But when the APA (or anyone) is talking about the toxic aspects of traditional masculinity they aren't talking about being engaged with and caring about your family - they are talking about all the ways that even this is sometimes discouraged in traditional masculinity - where the father sets himself apart because he feels he has to be "the leader" and therefore in control at all times. As noted in the Promundo study:
"In line with the Man Box rule that young men be self-sufficient, study participants tend to grapple with emotions with little or no support from others. When they do seek support, it is from women in their lives — almost never from their fathers. We also see that fear of appearing vulnerable or gay still has a powerful influence over young men’s behaviors, particularly for men in the Man Box."
So, if many boys don't feel like they can truly turn to their dads with their problems - and many fathers don't know how to make it clear that they are open to and available for that, it's a real problem. This is not to say that all dads are completely shut down or doing a terrible job, because clearly that isn't true but the "traditional dad" who is the provider, who is the head of the family, besides the inherent problems with a family that has a hierarchy and not a cooperative partnership between the adults, is the fact that it's a lot of weight on the man's shoulders that he is largely expected to carry stoically and alone. I certainly watched my dad do that, and it was terrible what it did to him. And a whole lot of men are just not emotionally open - because it's trained out of them quite young that this is "gay" or "girly" and that's the real issue is the coercive aspect. We're all on a continuum of Yin and Yang traits and if a guy just happens to be kind of a stereotype of a traditional man because that's who he naturally is, then that's no problem. The problem comes with all the ways that men are herded and bullied into those norms and then punished if they step outside of them. More and more younger men are starting to move outside them on things like being really present in their children's lives and doing things that used to be considered "women's work" but the emotional truncation is still very, very much in place for most men according to these studies.
If you see actual meritocracy as prevalent in your life, then I'm very happy for you because nepotism, the old boy network, and promoting people because they look the part (rather than act the part) is still a huge problem as are structural inequalities that are baked in as residuals from the time when they were actually part of both law and custom (only about 50 years ago). But as to your question about alternatives, I just so happen to have written a couple of things about that. Here's one of them.
