Man down: why men are unhappy and what we can do about it /
Matt Rudd.
- London: Piatkus, 2020.
- 214p. 20cm.
Library-in-a-Box
An alarming number of men end up anxious, exhausted, depressed - and very reluctant to admit they are. Even if they do everything that's expected of them in work, life and fatherhood, genuine happiness is still elusive. By midlife, their levels of stress are higher and their levels of wellbeing are lower - and work-life balance turns out to be just a cruel illusion.
The evidence is clear and ironic: the system set up by men for men doesn't work for men either. It is making none of us happy.
In Man Down, Matt Rudd takes the long view on this perplexing paradox. Drawing on stories from his own life, and the varied lives of the other men he has interviewed, he goes back to the beginning to consider what makes the modern man - how the seeds of midlife misery are sown in the school playground and cultivated through adolescence and into adulthood. By turns compassionate and provocative, Man Down asks the important question: is midlife unhappiness inevitable? Spoiler alert: it isn't.