STAY-AT-HOME JAMES

By the single white vertical stripe on the back of his cashmere pullover from The Kooples shall ye know him. It’s not what it first appears — ie, a neat piece of fash-forward detailing — it’s baby sick. James has embraced round-the-clock fatherhood with fervour and felt more than usually smug when he read a story about the new generation of men who regard fatherhood as the major signifier of masculinity. Now he’s heard about David Beckham building Lego bridges with his boys, doing the food shop and cooking dinner, he sees himself as a generational pioneer. He can name every resident of Pontypandy, is on buying-a-drink terms with Biff, Chip and Kipper, and he spends most of his spare time on Mumsnet, where he calls himself ‘Eileen’. James takes a special pride in being the only male regular at the NCT mums’ morning meet-ups in the independent coffee shop in Parsons Green. His Phil&Teds three-wheeler blocks the doorway while he yatters with Pippa and Cat. The other mothers regard him with — he’d be hurt to discover — not a smidge of sexual curiosity. Scheduling-wise, he’s a machine. The attention he brought to his job as a production manager for a small TV company is now applied to the smooth coordination of swimming, ballet and flute lessons for his eldest daughter. He loves that his lawyer wife never remembers when a packed lunch is needed for a school trip. Feeling somewhat emasculated by her being the breadwinner, he likes to catch her out at being less competent at childcare than he is. aloft in the top-of-the-range Cosatto car seat, and his pride in showing that car seat to the world for the first time is etched all over his face. The highchairs in his Clerkenwell apartment are all Stokke, the baby monitors use Bluetooth to connect with the iPad — and don’t get him started on strollers. His childtransportation system wouldn’t look out of place in one of the Transformers movies. Even an innocent playground enquiry about rear-facing or forward-facing can prompt a lecture. He’s aware of every significant study on the effects of seat position on cognitive development. Isofix car seats and side-impact protection? Check. The things that attach his children to the car cost nearly as much as the car itself. The only thing that can take the wind out of his sails is if another dad turns up to the One-O’Clock Club with a newer model of Bugaboo. Secretly a bit jealous that his children are going to be ‘digital natives’ (and might one day understand technology better than him), he nevertheless determines to give them every advantage. ‘Isn’t two a bit young to have an iPad?’ asked his wife. ‘It’s an iPad mini,’ he replied patiently. For her fifth birthday his daughter will receive a Raspberry Pi. She needs to start coding if she’s going to get a decent job at Google.