Masculinity is essential to procreation and is about fatherhood. Children are what keep men masculine. First, in our current society masculinity is associated with making money and responsibility, but because of fatherhood and not because of manhood; second, there are two different aspects of masculinity with one of them being within the family and the other being out of the family; third and most importantly, masculinity is about responsibility, which entails gathering resources.

Masculinity corresponds with making money.

Masculinity corresponds with making money in the sense of the perpetual competition amongst men for who can bring home the most resources. This is not the case with women. There are natural female in-group preferences. Women are five times more likely to show a preference for other women than men are likely to show a preference for other men (1). This demonstrates the possibility of a higher likelihood of competition between men as opposed to between women and is referred to as the women-are-wonderful (WAW) effect in psychological or sociological research. According to a study by the University of Chicago, it was concluded: “women shy away from competitive workplaces whereas men covet and even thrive in competitive environments (2).” Even with women eclipsing men in educational fulfillments, male earnings are not only essential to forming a marriage but also to sustain it according to a review by Alexandra Killewald in the American Sociological Association (3). Killewald describes “for marriages after 1975, husbands’ lack of full-time employment is associated with higher risk of divorce, but neither wives’ full-time employment nor wives’ share of household labor is associated with divorce risk.”

Money and competition go hand in hand with fatherhood.

How do money and competition relate to fatherhood rather than manhood? The two relate to fatherhood in the respect that sustainably gathering resources becomes a necessity once a man has children with his partner. It is usually a great motivator to work harder and win more resources for his family in his own respective marketplace. All men have the capacity to become a better and more stable provider to make them more suitable to raise a family with a potential mate. Other things like height and handsomeness are not as malleable as the ability to exercise or improve in their field to increase the likelihood of procreation in their lifetime. To put it simply, it is easier to improve one’s ability to work rather than one’s ability to look more attractive to women. As Killewald previously insisted: male employment correlates with the likelihood of divorce while female employment does not, or at least to the same degree (3). One can easily deduce that a man who does not work to provide enough necessary resources is then more likely to be subject to divorce and loss of access to his child, therefore a man must earn the money necessary to sustain his place in the relationship he wishes to preserve as a father and a husband. Manhood, on the other hand, is the period of being a man after childhood. Manhood is more closely related to biological changes males go through after puberty, as puberty is a transitional period between childhood and adulthood or boyhood and manhood. The difference in the meaning of terminology must be considered in the discussion of masculinity and its correlation to either fatherhood or manhood. However, traits advanced through one’s transition into manhood are undoubtedly utilized in fatherhood. Examples of this are some of the physical, cognitive, social, and emotional developments in puberty that all contribute to being able to compete to find a suitable mate and to procreate in the first place. To achieve the state of fatherhood, one uses his competitive edge he’s sharpened over time for exemplifying his ability to provide to a potential mate. Women, on the other hand, do go through a short period in which they compete over men to reach motherhood, but one does it by making herself more attractive rather than more competitive in her work environment. This points to the existence of one of the two types of masculinity mentioned earlier, which is the aspect from outside of the family.

There are aspects of masculinity both from within the family and from outside of the family. Women generally want men to be more stoic, hard, and winners when examining the standpoint from outside of the family. The aspect from within the family is centered on a man being caring and emotionally available for his wife and children. On one hand the man must compete with other men for resources, and on the other hand, he must be able to care for his children when he gets home from work the same way an animal will rip the head off its prey and then follow it by delicately feeding the head to its own offspring. Normally the more sensitive traits would put off a woman but given that the man has already gotten the attention of his desired mate, it is essential he shows he is capable of behaving in a more family-centric manner. The combination of both types of masculinity expressed by man makes up a truly masculine person.

How does the aspect of masculinity from within the family manifest in a man who does not have children and has not reached fatherhood? In the fourth paragraph of “A Man and His Cat” Tim Kreider mentioned what is “especially true of childless people…” is that they “tend to become overinvested in their animals and to dote on them in a way that gives onlookers the creeps. Often the pet seems to be a surrogate child (4).” Men will often find a substitute to replace the child they’d normally be looking after in fatherhood.

Men place greater value on a woman’s beauty than women place on men.

What do resources have to do with masculinity from outside of the family? Jeanna Bryner wrote in Live Science that researchers suspect “men place great value on beauty, whereas women are more interested in having a supportive husband (5).” Men and women both share an interest in procreation, as it is their primary function as humans, although different methods are used to get the attention of a male by a female than those that would be used to get the attention of a female by a male. Women seek motherhood and in turn find men to provide resources for any potential offspring. Men seek fatherhood and in turn find suitable women to breed with that can give birth to and nurture any potential offspring. The tendency to believe that there are other motives involved in finding mates other than procreation is mostly arbitrary. Having a child is the end goal, which leads to the idea of responsibility being most essential to masculinity.

Masculinity cannot exist without responsibility. Responsibility is the fact of having a duty to deal with something. A man must shoulder the world and move forward, as he has no other choice. If a man does not recognize his duty to procreate, he pays for it later down the line. Robin Hadley, of Keele University, found in a survey that “there was a similar level of desire for parenthood among childless men and women in the survey, and that men had higher levels of anger, depression, sadness, jealousy, and isolation than woman and similar level of yearning (6).” This challenges the idea that women want children more than men. Men want to take on the noble responsibility of fatherhood whether they know it or not. It’s in their nature.

It takes responsibility to build a sustainable life for oneself and attract a female companion, just as it takes responsibility to nurture and provide for a child. As mentioned previously, it’s in a man’s best interest to stay employed, as it affects his risk of divorce more than it would if a woman were to not stay employed. It suggests that even after gaining the affection of a woman he loves and having children he accepts responsibility for, he must always maintain his responsibility to be highly competitive and provide resources. The responsibility to provide resources is always consistent in a man’s life. However, many women also bear huge responsibilities in motherhood, which is why femininity exists. The father is certainly not the only parent in a family and the mothers’ actions are not to be discounted in the importance of a child’s overall development. Men and women are each other’s path to parenthood.

Men and women are each other’s path to parenthood.

With declining birth rates in many developed countries (7), it’s no surprise that we see men losing their sense of purpose. As we lose children, we lose men. Men must be masculine to survive. Children are what keep men masculine. It can be comfortably determined that the existence and necessity of masculinity is plainly indicated by the following conclusions: first, the importance of fatherhood in masculinity rather than manhood and the difference between the two; second, the explanation of how there exists two types of masculinity; third, how responsibility and resources are the foundations of masculinity. If a father questions the level or existence of his masculinity, he should look no further than the condition of his own child to determine it.