A couple of years ago my partner and I went on holiday with my parents. At the end of a pleasant week we packed our bags and said goodbye. Since my parents are in the unenviable position of having seen all their kids up sticks and move abroad, in my case across the Atlantic to America, farewells can be fraught moments in our family.

This one was particularly harrowing. But not for the reasons you might expect. As I was finished hugging my mum she suddenly gripped on to me and, out of earshot of everyone else, said: ‘You need to get a proper job, son, so that you can take care of your family.’

I was so shocked I didn’t know how to respond. As we drove away I told my partner and we tried to make sense of what had just happened. I could understand her worrying about our financial security, especially now that we had a young child and we lived so far away.

But what I couldn’t get over was her timing. Why pick the moment of our departure to drop such an incendiary statement? At the time this unresolved question left me with lot of anger. Today, I think I understand her better.

You see, when you’re a man in a relationship where you earn less money than your female partner, you are, whether you like it or not, participating in a social taboo. While the figures show that this kind of arrangement is increasingly common (nearly 30 percent of US women make more than their partners, according to a 2017 survey by the Pew Research Centre) our thinking on the issue remains largely mired in the past.

In the same survey, 70 percent of respondents said that for a man to be a good husband and father he needed to support his family financially. Less than half that number felt the same way about women.

Clearly her concerns about my financial dependence on my partner had been the elephant in the room for my mum throughout the holiday. And her misgivings about raising the subject had led to her keeping quiet until anxiety got the better of her and she ended up blurting it out anyway.

I can sympathise with her awkwardness. My partner and I have lived with this reality for the entirety of our relationship and it’s still not something we find easy to talk about.

For my part, I still feel a lot of shame around the issue and as much as I tell myself that my value as a partner and father is so much more than my earning potential, it’s hard to break free of the mindset that equates being a man with being the breadwinner. This is true for my partner too, who has confessed to sometimes judging me inadequate for not making more money.

Because of this conditioning things that ought to be straightforward become fraught with tension and shame.

The other week, for example, I needed to get a lawn-mower and trimmer but my bank balance was nearly bottomed out. I should have asked my partner to pay for it but, maybe because of the symbolism of the items themselves (freighted as they were with the notion of masculinity in action) I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. So instead I shelled out for something I really couldn’t afford.

Don’t get me wrong. I know this isn’t just a problem for men. Women have always known the humiliation of having to go cap-in-hand to their husbands. The irony of my mum being the one to raise the issue of my own financial dependence is that all through my childhood this was her situation. Time and again I watched her struggle against my dad’s suspicion that she was spendthrift as she tried to persuade him to give her money for things she regarded as household essentials.

Yet it’s hard for men to find solidarity when it comes to these situations. For a start, most men aren’t in my situation. But even when they are I’m usually reluctant to seek them out, if I’m honest. It’s somewhat analogous to that moment in school where you find yourself among the last ones waiting to be picked to play football. Not wishing to face your own shame, you deftly refuse to catch the eye of the other boys lined up with you.

What’s worse, when I do encounter men in my situation I’ll find myself secretly judging them, projecting my own sense of inadequacy on to them. This happened recently at a men’s group I go to. I brought up the issue of my shame around asking my partner for money.

One of the men, a stay-at-home dad, offered a very sympathetic response, telling me to focus on all the gifts I provide besides money. Despite his sincerity I can see that looking back I didn’t value his words anywhere near as much as I would have had they come from one of the ‘breadwinners’.

And yet the truth was this man, who looks after a 12-month-old and a toddler full-time, was doing far more in real-terms to ‘take care of his family’ than any of the rest of us. Just as I am much more involved in my daughter’s upbringing than my dad was in mine.

When you look at the way gender roles have changed in the last several decades it can seem at first glance like a series of diminishments for men. But if men are to move in to this new reality free from resentfulness and self-hate it’s important we focus on what we are gaining.

I may not earn a lot of money but I’m proud to say that I’ve been there every step of the way as my daughter finds her place in the world. I cook and clean, I shop and wash. The chores my mum once did for me I now do for my daughter. Sometimes it’s boring and sometimes it’s oddly satisfying. Every so often I’ll notice with bemusement the sense of achievement I feel after folding a big pile of washing.

I won’t round this off by saying anything cheesy like I count my earnings these days in smiles and hugs because I still make my money by writing and I’m ambitious to make more. But despite the frustrations I am quite sure I chose this path for a reason.

I don’t want to be stuck in an office when I can instead watch my daughter and her little friends play make-believe in the sandpit at school after pick-up. And if the price for that is diminished status or the judgement of those who ought to know better then it’s a small price to pay.

What I have now may not be a ‘proper job’ exactly but the life I lead has something to it I never experienced during all those years of clocking-in; namely, purpose.