A stay-at-home dad looks after his child. Photograph: David Sillitoe
David Cameron announced today that the Tories are planning to offerparents more flexibility on maternity and paternity leave - meaning that they could take time off together rather than be restricted to having to choose who works and who stays home. The party says that this would help fathers become more involved in caring for their children.
In Sweden, stay-at-home dads are a common sight, since they can take up to seven months paternal leave. And it appears Swedish women have come a bit further in the debate. For them it's not a question about who does the chores, but how they are done when the man is in charge of family logistics, says Jenny Sundelin.
Many fathers do the cooking, the dishes, the laundry and the shopping as well as going to regular "daddy-baby" groups. The Scandinavian outlook is that gender equality should be a basic right both in the home and at work.
A Swedish author, Gunilla Bergensten, has recently published a book about this, called The Resignation of a Family Project Manager (Swedish). The critics call it "an angry but liberating humorous book about gender role division in the home".
On the other hand, fathers in the UK have more often been in the shadows: men aren't part of the picture as much as they should be. The media usually highlights the issue from a woman's perspective, consequently pushing the male standpoint further to the side-lines.
Still, there has been plenty of coverage of the likes of Fathers 4 Justice, while other networks, such as the Fatherhood Institute, also aim to highlight fathers' issues.
Last October, the Fatherhood Institute published a study called 'The Cost and Benefits of Active Fatherhood'. The report says that fathers of two-parent families - where both parents work full-time - only carry out an average of 25% of childcare-related activities during the week and one-third at weekends.
However, the pattern has been changing. The study says that between 2002-05, the time new fathers in the UK worked flexible hours to spend time with their child rose from 11% to 31%. More importantly, the same study says that up to 82% of British men would like to spend more time with their family.
Equally, the National Centre for Social Research in the UK (NatCen) has found that views on gender equality have changed. Only 17% of men think it's a man's job to earn money, according to a report from January of this year.
However, the survey also states that British behaviour has not changed as much as its attitude. Up to 77% of couples said that when it comes to laundry it is still the woman who sorts the socks.
