7.7: What about Men?

In the past two decades a social movement referred to as The Men's Movement has emerged. The Men's Movement is a broad effort across societies and the world to improve the quality of life and family-related rights of men. Since the Industrial Revolution, men have been emotionally exiled from their families and close relationships. They have become the human piece of the factory machinery (or computer technology in our day) that forced them to disconnect from their most intimate relationships and to become money-acquisition units rather than emotionally powerful pillars of their families.

Many in this line of thought attribute higher suicide rates, death rates, accident rates, substance abuse problems, and other challenges in the lives of modern men directly to the broad social process of postindustrial breadwinning. Not only did the Industrial Revolution's changes hurt men, but the current masculine role is viewed by many as being oppressive to men, women, and children. Today a man is more likely to kill or be killed, to abuse, and to oppress others. Some of the issues of concern for those in the Men's Movement include life and health challenges, emotional isolation, post-divorce/separation father's rights, false sexual or physical abuse allegations, early education challenges for boys, declining college attendance, protection from domestic abuse, man-hating or bashing, lack of support for fatherhood, and paternal rights and abortion.

The list of concerns displays the quality of life issues mixed in with specific legal and civil rights concerns. Men's Movement sympathizers would most likely promote or support equality of rights for men and women. They are aware of the Male supremacy model, where males erroneously believe that men are superior in all aspects of life and that should excel in everything they do. They also concern themselves with the Sexual objectification of women, where men learn to view women as objects of sexual consumption rather than as a whole person. Male bashing is the verbal abuse and use of pejorative and derogatory language about men.

These and other concerns are not being aggressively supported throughout the world as are the women's rights and suffrage efforts discussed above. Most of the Men's Movement efforts are in Western Societies, India, and a handful of others.

Figure 3 shows the transition in family gender roles over the course of the Industrial Revolution through to Post World War II. Families in Pre-Industrial Europe and the U.S. were subsistence-based; meaning they spent much of their daily lives working to prepare food and other goods on a year-round basis. Men, women, children, and other family and friends succeeded because they all contributed to the collective good of the family economy.

Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\). The Western Family Pre- Post, and Post-WWII, especially for the United States

The Industrial Revolution created the roles of breadwinners and homemakers. After the Industrial Revolution was in full swing, women continued their subsistence work and remained homemakers while men continued in their breadwinning roles. After World War II, there was a social structural change where women began assuming the breadwinner role and became more and more common among the ranks of paid employees, especially beginning in 1960s-1980s. They had managed to remain homemakers, but men had not moved into the homemaking role to the same degree that women had moved into the breadwinning role. This creates a strong level of burden and expectation for U.S. women who find themselves continuing to work outside the home for pay and inside the home for their informal domestic roles.

Men often find a closer bond to their wife, children, and other family members when they engage in domestic homemaking roles. Mundane family work is the activity that facilitates ongoing attachments and bonds among those who participate in it together.

Many couples today already share homemaking roles, just out of practical and functional need. They often find the co-homemaking/breadwinning role to be defined in a few typical styles. First, is the tourist husband style. The tourist husband is a visitor to the homemaking role who contributes the occasional assistance to his wife as a courtesy-much like a tourist might offer occasional assistance to their host. He often believes himself to be very generous since it is hers and not his role. Second, is the assistant homemaker where the husband looks to his wife for direction and for instruction on how to "help" her out in her homemaking role. Like one of the children, housework and homemaking task are the mother/wife's job and he helps if called upon.

Finally, there is the co-homemaker husband who never "helps" his wife with homemaking task, but assumes that she and he equally share their breadwinning and homemaking responsibilities. The Cohomemaker husband is most likely to bond with his children, understand the daily joys and sorrows of all his individual family members, and feel a strong connection to his home and family (something Men's Movement advocates lament having lost).