Assume that all men are slobs and you’ll only make work for yourself

Don’t get me wrong: I love a gender stereotype as much as the next person. In fact, in my twenties I got a dating column and several books out of the idea that men want or behave in one way and women in another.

But while I do think there are patterns in the (mostly learnt) romantic behaviour of men and women, I do not believe that on a broader level men are just X and women are just Y.

Which is why I had to heartily agree with Victoria Bingham, the high-powered head of the elite South Hampstead girls school in London, when she said last week that women should not “infantilise” men by assuming they are simply incapable of cleaning and other urgent household and family chores.

“I have known friends leave instructions for their husbands on ‘Looking after the children’ when they have been away on business. I have listened to them lament apparently having to micro-manage decisions about coats, socks, carrot batons, baths and homework, lace, on top of very demanding jobs,” she said. But why? Here once again Ms Bingham is right, drawing attention to a sort of perversely countervailing wind to feminism, in which women define themselves by “extreme multitasking” and that being in charge of everything is a source of maternal pride.

To which I say: come on, ladies! Treat your menfolk as you would be treated – as the good person you married, a responsible human just like you. Treat anyone like they’re incapable and they will become incapable; do everything yourself and, of course, eventually, nobody else will do

anything at all. Anyway, this depiction of men as household slobs is completely alien to me.

My father was always a more natural embracer of chores and cleaning than my mother. In every relationship I’ve had, the man has been the one with an instinct for cleaning, doing the dishes and cooking.

One boyfriend used to fold my clothes and make the bed with hotel corners whenever he was around; it was genuinely wonderful. Another used to mock my own somewhat slapdash approach to scrubbing kitchen surfaces and vacuuming – he did it so much better.

But the assumption of male ineptitude, even untrustworthiness, goes deep. Witness the eruption of fresh anxieties last week over whether men could be trusted to take the male Pill – which has now passed its first clinical trial. Modern man should be no better or worse than women at reliable Pill-popping; assuming otherwise simply means nothing will ever change.