The amount of men in Ireland looking after the home and family has nearly doubled in the 10 years up to 2016.
According to a new CSO study of women and men in Ireland, the number rose from 4,900 to 9,200 over the last decade.
Meanwhile, most of the people looking after the home and family last year were women (98 per cent).
The report also found that the fertility rate in Ireland, at 1.92, was the second highest in the EU for 2015 after France.
It was also well above the EU average of 1.58.
The average age that women gave birth to their first child at also rose, from 24.8 years old in 1975 to 30.5 years old in 2014.
The research also revealed that 55.1 per cent of women between the ages of 25 to 34 had a third level education, while men in the same age group stood at 42.9 per cent.
Despite these statistics, they found that men have a higher overall employment rate at 69.9 per cent, compared to the 59.5 per cent 0f women.
The study further found that in paid employment, men worked an average of 39.7 hours a week in 2016, compared t0 31.7 hours for women.
But the report also found that women were significantly and worryingly out-numbered in all of the positions of power at a national and regional level.
21.4 per cent of the local authority membership were female, while just 22.2 per cent of the TDs who stood last year were female – compared to the EU average of 28.7 per cent.
