Housework is sexy but 1 thing is even better in a man

Debate is raging about whether men are ravishingly attractive when they are doing housework. We don’t mean blokes tying a frilly pinny over their crown jewels and leaning suggestively against the draining board pretending to do the washing up. We’re talking about chaps wrestling with the duvet, having washed, dried and ironed the crisply clean cover and wielding the loo brush and bleach with enthusiasm.

Is it sexy when a chap in Marigolds isn’t afraid to tackle the post-Sunday lunch roasting tray? Affirmative. Naturally, it warms your intimate cockles to witness your partner defrosting the freezer, not sitting splayed on the sofa like a pampered Sultan, granting you a favour merely lifting his feet so you can hoover underneath them.

Doing housework earns a gentleman a smattering of Brownie points and a possible side dish of nookie. If, however, he craves Rolls-Royce rumpy-pumpy and unalloyed adoration he needs to go several steps further. Every woman I know is desperate for her partner to share what is currently called the ‘mother load’. The phrase sums up the ton of worry usually carried by the woman of which the man of the house is blissfully unaware.

The mother load includes: remembering which day is gym kit day, making sure your asthmatic child packs his inhaler, baking (or faking) cakes for the 800th sale of the term, scanning food ingredients to protect allergic offspring, buying, writing and posting cards for all birthdays, realising shoes have been grown out of and need replacing, stocking fridge and freezer before friends descend to ‘watch the match’, noticing a child is anxious/listless/being bullied and dealing with the issue and making sure that everyone turns up to activities on time, in the correct outfit/uniform, with a snack/completed homework/emergency number and charged phone.

Today 75% of women work outside the home. Some out-earn their partners. All are incensed that men somehow manage to drift through life, unencumbered by tasks and troubles, as if they were still single. Highly organised captains of industry, capable of running international corporations, are seemingly capable of believing essentials – milk, toilet roll, washing powder, toothbrushes – magically replace themselves without human intervention.

Ask a dad his child’s teacher’s name/the location of the school camping trip or which vaccinations are due and decades after women’s lib, the response is blank incomprehension. If you’re keen to rev up your love life guys, realise your family doesn’t run itself, shape up and take responsibility.