Do men feel worse about themselves if their female partner make more money than them? Source: ThinkStock
AS MILLENNIALS, we're very lucky (or unlucky, depending on your politics) to have borne witness to some momentous events in our lifetimes.
The US elected the first non-white president. Some parts of the world are beginning to grant non-heterosexual people the right to marry. Even the wacky weed is fully legal in some places, if that's your thing.
In addition (and perhaps least controversially), women have an unprecedented presence in the workplace. One consequence of this is that women are becoming the primary earners in their household at a staggering rate.
Why does that matter to millennials? It's because we'll be the last generation of men to remember a time when such circumstances were not only rare, but "wrong." Not "wrong" in the way stealing is morally wrong, but more like the questionable, societally-imposed variety of wrong, such as seeing a man carrying a purse. AKA, something that makes some people feel uncomfortable for no logical reason. Something some people have decided is strange.
Successful women like Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer are taking home massive pay packets. Source: Getty Images
The issue millennials face is that we're living through the time when a whole bunch of "wrong" things are suddenly not only OK, but also embraced. Change is happening. And since we're experiencing the transition between the world we "knew" and the world we now know to be true, we're going to have to answer some tough questions regarding what exactly defines a man.
For as much (justified) praise is heaped upon successful women, the question of "how do men now define their identity" is often overlooked.
I've written before that asking "what does it mean to be a man" is an asinine question, and that's true — especially if you get at all philosophical about it. Even AskMen's tagline isn't "be a man," it's "become a better man."
For most of recorded history, a "man" was largely defined as someone who provides. In a larger sense, it's about having power, control and influence. When we look to see who's in charge, we reflexively expect it to be a man. Within the confines of your own home, the easiest way to gain that control (and thus fulfil your "manly" obligation) is to be the one who brings home the bacon. If you paid for the house, it's assumed that you get the final say over what goes on inside.
Gender norms within families have shifted since the Brady Bunch days. Source: News Limited
That's a pretty convenient arrangement, when you think about it. We associate manhood with power, we associate power with money, and it just so happens that men have traditionally been the ones making the money.
Make all the money (or at least most of it) and, boom, welcome to manhood. For most millennials, that was our reality growing up. Dad brought home the bacon and Mum cooked it. Even if Mum worked, it's unlikely that her job was the primary source of household income or even contributed to it significantly. If Dad's job moved, the family moved. If Mum's job moved, she either found a new one or didn't bother.
That is changing, and rapidly. There was an article in the New York Post the other week, in fact, about how women are struggling to assume the role of primary breadwinner. Part of it is the pressure that comes with it, but hey — that's what anyone asks for when they embark on a lucrative career path.
Oprah's lucrative career is bringing in more than her beau Stedman Graham. Source: AFP
The other part, though, is a little harder to sort out. In some households with female breadwinners, there's a general feeling of unrest on the part of the men, which sometimes leads to friction. Most of the couples highlighted are older, outside the millennial generation. For those men, the status quo changed even more abruptly.
So men feel emasculated when women out-earn us — but, why? I'm sure some of that is because the other low-hanging fruit for defining the male identity is our drive to impress women.
Think about it — how much of your energy is spent impressing the woman in your life? If you're single, it takes up most (if not all) of your time. Without mammoths to fell or Nazis to punch, your wallet is probably the easiest way to show the ladies you're up to snuff. When your lady is capable of buying herself everything you could (if not more), many men with a traditional mindset are bound to feel stymied, as though someone took away their man card.
If she doesn't need you, then what's the point? It's this odd situation where millennial men know that women are equal and want to feel good about it, but the traditional values are ingrained so deeply that it leaves this inexplicable feeling of discomfort... even if they desperately don't want to feel it.
Gail Kelly, one of Australia's most prominent businesswomen. Source: News Corp Australia
There's also something more insidious afoot: Research shows that men are often put off by their female partners' success. Not just put off, but seeing our women succeed actually makes many of us feel worse about ourselves.
They ran the study in the Netherlands, reportedly one of the most gender-neutral countries on Earth, and found men there were just as put off at their partners' success as men from other, more machismo-driven parts of the world. It doesn't even matter if a couple is playing the same game or competing for the same goal — men see their partners' success as our own failure, even when it has nothing to do with us.
That's… strange — and if you're looking for a "scientific" reason why female breadwinning leads to friction in the home, that's about as good an explanation as it gets.
So how do millennials factor into this? Future generations will likely grow up without the societal and institutionalised notion of "man = top earner," though only time will tell if that (supposedly) built-in aversion to female success will remain. For those men, they'll likely write their own criteria for defining a man, if they bother to at all.
Traditional expectations of masculinity are changing. Source: ThinkStock
For millennials, we're stuck somewhere in the middle: while we're young enough to wrap our heads around the idea that there's nothing wrong with our wives or girlfriends bringing in the lion's share, we're old enough that our association of manhood with income runs deep. If we still feel the need to ask the question and define ourselves as men, that stool just lost its sturdiest leg.
Personally, I'm all for it. The fewer men we have posturing and flaunting empty gestures as erroneous indicators of manhood, the better. Does your lady make more money than you? Good for her! We're smart enough that we ought to be able to divorce ourselves from the reflexive feeling of emasculation in response to our ladies' success. If you give so much weight to your income as a measure of your manliness, you must not be worth sh*t otherwise.
There are plenty of other things that make a man a man, and being worthy of someone else's love is chief among them. That's a tough sell if you spend a lot of time whining about how much money you make compared to your girlfriend.
You can show you're a man by having goals, having passions and doing the right thing, even if it's the hard thing. Aren't those desirable traits for anyone, male or female? Sure, and seems to be the way the world's going. You can either stamp your feet and moan about it or you can take this as an opportunity to write your own rules. Forget what you thought you knew: Define what being a man means for you.
This article originally appeared in AskMen.
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