Men have fallen victim to the "good provider" reduction....

What Are You Doing To A Man When You Call Him A Good Provider?
By Mark Greene, the Good Men Project, January 13, 2014
The Man Box is a set of rigid expectations that define what a “real man” is, particularly in American culture. A real man is strong and stoic. He doesn’t show emotions other than anger and excitement. He is a breadwinner. He is heterosexual. He is able-bodied. He plays or watches sports. He is the dominant participant in every exchange. He is a firefighter, a lawyer, a CEO. He is a man’s man. This “real man”, as defined by the Man Box, represents what is supposedly normative and acceptable within the tightly controlled performance of American male masculinity.
One value, central to the Man Box, is the expectation that men are to earn money and support their families. While seemingly benign, this expectation is rooted in a time when only men could be employed and therefore only men wielded the economic power in the home. Accordingly, what the Man Box offered was simple. “Do what you are told on the factory floor, be the undisputed king in your home.” Men, by retaining control of their family’s economic survival, held vast amounts of authority within the family structure; authority which often resulted in the brutal oppression of their wives and children. It was the devil’s bargain of economic power for American men; a devil’s bargain that is fading away as women become increasingly economically independent. But the ghost of it remains.

First and foremost, men are expected to be good providers. Our parent’s generation expects it of us, the family courts expect it of us, women on first dates often expect it, and in the event of an early death, our life insurance policies pre-suppose it. The simple mechanics of being a good provider excludes men from a number of other spaces which, not coincidentally, are reserved for women. What more, as they aspire to switch traditional breadwinner roles with men in our evolving economy, even highly successful professional women collapse into the expectation that men are supposed to provide. And the cultural contradictions go on and on.
Reflections:
"Providing" for the family, bringing home the bacon, holding down a job and not risking trying new ventures...striving for more and more creative ways to make a living, including sending out resumes throughout a career in education...feeling like a "cheque-writer" in the household...most men of retirement age know more about this experience than they should.
I used to say often in the course of a twenty-three-year marriage, "If I had wanted a corporation, I would have formed one; I thought this was something very different, called a marriage!"
Quitting and staying, as the contemporary phrase puts its, I believed for too many years that it might change, that I might be considered more than the writer of cheques, the "good-provider" but then I came to acknowledge that it would never change, that it was baked into the cake of the stereotypical concept of marriage, and I was the victim, along with millions of other men, of that imprisonment.
And what's more, I did not have the negotiating skills perhaps or the vocabulary to find mutually acceptable paths to a different picture.
Once, back in 1981, when three daughters were eleven, eight and five, I proposed that the family make the traditional cross-country camping trip to the west coast of Canada, with a tent trailer.
I had arranged for the money for gas to come from a free-lance journalism assignment that called for weekly "reports" on the journey, called into the local radio station for which I was then working as an editorialist. The children were of an age that, within one or two years, at least the eldest would no longer be content in a car with her parents and siblings, and would probably prefer to spend one month of her summer with her friends, or perhaps in a 'summer job' as was the habit of many adolescents.
Nevertheless, "There is not enough money!" became the resistant cry of my then spouse, pushing me first into a state of frustration, then discussion about how it would be paid for, and finally, a long solitary drive to consider my options. I returned from that drive to announce, "I am taking the kids and going on the trip; you can come if you like but the trip is going to happen."
Of course, she was not going to be left behind from a trip that neither she nor I had ever experienced as part of our youth. And also of course, she enjoyed herself, so far as I know, as did the three girls.
A decade after our marriage finally dissolved ( how appropriate that word, given the process of dissolution, erosion and the many attempts to prevent the process!) my ex-spouse commented, "Well, we certainly were 'well provided' for throughout the marriage!"
Where were such observations and perceptions and attitudes throughout the marriage? They were non-existent, since to offer such observations would and could only lead to complacency on the part of the "provider"...that is me!
The Man Box is so deeply embedded in the psyche of the North American culture, at least among the 'protestant' segment of that culture, that many male lives have been literally destroyed by its ravages.
It has been especially ravaging among those whose early years were infested with negative criticisms from either or both parents that usually included the words, "You're no good and you'll never be any good!" as were the words from my mother's mouth. As an adolescent, I was unaware of the psychological concept of projection, in which one projects one's greatest fears onto another, as she was constantly doing to her only son, having already established in her mind the belief that her own spouse was a deep and profound disappointment, just as her father had been, and also her father-in-law, whom she never met in person, but only through reputation. He was deceased when she was only fourteen.
While at least in my situation, it was the overt actions of my mother, and the complicity of my father that created the archetype of the Man Box, I fell into the same "trap" in my own first marriage. And there was also a "religious" component to the box. It had to do with how women perceived men, as a role player, and not as a human being. Playing a role, becoming a function as a provider, is one of the most debilitating reductions one human being can inflict on another; it is one of the most heinous forms of contempt and men have to resist such "definitions" of their female partners, just as we must resist the trap of being caught in such "definitions" by our female partners. And the part played by religion was that each "be good" aphorism had a moral, ethical and 'sinful' overtone that carried with it the prospect of some nasty pay-back if the man failed in his responsibilities.
"Be good!" or ELSE!.....and sometimes that "or else" included physical punishment, or worse, verbal insults, or downright devaluation, as if it were a moral imperative that this (in my case) female 'sheriff' were enforcing.
Female superiority, and as a consequence, male inferiority, is a notion that men will have to contend with for the duration of their lives on this planet. And, playing into that stereotype, given that universities now see 60% of their students, including their graduate students are female, (where are the men?) will only grow the stereotype.
Women will come to the advocacy "aid" and support of their sisters.
Men, on the other hand, are very slow, if even interested, in coming to the advocacy of their male counterparts, another of the myths that men have 'ingested' and fallen victim to...that if we were to come to the advocacy of men, we would be acknowledging that men are in need of such advocacy. Let's finally say it... MEN DO NEED THE SUPPORT OF OTHER MEN!
And that is not a weakness, but a simply reality.
And we are all indebted to the Good Men Project for showing that leadership and advocacy and encouraging others to join in the dialogue that must include both reflection as well as conversation.