Traditional gender roles don’t get men what they want

For years now, declining birth rates have been a concern, with much of the discussion focused on women — the factors that prevent them from having children, whether mothers can balance work and family, whether feminism has misled women.

But men and what do they think?

Demographers focused on reproductive trends have largely ignored men’s attitudes toward sex, caregiving, and relationships. We have far less data on men’s attitudes than women’s and even less on how those attitudes shape outcomes.

But, even if we haven’t examined them all closely, men have opinions on these subjects. American men are more likely to see the declining birth rate as a problem, for example, and are more likely to want a return to “traditional gender roles.” According to a recent poll by 19th News, 6 in 10 men favor such a return, compared to four in 10 women. Among Republican men, the number remained at 87 percent.

These attitudes aren’t just showing up at the polls—they’re shaping policy and discourse. A growing number of conservatives have publicly lamented that women’s equality may be a bridge too far, with some calling for an end to no-fault divorce or suggesting it’s time to get rid of women’s voting rights. Even the New York Times, a mainstream and liberal publication, recently asked, “Have Women Ruined the Workplace?” Played a section of the title. Discussing whether women have made professional culture too emotional and serious.

It’s easy to feel that men and masculinity have already received too much attention, and there’s certainly been a reticence on the left to focus men’s desires. These reservations are not difficult to understand. For most of human history men have preferred, and still dominate, positions of power.

However, it is necessary to understand the attitude of men. Everyone wants identity and purpose. For many men, these basic needs may manifest through a desire to feel masculine, and so their attitudes toward sex and grooming are shaped by these deeply held beliefs about what it means to be a man. If caregiving is seen as an overwhelmingly feminine job that diminishes masculinity, men will resist it.

For anyone who cares about gender equality, ignoring what men think and need, about women being able to find the partners they want or want to be able to build families, guarantees failure on every front.

It’s not just about work

When it comes to gender equality and children, activists and politicians have long argued that too much of the former trumps the latter. Or, as a former Tory minister in the United Kingdom once quipped, “Feminism is the new birthism.” The optimistic theory was that, if men moved up, and egalitarian policies like paid leave became more widespread, the birth rate would rise.

There is some truth to this, in the sense that research suggests lack of Gender equality lowers the birth rate even faster.

Today, women with financial freedom and less social pressure to marry are more likely to stay single than settle for friends they don’t trust to be supportive. “It used to be that women felt like they had no other choice — like this guy’s not great but he’s the best to come,” said Patrick Brown, a family policy analyst at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center. “But now…women are willing to stay single if they don’t meet someone who matches their standards.”

And since most people who have children these days do so in long-term, committed relationships, men who fail to demonstrate that they would be good partners are less likely to have children.

Telling women to stay at home does not guarantee that they will have more children. In most countries, working women are “more likely to have children than those who are not employed,” said Trude Lappegaard, a sociologist at the University of Oslo. This is true when their partners are also employed.

In South Korea and Japan, where women are expected to do almost all of the domestic labor and must navigate workplaces that heavily penalize motherhood, fertility rates have increased. South Korea’s birth rate will reach 0.75 children per woman in 2024, the lowest in the world, while Japan’s will drop to 1.15. A similar trend exists across southern Europe. In Italy, Spain and Greece, where traditional gender norms are strong, fertility rates have dipped between 1.1 and 1.3.

These patterns also show up in broader data. A 2025 study analyzing more than 40 European countries found that women increasingly want men to share childcare and housework equally, while men’s belief that women should handle unpaid, domestic work has remained largely unchanged. In countries where the gap widened, both birth rates and female employment were lower—suggesting that men may have curbed both resistance to sharing work.

“Of course this is not the only explanation – there are many factors that affect fertility – but we say that men not recognizing their share in the household affects women who choose to have children or not,” study co-author Giulia Bricelli told me.

The equation of men doing more housework and rising birth rates is not so simple. Compared to previous generations, men have markedly increased their time in child care and housework while fertility has been declining. “Pressuring men to help more at home doesn’t help fertility,” Lyman Stone, a conservative demographer at the Institute for Family Studies, argued this summer.

Still, it’s more nuanced than that. Nordic countries that restructured parental leave, provided free childcare, and created more flexible workplace standards that draw men into caregiving have higher fertility. Their rates hover around 1.4 to 1.6 – still below replacement, but better. In Norway, Iceland and Sweden, fathers used their country’s parental leave policies were Partners are more likely to welcome a second child. Gender equality isn’t a magic solution, but doubling down on traditional roles seems to make things worse, not better.

In fact, Briselli’s work found that countries with the smallest gap between men’s and women’s attitudes toward child care and the sharing of housework had both higher fertility rates and female employment. The most important thing is not the hours put into work but whether the women understand the arrangement properly. And, Stone’s own data also showed that when a woman’s sense of injustice increases, fertility decreases. It’s not just what men do at home, but whether they see it as their responsibility or as a favor.

research gap

This question—how men feel about their responsibilities at home—has not been well studied. “This part was definitely not well documented, it didn’t get a lot of attention, and I think we should be shedding more light on it, for sure,” Bricelli said.

Lappegård, a sociologist from Oslo, agreed and told me that there is a general lack of interest in men’s studies among the demographics in her field. “I’ve been screaming for the last 20 years that more research is needed on men,” she told me. “If we really want to understand what’s going on with women, we have to not only compare them with men, but men also have their own independent voice in this.”

This knowledge gap exists in part because many scholars see the study of men and masculinity as inherently conservative—an excuse to roll back women’s rights or focus men’s wounded feelings on women’s material concerns.

But, if we want to understand why men’s views on sharing housework remain stable even as women’s expectations change, we need to delve deeper into the questions of how men view their place in the world. And if we want to ultimately move toward more equality and connection, we cannot ignore the question of what masculinity can and should be.

Filling a huge void

With increasing concern about men’s mental health, there has been debate over whether masculinity can be saved or whether it is fundamentally oppressive. Some argue to redefine it in more humane terms, so that involved fathers and emotionally available partners are considered masculine. Others push back hard. The idea that there might even be a more positive masculinity is “an attempt to remove the derogatory taint of femininity from any trait or behavior before putting boys around,” argued Ruth Whipman in the New York Times.

In doing so, Jessica Winter echoed in a recent New Yorker piece, “Men still have to put women up in the social hierarchy, just not like they used to.” Both women propose a world that abolishes masculinity in exchange for a world of “full humanity” and a “gender-free” world.

However these suggestions strike me as wishful thinking. Dismissing positive views of masculinity certainly does not eliminate the demand for masculinity; The hunger for a sense of identity just doesn’t go away. Practically speaking, this creates a void for the Andrew Tates and Jordan Petersons of the world to more easily fill.

And few people are calling for an end to feminism. There are criticisms, to be sure, of its more toxic elements – like the dangerous pressure to be thin, or the encouragement to go under the knife – but it’s rare to hear feminists calling for women to reject it altogether. Instead, the movement worked to educate women on the more harmful aspects of femininity and widen the space in femininity for those who do not conform and allow women who wish to embrace traditionally feminine activities to do so.

We can do for men what feminism did for women: name harmful pressures, expand what counts as a “good” man in society, and free people from less healthy and less connected norms. Valuations of dominance, stigma around asking for help, and equating masculinity with control are not necessarily the future of masculinity.

Daniel Cox, director of the American Enterprise Institute’s Center for Surveys on Family Life, thinks part of the appeal of traditional gender roles is that they provide men with clarity — a sense that they have a defined place and that they are needed. “The primary message that all these men are hearing is that no one needs you, women can do it themselves,” he told me. This is a message that confuses men.

In response, Cox pointed to “relational masculinity” as an idea that could help men and that might be more in line with what women are looking for in partners.

“I think a lot of newlywed husbands and new dads feel the burden of responsibility to protect and provide for their family and that can mean a lot to you,” he said. “Otherwise you might say why am I grinding, right? But when you’re doing it on behalf of someone else and someone needs you, it’s incredibly motivating… I think we’ve fundamentally lost the idea of ​​serving one another, whether it’s your family, your community or country.”

While some women roll their eyes at the idea that men want to feel needed, if we’re being honest, that’s deeply human., Universal Desire. In a recent study of more than 3,000 Americans, people who believed they were needed—whether by their family, their work, or their community—reported being happier and more satisfied with their lives. It wasn’t about ego; It was about a sense of purpose from something outside of oneself.

The future may be different

Why the gender revolution stalled is not a complete mystery; Incorporating caregiving into a masculine identity asks men to give up certain advantages and embrace work that has long been feminized and undervalued. But countries like France – where Bricelli says men’s and women’s views on sharing housework are surprisingly similar – show that it’s possible for men to view involved fatherhood and domestic labor as key to being good men, rather than being reluctant to help. Things are changing in America, too. About 20 percent of American parents report actually being in an egalitarian partnership.

And women aren’t going back to the 1950s. They’re not living in a relationship that doesn’t feel like their education, career, or partnership. The data suggest that, even if they did, fertility would only decline rapidly.

Whether society-wide fertility can rise again under conditions of gender equality is indeed uncertain; Researchers like Lappegård say they have more questions than answers. But what’s at stake is more than birth rates—it’s whether men and women can actually build a life together.