I’m asking because part of the fun of the ongoing science project that is parenthood is watching other parents freak out over gender roles, thinking through one’s own hangups, and speculating on which characteristics of a child are conditioned vs. innate.

That’s all I meant.

I guess my explicit use of the word “stereotype” wasn’t enough to impart that I was making commentary about stereotypes rather than about bookish, meterosexual men? You bookish, metrosexuals are always so sensitive about your masculinity Of course, I am a bookish homosexual so I can only cast my metaphorical stones with so much force. My point was, however, that statements like “men need women to be women and women need men to be men…” make little sense (or are, at best, bland statements of biological necessity) unless we also accept the same kind of stereotypes that might question the masculinity of bookish metrosexuals – or the femininity of ambitious women with no patience for children. I am assuming Will was not just talking about the procreative necessities of sexual beings. But apart from that, the only thing men “need” women to be are effective partners and repsonsible spouses, likewise for the womanly “need” of men. The rest is just finding a complementary mix, between two people, of personality traits that don’t depend at all on gender.
You seem to suggest that having kids is a trump card for masculinity. It sounds like a reasonable propositiion, to me – but who cares about that, anyway? Surely not you or your wife and kids? What does it matter whether you are “really” masculine or not? It betrays a certain insecurity to be so concerned about whether you are “masculine” or “feminine”. Why bother? Isn’t everyone really a blend of masculine and feminine characteristics. If you accept that, then Will’s statement is pretty silly. But statements like it do, at lease, serve to reassure all those people concerned about being “real men” and a “real women” that all their effort in the direction of masculinity and femininity was worthwhile.

In short, the problem is the entire conceptualization of gender roles and masculinity/femininity that we let influence our lives and our conceptions of ourselves. Will’s statement depends on these pernicious archetypes for it’s validity. And these same archetypes inspire the subtle question your “childless” comment proposes: What right does a single, childless guy have to question the masculinity of a bookish, metrosexual husband? Don’t we look silly having this kind of argument? That’s my point: Arguing or pontificating about something as meaningless as “masculinity” is silly because the concept (and it’s counterpart) is itself silly. We need to get over it… and unfortunately that means getting over our love of phrases as quaint as “men need women to be women and women need men to be men…”

No, I don’t think Will went that route at all, although that wasn’t immediately clear from his initial post. With the final sentence of my comment, I was just stating the importance of being careful when using the word ‘need’ to express this idea, as it could be easily construed to mean ‘ought’.

I also don’t deny that a majority of males act a certain way at least partially due to biological factors. I just wanted to clarify what is a very common misperception about feminism.

Just because Will or anyone else likes art museums doesn’t mean he has to then forsake all claim to masculinity and its various social, moral, sexual, and aesthetic implications.

Quick show of hands here: who among the commenters has kids? Just curious.