Beyond The Cult Of Fatherhood Essay

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For centuries society has ranked men over women, trapping women into perfect little homes and giving them no freedom. Men seemed to have free range and able to do whatever they pleased, but the women did not know that men were struggling as well. After feeling restrained for years, women finally took a stand and became liberated from their suffocating roles in society. Even though the battle is not completely won, women now have the right to do as they please, but men are still in the bonds of their socially expected roles. Women are able to express themselves in more ways then one while men-“real” men- would not dare to shy away from the masculinity that is expected of them. A strong woman or a weak woman is still held up and admired as a woman, but a man who is anything but strong is scoffed at and ridiculed, an injustice that is hardly voiced. By reading Henrik Ibsen’s play “A Doll’s House” and David Osborne’s essay “Beyond the Cult of Fatherhood” one can begin to understand that men are trapped by society’s expectations just as much as women. Through magazines, movies, and home life men are expected to be powerful, emotionally reserved, and the provider of …show more content…

David Osborne in his essay “The Cult of Fatherhood” brings out the pressure that women place on men by saying, “From my experience, modern women want a man who will share the responsibilities at home but still be John Wayne in the outside world. They don’t want any wimps wearing aprons. And men know it” (Osborne 252). When did the idea that Osborne talks of come about? For decades, women have complained about all the expectations that men placed on them not even aware or caring of the fact that they have placed expectations on men. In Osborne’s mind and in the minds of many other men, is the belief that in order to gain the approval of others then they need to be a Hercules, an expectation that none of them can live up

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