When I had my first baby, I was struck by how many people assumed my career as a director would be put on ice. More people asked, “Have you painted the nursery yet?” and “Will you be going back to work?” rather than, “What are your next career goals?” Meanwhile, no one seemed to ask my male partner the same questions.
Nearly one in five stay-at-home parents is a father. Inside the growing number of men choosing to support their spouses and their families by taking on more of the parenting responsibilities.
In many cultures, male identity has traditionally been defined by the role of provider and an almost exclusive connection to work.
This view has offered status, structure, and meaning, but has limited many men’s mental and relational development.
So, what happens when that role disappears due to retirement or other life changes in adulthood?
For too many men, it means facing a loss of purpose, progressive isolation, and emotional disconnection — all of which impact not only their mental health but also their physical and social well-being.
At the Institute nuevamasculinidad.org, we have identified a recurring pattern: older men with vast social networks but weak or nonexistent emotional bonds.
It’s hard to talk about intelligence without talking about the collective. And with good reason, for Professor Émile Servan-Schreiber, the two are linked: ‘Today there is no intelligence that is not organised on the basis of a collective,’ says the expert. Whether it’s your brain, which is a collective of 80 billion neurons working together to produce something intelligent, or GPT chat, which brings together all the knowledge produced by individuals so that it can be used by and for everyone. For all that, and because the nature of the collective is to lapse fairly quickly into conformism, mainly for the sake of acceptance by peers, it is necessary for the collective to be as diverse as possible. In terms of age, professions… and of course gender. But what are the benefits of collective intelligence coupled with gender diversity?
When we talk about breaking barriers in male-dominated industries, the narrative often centers on women’s grit, resilience, and defiance. But there’s another layer to this story—one that’s quieter, subtler, and surprisingly transformative. It’s about the men who, intentionally or not, become unexpected allies in spaces where women are still unicorns. These allies don’t always wear capes or make grand gestures. Instead, they champion women’s success through curiosity, humility, and small, intentional acts of solidarity
We seek to highlight the stories of men who have embraced true partnerships with their wives, navigating the complexities of balancing career ambitions, childcare responsibilities, and household management. Their stories reveal how parental roles are evolving, from fathers taking parental leave to couples making joint decisions about career moves.
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