When Kate Mangino started studying men whom she calls “equal partners” – those who do an equal share of domestic labour – she was hoping to unearth some kind of common truth. She was looking for something that would explain why they were relatively unusual, maybe even something to help a future partner spot one in the wild. “It was a disappointment, to be honest,” she says, with a laugh.
Then she realised it was good news – these were men who hadn’t grown up with equal-partner fathers (only two of the 40 men she interviewed had). If they had willingly taken on half the domestic load, without seeing that as normal while growing up, then so could other men. “No matter where you came from, you can say: ‘I’d like to make this change,’” says Mangino, a gender expert who has written a book, Equal Partners: Improving Gender Equality at Home. “It might take some work and it might take some practice, but it’s not impossible.”
