What Causes Irritable Male Syndrome?

Male Identity and Purpose

For most of human history, the male role was clear. Our main job was to "bring home the bacon." We hunted for our food and shared what we killed with family and tribe. Everyone had a role to play. Some were good at tracking animals. Others were good making bows and arrows or spears. Some men were strong and could shoot an arrow with enough strength to kill a buffalo. Others were skilled at singing songs and doing dances that invoked the spirit of the animal and made the hunt more effective.

But now many of us work at jobs that we hate, producing goods or services that have no real value to the community. We've gotten farther and farther away from the basics of bringing home food we've hunted or growing our own. The money we receive is small compensation for doing work that is meaningless. And the men with some kind of job, no matter how bad it is, are the lucky ones. More and more men are losing their jobs and can't easily find new ones.

In her book, Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man, author Susan Faludi, concludes that the male stress, shame, depression, and violence are not just a problem of individual men, but a product of social betrayal of men feel as a result of the changing economic situation we all face. One of the men Faludi talked to at length, Don Motta, could be speaking for millions of men in this country who have been laid off, been downsized, or part of a company that has gone under.

"There is no way you can feel like a man," says Motta. "You can't. It's the fact that I'm not capable of supporting my family...When you've been very successful in buying a house, a car, and could pay for your daughter to go to college, though she didn't want to, you have a sense of success and people see it. I haven't been able to support my daughter. I haven't been able to support my wife. "I'll be very frank with you," he said slowly, placing every word down as if each were an increasingly heavy weight. "I. Feel. I've. Been. Castrated."

As Faludi interviewed men all across the country, she uncovered a fact that most men and women know all too well. Men put a lot of their identity and sense of self-worth into their jobs. If we aren't working or can't support our family, we feel that we're not really men. Motta's feeling of being castrated, speaks volumes. We need to help men know that there is more to who they are than a paycheck. But we also have to develop societies that create meaningful work that can provide a decent living.