Sorry, but this is a question posed by the New York Times. No offence, but how would the New York Times know?
Are Modern Men Manly Enough?
The loss of building skills is, I think, the most unfortunate part of the contemporary male's experience. I'm often regarded as some kind of throwback or intellectual lightweight by many of the beta males of the Episcopal Church because I like to build things with my hands [or take them apart], change my own automobile oil, clean fish, and shoot guns. Where [and when] I grew up, these were the normal activities of boys and men.
From a related article, an interesting observation:
I got messed up by my feminist mom in the 1970s, who taught me that gender was a social construct. I can’t believe that social experiment went on as long as it did, since it’s clear by month six of having a child that William does not want a doll. Ladies do go first. We are not free to be you and me. We are born different. As soon as my son was old enough to crawl, he pulled a jar of mustard from the pantry and pushed it around the floor making car noises. We bought him a closetful of stuffed animals, but he sleeps with a Matchbox car clutched to his face. He'll sleep with a doll when they make one with an internal combustion engine.
We can’t solve this man-crisis by sitting on a couch watching “Ice Road Truckers.” We’ve got to start fixing our own toilets, exercising outside at 6 a.m. and hunting the meat that we cowardly eat from far crueler factory farms.