Some of the most exacting housekeepers I know are, in fact, men, whose sharing of the care of their children has led them down the same well-traveled road as their feminine forebears, for whom the house became an extension of the self and therefore subject to the self’s same vulnerability, neuroticism and pride. Yet these men never seem quite so trammeled or devoured by domesticity, nor so possessed by its utopian visions: It may be the last laugh of patriarchy that men are better at being women than women are; but perhaps in relinquishing the role of housewife a woman robs it of its sting, and hands over a neutered identity where a basic willingness and competence are all that’s required.

Rachel Cusk, “Making House: Notes on Domesticity”