My ideal man? I’ll take a carer over an adventurer, any day | Emma Beddington

Is it ever OK to leave your family – including small children – to live in the wilderness or walk around the world? The latest season of Alone – the US TV competition in which cocky survivalists are dropped into a remote, inhospitable wilderness only to be rapidly humbled by squirrels and their own colons – has just ended. I love Alone.

The landscapes are spectacular and their implacable hostility to humans obscurely cheering; plus, I get real atavistic satisfaction from watching my favourite contestants make shelters or manage to trap rabbits (grim, but at least every scrap of every creature is usually used – someone even ate a hare’s partially digested stomach contents once). I’m also gripped by what it says about being a man. Obviously, the contestants aren’t all men, and anyone who goes on a survival show confident they can outlast 11 others living off shrews and moss is a particular personality type. But they are mostly men and it’s striking how many seem better equipped to tackle starvation and grizzly bears…