Modern dads range from a dying breed of older disciplinarians to classic “new men” who will happily share household chores with their partners, according to the government body set up to promote gender equality

It’s official: there are four types of father. However, it stresses that, in practice, most modern men still see themselves as breadwinners, because the pace of reform has not caught up with the change in their attitudes and behaviour.Launching the study, which is published today, Julie Mellor, the EOC’s chairwoman, said there could never be true sexual equality until men and women earned equal pay, and childcare provision was radically improved.”Mums and dads should be able to choose how they want to share the responsibilities of bringing up children and working outside the home,” she said. “But until we have equal pay, decent childcare and more opportunities to work flexible hours, many fathers will continue to find it hard to be there for their children and many women will continue to lose out at work.”Her views were backed up by Tom Beardshaw, campaign manager for the charity Fathers Direct. He said the study’s findings suggest parents have become increasingly “pragmatic” about who works and who stays at home to look after the children.

Whereas former generations would never have contemplated the idea of women as breadwinners, today’s couples are prepared to cast such age-old models aside – provided the mothers are the highest paid. “It’s fairly clear from this research that the traditional fathers of 20 or 30 years ago are dying out,” he said. “The ‘Enforcer Dads’ that remain tend to be older men, whereas back then they might have been in the majority.”What we’ve got is a drift towards a different type of father, with most falling somewhere between the ‘Entertainer’ and ‘Useful’ categories. To move things on further, we need government policy to catch up with what’s happening at home.”The research suggests that, in some ways, women are now wearing the trousers.

They are making all sorts of decisions in the home, and men, by and large, are just going along with them.”Mr Beardshaw, whose wife Andrea, a vocal coach, works from home so that she can look after their young child, Cole, two, said major reforms were needed to harness the new spirit of equality.While he praised some of the Government’s most recent family initiatives, he said his main concern was the current limit on paternity leave. By increasing the length of time fathers are allowed to be absent from work after the birth of their children from two weeks to nine months, ministers would be proving that they are serious about equality. Enforcer Dad Michael Douglas, actor and movie producerChildren: Cameron, 23, Dylan, two. A third on the way.He says: “I wasn’t really there for Cameron.