WITH FATHER’S DAY almost here (21 June in case you forgot), could one of the biggest gifts we give to our pops this year be to retire the hackneyed, out-of-touch phrase “hand-on dad” once and for all?

For me, the phrase does little but patronise fathers by normalising the celebration of the bare minimum of child-rearing, like changing nappies or pushing a pram.

In the spirit of Roy Keane – sure, why wouldn’t he do those things? That’s his job?

While well-intentioned, praising fathers for basic parenting feels reductive. It does nothing to address the greater imbalance of the mental load we know is a factor in 77pc of mums feeling overloaded.

There was a time when fathers were, by default, considered much more “hands-off.” They were not encouraged to do things like wear their babies in carriers or push prams in the park, and may even have faced slagging if they did so.

Dads and mums deserve better

As a child of the 80s, I grew up in a typical family that had traditional roles. My stay-at-home mum did the lion’s share of the childcare and household duties during the week, while my dad went to work.

He certainly helped; he changed nappies and gave bottles, but the day-to-day mental load, like pickups and drop-offs, doctors’ appointments, packed lunches, attending school plays and so on, mainly fell to my mum. In fact, the times when my dad dropped me off at school or made my lunch were so rare, they stand out in my mind for being fun and a bit chaotic.

In the last 40 years or so, family dynamics have shifted massively, as have the roles and expectations on fathers, and with those changes, the term “hands-on dad” crept into the discourse. How often do we read profiles of well-known or celebrity fathers who are described as being “real hands-on dads” for simply doing the basics, such as feeding or changing their infants or dropping their child off at school? The same would never be said of a........

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