Macho Man

In the Campbell and Kean chapter, one of the statements that caught my attention states, “One of the implications of this was a fear among males that their ‘masculinity’ was under threat.” This is in reference to the post 1945 “split character” of the pull of women back into domestic households as well as the pull to the workforce. This “fear,” which was held by many men during this time period, was heavily focused on the idea of “bread-winning” and authority. With the option for women to remain in the workforce, even when men were not at war, rattled the structure of the typical American family of this time. I find the relationship between masculinity and the success of a woman to be quite interesting. Is the femininity of a woman altered if she is married to a successful man? Maybe this double standard of what makes a man masculine compared to what makes a woman feminine, needs to be address; specifically when dealing with second-wave feminist views.