The requirement for a two-income household can have a number of less obvious, but still significant, negative effects on our  satisfaction with our lives. 

Case in point:  we males seem to have an innate drive to be, in some sense, significant.  For a variety of reasons, opportunities to attain this position have diminished in the world at large. 

If we could be more traditional breadwinners and mainstays of the family’s material wellbeing, we could still be significant in the eyes of our wives—and this is not an insignificant consideration.   But when we financially need our wives as much as they need us, we’re no longer "my hero" for bringing home the bacon.

And deep down, most of us really do want to be heroes.  If not to the world at large, then at least to somebody.

This is also probably more than a one-way, male-fantasy sort of thing.  To give just one example, when Bonnie Tyler sang the popular song "Holdin' Out for a Hero," was she dealing mainly with male issues, or expressing the romantic longings of a woman?

Coping with today’s reduction in opportunities for men to be heroes can be difficult.

One approach is exemplified in the fantasy of the 1978 Superman movie starring Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder.   Lois, a cynically tough and hard-boiled character, becomes meltingly feminine in the presence of the mythical Man of Steel.  What's the subtext to the audience here?   Apparently, that this is how all contemporary women would be, if only contemporary men were more impressive.

For men, buying into such a proposition has a decidedly masochistic and self-blaming undertone.  For women, it embodies not only self-centered cynicism, but also a large measure of helplessness—i.e., a belief that there’s nothing they or anybody else can do to improve contemporary relations between the sexes.

We can do better.