Want a family and a career? You need a house-husband!
Says top headmistress and mum of 5 (whose partner stays at home)
WOMEN who want a successful career as well as children should look for a partner who is content to stay at home, a leading headmistress has declared.
Gwen Byrom, 47, the new president of the Girls’ Schools Association, said couples should not be ‘straitjacketed’ by ‘gender stereotypes’ and more men should be able ‘to play a bigger role at home’.
Mrs Byrom, who has five children aged two to 19 with her stay-at-home husband, said she tells girls at her school they can ‘have it all’ by challenging the idea of a breadwinner having to be a man.
Her husband Andy, also a qualified teacher, has looked after the family while she has worked full-time for 12 years.
‘You can’t have five children and both work full-time, said Mrs Byrom, head of Loughborough High School in Leicestershire, adding: ‘My husband loves being at home with the kids. It is not a stereotypical male role but one he very much enjoys.’ She also urged young women to talk to their partners about how to balance work and family life.
‘It is a chat any reasonable couple would want to have,’ she said.
‘The whole thing about gender equality [is] it is not just about women. It is about men too, about men feeling straitjacketed with their own gender stereotypes of being the strong man and the breadwinner. They should be given the chance to say they want to play a bigger role at home in the same way women are offered leadership opportunities at work.’ Mrs Byrom, who used to work in biochemical research before moving into education, also finds time for her hobby – riding an 1100cc Moto Guzzi motorbike.
She admits to being a role model for her pupils and the GSA, representing some of the country’s leading private girls’ schools where pupils are encouraged to pursue ambitious careers.
‘I have three boys and two girls, aged 19, 16, twins aged 14 and a two-and-a-half-year-old. My husband stays at home and looks after them, I go to work,’ she told The Sunday Times. ‘Girls see me with my pack of kids trailing around. It shows them you can have a family and a career.
‘The message is you can have it all to a degree, but there are compromises. The compromise we made was that I would be the major breadwinner and my husband would stay at home and look after the children.
‘Girls have that choice and I
‘You can have it all’
encourage them to talk to their partners about that balance. I think what is lovely nowadays is that there are options.’
The number of women out of work to look after a home or family has fallen steadily to around two million since records began in 1993.
In stark contrast, the number of stay-at-home men has more than doubled, from 111,000 in 1993 to 232,000 in 2017, according to the Office for National Statistics.
However, the latest figure is the lowest since 2014, and experts believe the novelty of being a ‘new man’ could be wearing off.