Andrew Cave

Dr. Rand
01 April 2015
UWRT 1102
Emasculating America
There was once a day in America where men were revered for their physical strength,
steadfast courage, and unwavering emotional fortitude. The best of men consisted of enough
gravel in their gut and spit in their eye to protect themselves, their family and their country. If
their country was called to war, they cast their personal wishes aside, and spilt blood through the
battlefield strife for a purpose they saw greater than themselves. On the home front, men worked
all day long in whatever conditions as long as the bills got paid and the offspring were fed.
Calloused hands from a hard day's work, yet never too calloused to love his family. Men lived a
code of ethics synonymous with chivalry, and would crush anyone who harmed women,
children, or the disabled. This perception of masculinity has seemed to fade into the night and
diminish with each rising sun, and it seems that seems that it has stopped being cool to be a man.
Why have traditional gender roles changed, and how does the change effect society today?
On July 4th, 1776, the best damn nation in the Milky Way was born, and God named it
America. Increasingly populated by europeans, they naturally brought some of their ideals, and
were on the run from the Catholic church. Block (2003) claims protestantism began to thrive,
inadvertently rooting traditional gender roles into society that we can see today. While Catholics
could pray to women saints and the Virgin Mary, Protestants felt the unmediated power of a
thundering patriarchal God. Protestant women were able to read scripture and sing psalms

alongside men, and for a brief period of time were able to preach and contest theological points
with their pastors in public. Although this did empower women much more than ever before, the
notion that men are naturally superior still seized an unyielding grip and reinforced the conjugal
family unit and patriarchal dominance within family life(Bloch, 2003). Protestant writings
stressed the importance of love and also specified that the Husband's duty to love his wife was
predicated on her duty to obey"(Bloch, 2003). eighteenth century English literature, especially
sentimental romances and didactic pieces on female education and etiquette, emphasized
ornamental refinement, concentrating on feminine graces and dwelt on the charms of female
social companionship(Bloch, 2003).
The ideology of religion is nearly impossible to change, and that is a main reason that
gender roles are rooted so deeply in our culture. When we think of the 1950's and the American
dream, we think of a cute house with a white picket fence with two parents, and two well
rounded children. It was a time when the world was generally male dominated, and women had
no say. Women stayed primarily in the home, taking care of the children and maintaining the
home. Generally soft spoken and maintaining lady like mannerisms, they would live in the
background of the "man's world". They did not often hold important jobs, or any job at all other
than raising the children, yet their needs were met from their husband's income, and they were
always second in command to the head of the household. America hummed smoothly along with
these traditional gender roles for centuries, but over the past century, the division of traditional
gender roles have become mixed and muddled.
On the morning of December 7, 1941, Japan visited Pearl Harbor and asked us to come
out and see if we could win our second world war, which of course we did, making us
undefeated and back-to-back world war champions. Men from across the country had to fight

during this time, and women had to take positions in previously considered male-only
occupations such as aircraft factories shipyards, and manufacturing plants. The Department of
Labor (1976) tells us the number of employed women grew from 14 million in 1940 to 19
million in 1945, rising from 26 to 36 percent of the work force. After America received her
second world war trophy, the newly employed women still wanted to work. The numbers
dropped slightly due to employers firing women to hire returning soldiers, but this time period
was a pivotal era for women in the workforce and the acceptance thereof. The numbers leveled
out in 1965 about one third of the workforce was composed of working women(Department of
Labor, 1976), and continued to climb to current day where they take up approximately half(U.S.
House of Representatives, 2009)
Women being in the workforce, now more than ever, changed the dynamic of the
homestead. During the 1970's, about half of families were traditional families where the man
was the breadwinner and the woman stayed at home, while only one fifth of today's households
are the same way(U.S. House of Representatives). The changes of the American family are no
more evident than in the explosion of divorce through these years. In 1960, there were 393,000
divorces, and that number tripled in 1975, and topped out at 1.2 million in 1994(U.S. Dept. of
Health, 2009). Is there a correlation between females in the workplace and rising divorce rates?
Bill Muehlenberg (1996) says that this variable cannot be shown to have a clear one to one
correlation, but it can be plausibly assumed that there is a connection between women in the
work force and divorce. A number of international studies have shown that married women in the
paid workforce are much more likely to see their marriages end in divorce than those who work
at home (Muehlenberg, 1996).

Sociologists loathe to make cause and effect relationships, partly because of numerous
variables in the equation. In regards to divorce there are a number of factors at play here: the
decline of religion; the rise of excessive individualism; the impact of feminism; the growth of the
welfare state; changes in sexual morality and easier divorce legislation (Muehlenberg, 1996).
Whatever the reasons of divorce may be, divorce is a crippling thing to society as a whole. In
North Carolina, it's almost guaranteed that the mother will have custody of the children, and
across the US, one in three children grow up in a fatherless home. Children who grow up in a
fatherless home are put at a real disadvantage.
Children who grow up in a fatherless home are four times as likely to be poor (US
Census, 2011), are more likely to express aggressive behaviors (Osbourne, 2007), and at a higher
risk of abusing and neglecting children. The risk of teen pregnancy and premature sexual
activity is also greatly heightened with an absent-father household (Teachman, 2004), as well as
a higher chance of drug use (Hoffman, 2002) and an overall higher probability that the child will
grow up and become incarcerated (Harper, 2004). All of these statistics can predicate a massive
social swing in the wrong direction for the good of society, but most importantly, it means that
over 33 percent of children are growing up without a father figure to implement meaningful
masculine values. Is this the demise of masculinity as we once knew it?
Media influences us in all sorts of ways, and there has been a dramatic shift from what
used to be portrayed versus what's considered popular now. Let's take Clint Eastwood for
example; a movie director and actor encompassing masculinity in every way since 1970, yet
showing the complexities of man-hood. Eastwood grapples with all of the most significant
ethical issues of our time: war, vengeance, the role of law, relations between the sexes, the
meaning of friendship, and indeed with what it means to lead an ethical life as a good man in late

modernity (Cornell, 2009). Although the rough and tough movies like Dirty Hairy show a
fearless man void of emotion while staring down the barrel of a locked and cocked .44 Magnum,
other movies like Million Dollar Baby show a softer side; a man dealing with remorse and
repentance (Cornell, 2009). As masculine as Eastwood's movies are, and however many fans
they've accumulated, media has been going in another way. American children today are
subjected to media that downplays and suppresses the intrinsic male traits like aggression and
competitiveness by featuring countless new shows portraying men expressing their feelings and
sensitivity, often times to other men, about love, intimacy, and fatherhood. Men in these newly
popular TV shows are seemingly asexual and don't seem to have a hair on their chest or muscle
in their wrist. In the present day, one must fight harder and look deeper to find something that
merely resembles what was once considered masculinity.
Being a straight, white, protestant male sometimes seems to be the hardest orientation in
today's day and age. We live in a country where this fallacy of needing to be politically correct
for fear of hurting someone's feelings runs to the core, and it's tearing us apart. It's come to a
place where some people expect retributions from the straight white man, and we cannot allow
that to be the case. A man on the television saying that men are great would be bashed as a
woman basher, while a woman doing the same would be revered. It's not popular today to be
pro-man. This double standard has got to stop so that we have a better shot, as a nation, to raise
generations of men that can contribute the masculinity to America which she so desperately
needs to prosper, and of course guarantee our World War hat-trick.

Works Cited:
Bloch, Ruth H. (2003). Gender and morality in Anglo-American culture 1650-1800.
Berkeley: University of California Press
Drucilla, Cornell. (2009). Clint Eastwood and issues of American masculinity
New York: Fordham University Press
Harper, Cynthia C. and Sara S. McLanahan. (2004). Father absence and youth incarceration.
Journal of Research on Adolescence 14
Hoffmann, John P. (2002). The community context of family structure and adolescent drug use.
Journal of Marriage and Family 64
Muehlenberg, Bill. (1996). Women, Work and Divorce. Retrieved from
billmuehlenberg.com/1996/07/26/women-work-and-divorce/
Nord, Christine Winquist and Jerry West. (2001). Fathers' and mothers' involvement in their
children's schools by family type and resident status.
Washington D.C: U.S. Department of Education
Osborne, C., & McLanahan, S. (2007). Partnership instability and child well-being.
Journal of Marriage and Family.
Teachman, Jay D. (2004). The childhood living arrangements of Children and the characteristics
of their marriages.
Journal of family issues 25.

U.S. Census Bureau. (2011). Children's living arrangements and characteristics

Table C8: Washington D.C.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2009). Marriages and divorces 1900-2009.
Retrieved from infoplease.com/ipa/A0005044.html
U.S. House of Representatives. (2009). The Impact of Women's Growing Participation in the
Workforce: "The Shriver Report: A Women's Nation Changes Everything".
California: San Rafael

Andrew Cave
Dr Rand
1 April 2015
UWRT 1102
Reflection
I think the most interesting thing I learned during this inquiry process what the
undeniable role that religion had in the development of traditional gender roles, and looking at
the structure of the church, it seems much clearer to me now. I had plenty of sources, and lots of
research, but a lot of my research would point me to women in the workforce leading to divorce.
As correlation is not causation, I didn't want to write some fallacy about women's rights result in
divorce. Although I did mention the correlation, I tried to put the real emphasis on the failure of
men to pass along masculinity. In the beginning, my question was about how men have become
more feminized over the generations, and it ended up taking a direction of the degradation of
traditional gender roles. I was happy when I was finally able to actually combine the two, and
point out what I feel to be the major causes of traditional gender roles changing, and steer it in a
non-chauvinistic direction. I feel as though I've always had pretty adequate analytical and
evaluation skills, but I think this project helped me to organize a bit better. It took me quite a bit
of time to try to fit all of the factors in chronological order, and have it make sense. I also
enjoyed digging down the rabbit hole of articles to actual sources, instead of citing an article on a
random web page. This made sure I was not just copying someone else's bias into my own
words, although I'm sure my personal bias is evident throughout the paper. In this paper, I think
I'm most proud of being able to convey my point with statistics and ancient topics while

incorporating a bit of humor and American pride. I have a hard time remaining serious for
extended periods of time, so hopefully my humor will help my paper be more entertaining to
read. I feel that I adequately described my question and answered it accordingly while keeping it
interesting, which is why I feel my five power packed pages are enough without writing the sixth
page to take up space. I would like to continue to watch societal changes, and really take an in
depth look at social media and its effects on masculinity, as well how I can raise my future sons
to be men instead of Justin Beiber fans.