What if men had to breastfeed?

• Feast countdown = 45
• Sunday night's craving = Pretzels and M&Ms, the classic combo
• Sunday night's craving distraction = Researching campaign donors

If it's not already apparent by now, I'm fascinated by gender differences and their role in society.

Specifically, do men and women inherently, by nature, behave or think in different ways?  Or is it mostly chalked up to the way we're raised and the social norms of the time?  A classic example is men crying in public: hypothetically, they may be as apt to do this as women, but society has long taught them to suppress these feelings, so it's hard to know what would happen in a social vacuum.

I talked about this idea in depth with several guy friends one time.  Surprisingly, I was the one who defaulted to the argument that women are inherently more sensitive, nurturing, emotional, etc., but all I could really use to back it up was a woman's physical qualities.  My thinking was that women have babies, babies immediately rely on their mothers to survive, so women naturally take up the role of caretaker.  And then I threw in the whole bit about hormone levels.

Looking back, I find my position pretty flimsy.  I didn't even begin to account for the many women who choose not to have children, can't have children, or haven't yet had children -- does this mean that they are all inherently less sensitive and nurturing?  As for hormones, modern contraceptives have allowed us to control estrogen levels and its effects almost entirely, not to mention the fact that women who have had their ovaries removed do not report a sudden change in behavior.

No, I started to think more seriously about the notion that men and women may not be as inherently different as we assume -- except for that minor issue of physicality, which may be the sole reason that women have been subjugated under men throughout the majority of history.  The woman is weaker, bears the children, rears the children, so she stays in the hut.  But if there was a way to control for some of these physical differences, to split up the work of child-rearing, I was curious to think of how it would affect the world.

Then it hit me -- what if men had to breastfeed?

(Yes, this is Daniel Craig apparently wearing a bra)

Before you write this off as Shel Silverstein meets Three Men and a Baby, just follow me in this thought experiment for a moment.  Imagine a world with two main assumptions:

• Women and men share completely in the child-rearing process
• Neither sex is physically superior to the other

The exercise lends an interesting perspective on leveling the gender field, primarily by exposing our largest biases...

Let's start with the family.  A woman becomes pregnant, she carries the baby for nine months, and after delivery, she hands the baby over to Dad for the next year of feeding.  Suddenly, Mom is free of immediate responsibility and simply supports Dad as he keeps the little one alive.  Dad can't stray far from the house without a babysitter, and he grows intimately in-tune with the baby's every need.  In this new scenario, Mom and Dad are equally critical to the baby's survival and development.  On an even broader scale, bad fathers are less likely to bolt, knowing that their baby can't live without them; teen fathers now share the full burden with teen mothers; children grow up with a strong connection to both parents; and children see Mom and Dad as equals.  There's no predominantly male boss of the household.

Next, we look at the workplace.  Who's to say that Jane can't be CEO instead of John?  Both of them have to sacrifice long periods of time to have kids, so it's not a give-in that one gender will end up staying home more often.  Women study the same fields as men in school, set the same kinds of goals, and climb to success in the same way, because no one is encouraging either sex in particular to pick a "family-friendly" career path.  White collar executive suites are filled 50/50 with men and women, employees respond similarly to male or female bosses, and no company feels the need to create women's "empowerment groups".

Then comes modern society as a whole.  Women are just as likely to be breadwinners and major leaders.  There is no stigma associated with a strong, dominant female whose husband may stay at home with the kids -- in fact, there's no stigma for strong women at all.  For example, wealthy, successful females on Wall Street are targeted with the same eagerness as male bachelors.  A young girl beating a boy in the school math bowl or tennis match is seen as no big deal among peers.  Female U.S. Presidents are run of the mill.  Similarly, boys are raised no differently than girls (trucks and easy-bake ovens are interchangeable), men are comfortable showing affection and uncertainty out in the open, and they have no problem serving under a woman.  Parents don't shelter their daughters more than their sons.  On a darker note, women don't worry more about walking alone at night, and people fear female criminals just as much as males.  

Finally, we examine the ripples back through history.  Starting with the earliest civilizations, men and women have equal authority within the family and among peers.  Like people of varying races or ethnicities, they look different, but their abilities and behavior are indistinguishable.  Religions form around both male and female figureheads, marriage requires both parties to present dowries, kingdoms and property fall to the eldest child (regardless of gender), women fight alongside men in wars, and if gender discrimination exists at all, it subjugates men just as often as women.  A woman's contributions to society are no greater or no less than a man's.

Exercise over.

This is the closest I can get to picturing a gender-neutral world.  In my mind, this is what it would feel like to erase a troubled past and to treat the opposite sex exactly the same, despite any physical differences.  I readily admit that the assumptions are ludicrous, but the outcomes, in my mind, are not entirely so.

I don't want to get too philosophical or pedantic, but it's an interesting game to play.  At least it makes you wonder, are our differences just limited to body types?