FORGET what they told you at school or in church. Every man knows that in the real world you are what you do. Your masculinity is measured by the spec of your car, your clothes or even your pecs. If you've got it, flaunt it. If you've made it, show it. If your job is uninteresting or non existent, kindly get out of the way and let the next real man come forward.
These crippling untruths seem doggedly fixed deep within the male psyche. Men invest so much of their identity in what they do that everything can fall apart, explode and implode, when they can't perform the comforting role of breadwinner. They can feel emasculated and rage against the sullied course and confusion of their lives.
Breadwinning is such an integral part of men's identity, that those who don't earn enough to support their family can feel embarrassed or depressed, while those who earn more than is good for them can become arrogant and overbearing.
Men's image seems inextricably linked to the hunter gatherer of old. It's difficult to know to what extent this fusion of male identity with an archetypal provider is intrinsic to masculinity or picked up from social expectation. Some philosophers argue that there is no distinction between being and doing: you are what you do. Yet social expectations certainly play a role.
Guest lists at dinner parties and State banquets are more likely to reflect what men do for a living than whether or not they re decent or insightful human beings.
The unemployed tend not to be invited which is odd. We're told that the days of the job for life are gone. Children prepare themselves for the world of work with transferable skills for this brave new marketplace: "As we move evermore deeply into it, it seems inevitable that people will from time to time be out of work. Yet the social stigma of being unemployed remains pretty much as it always was. It's as if the chattering classes haven't caught up with the changed reality beyond their rose tinted glasses."
The degree to which a man's diminished or abrogated breadwinning role is forced upon him or freely chosen will largely determine whether or not unemployment floors him. Men who resign from a job and endure a period of unemployment in order to begin a new career tend to cope better than those whose job is made redundant. It's the job, rather than the man which is redundant.yet many men so identify with the breadwinning imperative that losing their job seems tantamount to the annihilation of their raison d'etre.
Nor are those in jobs necessarily in a better position. Men often hold onto positions at great personal cost to themselves. They stay in soul destroying jobs or in work environments strewn with demeaning put downs and endless humiliations, to say nothing of damage to their physical health. James Foley's 1992 movie of the acclaimed David Mamet stage play, Glengariff, Glen Ross, is a vivid portrayal of the tyranny men sometimes endure. Starring Al Pacino and Jack Lemmon, four real estate salesmen are callously forced to compete against one another to "close the leads", with the sack in store for the two losers.
"Oh Gold I hate this job," sighs George, aka actor Alan Arkin, poignantly showing the anguish of a man stuck in a job that debases him and forces him to compromise himself.
MEN often heroically stay in jobs in which they are dying inwardly or outwardly, in order to keep food on the table and a roof over their family's heads. If, as younger men, they could have struck out and tried something more to their liking, by middle age that option can seem to have escaped them. They dare not risk their dependants wellbeing for the sake of a louder personal drum and so grit their teeth stoically in unsatisfying jobs.
Corporate executives can also miss out. Sometimes they limp towards retirement with little to look forward to. Their children have grown up without their noticing they could never quite make the time to play with them.
Often they've drifted from their partner and failed to develop and expand themselves as people. Like abject King Lear on the moor, or Job reeling from the realisation of his man losses, some men awaken close to death to discover they've barely lived.
According to Dr Harry Ferguson, senior lecturer in the department of Applied Social Studies at UCC, being the good provider used to be the defining role of masculinity. It's only in the last 20 years or so, with the emergence of mass unemployment, feminism and the subversion of permanent jobs, that this tired and increasingly outmoded definition of manhood has been undercut.
At the latter end of the 20th century, a pay cheque is rarely enough to sustain a faltering marriage nor need the hick of cash damage a happy union. Increasingly, wives rightly expect a reciprocal emotional availability with their husbands, regardless of the breadwinning status of either party. In an era where so many women do it now as well anyway bringing ho me the bacon, commendable and all as it is, is simply no longer enough.