True to Type

From Menletter December 2005

By Tim Baehr

"January" is named for the Roman god of gates and doorways and is depicted as having two faces, one looking back and the other looking forward. As the old year wanes away, we often look on our past and future - sometimes with regret and dread, sometimes with satisfaction and hope.

This year my ruminations have turned to men as types, or stereotypes. By now you probably know the drill: we men are competitive strivers who neglect our families, not good at relationships, afraid of commitment, sports nuts, inept with childcare and other domestic duties, emotionally immature, not good at communication, fearful of doctors and neglectful of our health, to name a few of our more sterling qualities.

We can think of these stereotypes as lies perpetrated by feminists, genetically driven tendencies, socially determined qualities promoted by the patriarchy or "society" - or just vaguely accurate generalizations, sometimes true of some men, and with a grain of truth. We may bristle with indignation when a friend or partner or magazine article makes an observation that contains an explicit or implicit "All men are . . ." condition. We may even suspect that the stereotypes are true, if not of us individually but of men in general. (This pits men against each other: most men are sports nuts, making football widows out of their wives - but at least I'm not.)

But what if we accepted all the stereotypes as true, at least provisionally? What if we could find a way to reframe the stereotypes? What would we do if we saw the stereotypes as potentially serious flaws with potentially powerful solutions?

Let's have a look, keeping in mind the "if the shoe fits" cliche, but also not being too eager to see the shoe as too small or too big.

Workaholism

Men are often depicted as neglecting their families in favor of work. We may spend long hours, we may take work home, or we may put in regular hours but be thinking or worrying about work all the time. Even if we don't think of ourselves as overworking, work may be the primary focus of our lives, to the exclusion of other things.

Questions

● Is this a temporary situation - a major deadline, for instance?

● Do you have a lot of these temporary situations?

● Do you have a definite goal - a big promotion, extra cash for kids' college expenses, a down payment?

● Has your partner, if any, agreed to this arrangement? Are you working as a team?

● Do you feel compelled to work so much, perhaps to keep up a particular life style for your family? When do you get to enjoy this life style?

● Have you discovered that you prefer working to home life?

● Has your family or partner complained about how much you work?

Actions

The greeting-card sentiment, "No one on his death bed wishes he had spent more time at the office," is a cheap shot. Some of us love our work. Some of us have a real, but time-limited goal. Being up-front about our priorities may be liberating or painful for the others in our lives; at least they'll know where we stand. But there is a place for balance. What is the motivation for overwork? If we're escaping from a lousy home life, it should be worthwhile to invest some attention in that. If we're trying to provide a higher standard of living, we might look at whether any amount of material goods will ever be enough. If a partner is making demands for more stuff, it may be time to renegotiate a life style you both can enjoy. Look at the job you're trying to get promoted to: Outside of the glamour of the workplace, do the guys above you lead any better lives?

Committed to What?

I read recently about why men are afraid of commitment. With more couples living together without marriage, and with a general tendency to marry later than in previous generations, men are getting most of the benefits of marriage (sex and regular meals, someone to do the housework) without the dangers (divorce and alimony). A cynical view at best. Other theories are based on what we could call evolutionary psychobiology: men are not naturally monogamous, needing to ensure next-generation survival by spreading as much seed as possible. We are familiar with the behavioral upshot regardless of the underlying theory. She says, "We need to talk about our relationship," and he clams up or changes the subject.

Questions

● What are you afraid of? Be very specific.

● Are you able to commit to other things, just not to her/him?

● Is your partner really right for you? Are you happy to let things drift along because you're comfortable (even if your partner is not)?

● Are you philosophically opposed to marriage under any circumstances? Have you shared this with your partner?

● Did your relationship start out casually, deepen into love, and is now changing again? Is your partner on a faster track than you?

Actions

If you have been tagged as commitment-shy, it may be useful to explore what you really want. Think both short-term and long-term. If you have problems committing to anything, find out why. Try some practice-commitments: a volunteer project, a stint as a Big Brother. Make a time-limited commitment to your partner. Write and recite vows to stay together for six months or a year. See how it feels. You may also need to explore what commitment means to you, and whether you can honestly stay in a relationship for which both people don't share the same expectations.

A Sporting Chance

Engaging in or watching sports is a lot of fun for many of us. Our home team, or an entire sport, can become an obsession. The extreme form, regularly appearing in the comics and in sitcoms, is the man whose wife or partner is a sports widow, doing domestic chores while he sits, beer in hand, yelling at the refs on TV.

Questions

● Is your partner a sports widow?

● Do you miss out on family events while glued to the TV?

● Would you rather watch any sport than be involved with the domestic scene?

Actions

There really is a middle ground between abandoning your family and abandoning sports. We don't have to don an apron and do housework, visit the in-laws, or clean those gutters while the New England Patriots or the Portland Seadogs are trying to clinch a title. I think there are three keys here. First, make sure at least some chores get done. Second (given that some chores are done), negotiate times and trade-offs. Visit Auntie Em on a non-game day. But visit her, perhaps paying special attention to the story she's telling for the ninetieth time. Third, invite your family into your world, assuming you're not using sports as an excuse to hide from them. You could set up a buffet of chips and dips, provide pre-game orientation, talk about your favorite players and what to look for in their play. (Personal note: Our youngest son got us interested in sports. One day my wife looked up from the newspaper and said, grinning: "This is really twisted. I'm reading the sports section." I watch football games in rapt silence. She yells and screams when there's a spectacular catch or tackle.)

The Kids Are All Right

Men are often portrayed as being inept in domestic matters, particularly childcare. We supposedly make a mess of diapering, have no idea what to feed our kids, don't know how to dress them for either color-coordination or for the outdoors. Mothers working outside the home may even say that their stay-at-home husbands are "baby-sitting" the kids.

Questions

● Do you not know what to do for your kids, or do you just have a different style? (Does the diaper fall off, or does it just have lumps in different places?)

● Is your wife or partner a gate-keeper, not allowing you to have more than a minimal supporting role?

● Do you and your partner have widely differing (but perhaps equally valid) standards? Cereal may not be the ideal dinner, but it may be OK once in a while.

● Do you present a united front regarding discipline?

Actions

We may need to build up some credibility with a wife or partner who won't let us near the baby. The partner's own insecurity may make her or him fearful of being done out of a job, or being shown up. Or we may not have had a chance to show our stuff. We can learn by watching and learn by doing. Insist on having a hand in childcare. Express and negotiate standards. Agree not to interfere with each other's decisions as long as they don't harm the child. Kids are usually very adaptable. Even as babies, my brother's kids knew which end of the changing table to put their heads: dad is a lefty, mom a righty, and the diapering techniques were different. As for disciplining, a united philosophy is fine, but there's room for individual styles. See http://menletter.org/articles/Hearing%20Voices-September%202003.htm for an exploration of this.

Feelings: A Communicable Disease?

It's not that we men don't have feelings. And it's not that we don't communicate them. But we can be made very uncomfortable by someone - usually a she - trying to reach down into our psyches and yank the feelings out into the light. The timing is usually atrocious, and we often have the sense that we're somehow being blackmailed or violated.

Questions

● How do you acknowledge your feelings to yourself?

● How do you communicate feelings to other men?

● What are the feelings behind some of your actions?

● Have you ever been punished for expressing your feelings?

● Are you one of those men who is numb, protecting yourself and others from feelings that might be scary - and then tamping down all feeling, even the good stuff?

Actions

It seems to me that, if we don't want to be ambushed into revealing feelings, we might be better off communicating them on our own terms. This requires some self-awareness. We may think that our feelings are so private that nobody has the right to pry into them. But our feelings will come out in other forms - neglect, neediness, rage, substance abuse, for instance. One useful concept is containment. Once we acknowledge our feelings to ourselves, we contain them and put ourselves consciously in charge of when, and how much, and in what form, to communicate them. You may remember a previous essay on this topic: http://menletter.org/articles/Feelings-August%202005.htm.

For the Health of It

Supposedly, we men don't take care of our health. The stereotype is that men won't go to the doctor, won't follow up on health care, generally stonewall spouse's attempts even to make an appointment. Yet Men's Health magazine reports in its latest issue that 70 percent of men have seen the doctor for a checkup in the past year. A pretty good statistic, but there's room for improvement.

Questions

● Are you in the other 30 percent?

● Do you take better care of your car than your health?

● Are you afraid of what test results might reveal?

● Does seeing a doctor seem unmanly, or like a loss of control to some authority figure?

Actions

If we have a strong aversion to exposing ourselves to medical care, there's not much we can do, and even less someone close to us can do through wheedling, factual information, or browbeating. It may be helpful to think about why men die younger than women, and why the blame often falls on men (bad genes, working too hard, etc.). That could lead some of us to go to the doctor just out of sheer orneriness. It may also be useful to think of a doctor as we would a car mechanic - shopping around until we find a good one. Doctors are huge authority figures for most of us, but they're also service workers. We have to cede some authority to both mechanics and doctors - we wouldn't rebuild a car's computer, and we wouldn't do heart surgery on ourselves. Lack of insurance can be a big deterrent, but there are neighborhood clinics that don't charge a lot, and some free clinics. And if we think of ourselves as assets, to ourselves and others, it may make sense to invest in and protect those assets. Early and regular care is usually far less expensive than intervention in a catastrophe - for our cars and for our bodies.

Resolutions

It's the time of the year's turning, and a traditional time to make resolutions. Some of us make grand lists, committing to ambitious but impossible transformations, as if we could will ourselves to become new men. I find that a depressing prospect. Here's an idea: let's make a very short list of very small things to do - for example, just a couple of the following: look at our work habits; make a small commitment; set up one family buffet for a sports event; develop one childcare skill, or negotiate a peace treaty over differing styles; build a miniature psychic container for our feelings; ask a buddy to recommend a doctor. We don't have to do it all, but doing even one small thing is better than doing nothing. Plant a seed and let it grow. Maybe we can start some new stereotypes and kick the old ones to the curb.