Andrew Brown

Home boys

Meet the Dalis: men who are dependent – and loving it

Meet the Dalis: men who are dependent – and loving it

It sounds like a cushy life for a man. On weekdays he potters about at home, running a duster over the surfaces, tinkering with a short story he’s struggling to compose, painting, daydreaming, listening to a bit of Jeremy Vine; his wife, meanwhile, gets up in the dark, takes the 5.47 to Liverpool Street and toils away in a glass tower all day to bring home the bacon. He is dependent, and loving it: we could call him a Dali.

There are a plenty of Dalis around these days. You probably know one or two. And the statistics show it clearly. More and more couples, especially if they have children, are choosing to swap the traditional roles. This change, like so many other trends, is driven by economics: it is often cheaper for one half of the couple to stay at home while the other works than to pay for childcare so that both parents can climb the career ladder. Increasingly, women are paid more than men, so the woman might as well be the breadwinner. If she is a jet-fuelled alpha female, and her husband a softer homebody with creative leanings, then so much the better.

So it’s no surprise to find that in the past 15 years the number of families in which the woman is the main breadwinner and the male looks after the household has trebled, according to new analysis of labour market surveys carried out for The Spectator by the Office of National Statistics. The statisticians looked at men who were classed as economically inactive and looking after family or home while their wives worked: last year, 62,000 men fell into this category; in 1996 there were only 21,000. The figures show a steady increase, year after year; other things being equal, they should carry on going upwards.

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