Andy Byrom knew Gwen was the woman of his dreams the moment their eyes met over a couple of motorcycles, 26 years ago, in the bike sheds at Manchester University.
Not just because she, too, was a biker-nut —loving nothing more than to roar about the Cheshire countryside, wind rushing through her long, brown hair, thick leathers warming in the sunshine.
Or even because when they first met, her bike was kaput — as it so often was — allowing him to appear reassuringly manly and masterful with his toolbox to mend it.
‘I had the nuts and bolts to fix it,’ he says proudly. ‘And I’ve been doing it ever since.’
No, the real reason was that, despite being eight years younger than him, she had her own bike.
‘I was used to women wanting to go on the back of mine, but she wanted to ride hers.
‘She was so independent and never a keen passenger. So for once it was equal, which suited me fine.’
And that equality has been a hallmark of the relationship ever since.
For, over the past 12 years, Andy (pictured behind right) has been a house-husband, looking after his and Gwen’s (pictured front) five children (behind) — ranging from two years old to 19
For, over the past 12 years, Andy has been a house-husband, looking after their five children — ranging from two years old to 19.
He’s done the shopping, cleaning, changed nappies, done bath-time, read stories, tried out new recipes in his slow cooker and organised jamming sessions for their precociously musical children.
For her part, Gwen gets up at 6.30am, is at her desk by 7.30 at the latest and regularly works 12 and often 14 or 16-hour days as headmistress of Loughborough High School and as the newly appointed president of the Girls’ Schools Association.
Their happy reversal of the once traditional working-father, stay-at-home-mother roles was made public this week after Gwen, 47, explained in an interview how she and Andy juggle her demanding career, their five kids and his happiness.
For her part, Gwen (pictured)gets up at 6.30am, is at her desk by 7.30 at the latest and regularly works 12 and often 14 or 16-hour days as headmistress of Loughborough High School and as the newly appointed president of the Girls’ Schools Association
Crucially, she suggested that one way for a woman to ‘have it all’ — i.e. a high-flying career, children and husband — was to find a man happy to be a stay-at-home dad.
‘You can’t have five children and both work full-time,’ she said.
‘My husband loves being at home with the kids. It is not a stereotypical male role, but it’s one he very much enjoys.’
Of course she wasn’t saying the arrangement would work for everyone. Nor was she claiming it was the only way. And she certainly wasn’t saying Andy was any less manly for it.
She was just explaining what worked for them . . . that, in general, it is good to let men play a bigger role at home and that she encouraged girls — her own and her pupils — to challenge the attitude that family breadwinners automatically have to be men.
And more and more are agreeing with her. Indeed, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics, there are now about 232,000 stay-at-home dads in Britain.
So Andy Byrom is in good company as he busies himself about the house, tidying up and making suppers (chilli con carne is a favourite) for supper.
Nevertheless, there has been predictable criticism in some quarters that such a life for a bloke with a degree in Manufacturing Systems Engineering is weirdly unmasculine and downright strange.
Many unreconstructed males were appalled. ‘Come on mate! Step away from the mop,’ they raved online.
Pictured: Andy and Gwen Byrom’s children, looked after day-to-day by their stay-at-home-dad
Meanwhile, some women reacted by wondering if they’d still fancy their men if they ditched the day job to become a domestic god.
‘Somehow I’d rather he did no housework than all of it,’ said one.
Even on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour — not known for holding back on such feminist causes — during a discussion about masculinity prompted by Gwen’s comments, presenter Jane Garvey sheepishly admitted that she, too, was guilty of thinking less of house-husbands such as Andy.
She said: ‘I have an inner voice that sometimes makes judgments — and I don’t like those judgments I find myself making, sometimes about men who stay at home with the kids.’
Garvey, who describes herself as a ‘strident feminist’ and ‘the epitome of political correctness’, added that there are issues about women wanting men to be masculine and in touch with their emotions.
She said that for some men there are ‘some hard questions to face’ and ‘some big asks made of men by women — what is it that we actually want? Do we want a big, strong, capable geezer? Sometimes we do.
Their happy reversal of the once traditional working-father, stay-at-home-mother roles was made public this week after Gwen, 47, explained in an interview how she and Andy (pictured with son Bertie) juggle her demanding career, their five kids and his happiness
‘Other times we want someone to sit down and share our love of romcom box-sets and talk about feelings.’ She added: ‘Can we have it both ways?’
Happily, Andy doesn’t give two hoots.
When I visited their immaculately tidy house on the school campus, he was far too busy — and happy — potty-training two-year-old Bertie and locating his lost stickers.
‘I love it all, just love it. It’s been fantastic and I’ve seen so much that most dads don’t get to see,’ the former teacher says, beaming as he delivers coffees to the light-filled sitting room where Gwen and I are talking.
‘I’ve never needed a career as part of my identity and I’ve absolutely no yearning to go back.’
They never planned it this way, though. B
ack in their child-free motorbiking days, they didn’t pull in at the side of windswept roads to discuss childcare and fine tune who would do the vacuuming (as it happens, they employ a cleaner) and who would earn money to pay the mortgage.
When they met, Andy was studying engineering and Gwen biochemistry. After graduation, she wanted to be a research scientist and he dreamed of teaching.
But Gwen found laboratory work boring. At Andy’s suggestion, she tried teaching. ‘Going into the classroom was like coming home,’ she says. ‘It’s a fabulous, fabulous job.’
Independent spirit: Gwen (front) also runs the Girls’ Schools Association. She is pictured with husband Andy, daughter Nina, 19, twins Oscar and Stella, 14, and son Bertie, two
She was a natural. She worked her way up through schools all over the country as she juggled work with a succession of babies.
She gave birth first to Nina, who was born 15 weeks early and nearly died. Then, 18 months later, came Joe. And just as she and Andy were um-ing and ah-ing about a third child, she conceived twins Oscar and Stella.
‘That was a bit of a surprise but a lovely surprise,’ she says. Gwen enjoyed the babies, but was soon yearning for full-time work. ‘I missed the adult contact, the professional role.’
Unlike so many working mothers, she says she’s never woken in the morning and thought: ‘Oh, I just can’t be a***d today.’
She got her first major post — as Senior House Mistress at Roedean, the elite girls’ boarding school in Brighton — when the twins were two. ‘I couldn’t possibly do both,’ she says.
‘It was a big job; a 24/7 job. We had to make decisions — something had to give.’
Or someone. Happily, Andy decided to take a back-seat role.
Despite working as head of department in Design And Technology at both Solihull School and Bedstone College, he wasn’t as committed to work as his wife.
‘Unlike Gwen, I’ve never been particularly career-minded,’ he says. ‘I’ve lots of things I like to do, but I prefer the freedom and time to do what I like, rather than being ruled by the school bell.’
For example, cooking nice big wintry stews, loading and unloading the dishwasher, tinkering with one of their seven — yes, seven — motorbikes and attending every child’s sports day, music recital, prize-giving, swimming gala and school Nativity.
With the older children, particularly, he stood out like a sore thumb at the school gates. ‘The mums huddled in groups to chat and didn’t tend to include me — they didn’t invite me to coffee mornings — not that I minded!’ he says.
‘Though these days more dads are involved, so no one seems to care.’ It can jar that, despite them putting Andy as first point of contact for schools and nurseries, staff always call Gwen because she’s the mum.
And some male friends are uncomprehending. ‘There’s a lack of understanding,’ he says.0
‘A slight bewilderment; a curiosity and a lot of questions. For example: When are you going to put Bertie in nursery and go back to work?
‘That’s always the assumption: that I’m going back to work. But I’ve no yearning to. I’d prefer to do this — I’m happy.’ As is Gwen.
But like so many of Andy’s five-day-week, working male friends, she rues the number of school and social events for her children that she’s missed.)
She says: ‘It’s hard not to feel guilty when you know your child has worked really hard at something and you’re not going to be there to see it.
‘But that’s partly why we made the decision we did — so one of us would always be there.’ Perhaps one of the reasons she’s so ferociously driven professionally is her own school experience — at what she calls a ‘bog standard comp in Hull’, which closed in 2012.
‘School was interesting, let’s just put it like that,’ she says diplomatically. ‘I didn’t have the happiest time.
‘I had some excellent teachers, but it was tough. I kept my head down and worked hard, but I stood out because that’s not always the cool thing to do.’
There were highlights, though. Such as when her chemistry teacher marched her to the library and said to the librarian: ‘This girl is going to be a scientist. Give her some books.’ She says that moment ‘changed her life’.
‘It’s why I believe so strongly in social mobility and the danger of [gender] stereotyping.’
Indeed, she is constantly warning her female pupils about the presence of the so-called glass ceiling.
‘I tell them the work isn’t all done. There are still areas where things are not equal: the gender pay gap, the representation of women in the media,’ she says.
But she concedes: ‘Things aren’t straightforward for men, either.’
Gwen had her last child, Bertie, two years ago. She took the summer term and summer holidays off for maternity leave, then returned to work, handing over to Andy.
However, after Bertie was enrolled in nursery, Andy briefly had second thoughts about being a stay-at-home dad and went back to work part-time — then quickly changed his mind.
‘I was only working to pay the nursery fees and just saw him at the beginning and end of the day, so I thought I should stay at home with him instead which is just wonderful,’ he says.
Gwen, meanwhile, being the new president of the Girls’ Schools Association, is busier than ever.
In many ways, their lives are mirror images of each other’s.
For example, Gwen loves watching cookery programmes on TV because she rarely gets to cook (though she did do Christmas dinner), while Andy prepares the real thing in the kitchen.
For him, life revolves around the home. For her, home is a treat.
Even then she says: ‘I’m never completely switched off. On Christmas Day we had to sort out a leak in one of the school buildings.’
She checks her mobile phone constantly and only turns off the alerts on her smart-watch in the interests of marital harmony.
Whereas Andy merely checks his emails ‘once a week’, and asked for a ‘low-tech’ phone with no email or internet for Christmas.
‘You have to have a certain self-confidence to be a house-husband,’ he says. ‘Unlike Gwen, I’ve never needed a career to feel a whole person.’
Without doubt the arrangement, and life in the Byrom household, works brilliantly. ‘This set-up won’t work for everyone, but it works for us,’ says Gwen.
Surrounded by pictures of their happy brood, and regardless of what a self-consciously judgmental presenter of BBC Woman’s Hour may think about stay-at-home dads, she adds: ‘And neither of us are bothered by any issues of perceived masculinity.’