The Sunday Times November 14, 2021 27

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BATHTIME WARS

but as there was so much extra work,

women did, too. “There were 49 hours of

additional childcare per household,” says

Sally Howard, the author of The Home

Stretch: Why the Gender Revolution

Stalled at the Kitchen Sink. “But there was

a proportional carry-over, so women did

60 per cent more.”

All chores are not alike, she adds. “The

tasks that men took on tended to be the

higher value, enjoyable kind. They’d be

cooking a showy banquet, rather than

everyday drudgery like cleaning the bog.

But men are also being pressured more to

return to the office and that will skew

things at home, because women are

more likely to be at home and physically

there to do the work.”

Those who do not have children may

not be familiar with the unique longueur

between the end of the nursery or school

day and bedtime. As a freelance writer

who tends to be at home then, it often

falls to me to take care of our child. It is no

coincidence that this part of the day coin-

cided with what fathers once called “a

quick half with the guys from the office”.

Working from home ought to have

evened out the chores but the evidence

suggests otherwise.

“It really hasn’t changed much,” says

Caroline Whaley, the co-founder of

Shine, which supports working women.

“Women are still picking up 70 per cent of

the chores at home. A lot of women told

us their husbands had just comman-

deered the spare room, and could go in

and shut the door, while they were work-

ing at the dining room table.”

As well as the dishes and laundry and

cooking and childcare, women have

taken on extra emotional labour. “It has

been overwhelming,” Whaley says.

“Whether it’s family stuff, or carrying

responsibility for their teams at work, it

has all contributed to a drain on women’s

lives. There is more burnout than we

have ever seen before.

“Young mothers never feel they have

enough ‘me time’ anyway but that disap-

peared completely. A knock-on effect of

that is a feeling of a lack of accomplish-

ment, looking at your life and thinking, ‘is

this really it?’”

“There is a definite blurring of bound-

aries, which can affect people’s mental

health,” says Claire McCartney, a policy

adviser for the Chartered Institute of Per-

sonnel and Development, a professional

body for HR managers.

“[People working from home] are less

likely to take breaks and focus on wellbe-

ing. Our advice to companies and line

managers is to check in regularly.”

She also points out that two-parent,

white-collar set-ups are only part of the

story. “Forty-four per cent of employees

can’t work from home because of the

nature of their work,” she says. “So we

feel there is less flexibility being afforded

to them, which is quite unequal.”

There is evidence that it is human

nature to think you are doing too much.

In his book Thinking Fast and Slow, the

Nobel prize-winning behavioural psy-

chologist Daniel Kahneman writes that in

shared flats everyone ought to feel like

they are doing more than their fair share

of chores. We instinctively give more

weight to our own labour.

For families feeling the strain, Whaley

advises an old-fashioned solution: a con-

versation. “Women ought to realise that

it’s fine not to always be the one at the

school gates. It’s fine for the kid to wear a

funny outfit or have a burger once in a

while. Life isn’t going to fall apart.

“But by far the most helpful thing to do

is delineate roles. Sit down and ask each

other: ‘What’s fair here?’ It’s not an easy

conversation but it’s important, because

otherwise it can breed resentment like

nobody’s business. Just don’t have that

conversation when you’re angry.”

For Tom, the pandemic has given him

a new perspective on domestic labour. “I

have a much greater first-hand experi-

ence of the challenges but also the beauty

in the mundane, repetitive tasks at home.

It’s very demanding, raising a child.”

In other words, whoever is in charge of

the bathwater, don’t throw out the baby.

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‘I

t was like being in a pressure

cooker,” says James, remem-

bering the early days of the

pandemic. In March last year

he and his wife, Sophie,

found themselves locked

down at home with their

children, aged five and two.

Both parents work at law

firms, which suddenly had to

be combined with home schooling, child-

care and more housework than usual.

“It was quite exciting at first, even fun,

being at home with my wife and the kids,”

says James. “But it could be extremely

stressful too. The only way we could do

any work was to work in one or two-hour

shifts. By six or seven the house would be

a bomb site, so we would have to tidy, and

then after the kids went to bed we would

catch up on the hours of work we had

missed during the day.”

While it was occasionally fraught,

there were benefits. Sixty-five per cent of

fathers reported a better relationship

with their children after the first lock-

down. Fatherhood support groups had a

surge in membership.

Now the world is returning to normal,

the lines between professional and

domestic life are still blurred. “It’s an

endless debate with my wife and people

at work,” says James. “What’s best?”

The simultaneous pull of home and

work will be familiar to many. After the

chaos of the past 20 months, couples —

and especially parents — are emerging

blinking into a new world where the old

work-life settlement has been destroyed

but it is not yet clear what will replace it

and who will do what and when.

Deep down lurks the suspicion that

legging it to the office is the easy option

compared with staying home to hold — or

even just help to hold — the baby.

As one female friend puts it to me:

“There are no firebreaks any more.”

Work and parenting now coexist in a

swirling, overlapping mass of Zooms,

emails and chores. It might be more effi-

cient to unload the dishwasher at the

same time as arguing with your boss, but

it is exhausting.

“It has reshaped the norms of what’s

expected in family life and what’s appro-

priate,” says Tom, who works for Google

and has emerged from the pandemic

with three children under three. “It’s sub-

tle, but there are new expectations

[around childcare] and you can’t just

shed them because the world has gone

back to normal. You can hear the chil-

dren screaming and you can’t not go and

help, but equally work expectations have

moved on faster than you can adjust to

the new mores.”

In the UK, the number of people work-

ing from home doubled over the pan-

demic, according to the Office for

National Statistics. The new status quo

exerts unfamiliar pressures on many rela-

tionships. Studies have shown that 69 per

be a good thing, there is a hidden down-

side. On Friday, the economist Catherine

Mann, who sits on the Bank of England’s

monetary policy committee, was quoted

on the front page of The Times warning of

the potential for “two tracks”, one vir-

tual, one physical. Staying at home, she

warned, could hurt women’s careers.

“[Lockdown] has been really, really

stressful for families,” says Alivia Rose, a

psychotherapist and spokesperson for

the UK Council for Psychotherapy. Coun-

sellors, therapists and support groups

have recorded a surge of interest during

lockdown. “Some couples have grown

closer, but it has broken up many marria-

ges and relationships.”

New rules have been hard on children

too, she says. “If parents are working at

home and say ‘Right, mum or dad is

working now, we can’t talk to you,’ it’s

hard for children to get that definition.”

The statistics show that men picked up

more domestic duties during lockdown,

cent of women want to work from home

at least one day a week, compared with

56 per cent of fathers. For all its progres-

sive promise, the post-pandemic work-

life balance can be a mess of guilt, recrim-

inations and anxiety in which women still

pick up most of the slack.

My wife gave birth to our daughter a

fortnight before the first lockdown. It was

a good time to have a baby. While all

Lara’s colleagues were working from

home — she has a staff job on a magazine

— it was easier for her to join meetings by

video. When the rules permitted, how-

ever, she couldn’t get back to the office

full time fast enough. Nothing personal,

she explained over her shoulder. I sym-

pathised. The Victorian two-up, two-

down we live in is not really cut out to

double as a shared workspace.

For women, in particular, working

from home may be professionally risky.

While on the face of it reduced commut-

ing time and greater flexibility ought to

Couples, and parents in particular, have got used to

having one another around to help out. But as offices call

people back to their desks, tense negotiations are taking

place —including in Ed Cumming’s house

supermarket skip of choice,

then? I quite like shopping at

Waitrose”; and scolded a

guest for weeping when he

met the paramedics who had

saved his life: “Stop crying.

This is supposed to make you

happy. Anyway, after the

break, the biggest dog in the

UK. And he really is big. Don’t

miss it!”

It’s low-level gaffes such as

these that have made him a

figure of fun for, among

others, David Waywell, who

created a fake blog called the

Richard Madeley

Appreciation Society in 2007

after finishing his PhD in

English literature.

“He attracted my attention

because he was the perfect

everyman for the world of

celebrity: a mixture of overly

confident incompetence and

tone-deaf sensibilities,

especially around Judy

[Finnigan, his wife and

former co-presenter],”

Waywell explains.

R

ichard Madeley has just

been confirmed as Piers

Morgan’s replacement

on Good Morning

Britain — in a £300,000

deal. Next Sunday you’ll see

him enter the “jungle” —

actually a Covid-secure castle

in Wales — as a contestant on

I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out

of Here! for a rumoured

£200,000 fee. Last week he

provoked more than 1,400

complaints via Ofcom after he

ripped up an antivax leaflet

live on TV. This would be a

chaotic few weeks for any

other presenter; for Madeley

it seems par for the course.

The 65-year-old is

frequently described as the

real-life Alan Partridge. He is

a man who has spoken on air

about taking his own salt into

restaurants; wondered about

vets’ bills (“Is there a point

where you just say, ‘Too

expensive — the dog has to

die’?”); asked guests who take

food from skips, “What’s your

Madeley’s memoir is

unflinching in its description

of his troubled family. His

grandfather Geoffrey was

effectively sold to his uncle to

work as a farm labourer in

exchange for tickets to

Canada for the rest of the

family. The resulting

unhappiness passed down a

generation, and Madeley’s

father was often violent.

Madeley was born in

Romford and went to school

in Bow. After leaving at 16, he

took a trainee job on the

Brentwood Argus in Essex.

His first broadcasting gig was

on local radio in Carlisle in

1976, and he worked his way

through regional TV news

until he reached Granada

Reports in 1982, where he met

Finnigan. She was assigned to

mentor him on his first day. “I

thought he looked nice, but

the suit was a bit flash,” she

later recalled. She was 34;

Madeley was 26.

They divorced their

partners, married in 1986 and

had their son, Jack, who now

does their PR, and their

daughter, Chloe, soon

afterwards (Finnigan already

had twin boys). They ended

up presenting This Morning

on ITV together in 1988. The

show’s success generated

copious gossip, including one

tabloid headline that

Finnigan was an alcoholic

and Madeley a violent drunk.

“We’d gone away for a

week to Cornwall with our

children, and the mobile

went in the car,” said

Madeley. “It was our bosses at

Granada saying a terrible

rumour was being put around

that you’re in a self-help

institution for men who

batter their wives because

you’ve beaten Judy, that

Judy’s in a drying-out clinic

and the children are in care.

We were in the f***ing car!”

Herring says Madeley’s

loyalty to his wife has never

faltered. “He’s very open and

straight-talking in dealing

with the media, and as a

husband and a dad he’s a

genuinely lovely man,” he

says. “When the press has

been out there taking

potshots at Judy, he’s always

stood by her.” Finnigan

retired from TV work in 2018.

But the gaffes, and his

ability to land on his feet after

them, are for many the

source of his appeal. A quick

internet search of his name

brings up apologies for

calling an Insulate Britain

campaigner “darling” on air,

jokes about him calling Rishi

Sunak “Ricky” and a

conversation about eyeliner

with Queen’s new frontman,

Adam Lambert. He’s been

acquitted of a shoplifting

charge, delivered a bizarre

impersonation of Ali G on air

and struggled to cover

Finnigan’s accidentally

exposed bosom on live TV.

For the comedian Richard

Herring, who starred with

Stewart Lee in the spoof BBC

show This Morning with

Richard Not Judy, he is as

close to a national institution

as TV has. “We avoided work

by watching their show

throughout the 1990s, so it

was a tribute rather than a

parody,” he says.

They appeared on the real

This Morning a few times and

always chatted to Richard in

the green room. “What I

particularly liked about him

off screen was that he swore

like a trooper,” Herring

recalls. “Without Judy to

temper and control him he’s

even more of a dangerous

force of nature, and I utterly

adore him for it.”

Never mind the gaffes, Richard Madeley is a national treasure

Clockwise from

top: Richard

Madeley with his

wife Judy

Finnigan in

the 1980s;

as Ali G on

This Morning in

2000; walking in

London last year

Madeley accepts the

brickbats philosophically. “I

suppose I do have a bit of

Partridge about me, but

there’s a bit of Partridge in

every journalist on the

planet,” he told one local

newspaper. When asked by

The Bookseller magazine if

his family memoir Fathers &

Sons would change public

perceptions of him, he was

blithely dismissive. “I don’t

give a tuppenny f***. The key

thing is to have no sense of

self-importance: it’s

ridiculous to be self-

important. I just do the best I

can and hope most people

take me on my merits.”

“He’s not just an Autocue

monkey,” says James

Herring, who oversaw

publicity for Richard &

Judy, the couple’s

Channel 4 teatime show,

and their successful book

club. “He has the sharp

mind of a journalist and

years of training, so he’s

always had this ability to

drop in a zinger of a

question. He brings a

weapons-grade quality

to interviews and items

that simply cannot be

faked.”

The daytime TV legend has replaced

Piers Morgan and is a favourite to win

I’m a Celebrity. It’s the career high he

deserves, says Stephen Armstrong

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