On the Crisis of Men | The Point Magazine

I started wondering, who's offering a compelling alternative ideal of masculinity? I texted my friend Thomas Page McBee, who has written two books about becoming a man. He pointed out (in the least ’splainy way possible!) that I was asking the wrong question. Feminism, he replied, has helped women divest from the idea that there is a monolithic way

But when does a boy become a man in our society? When he gets his driver’s license? Or joins the army? Maybe when he takes a woman to bed? Or when he can provide financially for himself? Ask your community to tell you when a boy becomes a man, and the only answer you will receive is an awful silence. You feel the ambiguity, don’t you? With no commu

To be a father in more than a biological sense—to make fatherhood an integral part of my identity, to care about my child in an active and passionate sense—requires that I sustain an existential, life-defining commitment to my child. This is why parenthood can be such a transformative event, reorienting my deepest relation to the world, making life

We need people to remind men again and again how difficult it is to become a conscious father, and people to remind women how difficult it is to be a conscious mother.

He leans forward. “Tom, what you’re not getting, and this is true for most men I see, is that it is in your interest to move beyond your knee-jerk selfishness and entitlement and to take good care of your wife, so she isn’t such a raving lunatic all the time.” He shakes his head. “The idea that withdrawal is going to work is nuts. You’re a sweet gu

“Why are there more and more naïve men in the world?” Whether the fathers are actually darker than they were in the past, they are perceived so, and a son assigns himself the task of redeeming the dark father.