The signs you’re married to a manchild – and what to do about it

How would 38-year-old Kiera* describe her husband of nine years? “Kind,” she says, “but he also reminds me of a sloth – and not in a cute way.” For the first few years of their relationship, Kiera thought of her partner as independent, capable and mature; nothing sloth-like about him. But after they moved in together, and had their baby, she felt he began to resemble the slow-moving, tree-dwelling mammal that spends most of its life hanging upside down and sleeping. “Somehow, I have to hold a million things in my brain, while he absolutely doesn’t do that,” says Kiera, who works at a talent agency for TV, film and commercial work in London. “I work four days a week, but because he works five days, and earns £20,000 more, he somehow magically thinks I have all this time. “I get the house tidy at the end of the day, I think about dinner, cook dinner, do all the food shopping, think of all the things our son needs, like new shoes; work out what is happening with family occasions like birthdays, Christmas, holidays. My husband is very fun and very loving with our son, and people love him for how relaxed he is. But it means I end up doing a lot of the non-fun stuff that keeps our day-to-day life on track. If there are any appointments to get to, nursery events, things to book – I have to tell him, and then remind him, and then probably remind him again. Except that because I am mortally afraid of being ‘a nag’, I often just end up doing it myself.“Even getting a cleaner has been stressful,” she says, “because I am the one who will tidy up for her so she’s not doing the dishes, and also make sure she’s paid. If I ever ask him to do things, he says yes and does them happily, but it’s like a surprise to him, as if he never knew that buying hoover bags is a thing, or that a child might need a new coat when winter comes.” Kiera feels exhausted, and over-burdened, lying awake at 2am because of all the admin, chores, and memos in her mind. “I’ve almost got used to things being this way, and I must have some internalised sense that I am the woman, and therefore I need to keep it all together,” she says. “I’ve tried to delegate and things get better for a bit, but then worse again. “But truly, I have got to the point where I fantasise about being a single parent, as I genuinely think it would be easier in some ways. I could let it all go, and go on strike, but I don’t want my son to live in chaos, or miss important things. I really feel like sometimes I have another child, which is completely ridiculous.” What we’re dealing with here is what some women call “the manchild phenomenon”, which describes the blurring of roles between a partner and a child. We’ve all heard women describe their male partners as their “dependent” or one of their children – We can’t get a pet because I have three children already, including the husband. The idea of being a boyish Peter Pan is often romanticised in society, but the reality is that it tends to leave women feeling taken advantage of. Father-of-two Ash Juberg wrote in 2026 about realising he was behaving like a “manchild”: “Even though I was divorced with 50/50 custody,” he said, “I often treated parenting as a task I could delegate. I was trying too hard to be liked. I wanted to be the fun dad, not the firm one – and that meant avoiding some of the more mundane or difficult responsibilities. I kept acting like their friend when what my kids needed was a responsible adult.” Dr Natasha Wallace is a clinical psychologist and founder of Revive Psychological Services. “I find the term ‘manchild’ to be quite dismissive,” she says. “However, when women use it, it may be that they are describing a relationship where, I suspect, they feel they’ve become responsible for managing everything for another adult, rather than sharing with an equal partner. “They may feel they have to remind, prompt, organise or repeatedly ask their partner to take responsibility for things that should be shared, adding to the overall mental load. Over time, that may create something resembling a parent–child dynamic. One person likely becomes the manager, and the other waits to be told what needs doing.” Dr Wallace says that this dynamic can have consequences beyond housework, as it can be difficult to feel like equal partners when one person feels they’re acting as a parent for the other. However, Dr Wallace says, as a professional psychologist, she’d also want to understand what’s happening beneath that label. “Sometimes there are differences in expectations, skills, upbringing or executive functioning (skills that allow you to plan, focus, remember instructions, impulse control and prioritise tasks). Sometimes, though, there is a genuine unwillingness to take responsibility.” Ana Catalano Weeks is a professor from the University of Bath, and author of Making Gender Salient; From Gender Quota Laws to Policy. “I think much of the frustration comes from the gap between expectations of an equal partnership, which are now more normalised, and the reality of who takes responsibility – especially once kids are involved. A couple might share the cooking or school runs, while one person still remembers what needs doing, anticipates problems, and makes sure nothing is missed. Even when sharing the visible tasks, there can be a large gap in the mental labour behind this.” In Weeks’s research, she found that women’s employment and higher earnings were associated with doing less physical household work, but not with a lighter mental load. “We call this ‘gendered cognitive stickiness,’” she says. “Once responsibility becomes attached to women, it tends to stick. This is true even when women are the breadwinners in their families. So progress in paid work is not alleviating this gender gap in responsibility for the home.” In 2023, Britons who lived in mixed-sex households were questioned on what actually happens behind closed doors, and 63 per cent of women said they did more than their fair share of the housework. The British Social Attitudes survey found that only 22 per cent of men said they shouldered most of the burden, with 32 per cent admitting they do less than they should. Social scientists refer to the phenomenon as “second shift”, with women doing a day in their workplace and then shouldering most domestic and childcare duties. Weeks says the evidence in UK research continues to show women spend more time doing unpaid work (like cleaning), but that to focus only on time tells only a small part of the story. “It misses the mental and emotional work. You can be thinking about what the kids need for school tomorrow while commuting or trying to sleep. This matters because it can crowd out the space we have to think about other things – including work and leisure.” According to 2025 research published in the Journal of Marriage and Family, where 3,000 parents of children aged 18 or under were surveyed, mothers were found to take on 71 per cent of all household mental load tasks (such as planning, scheduling, and organising), compared with the 45 per cent managed by fathers. What’s also striking is that parents overestimated their contributions to the household in general – we all think we do more than we do. Yet dads were far more likely to make this mistake, seeing the mental labour as equally shared, when that’s not how the mothers felt at all. “It can lead to stress, burnout and even impact women’s careers,” says Weeks. “In many cases, resentment can build, creating strain between couples.” It’s not only mothers who feel they are left managing the majority of day-to-day life. Jana, 40, from Brighton, left her partner five years ago, after three years together. “I never wanted children,” she says, “but I properly felt like I was being his mum, without any of the joy that I imagine can come with having an actual child. I fell in love with him because he was so much fun, clever, and interesting, but the marriage then began to make me so miserable that I got therapy, and went on antidepressants for a while. “He wouldn’t accept responsibility for a single thing, he would spend his half of the bills at the pub, and then expect me to cover him. I found myself – and I am ashamed to say this now I’m out of the fog – paying for holidays, for stuff that went wrong with our flat. He’d empty the dishwasher – that was the one thing he did around the house – and then act as if he’d cured cancer. He would get upset and annoyed if I tried to bring anything up, ever. Nothing, and I mean nothing, was ever his fault.” Jana’s ex-partner would always drink too much if he went out, and end up on the bathroom floor. She spent time worrying about him, as if he was her teenage son. He would also miss work, just because he “couldn’t be bothered” to go. Jana suggested he get some therapy – “Obviously, there is stuff there in his childhood” – but he refused, and she started not to find him attractive anymore. “Our intimacy died and in the end, I looked at my life and thought, ‘Why on earth would I subject myself to this for the rest of my days?’” Dr Jill Weber, a clinical psychologist who has written about “man-children” in the US, says there are a few key signs you’re married to one. One is you end up picking up after them – clothes off the floor, yes, but also sorting out their debts, or thinking of Christmas presents for their family. Another red flag is that they won’t engage in serious conversations. “He will do anything to stop one in its tracks,” she says. “When you try to bring something serious to his attention, see if you are the one backing out of the conversation by apologising about something you did wrong.” Then there’s the big one: do you feel you’re always nagging? “The ‘nag’ always gets the bad press,” says Weber, “but when you look deeper, the nagging is usually the result of someone not taking full responsibility for himself and his actions.” Perhaps it’s no surprise then, that a major 2019 survey of 127,545 American adults found that married men are healthier than men who were never married or whose marriages ended in divorce or widowhood. Men who have marital partners also live longer than men without spouses; men who marry after age 25 get more protection than those who tie the knot at a younger age, and the longer a man stays married, the greater his survival advantage over his unmarried peers. Men not helping out around the house is hardly a new phenomenon, and of course, there are plenty of couples where men are taking on huge responsibility, mental load, and actively trying to make things as equal and fair as possible. Yet it’s a prevalent-enough issue in society that there’s a term for “man-child” but there isn’t the equivalent for women. A ‘fair’ split doesn’t always mean ‘equal’ “My view is that this is a very sticky problem,” says Weeks, “and there isn’t one simple trick to solve it. If that were true, I would see a lot more variation in the mental load among the mothers I study than I do. Instead, across lots of different demographics, mothers report doing the vast majority. “Recent work has suggested some positive results from the Fair Play method [a system created by Eve Rodsky to help couples equitably divide domestic labour, and reduce invisible mental load, by each having their own list of tasks]. Be honest when you are struggling with too much on your mind. We cannot pay attention to everything.” Wallace suggests starting with an open, non-judgemental conversation, to see if things can be made fairer. “We can’t expect our partners to be mind readers, so it’s important to communicate what we’re thinking about, what we’re finding difficult and where we need more support. “I’d recommend that couples to sit down and map out, on paper, everything involved in running their household, including the less visible tasks. “And something I don’t think we talk about enough is that fair doesn’t necessarily mean a rigid 50/50 split. What matters is that both partners feel the arrangement is reasonable and that their contributions are recognised.”