I appeared on Radio 4’s PM programme earlier this week as a token male chauvinist pig. The issue under discussion was the government’s proposal to make it possible for fathers to take up to six months’ paternity leave. I argued this was bad news for dads since it means we’ll no longer have a much-needed excuse for going back to work the moment there’s a newborn in the house.
I wondered beforehand whether my opponent would be a harridan feminist or a wet man and the answer was a wet man: Rob Williams, chief executive of something called the ‘Fatherhood Institute’. He wasn’t in the studio, so I couldn’t tell whether he was wearing a pinny, but he didn’t sound particularly red-blooded. When I said most men had no aptitude for looking after babies he drew my attention to a recent survey of young men which asked whether newborns should primarily be the responsibility of the mother. More than two thirds said no.
Yes, Rob, but that’s because they were standing next to their ‘partners’ when they were asked. Most men feel obliged to toe the politically correct line — often spewing a lot of balls about how ‘precious’ those first few weeks are — but the reality is we’re spectacularly ill-equipped to deal with mewling infants. Stick me in front of 500 rioting Cardiff City fans with my six-year-old daughter after a QPR game and I know instinctively how to react. (This actually happened last year. I whisked Sasha up onto a first floor balcony where we both chanted ‘sheep shaggers’ from a distance.) But place a newborn in my arms and I feel a bit like a monkey being confronted with the controls of a jumbo jet.
There’s nothing mysterious about this. Women have an aptitude for childcare that men don’t. A couple of years ago I visited a prison in South Africa and was struck by the difference between the male and the female population. Even though the prison was horribly overcrowded and some 50 per cent of the prisoners were infected with HIV, the male inmates seemed perfectly content. That’s men for you — one mood, all the time. Provided they could watch football on a tiny television set or listen to it on the radio, they were happy. The female prisoners, by contrast, were miserable. Why? Because they couldn’t bear being separated from their children.
The tricky thing about pointing this out is that it sounds like an argument against female emancipation. But I’m not arguing that women should be chained to the hearth, just stating the bleedin’ obvious. If, like Rob Williams, you think men ought to do 50 per cent of the childcare from the moment babies are born, don’t try to gloss over the differences between the sexes and pretend that nature is gender neutral. And for God’s sake don’t prattle on about the joys of spending time with your baby. Man up and admit that you think men should be forced to clean up baby sick because it’s only fair that they should suffer alongside their wives. (Whoops. I mean ‘partners’, obviously.)
Now, the laws of natural justice might well dictate that women should no more be forced to perform this drudgery than men, even if they do have an aptitude for it. But the solution is not to make it easier for men to take paternity leave. Who on earth can survive on the £130 statutory maximum in any case? That won’t even cover the cost of the breast implants. No, the answer is to make it easier for women from overseas to obtain domestic worker visas.
I know, I know, that’s even more politically incorrect than refusing to change a nappy. Immigrant labour is the middle-class vice that dare not speak its name. But paying female guest workers to look after our children is actually quite ‘progressive’. After all, they can often earn more as nannies than they can doing any number of jobs back home. Doesn’t that come under the heading of ‘wealth redistribution’? It seems crazy to deny poor women in other parts of the world a decent wage — and deny our wives the chance to have a career — in the name of equality. Let’s remove the cap on immigration from the Philippines.
I wonder if I’ll be brave enough to make this argument next time I appear on Radio 4? Probably not. That’s the trouble with me — all talk. I’m going to have to go now. My wife’s just plonked a baby in my arms.
Toby Young is associate editor of The Spectator.
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