Content at work, happy at home, staisfied in bed - can life really be so good for the Irish male asks Shane Hegarty
YOU CAN IMAGINE the reaction at the country's breakfast tables yesterday morning. The woman of the house opens the paper, reads The Irish Times/Behaviour Attitudes survey on men and sees the figure proclaiming that a great majority of us are satisfied with our love lives. The exasperated sighs might have been enough to blow over the tea pot.
Or maybe not. Maybe Irish women found reassurance. After all, Irish men proclaimed their wives and girlfriends to be really important to them - not quite as important as financial independence, leisure time and "being able to look after yourself" (cue another gust of sighs from partners), but that's because not every man has a partner. And our appreciation of women comes despite their treatment of us in a similar survey last year, when husbands and boyfriends featured down the list, trounced by the value placed on personal care.
We could have taken that badly. We could have sulked. After all, our hearts bruise easily now. The survey proves it. Most of us, young or old, think it's acceptable to cry in public. And most of us don't find it difficult to show our feelings, even if the 7 per cent who answered that they "don't know" illustrated how we sometimes can't even show our feelings about showing our feelings.
But here's the thing that came across most forcefully in this survey: we are a happy bunch. It's an age of shifting masculinity, when men are supposed to have struggled to find their feet in a shifting landscape.
We tell the survey that it is no longer a man's world, that the future is brighter for young girls than boys, that the political system supports women more than men. Yet we're sanguine about it. We are content in our jobs; satisfied in our home lives; optimistic about our futures.
Sometimes, of course, we seem a little confused, such as when we claim that financial independence is our top priority, yet a worrying number of us haven't bothered to sort out a pension.
And we're a bit cheeky, sometimes reckless, and occasionally delusional.
So what if our bellies enter a room two minutes before the rest of us, because most of us are happy with our health. Sure don't we get our exercise on the walk to the bookies, followed by giving our arms a workout in the pub?
We also flirt with disaster. We want to protect our families, but almost half of us admit to living for today rather than planning for tomorrow.
Or sometimes, we just flirt (more than one in 10 of us has cheated on our current partner). Then again, a quarter of us "find the thrill of danger rather appealing". And there can be nothing more dangerous than having an affair without having paid the gas bill first.
There are some predictable results. The younger the man the more "liberal" his social attitudes are likely to be, and the less likely he will value religion. While men want to protect their families, and they value equality of the sexes, the bulk of the childcare and the housework is still left to the women. And younger men are more likely to use skin moisturiser than men born in a time before any man was ever "worth it".
Occasionally, we're just baffling. Four per cent of men "don't know" if they have ever had a same-sex experience. And there must be one man, somewhere on the island, who comprises the 1 per cent of 55-64-year-olds who "don't know" if they go to restaurants.
But amid the confusion, the thrill-seeking and the contradictions, there is the unassailable fact that, however the question is put to us, most men say they are happy. They like themselves just the way they are. They are content with their way of life. Only 4 per cent express dissatisfaction of any degree with their lives "as a whole these days".
Four per cent. We're supposed to be wandering blindly in a post-feminist landscape, kicking our emotional satnavs in the hope of getting some guidance, not skipping giddily through life.
ACTUALLY, THIS ISnot a revelation. In survey after survey, the Irish have shown themselves to be pleased with their lot. The poll of women carried out last year, in which 90 per cent of women expressed satisfaction with their lives, and the over-50s poll carried out the year before, reinforce the findings. Taken as a whole, then, this research is giving us a glimpse into the Irish mentality that is not always evident in our collective public persona.
A lot of men told the poll that society is changing too fast, and if we are struggling to keep pace with a society that has accelerated perhaps we express this through fears over our crumbling society. But when asked to privately reflect on our personal circumstances we admit the truth, which is that life in a liberal, open, wealthy society, shorn of the straitjacket of traditional masculinity, has been good. It's not perfect, it's not without its challenges, it's not good for everybody - but it has a lot going for it.
Interestingly, when one goes looking for other opinions on this, the academic field turns out to be relatively barren. At least, it is in comparison with female studies, for which there are entire university departments. But there are increasing numbers of academics focusing on issues of masculinity, including Dr Anne Cleary of UCD's school of sociology, who says that the survey is an honest appraisal of how Irish men have both faced and coped with a changing society, even as they've held on to certain themes.
"They are traditional in terms of their health, their jobs, marriage and their family life. For instance, you look at how many expect to stay in the same job for 10 years or more and it shows that they are not half as transient as people think," she observes. "It is great to see men being able to openly acknowledge a love for their children, something which is a real change, but when it comes to looking after the children and working in the home it's still not quite there. But that's simply because many of them don't have the experience. There is a clear leap between their aspirations and the actual nuts and bolts of doing that."
Dr Cleary says that Irish men's happiness can be put down to some simple factors. While there is sometimes a belief that traditional masculinity offered men certainty and confidence over their roles in life, it was also suffocating. "Traditional masculinity was difficult for men. A lot of guys in Ireland now know how to live life, tap into emotions and deal with particular issues. But older men know that traditional masculinity didn't allow them to express it."
But shouldn't it be troubling that so many men have cheated on their partners? "Oh, I don't think that's high by international standards," Dr Cleary says breezily. That's true. One UK survey found that 22 per cent of husbands in their first marriage have had an affair. In the US, the overall rate has been estimated at 25 per cent. And yet, Irish men's fidelity contrasts unfavourably with the Irish women polled last year, when 6 per cent admitted to having cheated on their partner. Although, if twice as many men have cheated, it poses some interesting and unanswered questions about how those numbers match up.
THE SURVEY THROWSup other quirks. The youngest age group, for instance, is actually less concerned about climate change than are people in their mid-20s to mid-40s, although this may have something to do with the fact that young men are not famous for their long-term vision. But why is it, then, that while their attitudes are liberal in so many respects, they queer the graph on certain issues. Men aged 18-24 are more likely than those aged 24-44 to say that the man should be the main breadwinner in a household. They are a little more reticent than the 25-34 age group when it comes to allowing same-sex couples to adopt, and even less positive about same-sex marriage.
It may be because their political and social opinions have not yet been fully formed (although they are more likely to answer "don't know" to such questions). It may be down to the lack of life experience. But we don't know. This is the frustrating aspect of such polls. You get certain answers, from which you can plot certain trends, but sometimes the answers only lead to a maze of further questions.
Why would 37 per cent of men be disappointed if their son or daughter told them they were gay? At first, one assumes that it's out of traditional prejudice, but then one wonders if it is more complex than that. Is it disappointment that they're less likely to have grandchildren, for instance, or concern that their children may have more obstacles in life because of their sexuality? There is only so much that can be gleaned from a pie chart.
That feminism is the least of men's concerns also cries out for context. For starters, it's probably a question out of time, largely meaningless to many young men, a phrase from another era, even for those in their 30s.
Thursday's Irish Times chose Germaine Greer to illustrate the statistic. Many young Irish men must have wondered why a Celebrity Big Brother contestant had sneaked onto the page.
But greater subtlety can be found in the greater priority given to "equality of the sexes", which reveals an underlying belief that the redress in the balance of gender power has not yet resulted in full equality for men.
A vast majority believe that single fathers should have the same rights in relation to their children as single mothers do, and there is a negative view of how the family courts treat men, even among those who have no experience of it. "It's the one thing they're angry about," says Dr Cleary. "Perhaps it's because the men behind the father's rights campaigns have been so good at getting their message out."
And, while most men - across all ages - believe that paid paternity leave and flexible working conditions for fathers should be introduced, the issue is not on the political agenda, and probably isn't even close to getting on the longlist.
Which is frustrating, because it suggests that men care about such issues when asked but not enough to act on them at any other time. And it reveals how, for all their traditional strength in society, when it comes to addressing some of the issues that they are unhappy about, men might speak with one voice but they do so in a whisper.