Man's Work

I first saw this book a few weeks ago in the library and I was so taken with it I bought a copy for home on Amazon. In fact I bought several copies as I felt it was so good many of my friends deserved a copy too.



Man's Work (All in a Day) by Annie Kubler is a picture book with no words in which we see, over the course of a day, a dad and his child do what many people think of as 'women's work' - putting away toys, hoovering, ironing, cooking etc. I thought it was the ideal book for any child who mainly sees women do this work, be it their mum or a cleaner, to help them understand that actually this kind of task is not intrinsically something women do.

But as there are no words it relies on the person 'reading' the book to make up the story, so actually it becomes whatever you want it to be. Is the dad doing all this because the mum is away and it's a novelty to keep house? Or are they doing it as a surprise for mum? Perhaps it is a stay at home dad and this is the kind of thing he does every day? Or maybe he is the 'manny' rather than a dad and his job involves light cleaning duties? See, when you think about it it is as complex as Milton's Paradise Lost trying to justify the ways of God to men. Whatever your story though, I am sure that normalising men doing housework is an excellent thing.

Incidentally, another lovely picture book with no words is The Baby's Catalogue by Allan and Janet Ahlberg:

The shower monologues

I don't shower every morning - what mother of a baby does? (oh, you do - bugger) - but on the days when I do and when the baby is not in the mood to wait for me with her toys in her cot or nap while I do it, she sits in a highchair in our bathroom chewing a rubber duck and watching me. And because we are both happiest when there is a steady stream of chatter, I explain to her what I am doing, what shower gel is, why suds need rinsing, the difference between shampoo and conditioner and that kind of thing. And on the (increasingly rare) occasions when I shave under my arms or defuzz my legs or deal with the bikini line, I try to remember to tell her that these things I am doing are what some mummies do, but they aren't necessary and she should never feel that she has to remove body hair, but that it's okay if she wants to as long as she doesn't feel pressured into doing so, and to come to me for advice before she does it so that she doesn't cut her teenage legs to shreds with a cheap bic razor, and that if underarm hair is good enough for Julia Roberts it should be good enough for everyone else etc etc.

Boy do I tie myself up in feminist knots. Luckily for me children rarely take notice of who their parents were before they existed, so she will probably never take in that I wrote a book on feminism or that The Times, one heady day in 2009, listed me as a feminist icon alongside Nigella Lawson and Michelle Obama (hahahahaha!) and will come to her own conclusions about hair removal, no doubt influenced by whatever the fashions for it are at the time. But while I hope that she makes up her own mind about most things in life, I hold on to the belief that these 'discussions' will help lead her to consider herself a feminist, and that my ramblings in the shower will have some influence, and go in at some level. However on the days she goes downstairs to sit in the same highchair and watch her dad shave I bet she's not subjected to such monologues and I bet he's not tortured by getting the conversation right. But that's because men's beards are not a feminist issue - something I must remember to talk to her about next time we're in the bathroom.