This article is taken from the November 2022 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

This is an important book about how rich societies are failing to adapt to the breakdown of the old breadwinner-carer gender division — with many negative consequences, especially for non-elite men.

It is especially valuable coming from a self-consciously progressive, pro-feminist British man (writing mainly from a US perspective, having followed his wife’s career to America in 2012), who challenges many of the narratives of “toxic masculinity” and the tendency to see gender inequality only through a female lens.

Much of the story he tells, which applies with some variations in Britain and Europe, is a familiar one of men slipping behind women in education, in entry into many professions and increasingly in earnings. Women are now the main breadwinners in 41 per cent of US households, with three in ten wives out-earning their husbands. 

Recent changes in post-industrial economies, the family, and the broader culture have mainly meant a loss of status and meaning for men, especially working-class men, and an increase in status and opportunities for women. 

This may be both fair and beneficial for society as a whole, but the male provider role has not yet been redirected into anything new. Redundant men without responsibilities are a potential danger to themselves (see the “deaths of despair” crisis in the US) and to the wider society — providing, among other things, the backbone of support to populist parties.

On top of this are various aspects of modern life that appear more troubling for young men. Boys struggle initially at school because their brains develop later; boys react less well to family breakdown and absent fathers. Meanwhile men have significantly fewer friends than women and are less likely to take advantage of policy initiatives to give them a hand up. 

More existentially, for most women part of their role in the world is prescribed by their bodies, whilst for men their masculinity is something that has to be achieved and is therefore more fragile.

HEAL work for men should be promoted as STEM is for women

The conventional feminist answer is that men have to become more like women. Reeves, the father of three boys, knows this is only a partial answer and that male-female differences are real and persistent. 

On average, men are not only bigger, more aggressive and risk-taking, with a stronger sex drive, but they are also more likely to be object-oriented systematisers rather than people-orientated empathisers. Some of these differences are narrowing, having been accentuated by traditional gender roles, but there are limits to androgyny. The gender equality paradox — which finds that where women are most free to choose their academic and career priorities, there is a more gender-divided labour market (see Sweden) — is a real thing.

Reeves has some practical solutions. Male jobs have been more exposed to automation than female ones, and women have moved strongly into male-dominated sectors such as medicine and law with little movement the other way. Whilst a 50:50 balance may be neither achievable nor desirable, Reeves wants to encourage more men into female-dominated caring jobs and insists HEAL work (health, education, administration and literacy) for men should be promoted in the same way that STEM work (science, technology, engineering and maths) has been for women. 

Similarly, Reeves says men need to invest more in family life and fatherhood. Biology often dictates a bigger role for mothers in early parenthood, but that doesn’t mean that they are better at making a dentist appointment for a 12-year-old. There has been some movement towards a more equal division of domestic labour, especially in professional households, but there remains room for improvement. 

Gender conservatives are a weak and declining force

More specific proposals are either commonsensical (more male primary school teachers), impractical (starting boys’ formal education a year later) or currently utopian (six months’ paid paternity leave; even Sweden has only three). 

Two small reservations. Although the book is fluently-written, it can get bogged down in lists of academic papers. Also, Reeves seeks to balance his challenge to liberal orthodoxy, and taking seriously controversial writers such as Jordan Peterson and Geoff Dench, with a repudiation of gender conservatism.

On his own evidence gender conservatives are a weak and declining force: in 2012 only 18 per cent of Americans agreed that “women should return to their traditional roles in society”, down from 30 per cent in 1987. In the UK, it is in single figures. Few politicians promote this view. By contrast, the liberal beliefs that Reeves challenges are distinctly mainstream.

The mundane truth seems to be that most men in rich, liberal societies have broadly accepted gender equality, but many remain unsure of where that leaves them. This book should reassure such men that our interests matter, too. It might also leave a nagging doubt that more male nurses and a greater male contribution to family life may not be enough to fill an existential hole.