Seven out of ten men are happy for the woman to be the family breadwinner

By DANIEL BATES

Last updated at 7:51 PM on 21st November 2011

Back in the 1950s the man was the undisputed family breadwinner. 

But fast forward 60 years and men today are apparently happy to play second fiddle to their wives when it comes to money.

Three-quarters of men now say it is no longer important for them to be the one who earns the most, new research reveals.

A study carried out by the U.S. edition of Men’s Health magazine claims it marks the death knell for ‘1950s man’.

Husbands as depicted in the hit TV show Mad Men apparently no longer exist - 45 per cent of men are now ‘very willing’ to look after the house if their wives earn more.

While one in five are already doing so and happily play house husband to their wealthier partners.

But there is a price for some - half of men think they have to give up some of their masculinity to become what they considered to be a ‘nurturing father’.

Men’s Health found that another big change was how men see other men earning less than their wives - nowadays there is less peer pressure than before to be the breadwinner.

The magazine’s U.S. editor Peter Moore said: ‘The ’50s are over. Father didn’t even always know best back then.

‘So, if one of the things a woman knows best is how to bring in a big income, more power to her - and more money to pay for the holiday trip to Aruba.’

He added that men who are stuck in the daily grind look at their colleagues who are at home with their family and think: ‘Dude, you’re a kept man. Congratulations!’

He said: ‘Really, today’s man isn’t hung up with the gender stereotypes of prior generations.

‘There are some social stereotypes that die hard, and the image of the stern, taskmaster father is one them.

‘That’s especially the case because the boomers lived with those largely withdrawn, breadwinning dads.

‘Masculinity came to be defined as ‘emotionally unavailable.’ We’d all be better off with a more flexible definition.’

Some of the other figures in the study suggested that old fashioned ideas of being a man had not gone away entirely.

Some 89 per cent agree that protecting your family is a vital characteristic of being a man today. Only 29 per cent strongly agree that it’s OK to cry as a man.

However the study also found that 42 per cent of men said they did more housework than their fathers did and 69 per cent in a relationship take out the rubbish.

Adrienne Burgess, Head of Research at the Fatherhood Institute, said that 50s man was ‘appropriate for times’ but that things had changed for the better. She said: ‘I don’t think we should look back on it and condemn it.

‘It was for its time when women needed not to be deserted and needed men to go out and be the breadwinner for all sorts of reasons like education and contraception.

‘It’s not so much that attitudes have changed, but lives have changed. Things are not so rigid any more.

‘Fred said we need to love and work and extremes of either are bad, so we need to find a balance’.