J. Steven Svoboda is a member of TheMensCenter Advisory Council, an Independent attorney active in human rights law and Executive Director of Attorneys for the Rights of the Child (ARC).

Manhood: An Action Plan for Changing Men’s Lives (2^nd edition)

By Steve Biddulph.  Sydney, Australia: Finch Publishing, 1995. 261 pp. A$22.95 (price for new 3^rd edition).  www.finch.com.au.

Steve Biddulph’s 1994 first edition of Manhood: An Action Plan accomplished that rarest of all achievements for a men’s movement book, achieving bestseller status in its country of publication. The mainstream press as well as men’s rights activists praised the book, which remains Finch Publishing’s leading title. (While I am here reviewing the 2^nd edition of Manhood, Finch has just released a 3^rd edition of the book which does not contain the same material regarding the Duluth model to which I object to in this review.)

How did Biddulph manage this remarkable feat? First of all, unlike many descriptive works on gender issues, the book has a specific mission—to guide men through the “seven steps to manhood.” Biddulph’s steps are 1) ‘fixing it’ with your father’ 2) finding sacredness in your sexuality; 3) meeting your partner on equal terms; 4) engaging actively with your kids; 5) learning to have real male friends; 6) finding the heart in your work; 7) freeing your wild spirit. The bulk of the book concentrates on fleshing out each of these points and offering the reader concrete steps to achieving them.

Secondly, Biddulph is an extremely talented writer, packing his work chock-full of fresh insights and inspiring formulations. He also has a knack for forcefully yet succinctly capturing the essence of an issue that the more faint-hearted or less adept might approach more cautiously or avoid altogether. A few examples: “Choose your friends carefully. Some friends are on the side of your marriage and your happiness. However, a whole other group—both married and single—are losers with women and are glad to see you having problems too. They don’t want you to stay married.” (The emphasis in these excerpts is the author’s.) “It’s highly likely that boys have a biological need for several hours of one-to-one male contact per day. Put another way, to have a demanding job, commute to work in a city and raise sons well is an impossibility. Something has to give.” Sometimes Biddulph blends humor with his nuggets of truth. “Somewhere, in their heart-of-hearts, mothers feel so loving to their children that they never want them to leave. Men, however, have a part of them that would like the kids to be gone yesterday! In a healthy marriage, partners compromise and give the children eighteen years and then nudge them out!”

Later the author cuts right to the heart of many men’s passive withdrawal from their wives (and—I might add—their families), tabulating eleven specific ways men unconsciously depart, including extreme moodiness, complaints of fatigue and physical ailments such as backaches, an avoidance of eye contact with his wife, and having to be continually reminded about the same things which he continually seems to forget (hanging up his clothes, taking out the garbage).

A second key to Biddulph’s success is the superlative sections entitled “In a Nutshell” which end each chapter. The author deviates from the usual practice with such summaries by periodically injecting new ideas that are consistent with the chapter’s material, and it works wonderfully. Particularly noteworthy is his advice on dealing with our emotional legacy from our dads. “This fatherly ‘inheritance’ is a mixture of utter garbage and priceless treasure. Unless you get in and sort it out, you will never know which is which. Most men stay out of the ‘attic’, the part of their mind where this is all stored… As a result, a funny smell is always drifting down and tainting their lives. At the same time they feel deprived—missing out on the jewels and riches concealed in the heap.”

I did come across one major shortcoming in Manhood, one that raises a thorny issue with which I frequently struggle as a reviewer. I would hate to think that an ideological litmus test has been set up for books reviewed in men’s movement publications, whereby a rigid doctrine must be followed from which any deviation will be punished, in analogy to feminist reviews. Yet at the same time, what are we to do as free men when we read an otherwise excellent book that is marred by a lack of knowledge or understanding of female complicity in domestic violence, child abuse, or other problems?

Biddulph repeatedly discusses and explicitly approves the notorious Duluth model for analyzing domestic violence. The author goes so far as to prominently reproduce the two famous wheels (of “power and control” and “equality”) in a section called “Relating with Respect” which ends the book. So a top-notch book concludes with an egregiously misandrist model that makes no acknowledgement whatsoever that the female half of our society has any responsibility for violence against partners or children. As many readers here know, women batter men at least as often as they are battered, and mothers actually commit more abuse of children than any other group, including fathers or stepfathers. Certainly men’s violence is to be deplored, but should not women’s be similarly deplored? What is one to make of a book that along with reams of very helpful advice to men, recycles the tired old feminist assumption that men are the root of all violence? A second issue on which I somewhat take issue with Biddulph is his focus on the negative aspects of sports. While the downside of an overweening focus on competition cannot be denied, the author may be underestimating the positive role that sports can often play in a child’s life. A puzzling clash exists between such moments and the excellent information the author imparts throughout the rest of his book in his very knowledgeable, male-friendly tone.

If Biddulph gets marks off for these occasional if critical lapses, he deserves extra credit for the compelling, provocative cases he sometimes makes in which he goes farther than most masculists might go, for example when he suggests that it may be impossible for a child to reach adulthood without major problems if the child does not grow up with his or her father. I am not sure I agree with him but I appreciate his raising the issue.

It is only fair that I close with a couple more pungent excerpts from Manhood. Biddulph can be wildly funny and on point at the same time. “Our system has one outstanding way of holding men in place—it’s called a mortgage…. When you go for that vital interview at the bank… you walk out with a hundred thousand dollars. It’s a miracle! But something else happens, something they don’t tell you about. You leave a testicle behind!“ (again, the emphasis is the author’s in these quotations.) The author is also very compassionate. “Every father, however much he puts on a critical or indifferent exterior, will spend his life waiting at some deep level to know that his son loves and respects him… He will spend his life waiting.” Manhood: An Action Plan is so very good at what it does well that I would urge everyone to pick up a copy, gather the book’s numerous pearls, and pass over its occasional lapses with the same generosity of spirit that Steve Biddulph himself frequently displays.

©2002 J. Steven Svoboda