What's The "Man-Child" Phenomenon?

IT SOUNDS LIKE a scene from a Nineties sitcom: a man’s wife charges into their bedroom, furious that he’s not ready for an event they’re due at. He’s had an hour to get changed; in that time she’s got herself and each of their three children into their glad rags!

- Monica Karpinski

Exasperated, she reaches over and starts dressing him herself. Oh, wait—that is an actual scene from the 1996-2005 TV show Everybody Loves Raymond.

The term for men like this is “man child”. They’re completely dependent on their partner (who is, almost always, a woman) to do everyday jobs they’re perfectly capable of: cleaning, cooking, putting on a suit within an hour.

Unfortunately, recent scientific research shows that men-children aren’t just the stuff of sitcoms. Not only do they exist, but they’re putting their significant others off sex.

Real-life men-children might not be as blatantly useless as those on the silver screen, but, researchers from Canada and Australia found last year, they do expect their female partners to take on the lion’s share of domestic and caregiving labour.

Men were also reliant on them for completing basic life tasks, like doing laundry, in the same way that an actual child would be.