A few days ago, I watched Harry Potter with my daughter, and it reminded me of a comment Philip Zimbardo made in his book The Demise of Guys about the death of Harry Potter’s father, James Potter. It was pretty interesting.
I think everyone probably remembers the scene:
Voldemort is hunting down the baby Harry. At the last moment, Harry’s father James steps forward first, telling Lily to take the baby and run while he stays behind to hold Voldemort off. Unfortunately, he is no match for Voldemort and is killed. After that, Lily also dies at Voldemort’s hands while trying to protect Harry. But when Voldemort attempts to kill Harry, the protection created by Lily’s powerful maternal love sends the spell back. Voldemort himself is blasted into oblivion.
Zimbardo asks us to stop and think: what message is this scene actually conveying?
The idea it conveys is, in fact, this—maternal love is more powerful than paternal love, and a mother’s sacrifice is more noble, too.
Harry’s father James and his mother Lily actually did exactly the same thing, but only the mother’s sacrifice produced a miracle. Zimbardo marvels that although this work has circulated so widely, almost no reader has felt that there was anything wrong with this. It shows that, in our current cultural outlook, we actually don’t pay enough attention to the direct emotional contributions fathers make to family life.
When I read this comment, I slapped my thigh too: exactly! If Zimbardo hadn’t pointed it out, I would have completely forgotten that Harry’s dad was also killed protecting his wife and child.
What this actually reflects is the predicament faced by many men today:
On the one hand, under pressure from public opinion and their economic circumstances, men sometimes feel they have to return to the family and invest more emotion and time in family life—whether through housework or emotional effort—which really does benefit the family in many ways. But on the other hand, men also receive all kinds of signals telling them: “No one cares about the emotional effort you put into your family. Your only way out is to go out and earn money to support everyone; otherwise, you’re a loser.”
After having a child, women can consider three options:
1. Full-time work; 2. staying at home full-time; 3. a mixture of the two: part-time work.
If a woman chooses any one of the options above, subjectively speaking, it doesn’t seem like a problem, right?
Okay, meanwhile, if it’s a man and his wife has just had a child, how many choices does he have? He also has three choices:
1. full-time work; 2. full-time work; 3. full-time work.
—Men actually have no choice!
Under this kind of pressure, even when some men genuinely want to spend more time with their families, they are often simply unable to do so. Much of the time, they have no choice but to stay away from home.
In the book’s words:
“Men have learned to love their families by staying away from the love of their loved ones, while women love their families by staying present with love.”
The book also says:
“Women talk about whether they should ‘lean in’ or ‘step back,’ but men have never had the option of stepping back. This gives men an economically advantageous position, but cuts them off from the chance to receive and give love.”
“Women may feel guilty and blame themselves for not spending enough time with their children, while men’s feelings may be exactly the opposite.”
Sigh, being a man isn’t easy either o(╥﹏╥)o
References:
Philip Zimbardo, & Nikita Coulombe. (2016). The Demise of Guys. Beijing United Publishing Co., Ltd.
Note
- This series of articles, titled “Psychology New Knowledge Mini-Course,” consisted of short popular-psychology pieces and casual essays written at the time to accompany material related to Zhichao Wei: Psychology New Knowledge Course. They were published on the now-closed platform Fatuan; the original link no longer exists.
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