We need to talk about men needing to be partners, not 'providers and protectors'

[Echobelly]

I see a lot of messaging, especially in the 'manosphere' but some outside it too that men's role in relationships is to 'provide and protect'. In this day and age, though, that's an outdated model. Marriage has for a very long time not been the only way for women to get money to pat for anything, so we're not going to swoon over a guy just for earning money. For most couples, both need to work, plenty of women now outearn men and men can't expect to be forgiven having to give any help at home because they are out 'providing' (this was never a particularly fair deal anyway given women's unpaid labour). And we're not going off to war every 5 minutes these days, so the 'protect' part seems a bit redundant, especially when we know that intimate partners are the biggest risk to women.

But too many people still talk about things as that's all women want or need and - a man with a job who might be able to shout threateningly if you happened to have a break in at your house. And it sets men up to fail because the parameters are so different from the world this idea was based on.

I think a key source of disappointment and disillusionment for women is men just not being real partners in a relationship and as parents. And it seems they need to be told this - to know that their wives/partners are working (whether earning or not) and you don't just get to come home and say you're too tired from 'working hard' to help. Or that if you don't have kids, female partners aren't there to run your life with you or do all the management of your family and social life. Men need to be full participants in relationships, not virtual bystanders whose only job is to bring in money - and the way we talk to men and boys and bring up our kids should reflect this.

I think thats why the protector thing is hardwired to be attractive. Protection from other men.

If Dh wasn’t willing to protect me (I’m way more aggressive than he is so it’s not that I’m a wallflower) I just couldn’t find him attractive. it’s not a conscious decision, I just feel that way. Thats why I think theres a sliver of truth in the manosphere discourse but a lot of avoidance of men’s responsibility in their own vision of what ideal male female relationships look like.

As has been said women don’t need men like they used to and legislation has helped here(criminalising marital rape, DV, coercive control, equal pay etc etc) women can earn their own resource and control it too. so whats left of being a man? The hard bits. Being present for your wife and your kids, putting the hard yards in, contributing to the household not by chopping wood but by cooking and cleaning, teach your kids to read instead of teaching your kids to shoe a horse (I know someone here is teaching their kid to shoe a horse).

The reality is the men who would have been hard workers 100 years ago are still doing it. They are doing softplay, taking their kids to the dentist, taking paternity leave, doing reading practice, cooking etc etc. The men complaining are the ones who never would have thrived in a traditional environment either.

Sexist crap.

I don't think ever occurred to me because I have so seldom needed protecting. The thing is, women's mental and domestic load is a daily thing... needing to 'protect your wife and family' is something that might only really happen once or a couple of times in a lifetime. It's a bit like when men claim they do plenty at home and bring up things that happen once a week or occasionally (taking out bins, mowing lawn ) , not every single day.

My husband absolutely would try and protect us if we were threatened, and would be more physically effective than me because I'm 5ft 1 with a dodgy hip, but in 23 years together I can't think of a single situation where I would have been terrified or harmed had he not been there. Note that I have always lived in London, not somewhere quiet and peaceful, and have been out late at night a lot. I suppose I don't necessarily know there may have been times I might have been in danger had I been alone but a potential assailant was put off because DH was there. But I don't feel vulnerable without him. And I don't think I am in danger from others very frequently.

"The reality is the men who would have been hard workers 100 years ago are still doing it. They are doing softplay, taking their kids to the dentist, taking paternity leave, doing reading practice, cooking etc etc. The men complaining are the ones who never would have thrived in a traditional environment either."

This is a really interesting way to put it and I think you're onto something. The men who obsess the most over traditional gender roles are the ones who would actually be least able to cope with them. My ex-fiance really struggled with his low-stress 9-5 job but was so singularly obsessed with becoming an investment banker that he ruined both our lives for several years; the relationship ended with him screaming abuse at me and threatening me because he had spent so long under all this self-created pressure.

Ok, I’ll stick my head above the parapet.

I think there’s a lot of merit in protect and provide, and I think that men who have those instincts are the ones whose marriages are most likely to survive.

We functioned as equal partners before we had dc, both basically doing the same thing. When dc1 was born, dh quietly got on with the providing bit, without any resentment. It never occurred to him that I should pay 50% of bills out of maternity pay, and make up the shortfall in earnings. Instead he was thinking about pensions, updating wills, and looking at insurance policies. He never once complained about the stress of being the only earner.

He recognised and valued the mum and baby bond, and went out of his way to protect that space for us. He fielded over-enthusiastic relatives, cooked, cleaned, and made his mil feel welcome when I needed my mum, drove me to appointments and advocated for medical help when I was being dismissed and ignored.

When I was a hormonal mess, he was a rock of calm, quiet support. He took turns with feeds to give me longer stretches of sleep. Home and family are the centre of his life. He ducks out of lad’s nights, and stags and comes home early from work parties because he’d rather spend time with us.

I just think “protecting and providing” might need to be reclaimed from the knuckle draggers, the alt right, the fundamentalists, etc.

Your DH sounds lovely, and I have to say I agree with you. There is a middle ground between being obsessed with becoming a masculine archetype and asking your postpartum wife to transfer you half the mortgage payment pronto, and personally that's where I wish men would aim.

I'm glad you said this because I thought I must be in a parallel universe. I haven't heard the provider and protector message since about 1973.

I think some men still feel that to provide financially for their family makes them a "man". A lot of the time, for men like that, literally nothing else matters; making money is the be all and end all. My ex-husband was like this, and he felt completely emasculated by the fact that I insisted on maintaining my career after the children were born.
Unfortunately by the time partners of these men realise this is all he has to offer, they have foolishly become dependent upon him and it's incredibly difficult to find a way out.

Do women not want to protected and provided for?

I can't find who posted the original quote in this but I really agree with it.

My two grandfathers were sole providers for big families - but also knew that the work their wives did made the family survive. Both were providing. From the stories told by my parents (both born in late 20s) their fathers came home, helped out, polished shoes, were involved with their children.

Decent men are decent men in every generation. The problem with this generation is that social media is spreading some very stupid ideas - toxic masculinity, Andrew Tate (is that him?), trad wives, ballerina farm - utter unrealistic crap. .

You've laid out a massive false dichotomy OP. Why is it one or the other? Does being a partner mean a couple always have to play identical roles?

I would just point out tat while it's nice and fine for people to live a life where they both work in similar kinds of well paying jobs with similar levels of responsibility, where technology means that men's and women's work is broadly similar, where work itself is very fulfilling, and where the kids are healthy and the schools are good

• that is a very privileged position first of all, and
• it's not somehow more moral or civilised or better than other ways of life.

So I think YABVVU and also pretty narrow minded.

Sorry, didn't get through the whole OP, but it's all very well saying men don't need to be providers right up until the wife decides she doesn't really want to go back to full time work once the kids are at school. There have been many many threads on here from women that want to stay PT.

Often because a household with two ft workers can be really unsatisfying for all. If both partners are in work that lacks flexibility, or takes massive energy be it mental, physical, or in terms of time, and especially if they don't then earn enough to pay for help, many people find that family life pretty unbearable.

Once there are kids there are school pick ups, sick days, appointments, cooking cleaning and errands taking up evening and weekend time,

In my experience most households find things far less stressful, and also find they are able to spend their off hours together as a family, when there is one person either at home, or working a more flexible part time job.

And that's all the more attractive when people are working jobs that barely cover childcare costs, or which are not all that fulfilling, or if there are kids with extra needs be they struggling in some way, or are gifted, or something else.

I'm not a fragile, second class individual.

Yup, totally fair point. There is a toxic way to practice the whole idea, but also a positive one. Maybe given the general background of misogyny is why it can be harder to do it in a positive way - it can be hard to disentangle it from ideas of women as helpless or passive or needy in the current context.

I'm not saying there is anything wrong with providing or protecting, but it's also not what everyone wants, needs or is suited to and yes, you can be an equal partner while doing so, but in the worst interpretations, which you see quite a lot on the internet aimed at young men, 'provide and protect' is translated as 'you don't have to do any work around the house or on your relationship because if you have a job or better paid job and you're better at beating people up than your partner on the off chance you're called to physically defend them, then that's job done as far as family and relationships are concerned and your parter is obliged to do everything else'

Regarding this - no, I've never felt a need to be protected and I didn't think 'Oh thank goodness I'm safe now' when DH moved in with me. I want a partner who earns money just as I do, but I want my own money to make my own choices with and would hate to be reliant on someone else for it. I know providing doesn't always mean being sole earner, but the provision part for me needs to be mutual.

Certainly not.

On a personal level, I agree with you, OP, but I think there are actually a lot of women who are still looking for a man who will protect and provide.

I have been in situations where other men have had to step in, I’m 5ft 2 and was being hassled by someone who must have been 6ft 4, there is no way I would have been able to handle that entirely by myself. I think it’s more to do with unlikely but catastrophic events iyswim. I also don’t think it’s a conscious decision or thought women have. I don’t think women set out to find someone to protect them but on some level the belief that they would at least try to is there somewhere.

I think theres a reason most women prefer their partners to be taller than them. Why? If we didn’t still have some hardwiring that said it’s important? You would expect women to then not be fussed about male height. I think men make much more of a big deal of it to feel sorry for themselves than is actually the case but there is some truth to it. Maybe it’s just male beauty standards but women will fall in love with all sorts of men (as I said I don’t actually like men who would be considered traditionally attractive) why is height such a sticky standard for women?

I think perhaps we are evolving. Once women can gain and control their own resource a male is not much of a prize for just providing resource. Men perhaps haven’t caught up with this. I was reading an evolutionary psychology book on this and it placed resource and status (or potential to be able to acquire it as the most important thing) but things like stability and industriousness (I think I made this point before but trad men don’t actually go home and then do nothing, they are fully involved with the household as well) were rated extremely highly by women.

Perhaps the manosphere have basically stopped at the first step and didn’t bother thinking much further than that. They are thinking in terms of an imagined tribal societies where physical protection or hunting is required (I read somewhere even with the hunting, women gathered 80% of the calories a tribe ate which was interesting). It’s basically half arsed evolutionary psychology they picked up from the internet. A lot of womens value for men (according to evolutionary psychology) is not just providing resource but dependability, stability, trustworthiness etc. theres no point in having a man with resource if he won’t share it, directs it at other women, is lazy, unable to maintain shelter, unable to manage children or teach your children anything (tribe would have died out fast if men didn’t spend time teaching their sons how to hunt, how to create and maintain weapons, how to build shelter for example) etc. These manosphere types just don’t think like that.

I would say you do need someone who is geared to being a provider when it comes to for example having children. I’ve seen women on here saving up before having a child so they can continue paying half their bit of the bills whilst on maternity leave. These men did not see the family as a joint enterprise at all. There have always been men who don’t want to pay for the new school shoes, or hoard their own money away from their family (again seen on here multiple times) or spend their wage on themselves whilst their families struggle. Theres research on aid, when given to women it will go on the family when given to men the men spend it on themselves. So actually I would say a man with a provider instinct can rapidly become important when children are involved. Do you strictly need it as a woman in a western society with a welfare state, probably not, but is it ideal for a family to function optimally, well yes I would say so.

But you were being hassled by a man. One of the supposed ‘protectors and providers’.

Yes, of course. Women have always worked and they are absolutely well within their rights to get a job. I mean the women who chase high-flying careers, who become CEOs, you know, the 'girl boss', 'yass kween' types. I think they are some of the most overworked, fatigued and generally miserable women on the planet at the moment, but they'd never admit it as that would shatter the illusion that feminism is the best thing ever.

I don't think its just men who link 'success' to financial earnings. Plenty of women, whether they would admit it or not, would view a high salary as an attractive trait in a potential partner, along with the other conventional trappings of attractiveness (tall, kind, intelligent, funny etc). Men are still bombarded with advertising that indexes their alpha male status to expensive material goods that they can use for peacock displays to both women and their male peers.

Regrettably, I don't live like a trad wife, because thanks to the push to get women into the office, I can't afford that lifestyle. The choice was removed decades ago. More power to you for pushing yourself to aim high in the workplace, it's just not a life that everyone wants but many are forced into, like myself. The life I want is a pipe dream, so I'll continue building someone else's dream on the promise that I'll be able to retire in reasonably good health. Retirement. Lol yeah, that's a barrel of laughs on it's own.

The flipside to the emphasis on men being "protectors" is that it means men who buy into it feel they can't be vulnerable or in need of protection themselves - they have to be emotionally stoic (which is tedious for any woman who dates them).

What do I need protecting from, as a woman in the west in 2025? Not physical threats, by and large - or at least there's no physical threat I might face that a single man by my side would be any more useful to fend off. Protection in modern relationships is 99% emotional - protection from the doubts and fears in our own brains that hold us back and stop us being our best selves. Protection is having someone to calm me when I'm anxious or to say they'll have my back if I take a risk. Physical protection is mostly about nurturing me when I'm vulnerable (such as when I'm ill) - on which note, this is why I'm always flabbergasted by all the MN threads mocking their ill husbands.

All of this can be reversed of course, men need emotional protection as much as women, and women can be protectors as much as men.

To be honest the entire idea of nurturing and protecting existing at opposite ends of a false female/male binary seems bollocks to me.

My DH provides and protects. I also provide and protect. DH also does more than provide and protect (as do I). We both contribute our time and abilities.
OP is rather reductive/ simplistic.
Some men are shite but plenty aren't.