Now what with this new Government directive/policy/legal thing – whatever it is that the Gov does to make companies tow the line – to allow the part transfer of maternity leave to the father of the child after April this year I’m thinking it might be time for *ladies gasp, drum-roll, mock-shock-horror faces please* more ‘he time’ and less ‘me time.’

Although I’m imagining men up and down the UK laughing at the new comedians’ (that’s Cameron & Clegg) idea of a bad joke (What? Stay at home with a baby and have banal conversation with people I barely know just because we fertilised an egg at the same time. Are you kidding?) I do think it’s interesting, relevant and kind of zeitgeisty to consider fathers’ needs both for more kiddie time and more he-time. Let’s face it, he’s going to need it if he’s having a six months paternity leave.

It’s taken as read that men who work long hours and barely see their kids during the week want to see them for every scrap of the weekend. But I think that’s a sentimental urban myth (I know at least one couple who’ve moved half way round the world for his work and he’s travelling more than he ever used to – why if not to escape????) and delve deeper into the internal workings of any middle-class family’s weekend and you’ll see the dad clamouring, albeit quietly and maybe only in his own head, for a fix of he time. And why the hell not? They’ve worked hard all week too. Maybe at something they detest to keep mortgage payments going.

A client of mine who’s mum to two young children and currently dreaming up wonderous ways to take her new business to dizzy heights has recognised the key to a flourishing family life is to let her husband enjoy a bit more he time. Some days this only equates to letting him get in the door without yelling at him to take over for at least 8 minutes but that’s a start.

The answer of course is not for fathers to have he-time at the expense of our she-time (we knew this all along but just for the record proper academic research shows middle class fathers married to a wife who also earns have on average 1.5 more hours of me time a week than their wives*) but for people who don’t have kids to come and rescue us so we can have ‘we’ time. Childless uncles, aunts, neighbours, grandparents, friends…we need you. Our kids will be paying your state pensions so get involved and do us a favour can’t you?

* Changing Rhythms of American Family Life by Suzanne Bianchi, John Robinson and Melissa Milkie

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