The history behind why so many boys and men are struggling today
Our ideas about "traditional masculinity" actually aren't so traditional.
When
reached out to me in April, I’d been fantasizing about collaborating with other newsletter writers. But it felt a little bit like a pipe dream.I’d been writing the newsletter for a little over a year. I appreciated the handful of people who regularly read my posts. But it often felt like I was shouting into a void.
Carole said she was working on a post about masculinity and loneliness and wanted my thoughts. My chest glowed and melted like butter. Her curiosity felt so good.
She sent an initial question, which I’ve answered below. She plans to release a full post with all of my answers next month, as part of her series “Men through the lens.” Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss it!
👋 New to this newsletter? I’m Jeremy, a therapist busting the myth of “traditional masculinity” and helping men and couples have better relationships. If you subscribe, you’ll get a free post like this every week. For $5/month you’ll get my Friday Q&A posts with specific advice on how to improve your relationship, get better at dating, raise boys in a healthy way, support the men in your life, and more. 👋
: My first and very obvious question about men and their mental health is: What is or are the roots of the problem? We see the suicide rate for men is the highest, loneliness is rampant, and all of it seems to feed into a larger, deeper issue blaming women for it. But there's something more about it, isn't it?
I love this question because it gets to the heart of what I’m trying to do with the newsletter and my work with men as a therapist.
As a society we’re slowly waking up to how more and more boys and men are struggling. The New York Times seems to publish an article about it every month. (By the way,
’s recent article about her new book, Boymom: Reimagining Boyhood in the Age of Impossible Masculinity, is really, really good.)But no one really knows why. We can blame Trump and influencers like Andrew Tate for convincing many men (particularly young men) to “man up” and aim their anger at women and other marginalized folks. We can point out the “toxic” ways men have been socialized. We can tell men they don’t have to be emotionally reserved and bury their feelings and act like they’re okay all the time.
But why are men being taught these things in the first place? Why are so-called “traditional” ideas about what it means to be a man so hard to let go of? Where did they come from? They aren’t actually helping men be happier and healthier, so who do they serve?
I’m lucky to have worked in politics before becoming a therapist. I learned that if you want to understand why something is happening in capitalist society, follow the money.
I said “so-called” above for a reason. The big thing I’ve learned since starting my newsletter last year is that “traditional” ideas about masculinity aren’t actually traditional. They’re a pretty recent invention, only a few hundred years old. And if we follow the money, we see that these ideas were created to manage a major, world-changing shift in how society was organized, from feudalism to capitalism.
Before the 1800s, men and women didn’t have as rigid ideas about gender and the roles they played in families and society. Patriarchy existed and life wasn’t perfect. But gender roles were much more diverse across different areas of the world.
For example, as
writes, “the culture of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) ... enshrined extensive rights and leadership roles for women in their Constitution.” Another example: Recent research has found that as many as half of prehistoric humans who were big game hunters could have been biologically female.When capitalism began in Western Europe, the new class of business owners needed people to work in their factories, fields, and mines. They first tried to force all peasants to work long hours, including men, women, and many children. But with no one to raise young children at home, this new working class wasn’t able to produce enough workers for the fast-growing economy.
So, business owners used laws and government policy to force women to stop working and instead raise children and do other unpaid labor at home. To justify this shift, ideas were created about femininity—that women were “naturally” relational and nurturing, meant to raise children and care for older family members rather than doing “real work” for money.
Masculinity, in turn, became about being the opposite of feminine: emotionally reserved, stoic, focused on protecting the family and working outside the home. These ideas were invented to serve capitalism—to exploit workers and steal free labor from women to make profits for the rich and powerful.
Today, more and more women are entering the workforce and ideas about what it means to be a woman have expanded (thanks to feminism!). Yet, we still raise boys and treat men as if “traditional masculinity” is a natural, unchangeable thing. After hundreds of years of mythmaking about men, it’s deep in our bones at this point. It’s the water we swim in.
These stats from Whippman’s article break my heart: Parents are more likely to use emotional words when talking with their 4-year-old daughters than those speaking to their 4-year-old sons. Compared to fathers of girls, fathers of boys are less attentively engaged with their boys, spend less time talking about their son’s sad feelings, and instead are more likely to roughhouse with them.
I think it’s important to know why parents tend to raise boys differently than girls. And why we struggle to imagine a different, healthier way for men to be in the world.
If we believe the myth that it’s “traditional” and “natural” that men are less emotional than women, we give the myth value it doesn’t deserve. We may think we can’t let go of it and be different because that’s how men have always been.
But the truth is “traditional masculinity” was manufactured relatively recently to support capitalism. And capitalism is what’s holding us back from addressing so many of our problems, from the skyrocketing cost of living to climate change.
This sometimes makes me feel less hopeful for myself and other men. The problem seems so big and unsolvable. But it’s the truth. And we have to start from there.
Now, a question for the comments below: How does the myth of “traditional masculinity” show up in your life?
(P.S. If you become a paid subscriber for $5/month, you’ll get my weekly Friday Q&A posts about improving your relationship and friendships, plus the warm feeling of supporting my writing.)
I’m a teacher & my husband is an engineer. The gap in our salaries very subtly germinated into his perception that his job is more important than mine. Our division of household labor has followed a traditional pattern with me doing most of the food prep & laundry while he does most of the yard work. It has been a struggle to break out of the rigidity of habit and I think that both of our struggles with mental health have been exacerbated by a lot of “default settings.”
Not cis, but I remember being taught never to cry in front of other people. Crying was viewed as something shameful, something nobody was supposed to know you did.
I have only seen my father cry twice in almost 40 years.