Dear Abigail,
To get right to the point: Are men meant to build empires, and women meant to change diapers?
My wife and I have four children under 7. We work very flexible 40-hour weeks, and financially we’re very comfortable. Our nonwork hours are filled with family activities that we either do together or divide up more or less evenly. On good days, it’s delightful and rewarding. On bad days, it’s aggravating and draining.
I’m writing because my work is currently taking a back seat to family. I’m well-known in my field, and I often feel that I could really “put a dent in the universe” if I went all-in with my career. My three sisters have all married men who put their own career goals far above children and family. Nothing is more important than their work: They rarely attend our family holiday gatherings, barely change diapers, and if their kids are sick—well, that’s too bad, but my sisters better figure it out, because there’s an unmissable investor meeting in Dubai.
I know there are voices in the modern conservative movement who would say all is right with their arrangement: They are “men being men,” valiant warriors on the bloody battlefield of commerce. And my sisters, left with all the family responsibilities, are “women being women.”
I vacillate between two extremes. My brothers-in-law aren’t exactly Andrew Tate, but I often think they are self-absorbed jerks who will regret their priorities later in life. But on, say, my fourth day staying home from work with a vomiting toddler, I’m deeply envious of them. It seems to me that my sisters have sacrificed so much for their families, but their husbands get to do whatever they want, as long as they’re “grinding.” They get to enjoy roaring professional success, jet around the world, and be absolved of essentially all tedious childcare responsibilities. What a hack!
I think about the pretty substantial things I could accomplish if I devoted myself to work like they do. And I wonder: Have I been poisoned by progressive gender ideas? Have I emasculated myself by limiting the hours that I work, and spending most of my free time doing sing-alongs and playing football with my kids? How does a man think about—and weigh—the impact they could have on their families versus the impact they could have professionally?
I’m not a very woke person, but I know there’s no shortage of right-wing influencers who would call me a “pussy” or worse, a “cuck,” because I’m playing dress-up and cooking with my daughters at 5 p.m., and I’m not out there crushing it every day. Maybe my brothers-in-law see me this way as well. Does a “real man” toss the kids to his wife, jump on a plane, and set his sights on building an empire?
Thank you so much.
Martin, 44
Dear Martin,
Hundreds of thousands of American GIs marched off to World War II with a copy of Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn buried in their rucksacks. The coming-of-age story—let’s face it, a girls’ book—was a favorite among our male troops because 11-year-old Francie Nolan’s loneliness and grit touched them deeply, filling their hearts with the simple beauty of family life.
The young men who dog-eared those pages would go on to defeat the Third Reich in Western Europe and liberate Dachau and Buchenwald.
Like a lot of Americans my age, both of my grandfathers fought in the war—one in the Army Air Corps and the other in the U.S. Navy. Both were proud and eager to serve a country they loved—and returned to my grandmothers as adoring and attentive husbands and dads. They helped the kids with their homework. Neither was ever caught bragging about how many women he had slept with or how much weight he could bench-press.
