by Liz Plank
Given how often this stereotype is reinforced, it’s no wonder providing was central to the identity of every man I spoke to, regardless of where they grew up or how they identified. It was virtually impossible to speak about what it means to be a man without it coming up. But where does the idea of the provider even come from? It is associated with being one of the oldest and core defining characteristics of masculinity. The term is used interchangeably with the term “breadwinner” and it’s associated with financial stability and premised on bringing in an amount of money that goes toward responding to the needs of the family. The belief that men are solely responsible for monetarily supporting their family came to fruition during the industrial revolution. It wasn’t until the early twentieth century that the idea of a “family wage” became an organizing principle of our economy as we know it. As Barbara Ehrenreich remarks in The Hearts of Men, this family wage was only available to the more privileged, most often white, male workers, like those who were members of unions or certain professions. Nonetheless, this is the origin of the gender wage gap. “As it turned out, the other side of the principle that a man should earn enough to support a family has been that a woman doesn’t need enough to support even herself,” Ehrenreich writes. This explains why a woman such as Oprah Winfrey, back when she worked at a local broadcaster, was told that she couldn’t get the same salary for the same job as a man because she didn’t have a family to support. The argument that men needed to fulfill their role as economic supporters justified the creation and the persistence of what we know as the wage gap today. Women were pushed out of higher-paying jobs, as male-dominated fields became better paid. The fact that female breadwinners now head, according to some accounts, 40 percent of households in the United States has rendered the concept of the family wage completely obsolete and yet it continues to underpin the way families organize. So the concept of the provider came from a different time, but although it felt outdated to me, did it feel outdated to men, too? When I decided to ask men about what the term “provider” meant to them, it was clear that although there’s no updated alternative label to replace the term with many men had already begun redefining it on their own. When I asked men on Facebook if they identified as a provider, a captivating thread ensued. “As a parent, yes. As a man, no,” Jim Dooley, a 47-year-old father who lives in Eddyville, New York, responded. “I spent most of my life in a blue-collar job, surrounded by, for lack of a better term, regular men and most of my friends would fit that description too.” When I followed up with Jim, he told me that he would rather get rid of the term “provider” altogether:
We should just avoid the word. Just use the word “parent”. “Provider” has too many negative connotations … The fact that in the past a man’s role was seen as more valuable because he was the one who provided food and shelter seems really sad. It’s not only sad that we treated women this way. By undervaluing the work of stay-at-home moms, we were short changing our children, too. On another level, the word “provider” does have a clear definition and I’m sure it has been used to make women feel inferior, both intentionally and unintentionally. And now that more women are playing the role of provider, stay-at-home dads shouldn’t be made to feel inferior either. Let’s learn from our mistakes.
For other men, it wasn’t the word “provider” that they thought needed to change; it was the determiner that precedes it. We often say “the provider” as opposed to “a provider,” implying that it’s a unique responsibility that falls on the shoulders of one single person. “Provider seems to have a negative connotation to me,” said Terrance Kayton in the same thread. “I am a trans man, I identify with being a provider for myself and a partner for my lover, and together we provide for our family. It sounds, to me, that ‘the provider’ can only be one person and that person has sole responsibility to be the provider.” Terrance’s uneasiness with the term “provider” led him to come up with a whole new label for himself as a man and parent. “I just made up ‘co-provider,’ which I feel offers the opportunity for multi-loving parents, partners and families to be seen,” he said. Michael McCall added that it also diminished the complexity of the partnership between a couple. “The use of ‘the’ in describing any role in a mutual relationship is likely dangerous and cheapens what could be a richer, more nuanced collaboration,” he wrote. “I think my wife and I have always seen the parental role of provider similarly—to provide our son with guides for finding important things in life and then space to find his path.”
Some men also expressed disdain for the term because it suggested a power dynamic between two partners and a role hierarchy that could put a strain on the relationship. “The concepts of providership and dependency are loathsome and don’t help build good foundations for partners,” Sean David Burke wrote. He said that he found himself working longer hours or taking extra jobs to ensure that he can pay for his partner’s experiences instead of focusing on spending time in the actual relationship. “The last thing I ever want is expectations or dominion over any living being, especially a person I love,” he said. “Sadly, it has often created imbalance, resentment towards me and a pattern that needs to change.” Another dad said that he didn’t need a distinct role from his wife, especially since at the end of the day, all the resources are pooled. “As a husband, I make no distinction between what I bring home and what my wife brings home.”
Other men said that they rejected the term “provider” because they felt like it was reductive of the plethora of contributions they could make as men. “There’s a really odd dynamic where ‘provider’ is often associated with providing materials like breadwinning despite providing care proving every bit as important (if not more so) than material odds and ends for the long-term well-being of children,” Trevor Counceller wrote. “My definition is much broader than either of my parents’.” David Cline, who stayed at home and raised his kids for fifteen years, said he didn’t view himself as the provider, but that didn’t stop him from knowing that he was providing. “I provided stability, love, the ability for my wife to not worry about the boys while she was at work,” he wrote. Single dad Joey Braz viewed the term “providing” as a two-way street with multiple and varying different sources:
“Provider” is a gender- and age-neutral term in my house. I’m a single dad in a three-generation household. I might collect a paycheck, but I couldn’t do that if my parents couldn’t help w/the kids, house, etc. I also couldn’t do that if the kids couldn’t help out, too. We ALL provide each other with love, support, accountability & instilling of values. Sometimes it’s the adults & sometimes it’s the kiddos who provide. It might not be how I grew up but that’s what family means to me today.
Only one man in the entire thread identified as the sole provider and said he found it extremely challenging because it was never his plan or a preferred situation. “I always wanted to be a co-provider and partner,” said Alex Bell. “The idea that others had to be dependent on me didn’t feel like an equal relationship. For most of my relationship, my wife and I were co-providers, until a series of car accidents resulted in my wife with traumatic brain injury and unable to work. For the past seven years I have been the main provider.… It no longer feels like a partnership. I long for the days that we were equally contributing.”
This fascinating thread on providing was illuminating because, although my question used neutral language about whether men identified with the term “provider” and what it meant to them, there wasn’t a single man who had a positive reaction toward it. In lieu of a scientific poll on the topic (if any researchers are reading, please feel inspired to do one!), this thread offered an interesting glimpse of the frustrations, contradictions and pressures that men encounter with the concept so often imposed on their identity as men.
Given the anxiety so many men feel about the label, how is it that the overwhelming majority of Americans, seven out of ten to be exact, still use a term that so many men find outdated or insulting? After all, I agreed with the m
en I spoke to. Providing money is important. Providing care is important. It had always been confusing to me that only one counts as providing. The problem is not the way that men identify with this role but rather our narrow view of what a provider does. How is it that paying for a frozen turkey is providing but preparing said turkey isn’t? How is the person buying the book providing but not the one teaching that child how to use it? A pencil has no value if a child doesn’t know how to write with it.
There’s a gap between the expectations of men’s lives and their actual lives, and the most effective way to alleviate that pressure of being a provider for men is to expand and empower the multitude of their roles and, particularly, the richness of their role as caretakers. The ideals we impart on men puts such a high premium on providing that it crowds out any other contributions that fathers can make to their family, which can be just as, if not more, important than financial resources. Distilling the role of men in their families down to a material focus diminishes and lowers the standard for all dads.
Earlier in this chapter, I discussed how the dearth of questions about fatherhood for men in popular culture revealed a lack of investment in their role as caretakers. But even worse is that when stories about fathers do show up, in the rare case that there are depictions of fatherhood in our media landscape, they can be very bad. The way outdated masculinity norms are embedded in the way fatherhood is represented became undeniable to me when I started working in media and would see the kinds of stories about dads that would receive media coverage. Let’s just say I knew we had an expectations problem with the way we view men when the biggest news story about fathers in 2016 was that a single dad had braided hair. I imagined headlines about moms following the same framing: “Florida Mom Successfully Feeds Own Children” or “Local Mom Gets Everyone to School on Time and Remembers to Wear Deodorant.” Although I support appreciating and celebrating dads, the subtext in many of the news stories was shock that men were average to decent caretakers.
The flip side of being surprised by dads who do the bare minimum is the rush to criticism of mothers who are trying to do the bare maximum. The only thing that rivaled the traffic of a story about an average dad was that of a story about a terrible mom. The hunger for these stories was undeniable. For every news story about an “awesome dad” who miraculously changed a diaper without accidentally murdering anyone, there was a story about a mother criminally breastfeeding her child for as long as she believed was right for her child. A trend that was coined “mom-shaming” started percolating online around 2015. It was a genre of amateur photography of the cruelest form where people would snap pictures of what they perceived as bad (curiously, only female) parenting and post it online. One picture of a woman nursing went viral after someone posted it protesting that she should “cover up,” clearly defeating the entire purpose of an already pretty questionable point.
As I watched the bare-minimum dad and the bare-maximum mom as internet trends simultaneously take off, it dawned on me: How could our standard for motherhood be so high yet our standard for fatherhood be so low?
The lowballing of fatherhood didn’t feel fueled by ill intent, but rather it felt like the result of the lack of storytelling about fatherhood created a dad-story desert that turned average fatherhood into front-page news. These stories were getting a lot of traffic because people weren’t used to seeing representations of men in the home; that’s why the rare story about them felt like a National Geographic documentary on an endangered species. The way our society fails to accurately depict fatherhood starts early and goes well beyond the news or the mainstream media. It’s even salient in the books we give our kids. Suzanne M. Flannery Quinn noticed when she looked at two hundred bestselling picture books and found fathers were far less likely to be represented as prominent parents. Numerous studies have found an underrepresentation of fathers in children’s literature. And then there’s television and films where dads are often presented as absent or bumbling idiots.
And even when fathers step out of the mold and prioritize caretaking even momentarily, they risk being humiliated or mocked for it. For instance, when New York Mets second baseman Daniel Murphy missed two baseball games because he wanted to enjoy the full three days (!) of the paternity leave offered by Major League Baseball after the birth of his son, he was ridiculed by former NFL quarterback turned sports reporter Boomer Esiason. “Quite frankly, I would’ve said ‘C-section before the season starts,’” he said on his radio show, suggesting that a woman should undergo surgery to prevent paternity leave (or something). His co-host, Craig Carton, piled on. “To me, and this is just my sensibility, assuming the birth went well, assuming your wife is fine, assuming the baby is fine—twenty-four hours, you stay there, baby is good, you have a good support system for the mom and the baby, you get your ass back to your team and you play baseball,” he said. Mike Francesa, a veteran sports reporter who has been nicknamed the Sports Pope, reiterated the same perspective a few days later on the same program. “I don’t know why you need three days off, I’m going to be honest. You see the birth and you get back,” he said. “Your wife doesn’t need your help the first couple days; you know that.”
I personally don’t know any women who would agree with that statement, but who asked us anyway, these guys seem like the real experts on pregnancy!
Men seem to have taken notice of the terrible way they are portrayed and are increasingly annoyed with it and expressing a craving of different images of themselves in television and films. Dove Men+Care conducted a study in 2015 that showed that although a wide majority of men (86 percent) believed that masculinity means something different to them than it does for their fathers, only 7 percent of men could identify with current representations of masculinity in the media. “Looking at dads in pop culture and movies, I end up being so turned off by the role of the dad and how that type of fatherhood is displayed,” stay-at-home dad Christopher Persley told me. Even in the rare case where fathers are shown as caretakers, they are represented differently than moms. As an educator and media critic with his own blog, The Brown Gothamite, Christopher pays close attention to positive representations of fatherhood, but he finds himself disappointed more often than not. “The standards are still so low, it’s almost like we are just given a pat on the back for being there.” Christopher brought up the Incredibles movie, which had just come out at the time of our interview and was being lauded for its representation of a father who stays in the home for his wife to go out and be the superhero. “I wasn’t all that impressed with what he did,” Christopher said. “Yes, he was there at home with his kids, but he didn’t enjoy it. He didn’t even want to be there. That’s not worthy of celebration for me.” Indeed, staying at home was presented as something he had to do, not something he wanted to do. And that difference matters because seeing a dad enjoying caretaking in pop culture is still far too rare.
The negative messaging about fatherhood in media, television and film isn’t just annoying; these messages shape and impact the perceptions and treatment of fathers. Christopher is all too familiar with them. Because fathers are so rarely seen actively and successfully parenting their kids, he finds himself being stared at when he’s out in public with his daughter. “I always feel like there are eyes on me as a parent,” he said. “So many people question aspects of my parenting.” As a black father, Christopher says the criticism and surveillance is particularly pernicious. He says that people will point out the way his daughter Camilla’s hair looks to him, assuming that it’s a failure on his part rather than the result of a conscious decision to let her wear her hair the way she likes. People often stare or rudely interrupt him while he’s having a private conversation with his daughter to comment on his performance as a dad. Even when it’s to say something complimentary about him, Christopher finds it invasive. “I know they think it’s a positive thing, they feel like they need to comment on my parenting because I’m a dad, but I’ve never noticed anyone saying that to a woman or a moth
er. I don’t appreciate it,” he said. “Even Camilla notices it, so it’s challenging to have people engage with me as if my parenting is on display.”
Although the situation feels grim for men trying to flip the script on traditional masculinity as it relates to fatherhood, there is hope, especially when we look to other countries that made fundamental changes to their laws and have seen men enjoy more freedom as a result of those policy changes. Although it feels inevitable, it’s not everywhere that fatherhood is primarily associated with “providing” and a prioritization of work over family. Denmark is a great example; it’s one of the countries that enjoys the most generous parental leave policies in the world. Dads receive two weeks of paid paternity leave after the birth of a child and are entitled to taking up to a full year off. In 2001, the country received a lot of attention for its introduction of its daddy leave quota, with a use-it-or-lose-it father leave that could not be transferred to the mother. It created a new default, which fundamentally challenged assumptions about the way families operate and expectations in the workplace on new fathers. Even though Danish men take far more leave than men in other industrialized countries, because Danish men don’t take as much leave as Norwegian and Finnish men (largely due to the fact that the gender wage gap is higher, which means men usually make more than their wives and prefer to remain in the workforce), the government has continued its efforts and commitment to encouraging them to take time to father. For instance, the government recently implemented a new campaign with the tagline “Orlov—tag det som en mand,” which translates to: “Paternity leave—take it like a man.”