What about the boys?

This post has been a long time coming.  It has been percolating in the back of my mind for months at least.  Years really.  Over the past few months, though, it seems that the plight of the modern man has been in the news a lot.  Here are my thoughts.

I sat down to write today because of a lucky juxtaposition.  A persistent cough, jetlag, and an understanding boss combined to allow me to be home at 3:00 in the afternoon.  On the way home I heard an interview with Cheryl Kilodavis, who wrote a book (My Princess Boy) about her five year old son who likes to wear pink dresses and sequins.  She was interviewed with two other women, one the mother of a male to female transgendered adult and the other a psychologist, expert in gender identity.  This comes on the heels of a wave of stories in the national media about families where men are unemployed or earning less than their wives or female partners and the effects this is having on us all.  In a country where men, especially husbands and fathers, define themselves by their ability to earn (bring home the bacon if you will), we are told that this is causing real problems.  I heard one call-in show where a man called in to explain that, while both he (a humanities professor) and his wife (a lawyer) were employed and successful, she was leaving him because she no longer wanted to be married to a man who made less than she did.  You could hear the agony in his voice.  I believe this illustrates a very particular moment in the history of gender relations in this country.

Gentlemen, we are behind the curve in terms of redefining traditional gender roles.  Feminism has become entrenched in our national consciousness.  This is not to say that all is well.  There is still a significant income gap, for instance as this graph from Wikipedia shows

(wiki linky)

However, I would argue that it has become generally accepted that women and girls should be encouraged, if they wish, to enter into traditionally male roles.  They may face adversity (ask a female service member sometime if you really think everything is okay), but, in general they will be encouraged by women if not by men.  The reverse is not true.  

Getting back to Ms. Kilodavis and her Princess Boy, there is a very strong backlash against men who choose to exhibit traditionally feminine traits.  In this case, her son wanted to dress in pink lacy dresses.  Her reaction was to try to guide him back to traditional male outfits.  At first she justified it by saying that it was to protect him from discrimination.  Later she came to realize it was her own hang up that caused her discomfort and she eventually came around.  Then she wrote a book and made a splash on TV talk shows, NPR, and in the national media.  Think for just a minute how a book publisher might react to a woman who allowed her daughter to wear jeans, and tried to pitch a book about it.  In 1911 there might have been backlash, but in 2011 we don't even notice.  

This, and the stories of male to female transgendered people are splashy and get attention.  But there is a more subtle distinction here as well.  Jeremy Adam Smith blogs about, and wrote a book about, a trend toward men breaking out of their Don Draper absent father roles, and toward acting as caregivers, sometimes primary caregivers, for their children (so-called, stay-at-home dads being the extreme example).  This is an extension of the call of women, as they enter the workforce, to have partners who share the burdens of homemaking, as they expand to share the burdens of breadwinning.  Again, I am not arguing that all is well in terms of gender equality or that things have shifted the other way somehow.  What I believe is that we have spent so much effort on valuing women's move into the public sphere, so long the sole purview of men, that we have forgotten to value the contributions of women and men in the private sphere, traditionally belonging to women.  It is empowering for a woman to break out of her traditional gender role and become a high-powered attorney, wearing a suit and working 70 hours a week.  When anybody, male of female, prioritizes the private sphere, they feel compelled to justify themselves to the world.

I believe it is past time for a men's movement to answer the advances of feminism.  I emphatically do not mean something along the lines of Robert Bly and Iron John (so eloquently described by Utah Phillips as men getting together and "dragging their scrotums through the underbrush").  This semi-tribal, yuppies-drumming-and-hugging-in-loincloths movement of the nineties just doesn't do it for me.  The exact shape of what I do want isn't completely clear.  I believe we need to re-value "women's work."  Raising children, cooking healthy meals at home, keeping the house clean and orderly, washing laundry...all of these things are vitally important.  It isn't doing anybody any good to work themselves to exhaustion in the public sphere in order to be able to afford to pay somebody else to maintain their homes.  

This is a question that weighs particularly heavy on my mind as the father of a son.  I am also the father of a daughter, which comes with its own worries.  I can say unequivocally though that I see far more role models and support structures for my daughter in the world than I do for my son.  Whatever my daughter does, I expect her to get a "you go girl" from somebody in authority.  I worry about my son though.  He doesn't want to be a princess, hasn't put on a dress in a while, and shows no inclination to wear one to school.  In fact, if anything, he shows more of the stereotypical boy traits than I am comfortable with.  He plays with toy guns, tends toward an aggressive personality, and torments his sister.  Where are the role models in the media or in stories for him to emulate? John Rambo?  Ben Stone of Knocked Up?  Men in popular culture tend to be muscle-bound, testosterone-poisoned brutes or (more recently) overgrown boys who never grew up.  I worry about what is cool these days, and how my boy will react.

My revolution is a quiet one for now.  I am not a good housekeeper, but I cook healthy, homemade meals from scratch.  I try to offset the type-A, career-obsessed modeling of their mother by leaving work early to pick them up when I can, by deliberately choosing a career where I rarely have to work nights and weekends.  I know I am not the only one moving in this direction, but I wonder what is the iconic image of this new change I hope I am only seeing the beginning of.  Perhaps you will see me in the newspaper, burning a jock strap in front of the courthouse.  Until then I will be baking bread, teaching my son to put the toilet seat down, and wondering what comes next.