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"Is there a Daddy Track? No," says Edward Zigler, a Yale psychologist. "The message is that if a man takes paternity leave, he's a very strange person who is not committed to the corporation. It's very bleak." Says Felice Schwartz, who explored the notion of a Mommy Track in a 1989 article in the Harvard Business Review: "There isn't any forgiveness yet of a man who doesn't really give his all." So today's working stiff really enjoys no more meaningful options than did his father, the pathetic guy in the gray flannel suit who was pilloried as a professional hamster and an emotional cripple. You're still either a master of the universe or a wimp. It is the cognitive dissonance between the desire for change and the absence of ways to achieve it that has reduced most men who even think about the subject to tapioca.
Robert Rackleff, 47, is one of the rare men who have stepped off the corporate treadmill. Five years ago, after the birth of their third child, Rackleff and his wife JoEllen fled New York City, where he was a well-paid corporate speechwriter and she a radio-show producer. They moved to his native Florida, where Rackleff earns a less lavish living as a free-lance writer and helps his wife raise the kids. The drop in income, he acknowledges, "was scary. It put more pressure on me, but I wanted to spend more time with my children." Rackleff feels happy with his choice, but isolated. "I know only one other guy who left the fast track to be with his kids," he says. "Men just aren't doing it. I can still call up most of them at 8 p.m. and know they will be in the office."
Men have been bombarded with recipes to ripen their personal lives, if not their professional ones. They are now Lamaze-class regulars and can be found in the delivery room for the cosmic event instead of pacing the waiting-room floor. They have been instructed to bond with children, wives, colleagues and anyone else they can find. Exactly how remains unclear. Self-help books, like Twinkies, give brief highs and do not begin to address the uneven changes in their lives over the past 20 years. "Men aren't any happier in the '90s than they were in the '50s," observes Yale psychiatrist Pruett, "but their inner lives tend to be more complex. They are interested in feeling less isolated. They are stunned to find out how rich human relationships are."
Unfortunately, the men who attempt to explore those riches with the women in their lives often discover that their efforts are not entirely welcome. The same women who complain about male reticence can grow uncomfortable when male secrets and insecurities spill out. Says Rackleff: "I think a lot of women who want a husband to be a typical hardworking breadwinner are scared when he talks about being a sensitive father. I get cynical about that."
One might be equally cynical about men opening up to other men. Atlanta psychologist Augustus Napier tells of two doctors whose lockers were next to each other in the surgical dressing room of a hospital. For years they talked about sports, money and other safe "male" subjects. Then one of them learned that the other had tried to commit suicide -- and had never so much as mentioned the attempt to him. So much for male bonding.