Part 2 Author Virginia Valian discusses men's identity, role models and accepting the pitfalls of gender schemas. Men have more difficulty becoming full people than women do. It's like being a tomboy versus a sissy. It's much more acceptable for a girl to be a tomboy than for a boy to be a sissy. So a man who takes a less prestigious job to follow his partner to a new city, say, is bucking an emotionally-charged set of expectations about what it means to be a man.
Men can learn about how gender schemas work to stifle their personal life.
Their partners can help by thinking in advance about where conflicts are likely to arise and making realistic plans for how to cope with those conflicts. I'm a little skeptical about role models. For one thing, children get information about gender from lots of different quarters. What happens at home is just one part of the mix. That said, parents can encourage children to be flexible rather than stereotyped in their interests, their friends, and their aspirations.