Is there a Masculine Genius?

Attention! You have a message, from Sweden to the fathers of the world; there is a Masculine Genius!

Intimacy and affection, in other words, emotional bonds do not exclusively belong to women. Due to their nature, women possess an innate quality that facilitates an intimate bond with others, a deep understanding of other people and a personal capacity for socialization. John Paul II called it the Feminine Genius in his Letter of Pope John Paul II to Women.

This particular makeup of the woman on all levels, corporal, neurological, sentimental and spiritual, has its own meaning directed towards making the dimension of motherhood possible. This interior richness shows itself and is boosted according to the inmost being and development of each woman. A woman who is less affectionate or less understanding because of her temperament is not to a lesser degree woman or mother.

Do men then also possess their own innate quality that enables them to be fathers? Is there a Masculine Genius?

The dads in Sweden are a stimulus for those men who want to spend time with and take care of their children. There are many matrimonies where the man is more affectionate and caring, or has more organizational skills than the woman or simply because they see that for the well-being of the family as a whole, it is necessary for the woman to prioritize her professional work in the medium or long term, instead of the man.

María Calvo, Professor in Administrative Law at the University Carlos III in Madrid, has spent 15 years studying the role of men in the matrimony and in the family. Among other books, she is the author of “The Stolen Masculinity” (“La masculinidad robada”) (Almuzara, 2011). In her article “For the children, the father is as important as the mother” (“Para los hijos, el padre es tan importante como la madre”), she deals with some key issues that help us reflect on this topic.

Does caring and tenderness make man less masculine?

We women love this paternal dimension of men, which actually makes them more man-like, and women more woman-like. To feed a baby or change diapers can be signs of virility without being affected, and a kick-off for the beginning of a new teamwork, which today is so necessary to make a family prosper.

These tasks can be carried out in the same manly way as when the man shows off his strength in sports, his craft when mending things or his power when acting as a true gentleman, dominating his temperament and his impulses, when he treats women with the delicacy that a woman´s sensitivity needs; all this is to be genuinely masculine!