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When I told my wife I was engineering things so I could join her in working entirely from home twice a week, she lit up. “That’s wonderful.” It was so sweet, I had no idea that she would be as thrilled as I was about the extra time for rest, self-improvement and playing with the children that this new arrangement would afford me.
It turned out her list of dreams for this freed-up time was slightly different to my own. I’d be Jamie Oliver in the kitchen, cooking delicious, nutritious meals from scratch (even though I had hitherto struggled to reheat pasta in the microwave), I’d return things to the shops (er, what things and why?) and I’d complete all the DIY jobs I’d been avoiding for the last five years precisely because I lack both the aptitude and the desire.
“Wait. I am still actually working – I’m just working from home now,” I’d tell her, alarmed.
And here’s the rub. Mothers and fathers have a different relationship with the workplace and with the home. When one or both of us work from home, this relationship-damaging asymmetry is brutally exposed in gory, technicolour detail.
It took me a while to understand that ditching the commute wasn’t about getting time for myself; it was a chance to take responsibility. And that, it turns out, is better.
As Professor Leah Ruppanner, sociologist and director of The Future of Work Lab, explained to me recently on my Be a Happier Parent podcast: “For fathers, work and family aren’t in tension. Earning more, progressing in a career: these things feel aligned with being a good parent. The mental load of work is experienced as being in service of the family, rather than in competition with it,” she said.
For my wife, it felt completely different. Working from home allowed her to catch up on the job she felt she’d been neglecting – the one she’d been told, in ways both subtle and explicit, was her true responsibility. It allowed her to attend to the household she’d neglected while selfishly chasing her own dreams (dreams which, funnily enough, enabled her to provide for the family).
This often leaves mothers carrying an impossible load – maintaining the high standards and constant availability demanded by work while simultaneously driving the entire operation of the home forward. Meanwhile, many dads shut the office door and insist that they can’t be disturbed.
And men do have good reason to want to shut that door and demonstrate that they are still fully committed when working from home. Men are twice as likely to be refused flexible working than women. Research by Jasmine Kelland revealed the “fatherhood forfeit” when fathers applied for part-time roles, they were judged as less competent and less committed than mothers, and even viewed with suspicion. Mothers face a different and even more unfair problem: once they have children, they are regarded as less committed to work, regardless of how they behave.
So what do we do about it? Commitment to the workplace is one thing. The wider issue here is that women are seemingly socialised to look after other people, whereas men appear to be taught that chasing their individual betterment makes them good men. To some fathers, flexibility buys “me time”; whereas it allows mums time to support their families. I made a fair few mistakes in the way I treated my flexible working. Here’s what I learnt.
Don’t relax
My wife used to say: “If I catch you relaxing between the moment the kids wake up and them going to bed, I’m going to lose it.” Fair. I never saw her relax once. A “coffee break” involved a superhuman burst of speed, sorting and tidying through every room and then back into the kitchen before the kettle had boiled. In contrast, my absent-minded guitar strumming while my tea brewed was like flying a sonic flag that declared: “Alert! This guy’s chilling out when he could be putting a wash on.”
Don’t use your reclaimed commute time to workout
That time is for getting kids ready for and delivered to school. I was excited about getting super fit with my newfound flexibility. I signed up for classes that I could never have attended before. So instead of leaving her alone to deal with the pre-school madness so I could work, I was now doing it so I could work out. This didn’t do our relationship any favours. The 5am club really does have a lot to recommend it when you have young children. If you can get your run in before anyone else in your household wakes up, then no one gets to be annoyed about it.
Do make her lunch
Your selfish work-avoidant snacking becomes a loving gesture when you make her a fried egg sandwich as well, whether she eats it or not.
Don’t kid yourself that playing with the children will get you any brownie points
Dads are excited about working from home, as it gives them more chances to connect with their kids. And that’s wonderful. Just don’t be fooled into thinking that it gets you credits on the ledger in the same way that cleaning the fridge or decluttering the drawers will.
Do use any passive work time to get other stuff done
My jogging partner, Melissa Hogenboom, an author from north-west London, once told me with glee: “I had a lunchtime meeting cancelled yesterday. Amazing! It meant I could get a bolognaise going so that I could feed the kids the second they walked through the door, avoiding that post-school hangry meltdown.” To me, that seemed like she’d just worked through her lunch, but at a different job.
I started to see the same at home. I realised that any Zoom meeting where my wife didn’t have to actively contribute, she was decluttering, putting socks into pairs or doing a food shop order in the background.
If this all seems to make working at home seem less appealing, then you’re beginning to understand what it’s like for mums. A 2025 study from the University of Melbourne shows that remote working increases the chances that women absorb additional unpaid labour on top of increased working hours. Rachel Childs, relationship coach and founder of Parents That Work, explains: “It’s important to recognise that we can’t be running at 100 miles an hour all day trying to be endlessly productive and achieving everything. This is about finding moments where multitasking now can enable quieter moments later in the day.”
When I first imagined this new arrangement, I thought I was gaining something: more time for myself. The gym. A slower morning. The occasional break in the day. What it actually allowed me was space to step into the running of family life, which is how you become essential. It’s how you build a real partnership. It’s how you become someone your children rely on, not just someone who appears at the edges of their day.
My wife was right to be excited. She just understood something I didn’t. This wasn’t flexibility for me. It was a chance to finally pull my weight.
