The Equal Parent
By Paul Morgan-Bentley
Thread, £12.99


When I was pregnant, my husband and I attended antenatal classes. Four years on I’m still furious that, when it came to the session on breastfeeding, the men were sent off to get a drink. Keeping our progeny alive, it seemed, would be purely women’s work.

Society’s low expectations of fathers (including Peppa Pig’s moronic dad) is just one of the topics discussed in Paul Morgan-Bentley’s memoir-cum-manifesto The Equal Parent.

The author, a Times journalist, delves into the questions my peers and I often ask: why does nursery always ring me first; why does my other half never hear the baby cry at night? Why are girls’ clothes always pink and boys’ clothes blue, and why in 2023 are dads still being praised for doing the absolute minimum?

The Equal Parent Final

Why, when we grew up being told we could have it all, does the mental load still fall so squarely on women?

As a father in a same-sex relationship, in which roles are not ascribed by gender, Morgan-Bentley offers a unique perspective.

With neither parent automatically expected to take on certain roles, and having both taken leave in the first year, they’ve found themselves in a more balanced dynamic than most. Perhaps inevitably, he also looks at how the world responds to set-ups that sit outside the nuclear family (increasingly well, it turns out).

His book is at its most alive when he describes their choppy journey to becoming fathers, including their relationship with their surrogate and their obvious delight in their son.

While not new territory, it’s provocative. There are many issues women just accept as the way things are — but Morgan-Bentley has asked the experts and found clear evidence there’s no biological reason for the way family life is divided.

Still, much of it left me despondent: at the realities parents are battling, from astronomical childcare costs that push women out of work to small things such as the lack of changing facilities in men’s loos.

The author emphasises how shared parental leave could be transformative, but my instinct is it will be generations before the wholesale embrace of that and the structural changes required make it the norm.

That aside, this is as much a book about learning to be a modern parent as it is about parenting as a man with another man. Morgan-Bentley shares, for example, how fatherhood helped with his anxiety, something that rang true for me too.

And with two kids under four, there’s a certain joy in reading about the trials and tribulations other parents are experiencing: the tantrums, the days when only screen time will get you through. It’s heartening to know that even in an “equal” family, it’s not always plain sailing.