Found! The 'man who has it all' - Women's Agenda
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Ed's Blog

Found! The ‘man who has it all’

by Angela Priestley |

Last week I discovered @manwhohasitall and have been checking in on his Twitter account ever since.

I don’t know who the ‘man who has it all’ actually is, but I do like his observations on whether men really can have a great career, while raising kids, AND looking ‘put together’ and fabulous at the same time. His bio states he’s offering tips for men juggling a successful career and fatherhood. Like many well-wishing sources of judgemental inspiration, he’s here to help. 

You see @manwhohasitall especially likes to demonstrate just how challenging a full plate can be for working dads. Not only does @manwhohasitall contend with a wife who has a penchant for video games, as well as his own underlying guilt regarding whether he’s parenting, working and managing himself the right way, he’s also filtering through various sources of advice from men like him who’re telling him how to ‘have it all’. 

But unfortunately for @manwhohasitall, it’s hard to take him seriously as his observations and tips sound completely ridiculous. Take the below sample of recent tweets:

 

 

Silly, right? Well only because they’re tips for ‘working dads’. If these had been directed at ‘working mums’ instead, many would appear perfectly normal and within the context of the various expectations we apply to women. We see, read and hear such advice on a daily basis. We’re told how to parent, work, exercise and manage ourselves better. We’re told had to find an extra hour in the day, why we need to sleep more, how to lose those extra kilos, when to make time for exercise, and why the stressful tone in our voice is destroying our kids’ confidence.

I especially like the @manwhohasitall’s background image: a picture of rocks peacefully sitting atop a gentle river, with the word ‘Me Time’. The picture, he must know, is the closest he’ll ever get to any kind of possible ‘me time’. If he did find any such hours, he’d probably whittle them away reading about other men who manage to pack a high profile executive career with six kids, a business on the side, renovations, and an ultramarathon training regime. The @manwhohasitall will no doubt feel wonderful about himself as he wonders why superman can operate on just four hours sleep a night while he still requires the full eight.

The only thing we’re missing from the @manwhohasitall’s Twitter account is how quickly he can lose the baby weight and get his body back to its perfect, pre-pregnancy self. Lucky for @manwhohasitall, science has not yet offered the answers he needs in order to personally test out the question.

Perhaps that’ll be an additional pressure for working dads and the men striving to have it all in the future.

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