What an interesting post, Spink, thank you.
I had guessed DH comes from a family in which anger is fairly commonplace. I think you would find that his rages at DS and you come not so much - or at all - from feeling threatened in his masculinity, but very much from a conflation of respect and fear. There's a lot of good writing on the Web about the difference between fear and respect, much of it written for men.
I've been quite the rager in my time and have, indeed, provoked fellow ragers - particularly men - to exceed their own boundaries in anger. Growing up in a family that tolerates rage leads you to become the same even when you know it's undesirable. There are complex and multi-layered reasons for this but it's probably not necessary to look into them all.
The first major point is that we (ragers) need to really recognise that there are other ways of expressing & sharing strong emotions, which are actually more effective than the ones we learned. If you didn't grow up like us, it may be hard to understand what cataclysmic knowledge this is.
Once grasped, we suddenly find we can manage other people's rages through our, better, responses. Successful "anger management" (of our own and others') is often thought to be about control, but it's really the opposite. An emotion fully felt and clearly expressed is a hell of a lot more powerful than a rant.
Thanks to the power that comes with true feeling & expression, we find ourselves capable of managing anger. This is a huge revelation. So is the discovery that, no longer trying to 'control' (suppress) our true feelings, we lose the urge to rage inappropriately. Suppressed anger has a way of squeezing out through the weak points, which often turn out to be situations reminiscent of times when our own elders raged at us when we were young. When, unlike those adults, we understand what's going on and dare to own our emotions, that seepage dwindles away to nothing. I haven't raged in years, despite provocation, and probably never will again. Hurrah.
When you discard the wrong belief that emotions need to be controlled, you can easily see that the adults in your own childhood were all wrong about wanting to control you. They were blindly re-playing old patterns learnt in exactly the same way (rage, fear, control in their own childhoods). Never having questioned the idea that everything must be controlled (suppressed), they went on and took their turn at being the raging oppressor, never really thinking about it. It was just what adults do to their families. When I think back to my sibs and me as small children, anxiously trying Not To Upset Daddy, I also remember the technicolor excitement of a small child's daily life - always tempered, in our case, by fear and the need for a ready excuse for being children.
Near the beginning of his book "Homecoming", John Bradshaw asks the reader to spend some time observing children aged 4 or so. He asks us to notice how little and vulnerable they are, yet also so full of clear-eyed wonder, intelligence and humour. He asks us to see how fascinated they are by apparently ordinary things, how ready to trust and make friends; to appreciate their fragility and their courage. I used to be a nanny - and a good one - but I had never observed children with such love and amazement. I probably was a good nanny because, like my parents, I viewed children as 'raw material' to be shaped. I regret never having truly appreciated them.
When you see children clearly, and recognise how incorrectly you were taught as a child, you don't feel like harming them. More to the point, you do see how the rage of hulking great parent - an adult this child trusts with their life and heart - must terrify them. And you stop doing it. You get your respect through guidance; teaching; wisdom. And for the simple fact that you are their parent. The need to control through fear now looks horrid, because you can see it for the damage it is.
I didn't realise I was going to write such an essay. I'm not at all suggesting your H needs to put himself through the gruelling process of 'inner-child work'! I felt it important to show you how the lessons I learned from it can benefit any adult who's unconsciously acting out damaging family behaviours. I hope at least some of it is some use to your husband :)