Are men supposed to suppress their emotions? Yes many a time. Men do need to love and comfort their wives and family members but It is foolish to think that men should express their emotions in the way women do. That is truly for sissies. On the other hand men shouldn’t be cold to their wives and children. Suppression of emotions at times is not the elimination of emotions at all times.

Were women oppressed? No. They were protected, provided and cared for generally. The liberation of women has not been good at all. Women were liberated from being women. Women have always had a mind of their own(how could they have had someone else’s?) and did not need any liberation to acquire knowledge and become intellectual. Women did not need feminism to follow their passions in a womanly manner and truly be themselves. Women joining the military and being career minded are not freedoms which manly men should prize. Manly men need womanly women and joining the military or being career minded makes that woman less womanly. A wife having a job to support a family in financial difficulty is different from a wife aspiring for a career. Wives should be their husbands faithful helpmeet.

Are dads expected to be hands-on in child-rearing? Yes and No. Yes for being involved in their child’s life. No for being hands on ‘just like the moms’. Men should be involved as fathers but not in the same way as mothers.

Is there only one way of being a man? I’d say that men have always been men in different ways: some doctors, some carpenters, some merchants etc etc. Well this question had a hidden meaning. I think the question is “Is it ok for men to be stay at home dads”? I think not, unless he is physically or mentally unable to work outside the home. It is not manly under normal conditions.

Somewhere Robert Baden-Powell is spinning in his grave.

A man’s first duty is not only to reproduce, but act as steward for posterity: Bring up descendants worthy of his legacy, fitting them for principled action and self-sacrifice as circumstances warrant. One’s own survival is a personal priority, but language-speaking humans are by definition social animals, whose individual well-being depends entirely upon the health of their communities.

“Civilization and Its Discontents” pose not dilemmas but trade-offs. Only to the extent that men as husbands, fathers, providers, are recognized and rewarded –by no means materially– for essentially altruistic roles (defending and supporting home-and-family, commonly dying young) can communities prosper proudly and in peace. Now as “diversity” swamps ambition, warps group identities, promotes demographic and socio-cultural catastrophe by draining all incentive, perversely confiscating hard-earned productive gains, we reap a whirlwind sweeping naive post-Enlightenment populations to collectivist abyss.

As ethical and moral –individual vs. collective– standards dissipate, we one-in-five make classic efforts to allay the rot at home. Nothing substitutes for character: Earned appreciation, independence and responsibility, incentive risk-reward are key. Education rather than mere training acquaints us with the past, puts forebears’ efforts in personal context and perspective. May we bestow on our posterity the fruits of what ancestors labored to bequeath for us.

Transmitting love requires good examples: Kids see through phony preaching, PCBS, in milli-microseconds. So far, so good… married twenty-eight years this April, we have two Eagle Scouts and a beloved elder daughter glorying in her Biochemistry Degree. The family name dates back 1,150 years, and odds are it will be preserved– a comfortable thought, knowing we are but links in a millennial chain.

Why others differ with these theses, I neither know nor care. Meantime, each heir in our long line will stand his ground– “And what is more, you’ll be a Man, my son.”