By HOLLY WAINWRIGHT

Picture this:

You’re feeling tired and crabby with your kids.

You yell at your daughter to hurry up and brush her teeth, and no matter how loudly you shout, or how serious you make that tone, she refuses to do it. When you push her on why she’s ignoring you, the 10-year-old disappears into her room and comes out with a list.

A list of all the events you’ve missed in her life because you’ve been at work.

The ballet recitals, the first day at schools, the play, the tuck-shop duty. Her soccer game, a parent-teacher night and the Halloween dress-up parade.

You feel terrible. You know there was a good reason why you had to be somewhere else, but suddenly you see the mountain of missed moments from your daughter’s perspective, and you feel like crap.

This happened. That list is real. It’s what happened to the male CEO of one of the world’s biggest bond-trading businesses. A man who earned a gajillion dollars a year (okay, I exaggerate, he ‘only’ took home $100 million a year). And do you know what he did?

He quit his job.

The man in question, Mohamed El-Erian, wrote in an essay for Worth:

Mohamed El-Erian at PIMCO.

It’s strangely reassuring that the endless dilemma of the work-life juggle doesn’t discriminate, whether you’re working two jobs to pay your rent, or are one of the most highly-paid money-men in the world, you’re still missing your kid’s dance recital, and she still doesn’t like it.

But would you quit your job if your child did the same thing? If your kids made it known that they hated the time that work took you away from them?

It’s a confronting question, isn’t it?

Because, of course, when you are a gajillionaire, you CAN quit your job. Something the great majority of us can’t do.

All many of us can do is try to manage time and expectation between work and family, and try to land in a place where the two can co-exist while still paying the bills.

But the fact that such a high-profile man is discussing the issue can only be a Good Thing.

Because the work-life juggle (like childcare and maternity leave) is framed as a Woman problem, when in reality it’s a Human problem, relevant to everyone with, you know, a life.

When women quit their high-profile jobs, they are met with sympathy and support – and a little bit of hand-wringing from working mums like me who see their own family fears reflected back at them. But when men do it we tend to see it as a mysterious excuse. Mohamed, in such a high-profile position, was subject to many whispered rumours about office assassination when he  took his own giant step back.

A survey conducted in the US last year found that 50% of men were stressed about balancing the demands of family and work, compared to 56% of women. Same-same, people.

I have a full-time job. And when people hear the age of my children (4 and 2) they never fail to comment that I must “really have my hands full”, that it “must be difficult” and the fact that my children are young.

All of those observations are fair enough. I understand.

But it seems almost redundant to point out that my partner is never on the receiving end of those comments (in fact, if anything, he is always told he “lucky” that he chooses to work four days a week, a comment that I have never heard directed at a woman who works part-time).

Men are still rarely put under pressure by society to make sure they’re spending enough quality time with their kids, in fact they’re frequently heralded and applauded for being hard-workers who are sacrificing family time in order to provide.

So maybe, just maybe, Mohamed El-Erian should become an unlikely feminist pin-up. A man who takes family responsibility seriously.

A man who listened when his daughter presented him with the list that we’d all dread reading.

So, would you quit your job if your child asked you to?

Watch the very excellent Georgie Gardner resign her marvellous job for family reasons.