For the Love of Men by Liz Plank

Just finished checking out this 2019 book. I share the author’s concern for men. I agree that men have had very limited models of how to be in the world. A variety of current cultural influences have left many men uncertain about their roles.
I only want to comment on two things. First, she mentions a study comparing young men’s responses, supposed to evaluate their level of support for a working wife. She reports that more men in 2014 than the men in 2010 “believe that a woman working outside the home harms preschool children”. Her interpretation of this finding is that men were reverting back into the “male provider/female caretaker model” and less supportive of their working wives. However, I wonder if further investigation is warranted. Perhaps there is another reason or explanation for this finding. The language posed in these questions leaves little room for nuance. Could it be that these fathers believe that a child benefits from having a parent at home? Be it father or mother? This is a very intriguing area of study and I hope to learn more from future studies.
Second, I just have to mention, that she also has a short section on the “gender life expectancy gap” which is something that has long been identified. But from my experience as a NICU nurse (and I believe recent data bears this out), the chance of survival for preterm babies is about equal between girls and boys, given the advances of sophisticated medical interventions. An observation I hope will give parents of boys a bit of equilibrium. In fact, I just read of a 22 week gestation infant, weighing less than a pound, that was going home from a Colorado hospital and yes, it was boy.