It has been well documented that men are increasingly falling behind women in important measures of life attainment like workforce participation, college enrollment and graduation, general health, hopefulness in life, life expectancy, and overall well-being.
The Institute for Family Studies has an important new article by a professor at the Yale School of Medicine explaining how married fatherhood plays a massive and irreplaceable role in improving the growing masculinity crisis. Dr. Samuel Wilkinson believes the power of married fatherhood is central to reviving healthy manhood because it is essential to what gives life meaning for men. He asks, “What is it about human connection that gives life meaning and purpose?” Wilkinson explains that leading research projects from the world’s most prestigious universities regularly demonstrate meaning comes from intimate connectedness with other humans. He adds, “Why relationships are rewarding has to do with the way nature shaped our family relationships.”
Of course, it cannot be missed that marriage and fatherhood are central to the family and human thriving. Every new person that nature and nature’s God gives us issues directly from one man and one woman. This process is obviously more intimate and direct for the female than the male. Wilkinson notes,
“While women carry and nourish life within their bodies for months, a man’s biological contribution is relatively brief. It’s even possible for a man to conceive a child and not even know it. For a woman, such a scenario is absurd.
He adds, “This biological difference often translates into a more tenuous emotional connection between men and their children.” Therefore, fatherhood must be enforced as a necessary and expected personal and social value. Why? Because the man is naturally less tied to his offspring than is the child’s mother. It is why anthropologist Margaret Mead, in her book Male & Female, described fatherhood as a “social invention.” If the society does not insist on it and actively train young males for it, it is far less likely to happen.
She explains the humanly universal nature of this fact:
When we survey all known human societies, we find everywhere some form of the family, some set of permanent arrangements by which males assist females in caring for children while they are young. … Its distinctiveness lies … in the nurturing behavior of the male, who among human beings everywhere helps provide food for women and children.
Mead notes this practice does not come naturally to men. It must be taught by older men, encouraged and expected by women, and enforced by society. She adds,
“In every known human society, everywhere in the world, the young man learns that when he grows up, one of the things he must do in order to be a full member of society is to provide food for some female and her young.”
It is a sociological fact that it works out best for the man, the woman, and the child, if that child is the offspring of their marital union because “every known human society rests firmly on the learned nurturing behavior of men” Mead explains. And thus, Professor Wilkinson adds, “In short, the quality of a man’s marriage is a strong predictor of the quality of his fathering.” That is how dad remains tied to and encouraged to provide daily for his child and his children’s mother.
Nothing else can change a man into the pro-social contributor like marriage and fatherhood. Wilkinson explains, “Becoming a father can be transformative” as it “can awaken a man to his deepest capacities for love, sacrifice, and responsibility.” This is because, “Fatherhood – when linked to marriage – acts as a catalyst for healthy masculine development.”
Professor Wilkinson is precisely right.
No society has ever discovered how to build healthy manhood apart from its connection to marriage and fatherhood. Military service can come certainly transform men but ultimately fails because its mission is different. The discipline of sports cannot do it, because it does not and cannot tame the male sexual drive, nor does it nurture selflessness. Neither of these trains and encourages men to deny themselves and work to provide for their children and the children’s mother. Only marriage brings that out of men in any effective fashion.
As Nobel prize winning economist George Akerlof explained in a celebrated academic paper, men do better in nearly every measure of male well-being when they marry and become fathers.
Akerlof’s scholarship demonstrates, “Married men are more attached to the labour force; they have less substance abuse, they commit less crime, are less likely to become victims of crime, have better health, and are less accident prone.” This is because, as Akerlof puts it, “With marriage, men take on new identities that change their behaviour.” These new identities are “husband” and “father.” In short, he concludes, “Men settle down when they get married; if they fail to get married, they fail to settle down.”
We must remember these truths in every effort our society undertakes to reclaim essential and healthy manhood.
Related articles and resources:
Are Government Policy and Culture Making Men Weak?
Andrew Tate’s Counterfeit Masculinity
Superman and a Culture in Need of Masculinity
Why manhood doesn’t happen naturally
The Important Parenting Differences Between Moms and Dads
Married Fatherhood Makes Men Better
Important New Research on How Married Parents Improve Child Well-Being
New Research Shows Married Families Matter More Than Ever
How the Left’s Gender War Backfired — Tremendously
The War on Masculinity is Toxic: Exclusive Interview with Prof. Nancy Pearcey
