There is a debate taking place in the Labour party about men and women's relationships. Diane Abbott has pitched into it, criticising Blue Labour and accusing me of saying that all that women need is a faithful man. I've never said this, but I'm sure that most women do want a faithful husband or partner. And men want much the same thing from women: love, understanding, friendship, kindness and a relationship that is reciprocal.

But love and intimacy are tangled up in the power relations between men and women, and there is a darker side to relationships between the sexes. Feminism has cast a powerful light on men's sexual violence, on our masculinity and on men's domination of women. When women assert their independence, men's sense of self and identity can be threatened. But this is not the whole story. Many men welcome women's equality and they support feminism because it has provided an opportunity to talk about relationships, masculinity, fatherhood, emotional life and sexuality. It has helped modern men to become more involved in the ordinary love of family life and relationships.

In the past, Labour's tradition was about men and men's work. It was a patriarchal culture that was reticent about emotions and marginalised women. But it gave working-class men pride in their work and in their union and it gave this pride a politics. It gave the working class – men and women – a democratic voice at the table of government. The temperance movement and the chapels strengthened it with the virtues of justice, prudence, temperance and courage. And these virtues were not confined to Labour politics. Men gave their active support to the suffragettes, a few enduring imprisonment. Their motives were both radical and conservative. As Victor Duval the founder of the Men's Political Union for Women's Enfranchisement, argued, what was needed was, "some good men, some honest men, some real men".

Today, Labour's tradition of masculine solidarity is out of place in our more democratic culture of the sexes. In the past three decades many men's lives have been irrevocably changed, particularly men who have lost their work because of deindustrialisation. Men's incomes have stagnated, and the old "family wage" has disappeared. For increasing numbers of both working-class and middle-class men the traditional role of family breadwinner and head of household is unattainable. Low wages and a lack of affordable housing have made it increasingly difficult for many young men to create an independent life of their own. The traditional rites of passage into adulthood – leaving home, entering employment, establishing a family, and taking on legal obligations and rights – are disappearing.

The balance of power between men and women has shifted within many families. This has led to better and more equal relationships between men and women. But it has also created a reaction from men (and from women too) against the greater equalisation of the sexes. The loss of men's traditional masculine identities and the status and authority skilled work gave to many has fed into a xenophobic, anti-immigration, nationalist politics. Its virulence across Europe has undermined support for traditional social democratic parties.

Labour has to find new ways of speaking to men as workers, husbands and particularly as fathers. Women need the support of their partners and husbands in looking after the children and in managing the household. They need men's support in helping them succeed in the public world of work and politics. In turn, men need women to help them, particularly in meeting the challenges of the changing emotional cultures of work, parenting and relationships. Labour needs to help create a new democratic settlement between men and women. A public life of equality and respect and a family life which is a shared endeavour of bringing up children. It would require a family-friendly economy – a living wage, equal pay for women, skills training, flexible and secure employment, and affordable homes so that mothers and fathers have more opportunity to negotiate work, housework, child care and free time.

Emotional life lies at the heart of the bonds that bind people and society together and politics has to be attuned to them or fail. Labour's debate about men and women's relationships, the good, the bad and the paradoxical, is a step in the right direction.