A child has two parents – how, in 2020, do we still expect mums to do the lion’s share?

Ask any father if he wants his children to grow up happy and healthy and he will undoubtedly say he does. Surely, then, he should put in as much effort into ensuring this happens as his children’s mother?

When speaking about gender equality – or the lack thereof – we’re quick to assume we are referring to men’s attitudes. Women look out for women, surely? Apparently not. When the United Nations published a report stating that 90 per cent of people were biased against women, I assumed there was a typo. But no: 90 per cent of men and 86 per cent of women from 75 countries really are biased against women.

Of those surveyed in the United Nations’ inaugural Gender Social Norms Index, half believed that men make better politicians than women – just look at Elizabeth Warren’s recent experiences in the Democratic primaries – and 40 per cent agreed men made better business executives than women. Probably the most startling statistic of the lot, however, was the fact that 30 per cent of respondents agreed that it was “justifiable for a man to beat his partner” – but I don’t quite have the mental energy to dig into that right now.

While women’s educational attainment and political engagement have improved, it would seem the old chestnut of having children is still holding us back. Between the fact that taking time off from work in order to recover from producing another whole person is viewed (implicitly or explicitly) as huge impediment to our careers, the fact that once these little bundles of joy show up, we women are the ones expected to take on the lion’s share of looking after them – we are set up to fail.

Everyone seems to agree that a woman taking time out of work to have a baby equals career stagnation – and that upon returning to work, the extra demands placed on those women by having to raise that baby mean that progression is simply impossible. This is seen as not the fault of the employer – just the cold, hard facts of the employee not being there as much as they once were.

This brings up a whole myriad of issues around an employee’s contribution and the wildly outdated notion of presenteeism. That your career can only continue to go forward if you are consistently and without fail at your desk for eight to ten hours per day, five days a week, is a fallacy.

Take Brian Heyworth, recently announced as global head of institutional business at HSBC. A graduate of Cambridge University, Heyworth has had an impressive career working with JP Morgan, followed by Bank of America. In 2005, he had a psychological breakdown. He spent two months in hospital. Heyworth had been in talks about a senior role in HSBC around the time of his collapse. Following his recovery, he went back to them, explaining what had happened. They asked him two questions: “Can you do the job?” and “Are you OK?” He presumably replied in the affirmative, because he started at HSBC in October 2006. Overall, he was off work for six months. As well as his day job with the bank, Heyworth is now also an advocate for mental health issues and the importance of destigmatising the topic in the workplace.

Heyworth’s experience is enormously hopeful. The way that he dealt with it, the way HSBC supported him, is a shining example of how the system could work.

While many take longer than six months off after having a baby, the idea that becoming a mum renders you a fraction of the worker you once were is insulting. But plenty of people judge a woman to be a bad mother if she doesn’t give more of herself to her children than her husband does.

A long-running study of attitudes towards gender among young people showed a worrying trend. Following decades of young people’s beliefs becoming increasingly egalitarian, 2014 marked a regression. In 1976, 40 per cent of high school seniors believed the husband should make all the important decisions in the family; in 1994, it fell to 29 per cent. In 2014, it crept back up, to 37 per cent. Reaction to the statement “It is usually better for everyone involved if the man is the achiever outside the home and the woman takes care of the home and family” followed a similar pattern: as of 2014, those who agreed with the sentiment had risen back to almost 40 per cent.

Interestingly – this second statement doesn’t preclude women from also working outside of the home. It’s just that if there is anything to be done in the home, many think women should do it, even if both she and her partner work. (It’s worth noting that this particular study only includes heterosexual couples.)

Ask any father if he wants his children to grow up happy and healthy and he will undoubtedly say he does. Surely, then, he should put in as much effort into ensuring this happens as his children’s mother?

Partnership and collaboration are key – one of the greatest marital partnerships was that of American Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her late husband, Marty. Justice Ginsburg tells a now-famous anecdote about when, in the 1970s, Marty was working as a corporate lawyer while Ruth was appearing before the Supreme Court, teaching at an Ivy League college and was a founding member of the Women’s Rights Project.

At the time, their son’s school often found cause to call Professor Bader Ginsburg about his rambunctious behaviour. During a call that proved one call too many, Ginsburg told her son’s teacher: “This child has two parents. Please alternate calls. It’s his father’s turn.” Mr Ginsburg went to the school – no big deal.

This took place fifty years ago, but most families still face the same issue: mum deals with the kids’ issues, whether she’s working or not. In the same way that women can work as well as raise children, men can raise children as well as work.

Everyone has a responsibility to challenge prejudices about women’s role in our society, particularly their role as parents, remembering Justice Bader Ginsburg’s words: for the most part, a child has two parents.