After some brief expressions of sympathy, in particular from one of the women present, the conversation moved on. Though sad for all involved, especially the couple's young children, to us thirtysomethings such news comes as no surprise. Breakdowns in relationships, such as retrenchment, car accidents or minor operations, are just one of the everyday hazards of modern life for Generation X. It is an event that statistically is as likely to occur as not. In her provocatively titled new book, Are Men Necessary? When Sexes Collide, American columnist Maureen Dowd tolls the bell of marital doom. In an extract published in the New York Times Magazine, Dowd laments the abject failure of modern relationships: "Despite the best efforts of philosophers, politicians, historians, novelists, screenwriters, linguists, therapists, anthropologists and facilitators, men and women are still in a muddle in the boardroom, the bedroom and the Situation room."

Dowd presents the landscape of relationships as a disaster zone of disappointment and inequality for women: "Before it curdled into a collection of stereotypes, feminism had fleetingly held out a promise that there would be some precincts of womanly life that were not all about men. But it never materialised." In Dowd's view, the sway held by stereotypes hasn't lessened since the rise of feminism, only their content: "The message is diametrically opposite - before it was don't be a sex object; now, it's be a sex object - but the conformity is just as stifling." Virginia Woolf wrote that "to enjoy freedom we have to control ourselves". Dowd is quite right to identify conformity as a true enemy of happiness, but it is a force propelling our consumer society that is difficult to deny. In gender relations, as in everything else, we are only limited by our imaginations and our capacity to empathise with one another.

The "can't live with them, can't live without them" theme adumbrated by Dowd also echoes in the media across the gender divide, where the howl of embittered women is answered just as loudly by the bellowing of angry men who fear that they really are unnecessary. In addition to the misery and hardship that failed relationships cause to women, the high rate of divorce is just one of the factors that contribute to the so-called crisis in masculinity. According to Marian Salzman, Ira Matathia and Ann O'Reilly, the joint authors of a new book called The Future of Men, instability and uncertainty in relationships is just one of the issues profoundly troubling men. They refer to data indicating that men have a greater psychological need for permanence in relationships than women, and point out the fact that roughly twice as many divorces are instigated by women as men.

But is the crisis real, or is it a furphy, an excuse for some men to behave badly and feel sorry for themselves? Are the gender wars overall a sign of social disintegration or a bit of a beatup? The threshold question is not one that preoccupies the authors of The Future of Men. In a sign of the times, the book is not a work of sociological inquiry or journalistic speculation but a business title.

Salzman, Matathia and O'Reilly are not polemicists but professional trendspotters and as such are primarily concerned with how the fluid situation of men may translate into future spending patterns. They assert that the combination of "the women's movement, the evolution towards information-based economies, and shifting social mores and values" is having "a negative impact on the male psyche, leaving modern men hesitant, disoriented, and, in many cases, more than a little depressed". The authors say that companies "looking to connect with the male consumer" must respond to what they term "M-ness", that is a new masculinity being defined by men themselves. After a decade or so of metrosexuals having the unblinking queer eye appraise their dress, hygiene and appearance, men are reasserting their traditional masculinity.

This new "ubersexual" man will keep using a regular moisturising routine, but will also be manlier in his pursuits and outlook. But like the conformist women described by Dowd, is the crisis of masculinity merely creating a new breed of fashion victims whose angst can only be soothed by retail therapy? Advertisers, take note: boy's toys can compensate men for the feeling they are toy boys. The new alliance forecast in The Future of Men between quiche-man and caveman, to borrow the distinction made in Kath & Kim, may seem like a refreshing new development in the affairs of men, but is it simply a case of putting some of the old wine in new bottles? In truth, the really significant changes have occurred around men and not within them. Human evolution has lagged far behind technology, medical science and legislative change. Thomas Keneally reminds us: "It is for most of us far less than 5000 years since we came in off the plain and began farming. But our chemistry is built for nomadic life. We really did have mastodons to kill once."

It is precisely this apparent mismatch between purpose and use, a "suspicion that we are biologically and socially redundant", as Keneally puts it, that gives rise to a "profound unease" in men. The projection into the future properly begins in the past, though we do not have to go back five millennia to establish the beginnings of a modern malaise. The future of men arguably began that day in November 1951 when the patents were filed that heralded the introduction of the contraceptive pill for women.

Giving women the power to control their own fertility, as almost all of them do in the West, was an epoch-making moment in the history of humanity. The freedom of choice that the Pill gave to women, and indirectly to their sexual partners, has been followed by medical advances that enable human reproduction to take place without the male partner or sperm donor being present at the moment of conception. When cloning is perfected, then the concept of paternity could be done away with altogether. In any case, according to geneticist Jennifer Marshall Graves, the Y chromosome will have exhausted its capacity to mutate within the next 10 million years. The only real question is when, not if, the Y chromosome disappears, she has said in an interview. "It could be a lot shorter than 10 million years, but it could be a lot longer."

Some modern freedoms, such as those that enabled women to vote and to own property without being treated as property themselves, have altered relations between the sexes forever. According to the authors of The Future of Men, there is no going back, and nor would societies that have experienced the benefits of the liberation of women want to return to the sexual dark ages: "In the short term, it's clear that cultures that resist the rise in female power are losing out to those cultures that accept it, because the cultures that accept it are progressing further faster on most fronts - health, economy, security, and technology, to name a few. Only history (sic) will tell what the longer-term consequences may be."

Some of the more militant men's advocacy groups may gnash their teeth but the dethronement of men was in some sense an abdication, since the entry of women into the workforce was an unintended consequence of the world wars waged by men, and it was men that led the medical research into women's health. Now men and women are able to work together as never before to improve the lives of everyone. Who in their right mind would want to pass up the opportunity, however imperfect the application so far, to create a non-discriminatory meritocracy? On the domestic front, much of what has happened in our time is not gender-specific but is the impersonal operation of technology-driven consumer society. The services that in the past only marriage could provide to each partner have now virtually been outsourced. Single women can now "hire a hubby" whenever there's an odd job to be done, while any man with enough cash can enjoy what used to be regarded as conjugal rights at the nearest licensed brothel.

Nothing is sacred, and everything has a price. Shopping, cleaning, healthy food, child care, back rubs - all are just a phone call or a mouse click away.

An enterprising Japanese inventor has even come up with an artificial arm for singletons that takes the place of that otherwise provided by a real sleeping partner. The marketplace fills the space to ensure that not even the absence of ordinary human contact lacks a commercial substitute. If robots can serve as pets, why not have them fill in for humans as well? Objectively, the only factor holding women back from the possibility of complete independence from men, and vice versa, is financial, since the moral, social and legal pressure that used to exist for couples to pair off permanently has disappeared. The crucial issue is the mutual desire to have children. In most cases, the cost of health and education is such that it still requires two incomes to ensure that children receive what is generally considered to be a good start in life. The authors of The Future of Men identify one area in popular culture that needs an adjustment to accommodate M-ness, and that is the negative stereotyping of men. In 1929, Virginia Woolf wrote that women "all these centuries have served as lookingglasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the magic figure of man at twice its natural size".

Woolf knew, however, that the best writing transcends gender-specific thinking, since "anything written with a conscious bias is doomed to death". Great art, according to Woolf, encompasses the whole of human experience and dissolves any crude distinction between sex and gender. "Some collaboration has to take place in the mind between the man and woman before the art of creation can be accomplished.

Some marriage of opposites has to be consummated". A powerful representation of this concept as it may be manifested in an actual relationship appears in Kurt Vonnegut's novel Mother Night. The main character, an American playwright recruited to spy in pre-war Germany, sees the bond between himself and his wife as constituting what he calls "a nation of two". The couple's loyalty to this nation will allow for a measure of regional autonomy and can survive the occasional outbreak of civil unrest. Despite Woolf's plea for wholeness and her warning against replacing misogyny with misandry, stereotyping is still with us. Once women might have been denigrated or patronised with impunity, but now popular culture tends to load the dice against men.

Sitcoms and ads routinely show male characters as weak, foolish or stupid. Instead of Father Knows Best, there are such dubious role models as Homer Simpson and Ray in Everyone Loves Raymond. Not that they have much of an example to follow - Abraham Simpson was a terrible father and Ray's dad is a ranting sociopath.

Of course, these shows would not be funny if the gag did not correlate to events in real life, but there is no balance, and in any case a joke repeated too often quickly becomes stale. Of recent comedies, Coupling and Kath & Kim stand out as mature enough, and wicked enough, to be even-handed in satirising human relationships. Selfishness, vanity, vulgarity, duplicity, snobbery, deceit - none of these things is the sole preserve of one half of humanity. Nor are any of the more admirable qualities, needless to say.

Unreconstructed heroes such as those played by John Wayne and Steve McQueen have disappeared from the big screen, but also lost are the Gregory Pecks, Henry Fondas and Cary Grants. Russell Crowe's rampaging public persona may seem like a throwback, but even he can't go berserk in a hotel without concern for his family being the cause. Such sensitivity, which is shared by Crowe's characters in such films as Gladiator and The Cinderella Man, never inspired the ritual trashing of hotel rooms by rock bands in the '60s and '70s.

In modern life, the patriarchy has been superseded. Men increasingly share in the family chores and spend time with their children, which is why the authors of The Future of Men think that "business still seems to be lagging behind the cultural reality of how much gender-blurring has occurred in traditional female domains". They write that "products related to food preparation, home furnishing and entertaining, and home maintenance (i.e. cleaning) are still generally pitched at women, despite the fact that most of these items have become gender neutral". While it has never been easier to form attachments, it has never been more of a challenge to maintain them. The upheavals in men's lives have brought much that is new and unprecedented but also confirmed much that is as old as the hills. A good man or woman has always been hard to find and the course of true love never runs smooth, as Shakespeare and Jane Austen, among other writers, understood.

Some are lucky in love and others miss out, no matter what the rules of engagement happen to be. Mutual misunderstanding and gender confusion are a rich source of comedy and pathos in Shakespeare's plays and the politics and economics of sex is a central concern of Austen's novels. Female sexual selection was known to be a vital factor in courtship long before evolutionary science confirmed it as the dominant one. Much of what seems contemporary in gender conflict has a historical precedent. The cad or shrew of yesteryear is today's ballbreaker or toxic bachelor. For every female chauvinist pig there's a pick-up artist playing "the game". In his primping and preening, the metrosexual takes his cue from the dandy of yore.

The prospects for men may seem bleak to some, but that need not be the case. Rather than feel useless and rejected, most men should perhaps feel lucky that women still show as much interest in them as they do and want their companionship. Often the most effective critics of cultural misandry are women, and women do continue to give birth to sons as well as daughters. Most women are attracted to men enough to want to be with them in some meaningful way, while men (or women) who like each other are no longer prevented from fulfilling their desire. Love is fragile and often fleeting but I doubt whether many of us, no matter how modern our outlook, could contemplate life without it. And for the time being, at least, it seems we don't have to.