charge of their son and two daughters. "So you see," she explains, "he really does have to deal with this as if he was a single dad."

Jessica (not her real name) is a senior American banker in her 40s. Over coffee in Canary Wharf, she tells how her macho husband has become an ideal wife, the darling of local mothers and the attentive father to their two daughters. Richard (again, not his real name) delights in reading "Little House on the Prairie" with them, then amuses himself when they are at school by keeping fit, updating the family website, a bit of gentle day trading, and poker games with his friends and her clients. "I think he's really appreciative of living like this," Jessica says, "and it's all provided by investment banking” we don't need both of us to work. We are two strong individuals in our own right, so it was a question of getting used to it, and we have, God bless, a ton of money."

Regulars at the Wimbledon playgroup dwell in a less rarefied atmosphere, members of a larger swathe that is affluent, but not super-wealthy. There is chat about private school, but no one has an expensive nanny; most of the fathers talk proudly about refusing to hand their children over to childminders. Their partners' jobs may not qualify as extreme but still demand constant presence. The decision to swap gender roles may not be a necessity, but the money has given them a choice.

Steve, a tall, good-looking Scot who has come with his ebullient, curly-haired daughter, explains that when his wife, who works in finance, became pregnant with their elder child, she put their earnings and likely child-care costs into a spreadsheet. It became obvious that he should give up his job in financial it, which he didn't really enjoy, and take care of the family.

Paul recommends the experience: "It's extremely rewarding to see your kids grow up. We're very, very lucky, and the children benefit because they get the male attention all day and then in the evening they get input from the wife” I know she does more with them than I would if I was coming home knackered."

Like several others here, he sees his stint at home as a four- or five-year career break. Some are preparing for the difficult return to work even before the children have entered school-encouraged by partners who don't want the burden of permanently supporting the family. One has been studying for an MBA, another an undergraduate history-of-art course, which has led to a part-time job with an auction house. That business-school dissertation still needs writing, but father and daughter now have co-ordinated afternoon naps, which makes it easier to stay up late and work at the computer after the womenfolk have settled down for the night. "You have to have something else going on," the would-be entrepreneur shrugs. "Otherwise..."

Juliet Blanch's husband John doesn't think he will work again. He was never, he admits, likely to make partner in his own law firm. By the time their third child arrived eight years ago, his wife was earning so much that he didn't need to go back. Juliet and John met when they were ten years old, and went from childhood sweethearts to fellow aspiring lawyers and then husband and wife. "She's always been my best friend, which is not always the way with couples," says John, who believes they experience less tension than a role reversal might cause for a couple with competing egos. "You could almost consider us one person."

Happily holed up in Guildford and preparing to bring the children back for tea (he is famous among local families for his chicken nuggets), John tells me that intellectual stimulation is the only aspect of working life that he misses. But he feels connected to his old world via Juliet and understands the pressures she is under: "You can't give what is required for a serious job without back-up at home-the travel, the phone calls across time zones." When she is at home he lets her sleep in one day of every weekend to recover, and she understands his need when she gets home late in the evenings to moan about the homework. "He's desperate for some adult company."

Jessica has also handed over control of the home to Richard. They have been together on and off since they met at university, aged 19, and theirs is, they both say, an ideal marriage of opposites. "He's in charge...I don't want to clean up, I don't do dishes, I don't even know how to use the washing machine," she exclaims in delight. "He's going to choose how to do things for the girls, and I'm ok with that. And he takes care of the family money, organises the holidays--I never seem to have cash on me." Richard, a former engineer, is reticent, masculine, and, she says, less emotional: "so much better at [parenting] than me, calmer, less hyper-competent, more patient."

Admitting he may not pick up on the odd flicker of disapproval his wife feels directed at them, Richard observes: "You probably do need self-confidence to do this, because society has such a grip on people." He runs the household, she explains, "on his own terms". That means not giving his girls every outing they want; not killing himself catering for the PTA when they have meetings at his house; not needing to prepare great meals all the time (he'll cook a big lasagne, but often the family eat takeaways); and not, above all, feeling the guilt that seems to plague so many mothers. "Men have an ability to only do what they want to do," the pinstriped mistress of the universe observes, "whereas women are suckers."

It all seems organised and harmonious--"from each according to his or her abilities", say husbands and wives alike. They would recommend it to hard-pressed, dual-income couples everywhere. But several refuse to speak about swapping roles, and even some high-powered women grow nervous when the subject comes up. The men who will talk don't-won't-complain about their set-up. They repeatedly buttress their maleness by calling their situation "logical".

David Hewison, senior couple psychoanalytic psychotherapist at the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships in north London, thinks couples hide their anxieties. Even when the swap works, each partner "tries not to let the side down" when the subject comes up, he says. "And it's hard to talk about, which suggests that the stereotypes still run very strongly."

A full-time father may attract curiosity verging on suspicion, because he clashes with our expectations. But this very curiosity, Hewison suggests, gives a father privileges denied to most mothers. As rarities, these men have value and interest, and therefore status. "It's an adventure, a bit of a holiday for them, it's not like a kind of life sentence. Also, you get a lot of attention from women, which is nice."

When Matt left the advertising agency, he recalls a colleague pumping his hand repeatedly, saying "I admire you, mate, but I couldn't do it." Jessica's square-jawed consort attracts a lot of admiration” at parties the working husbands complain they are tired of being compared unfavourably with this paragon. Juliet sounds frustrated at this attitude: "Women say ˜It's brilliant! He's coping!' But why? He's an intelligent sentient being, like all of us." Jessica's female colleagues ask how she got so lucky.

And yet, displaying a certain anxiety, they also ask whether her husband "still feels manly". She and the other women I met try to protect their partners from feeling powerless for instance by not competing on his turf and by surrendering power in a few symbolic areas. Most of the women made a point of telling me their husbands manage the household finances, even if the men are also doing the laundry and sewing the nametags. The alpha wives are also careful about conferences and work dinners. "He's a good sport about it," says Jessica, "but we keep them to a minimum." John says he prefers to take a back seat unless Juliet really needs him to show up as an official consort: "Inevitably conversation comes round to work, and you're sort of pushing the mushrooms round the side of the plate..."

Alongside this domestic ego-support, fathers now have the online networks, support groups and what in America has become something like a political movement, with annual conventions and angry bloggers monitoring stereotypical representations in the media.

Dr Kyle Pruett, a professor of child psychiatry at Yale who has been following a group of families like these for the past 16 years, has become a somewhat reluctant figurehead for this movement, because his research shows that children develop normally in their fathers' care. He sees full-time fatherhood "slowly inching forward, but it's never going to take the world by storm."

Far more interesting, Pruett feels, and possibly a factor that could limit the number of couples who make the switch, is the other, female side of the story. He observes from his research that there is a limit to how far women are happy with the arrangement, even if it makes sense. As the years go by, Pruett has observed that the women in his study who are the sole breadwinners face a struggle not to feel they are sacrificing too much of their femaleness. "The babies are fine," he says, "the men are OK, but I believe it is a much more complicated journey for the mothers."

Juliet is conscious of what she has given up, even though she's confident the whole family is thriving: "I've had to relinquish the decision-making about how the children are being brought up, which is a big thing if you've given birth to them." John says he has had pangs of guilt about that-but credits Juliet's motherliness during each of the children's infancies, a stage that he, at 15 stone and six-feet-two, found hard. "They were so small and floppy and vulnerable. You're holding this little bundle and you feel very big and cumbersome."

Richard, too, became interested in his daughters once he could see that they were speaking, thinking and processing information. But he seems less impressed with caring for a small baby. "When the kids were very young it was horrible," he says with feeling. "I can't look after a child of three years or under, you have to have a nanny for that. There's no intellectual stimulation and you can't control their day." Jessica says she "loved the little helpless baby stage" and negotiated a four-month break after the first birth, an "idyllic" six months after the second.

An optimist would say that the attention focused on fathers like the Wimbledon group, now packing the biscuits into their Tupperware containers and leading the toddlers in a last-minute race around the hall, might help raise the kudos of parenting in general. Matt, along with most of the other men, has come to feel strongly that the work of bringing up the next generation is undervalued. "I have heard lots of stay-at-home mums say ‘Oh I just look after the kids', which isn't right."

But Hewison takes what he calls "a slightly cynical view...It's now got prestige exactly because men are doing it it's the kind of gender-role skewing that goes on everywhere. Men are claiming to be special for doing something that women do anyway and aren't allowed to claim to be special for," he observes. "It suggests that men need to have their identity and status protected in a way that women don't.

And Pruett warns that some fathers, especially the younger men, are so relieved to be proving their competence once they see their children are happy and healthy under their care, that their pride verges on hubris. It can sound as if they are dismissing the mother and edging her out. An American ex-marine, now living in London and looking after his 19-month-old son, told me, "There's only one thing a man cannot do and that is give birth I can do everything else."

If the attention on these full-time fathers is to raise the status of parenting in general, it should not be at the expense of motherhood. And perhaps we should be patient about the anxieties stirred up when the sexes swap places so radically. After all, as Richard muses, puzzled by how females can cope with "just rocking a baby" day and night, "Human beings are not evolving as quickly as our society is changing."

Assumptions about male and female roles are far from being bred out of us, even in these pioneering families. Pruett tells a story about how the child of a stay-at-home father and working mother shocked his parents by drawing a family portrait-the man in a suit, ready for the office and the woman wearing an apron. After all their hard work, "the mother was really upset because she wanted this child to honour the sacrifice she was making, and the father really wanted to be seen as nurturing."

For more information on stay at home dads, check the website Dad at Home