Daddy’s the fun one. Of course he is. Look at him. It’s hard to compete with someone who looks like a cartoon come to life. He’s also 20 years into a career where his sole mission has been to make people laugh. That’s what he’s programmed for, his every fibre constantly scanning for an opportunity to turn that frown upside down – and there’s no audience he enjoys more than our girls.

I, on the other hand, spent the best part of my professional life as a secondary school history teacher, a profession not exactly renowned for being a laugh – essentially, a qualified teller-off of children. It’s not a fair fight.

Pathological need for attention aside, the girls think Rob’s more fun than I am simply because he’s not Mummy. I’m not the only mum who’s somehow found herself as chief executive of her own family, responsible for the Sisyphean task of everything, all of the time, for everyone. Which is a lot when you think about it. The mental load and disproportionate division of domestic labour mean that mums are spending significantly more time managing the family than their partners do. This doesn’t just take away from the time women have to invest in themselves, but also from the time they have to enjoy the family they’re working so hard for.

It’s easier to be fun when you’re coming at it fresh, when you’ve been set up for success by someone who’s already dealt with the boring stuff. No one wants to be “Shouty Mum”. “Shouty Mum” isn’t what I had children to be. I wanted to be “Earth Mother Mum”, “Down with the Kids Cool Mum” or even “Freshly Baked Organic Goods Mum”. “Shouty Mum” wasn’t on the 2015 vision board.

“Shouty Mum” has a recurring role in the soap opera of our life, though, because sometimes “Patient Mum”, “Asked 17 Times Before Mum” or “Overstimulated by Bickering Mum” has long since run out of patience. “Shouty Dad” isn’t really a thing in our house, probably because Rob’s worked away so much in the last few years – topping out at almost 200 nights last year alone – that his tolerance for the selective deafness or intense bickering of children hasn’t worn thin yet. He’s not on his last nerve, whereas I waved goodbye to mine long ago. If it doesn’t sound fair, it’s because it isn’t. Parenting is almost impossible to divide equally, especially if your work schedules are as mismatched as ours.

I know that one day my girls will look back and appreciate how much work I was doing that was invisible to an eight-year-old’s eye: the silent tasks and labour that most mums have assumed by default. Maybe, in the eternal cycle of parenthood, if they have their own children one day, they’ll look at me and say a thank you that’ll hit differently because they’ll have lived it themselves, the way I saw my own mum in a completely different light once I had the girls. I finally understood just how much of herself she had poured into our family, never once outwardly begrudging my dad the hero’s welcome he received when he came home from work – despite rarely receiving one herself.

I want to be the fun one, too. I don’t want to wait 20 years for my girls to realise I wasn’t not fun – I was just tired. Call me needy, but I’m a hoot and they need to know that. After a minor Damascene realisation that probably involved one of them telling me how much more fun Daddy was, I accepted that if I was feeling like a martyr to motherhood, then I needed to change something and stop assuming responsibilities that could be shared just because I was Mum.

If dads are stealing all the glory, then we’ve got to bring “Fun Mum” out to play sometimes. The girls are so used to me as “Logistics Mum”, “Homework Mum” or “School Run Mum” that the unpredictability of “Fun Mum” blows their minds. The hysteria that ensues when I go rogue is electrifying. I can see why Rob’s so desperate to make people laugh all the time: it’s a physical high.

Try it. I dare you. Strap yourself into that deeply unflattering harness and do Go Ape instead of waiting in the café. Go on the slip and slide. Let them get your hair wet in the pool on holiday. Just once, don’t be the sensible voice of reason. No trampoline parks, though. I’m fun, but I draw the line at testing the limits of my pelvic floor just to impress the girls.

That’s the beauty of “Fun Mum”: she doesn’t have to be fun all the time. No one’s fun all the time, and everything you’ve been doing still needs to get done, but letting go sometimes is gloriously liberating. Mums are expected to somehow be all things to all people, and you need to make sure that one of those people is you. Don’t let someone else take over the fun stuff because you’re exhausted by the hard stuff. Mums deserve to be the fun ones too.

This week I have been…

 to the podcast by Ainslie Harvey, who has exactly the right kind of friendly Aussie drawl to make it hit just right. Each episode whizzes through something scandalous or quirky in history, combining meticulous research with a feminist girly-pop edge and a purposefully female lens.

The  series I’m currently on is a whistle-stop tour of the big hitters and main events that feels disquietingly pertinent even now. My main takeaway? The  was essentially the first incel “how to take down women you’re threatened by” book, which explains a lot, to be honest.

 Season 2 of The Real Housewives of London on Hayu. People dismiss The Real Housewives of [insert any franchise city here, because I love them all]. But these women go through everything life can throw at them: births, deaths, marriages, divorces, financial ruin, businesses, friendship breakdowns, arrests, betrayals, cheating, abusive relationships, career changes, addiction, recovery and pretty much everything else you could think of.

It blows the Bechdel test out of the water AND it is cast almost entirely with mature women in an industry that barely acknowledges our existence beyond 30. You could, if you were feeling especially melodramatic, argue that it’s one of the biggest sociological archives we have of women: our friendships, our hierarchies, how we communicate, how we resolve conflict, etc. If one were feeling melodramatic, that is.

 East of Eden by John Steinbeck for the 10,383,729th time, as there’s a new Netflix series based on the book that I’m excited about. It made me want to reread it, as adaptations never quite match up to your imagination. I first read this when I was about 15, and that was it for me. Now I dip back in whenever I miss it.

I love every part of this book: the eternal themes of good, evil and choice; every flawed character; the sprawling descriptions of the American West that are so visceral you could almost be there; every theme exquisitely developed before the book reaches its heartbreakingly perfect conclusion.