What Do Men Really Think About Women? Having Careers? Families? Balancing Both?

I'm going to get in trouble for this one

One of the things I have long wanted to do with Culturcidal is answer more questions about culture from the audience. So, the second I saw this question in my Twitter DMs, I immediately knew I was going to write about it.

What do men really think about women? Having careers? Families? Balancing both?

Of course, I can’t tell you what EVERY man thinks because let’s face it, we live in a world with an infinite number of opinions, many of which are diametrically opposed. On top of that, a lot of men are committed to saying what THEY THINK women want to hear. For example, if they’ve concluded women like men who love women with careers, then they’re all in on talking up career-women.

All that being said, I have a lot of male friends, I’ve run a page that talks about men’s issues, and I’ve interviewed a number of men about men’s issues and I’m going to tell you the truth, even if it isn’t what people always want to hear. Just remember that not every man agrees.

Let’s start with this one.

What do men think about women having careers?

As a general rule, men don’t put a lot of time into thinking about what kind of career a woman has. Is she a clerk at a dollar store? A bank manager? A nurse? A schoolteacher? Most guys just shrug because it’s all one big blur to them. They just don’t care. Granted, there are exceptions. Like, say, J.K. Rowling, Kim Kardashian, and Ronda Rousey. If she’s a maid, chef, or massage therapist, those have obvious benefits. A model? Then not only is she beautiful, but it gives him bragging rights with other men. Also, some men may have particular preferences that fit well with them personally. I love psychology and cryptocurrency, so would I be more interested in meeting a woman because she was a psychologist or worked with crypto? Absolutely. However, aside from exceptions like these, a woman’s career probably isn’t in the top 10 things a man cares about when it comes to a woman. It can even be a negative because a woman in a high-powered career may not be at home very much or may take the authoritarian attitude she needs to have at work back to the house. If the choice was between say a woman who was a 70-hour-a-week district manager and a woman who was a part-time maid with all other things being equal, most men would probably prefer the maid. Don’t get me wrong. We’re not talking about men hating the idea that women have careers, it’s more that in most cases, we’re just indifferent because it’s not something that’s particularly important to us one way or the other beyond supporting a woman in her chosen profession because we care about her. 

What do men think about women being stay-at-home moms? So, there’s often a big difference here between what most men would PREFER and what most men can reasonably achieve. Once they get married, most men would PREFER to have a stay-at-home wife who could take care of the house and the kids while they brought home the bacon. The problem with this is that it can be economically difficult to achieve, especially in the more expensive parts of the country. It can almost feel like a case where the guy needs to be wealthy, or both the husband and wife need to significantly scale down their lifestyle expectations to make it work. Of course, we also can’t forget that a lot of women WANT to work.

Put another way, if you want to be a stay-at-home mom and your husband can afford it, he’s probably going to be very comfortable with you doing exactly that. Additionally, if you worry about that sort of thing, he’s not going to think less of you for doing it. Being a good stay-at-home mom often makes a bigger positive contribution to a happy home, a good marriage, and well-adjusted children than the money she could make working does.

What do men think about women balancing home and work? This almost seems like a more pertinent question for men given that stories like this about guys who work themselves to death to “take care of their family” and ultimately get dumped because they’re not around enough are so common they’re essentially a meme at this point.

If we’re being perfectly honest, most men look at talk about “balancing home and work” as another way of saying, “You need to do a lot more work around the house.” So, it’s certainly not a subject that’s going to excite any guy, but ultimately, people just find a way to work it out. Given that women tend to be more interested in work/life “balance” than men, it doesn’t seem like it’s a huge issue except on occasions where it turns into fights over housework.

What do men think of women? Here’s where I am going to DEFINITELY get in trouble because we live in a society where bitterly criticizing men is commonplace, but it’s considered outrageous for men to aim any criticism in the other direction or for that matter, for men to have any standards at all that go beyond looks (and even that is increasingly controversial). However, if you really want to know what men think, as opposed to getting a fake “let’s just keep the peace” answer, not everything is going to be sunshine and roses.

Of course, men WANT women. We want them for sex, for relationships, and to bear our children. We enjoy their company. We want to make them happy. This is a story as old as time. It’s nothing new, but in the modern world, the particulars of how you go about all those things have changed considerably and often not for the better.

Most men believe women of past generations were more feminine, more interested in pleasing men, and put a higher priority on finding a good man, getting married, raising kids, and taking care of a house than having a career. Those are all things that men still like just as much as their great-great-grandfathers did. A lot of people respond to that by saying something like, “That sounds like it’s right out of the fifties!” Well, YES. That’s exactly the sort of woman a lot of men would prefer – but life is what it is, not what we would prefer, so we cope. All I can tell you is that if you’re a woman and you want to impress a guy you’re dating, ask yourself “what would a horny June Cleaver do in this situation” and you will rarely ever go wrong.

On a related note, many men think that a lot of fairly average women have an extremely inflated sense of their own value today. They believe that because of our “you go girl” culture, the way women are deluged on dating apps, the legions of “Oh wow, you are so beautiful!” comments women get on social media, and the willingness of top-of-the-food-chain guys to sleep with women they’d never date, a lot of women end up with inflated egos. In other words, there are an awful lot of women that most men would consider to be 5s, 6s, and 7s that seem to believe they’re 8s, 9s, and 10s. So, many guys who see themselves as 6s or 7s are getting blown off by what they think of as women of equivalent value, and some of them are resentful of it. Are those guys wrong about their own value? Certainly, in some cases. However, there’s definitely at least SOME truth to the idea of ego inflation among women, even if thirsty men are largely responsible for it.

We could also add that a lot of men, with good reason, are increasingly scared to death of marriage. That’s not because they hate the institution or don’t want to commit to a woman, it’s because they see it as a punitive legal contract that’s heavily rigged against them. They’re giving up the possibility of having sex with a wide variety of women in exchange for a supposedly “permanent” contract that their wife may often feel INCENTIVIZED to opt-out of a few years down the line. He can lose his house, half his accumulated income, and end up making exorbitant child support payments while she ends up having sex with other guys in a house he paid for on his dime. In return, he gets nothing except losing regular access to his kids. That doesn’t exactly seem like a fair trade-off, does it? For a man, marriage is essentially handing a woman a financial guillotine she may benefit from using down the road and he has to stick his neck in it and pray she doesn’t cut his head off one day. EVERY guy knows other guys who were absolutely picked down to the bones in a divorce because their wife got bored, cheated, or just wanted to see what else was out there – and men have to think hard about that huge risk before they get married.

Beyond the relationship aspect of things, most men don’t really buy the whole idea pushed by society that women are horribly disadvantaged and that the world is terribly unfair to them. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the world is actually unfair to men either, but it does mean that we’ve noticed women have an awful lot of advantages over men. In divorce court. In college. In the way, they’re treated by society. In the way that they’re allowed to switch from “I am a woman, hear me roar” to “I am a delicate flower who needs protection” depending on what benefits them the most at that moment. In what they’re expected to achieve to be valuable. If they were being honest with you, most men probably would not disagree with this statement.

Now, some of this may sound negative, but most men still love women. Married men love their wives. Single men want to date and procreate. There’s still a general feeling among a lot of men that women should be taken care of, protected, and valued. Men do want to meet women’s needs and make them happy. Do most women feel the same way about men? Let’s hope so.

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