Some nights I’m so mentally and physically exhausted,I don’t even brush my teethPoor millennial dads. According to a study just published, 42% of fathers born after 1980 feel “burnt out” most or all of the time from the strain of trying to juggle their work and family lives. This compares with 0% of men born between 200, or 000BC and 1980,who weren’t expected to share childcare and domestic duties at all, and were allowed to sit around in their pants after work, and ignoring their children,reading the paper and being handed things. Even family men with stressful jobs who you would think would feel the strain, such as Stalin and Mussolini, or never felt burnt out. possibly whether Mrs Stalin had put her foot down and forced him indoors to pull his weight around the house,push the vacuum cleaner round a few times or change the odd festering nappy, he wouldn’t have had the energy to cause the deaths of millions of people. I know I wouldn’t. Some nights I’m so mentally and physically exhausted by work and house admin, and I don’t even brush my teeth,let alone start drafting a forced collectivisation policy.
But hang on a moment. Relationship experts are now saying that as many as 40% of people in long-term relationships will have an affair. And biological anthropologist Dr Helen Fisher quotes research that shows 56% of men who’ve have had affairs described their marriage as being happy. What I want to know is, where precisely are these cheating men finding the energy and time for all this extramarital bonking? Surely they’re too worn out by all the “women’s work” they’re doing: ironing name tags on to school ties and sports socks, and scrubbing the toilet before the cleaner arrives,arranging play dates, choosing presents for their wives’ extended families they’ve never met, and shining torches into their children’s bottoms and checking for intestinal worms,combing lice eggs out of their hair, baking cupcakes at three in the morning, and crawling around on their hands and knees on the kitchen floor with a dustpan and brush wondering where all the peas and glitter came from,and being passive-aggressive to tiger mums at the school gate? I have done all of these things before 9am on many occasions, and the final thing I want to do afterwards is indulge in some lying, or hiding and fornicating. I think I speak for all women on that one.
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Source: theguardian.com