Are Dads just being Dads?

Friday 28 October 2011 15.30 EDT

Has the ‘new man’ triumphed at last

The Guardian

By William Leith

Are you a man growing a moustache for charity next month? Do you look after the kids? The new man has triumphed, argues one father – and it’s to be celebrated

There are now 10 times more stay-at-home dads in Britain than a decade ago. Photograph: Gemma Ray

Two years ago I asked someone I knew why he was growing a silly moustache. I didn’t say silly. But it was. It didn’t look like a moustache he would grow normally. It looked like a novelty moustache. It curled down the corners of his mouth; a moustache a bad guy might grow in a western. It was, he said, for something called Movember. You grow a moustache in November, and get people to sponsor you. The money goes to a prostate cancer charity.

This year 75,000 British men have registered, and it’s a more interesting thing than you might think. Men are making themselves look silly – of course, in some cases they look fine, or even cool, but this is rare – in order to help other men who have fallen ill. But it’s not just men who are ill – it’s men who are ill in that embarrassing area that makes men so vulnerable. It’s that illness that men, who famously won’t go to the doctor, won’t go to the doctor about. And then, when they do, it might be too late, and they might need radical surgery, and then they might have to face the nightmare scenario… read the rest of “Has the ‘new man‘ triumphed at last” by clicking on that link.