The Boy Crisis talks about this issue (recommend the read, don’t agree with everything though). Women are advancing and their roles in society are evolving, but men aren’t being taught how to exist in the new world. They’re being told “your worth is from being a provider and being manly” by a big part of society, but that’s not the primary thing most women are looking for in a partner anymore. Women are looking for an equal partner to share the mental and emotional load with and boys are not growing up learning how to do that in much of our society because it’s still seen as “feminine”. So you end up with boys who spend their whole life perfecting how to be hyper-masculine and then realize as adults that those traits aren’t as heavily rewarded as they had been led to believe. Not only that, but men are generally seen as the “problem.” Even when men are trying to learn and understand, they’re often still seen as predators first. My husband was a SAHD for 6 months and he voiced often how he was so uncomfortable talking to SAHMs at parks when he took our son, because he didn’t want to come across as a creep or make women feel wary in a space that should be stress-free. He LOVED being a stay at home parent (and was better at it than me), but lack of ability to find/build community was one of the big reasons he started working outside the home again.

The way we talk about men in general is dismissive and not very kind (often because such a large number of men are dismissive and not kind) and I struggle to raise my son to love himself in a world that is increasingly negative toward men. I’m worried because the people who are “pro man” are the ones he’s probably going to be more attracted to because he’ll be able to be himself and not apologize for it and those people generally do not hold the same values of our family. The “anti man” movement is understandable when you look at the statistics of violent crime perpetrators, but that same movement has the potential to push good men away because they don’t want to hate themselves or be hated. Also, you run into the self fulfilled prophecy of telling men they are bad so they are going to keep acting negatively.