Every study, it seems, brings another assault on the masculinity of the American man.
As I read about how men are thinking more like women, and women are filling the space vacated by declining masculinity, I have to wonder: Is it a shift in gender roles, or an easing of expectations?
In other words are we seeing men and women as they always were, but were never allowed to be?
Those in the men-are-the-new-women camp point to what they see as troubling evidence. Early this year there was much buzz in the halls of gender behavior when a study of 5,000 American adults found that more men are interested in attachment and commitment, while more women wanted to preserve some of their independence in a relationship.
There were other findings that sounded alarms about the manliness of men. Half of single men 21 to 35 wanted kids, where for women in that age group, the number was 46 percent -- not exactly a statistical landslide, but apparently troubling none-the-less.
Adding circumstantial evidence of de-masculation is the growth of men's cosmetics, waxing, and fashion. Now this: SPANX, a company founded to fight panty lines, tummy bulge and bra fat -- reports that one of their hottest new products last year was SPANX for men.
There is more. But across all of it, interpretations range from interested observation to predictions of the matriarchical decline experienced by civilizations past. But at the core: there is the fear that America is becoming a less manly place. I heard nothing, for example, about the hard-nosed warriors in the U.S. women's soccer team that spoke to bad things happening to females.
But as we pine for the macho man and alpha male, let's also look at some additional evidence of the changing American man.
Dr. Warren Farrell, the author of the book Father and Child Reunion, points to the growing desire of dads to be a bigger part of their children's lives. This new paternal involvement, he writes, "is to the twenty-first century what women's desire to be in the workplace was to the twentieth century."
A 2007 survey by the employment website Monster.com found that 70 percent of fathers would consider being a stay at home parent if money were no object. Almost 50 percent of dads of school aged children took paternity leave when their employer offered it.
The evidence is also accumulating in smaller increments. Men are free to hug more, they help with homework, they listen more, and -- especially with daughters -- are part of their lives in ways long denied to fathers of earlier generations. Is it feminization that has brought fathers so far from the distant, silent providers of the past?
Pick any organization, and you'll find awareness, backed by shifts in culture, that the days of the my-way-or-the-highway manager are past. Is it feminization to realize that leadership by brute force of title must be replaced by the so-called "soft skills" of communication, cooperation and engagement?
While some wail over the declining state of manhood implied by the statistics, there is also the very real possibility that men are evolving from swaggering through life in some cartoon interpretation of what men are supposed to be -- to becoming more fully-formed human beings free to find out what they can be.
So here is the question: are men less masculine, or more liberated? Are they being feminized, or humanized?
Follow Dr. Peggy Drexler on Twitter: www.twitter.com/drpeggydrexler
Now they are much smarter and they see the state that Mother Earth herself is in and the women want to see if they can do better. I know they can.
Forget the old roles of what a man was supposed to be. They were nightmares.
I know I should not bring Amy Winehouse into this but she was a good example of a very creative and very intelligent woman asserting herself into a man's world. And she was doing an excellent job of it with her great songwriting and fantastic voice.
But she let herself be seduced by the wrong men that walked into her life and it left her a shambles.
But I really loved her spirit.
At the risk of sounding too geeky, old Star Trek episodes alluded to this divide .. one in which Cap'n Kirk was divided into an evil half and a good half .. the evil half had no emotional strength and the good could not make a hard decision, another was when Spock's leadership was insufficient since he only operated on a scale of logic and could not understand an opponents illogical but emotional response.
Sometimes a simple exercise of power is the best and most efficient solution. Compromise and consensus cannot always be achieved and if it is, may not offer the best solution; only the one most palatable to all involved. It certainly is not the most efficient one. It is also easier to work with consensus because then you cannot be blamed for any adverse outcome. The "all chiefs and no braves [to use an ethnic phrase]" is often not an ideal organizational structure. We have a generation of men hesitant to act because they don't have models that are clearly rewarded.
I think women want a strong male but one who values their leadership and emotional IQ. I think women still want men to be men, but not at the expense of their equality.
It isn't easy being out in front - taking the heat & pressure of expectation. Women have both advantage and disadvantage of lowered expectations despite patronization. Success may be discounted but it is also often given greater credit due to being
It really is true, women have no idea what they want.
Women want respect, in whatever they do. They don't always make that clear. Young people don't always know what they want.
As long as they have male hormones they will be men. Only if that fails, because we have polluted the environment, will we have cause to worry.
I think in Texas they are, unfortunately.
But the very highest praise is for the great Champion. The single mother. She who chooses to deprive her child of a father. That is the most important, and heroic thing that is praised by the feminist movement.
The idea of male as sperm donor and trust fund.
Families were supposed to be large, with aunts and uncles and grand mothers and grand fathers and cousins and siblings ... women were never supposed to raise kids alone, but they were never supposed to raise it with the father either.
"They were never supposed to raise it [sic] with the father either". What on earth do you mean?