What happened to the modern man?

Week beginning 12 Dec. 04

I discovered last week that Marks and Spencer are experimenting with a new provision in their stores: a creche for men. The idea is that while our Significant Other is browsing round M&S -- or being shown around the shoes by our Significant Teenage Daughter -- we can sit with other dads, hubbies (and ministers?), reading choice literature and playing with the latest electrical gadgets and gizmos.

I am amused by this, and wonder what it all means. After all, I thought modern man was different to his predecessors: gone were the days when the female of the species did the shopping while the males sat in the car, waiting. Was it not discovered to be a law of nature that the male half of the relationship provided the financial wherewithal while the female half spent it? Then we became civilised, overthrew the old taboos and discovered that it was macho to do the shopping.

I realise that I am in the privileged position of working on constant flexi-time, but I have to admit that I love doing the shopping. I retain complete control (wife permitting, of course) over the food in our house -- except at the communions -- from purchasing to storing to cooking. It's easier for us that way. On the other hand, my wife does her share of running the weekly routine. We complement (is that the correct spelling?) each other. (Sometimes I mis-read the shopping list: after all, how was I to know that 'yorkies' was short for yorkshire puddings?).

Modern life, as every family knows, is no longer a straightforward case of dad being out from 9 till 5 and coming back to his tea on the table. In some cases it is; but the permutations and pressures of domestic life in the twenty-first century are such that old rules no longer apply. There may not be a dad around. Or a mum, for that matter. Home may be the workplace. If there is work. Or it may be on the other side of the world for half the year. We would all like the comfortable routine of the nuclear family. But the combination of mum, dad and 2.4 children is not always there. As the old bachelor said, the desirable was not always attainable, and the attainable was not always desirable.

But here is surely a new twist. Now it is possible to enter a store with one's wife(/partner/other/better half) and then spend the duration amusing one's self with other hubbies who would rather play with a scalextric model than examine every blouse, skirt, and shoe in the store. This must be post-modern man: shopping with his wife while not actually shopping; entering the store only to give the appearance of sharing the burden -- while not actually sharing it at all.

And I wonder what all this says about modern life. I suspect that there is a subtle undercurrent here that questions the ethical commitment required to make marriage work. The biblical mandate is not about entering into marriage in order to get out of it, but to put into it. It is not about individualisation but about complementarity. It is not about pandering to our own personal interests, but about thinking constantly about the interests of that significant other.

I realise that I am obliged, by virtue of my calling and responsibility, to speak on matters on which I am no expert, and in which I cannot say I excel. Being a husband and father are two such. Yet the guidelines are there for us in the Creator's handbook. Marriage, after all, is not our invention but His; it does not derive from the law of nature but from the law of God. It is an ordinance as old as the world, and as precious as life itself.

But now, it seems, we men don't even need to grow up; the stores provide the same level of amusement and recreation for us as they do for our children. We can leave mum to shop while we go and play. Something is radically wrong here.

Indeed, something is wrong in the whole area of modern ethics and morality. Guidelines are issued to our pupils and students on the assumption that they will have multiple sexual partners. Abstinence is a dirty word. Virginity is no longer prized. Our films, soaps and contemporary fiction all feed in to the same jumbled up ethics that govern modern lifestyle and behaviour. We have sown the wind, and we stand ready to reap the whirlwind.

Is it not time we began raising a generation of men who will learn to take responsibility for their actions? Men who will love their wives as Christ loved the church, who will make their full contribution to home and family life, and who will show, by precept and example, that they are committed to the lives of those who are dependent on them.

It strikes me that, if there is truth in the plan to provide points of entertainment for those who can't really be bothered helping with the shopping, then we are not really doing much to teach our sons to be good husbands and fathers. What responsibility will they take if their dads haven't learned to grow up?