Status Anxiety Paternity leave, no — immigrant nannies, yes!

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.