Ikea's Mänland Offers Refuge To Bored Man-Children

Everyone knows that men are like whining children. Or at least that’s the premise of Mänland, a “male-oriented” holding area that was recently tested by an Ikea store in Sydney, Australia. Any resemblance to the children’s play area, Småland, is not at all coincidental.

As the video above shows, Mänland doesn’t just feature imported Scandinavian diacriticals like the rest of Ikea. It also has Xbox consoles, free hot dogs, “footy,” and pinball machines. A thirty-minute timed buzzer alerts spouses, all of whom are presumed to be women, that they need to pick up their helpless charge.

It’s repeatedly referred to as a “creche,” which is Australian for daycare. In the video above, a woman interviews a female manager, and they joke about “whinging husbands” and guys getting a “reprieve.” The men interviewed there sound quite pleased, so clearly there is some market for this. But it’s one thing for a man to be annoyed about being taken shopping for women’s clothes, although I know men who like it. It’s another thing to blithely accept that male partners have no role in home shopping, where they presumably live too. If they really are complaining that much, they should suck it up or stay home and do something else for the household.

The problem with the men-as-children meme is that it’s self-fulfilling, particularly in conjunction with the idea that men are no good at household tasks and only women can do stuff like laundry. Some men may prefer playing video games to buying a couch or cleaning the kitchen, but women probably would rather do a lot of other things too.