Is the Threat of the Bad Father Bigger Than the Threat of the Bad Mother?

Wolitzer is a wonderfully complex portrait of somebody who's not a bad person necessarily but who struggles with this role. I think that my read on the way that Wolitzer breaks that down a bit in the book is that that is partly down to masculinity and the struggle he has with the expectations heaped upon him by masculinity or what masculine prowess ought to look like. He's able to retreat into the expected role of the slightly absent father you know and the fact that also he's been in this power balance within his marriage where the woman has had the fiscal power, then he suddenly reaches a point where he becomes the breadwinner right? It's a very interesting portrait of something that is a