The idea that younger generations are automatically more progressive is hitting a bit of a wall.
While most people assumed the “obey” era of marriage was firmly in the rearview mirror, a massive chunk of Gen Z men are actually leaning back into those traditional power dynamics. We’re seeing a genuine split where one in three young men think a wife should just follow her husband’s lead, which is a massive U-turn from where things were even 10 years ago. This isn’t just about a few loudmouths on social media; it’s a change that’s making the modern dating world feel like a total minefield.
The numbers are surprising to many.
Almost a third of Gen Z men believe a wife should obey her husband and that husbands should be the ones making the big decisions in a marriage, according to a new global study by Ipsos and the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s College London (via The Guardian).
That might not sound remarkable on its own, but when you compare it to Boomer men, where around 13 to 17% held the same views, it becomes genuinely striking. The generation that grew up alongside social media, diversity campaigns and widespread conversations about equality has ended up more conservative on this particular topic than the men who came before them. It’s not what most people would have predicted.
Women in the same generation see it very differently
Gen Z women don’t share these views in anywhere near the same numbers. Only 18% of Gen Z women agreed that a wife should always obey her husband, and among Boomer women that figure was just 6%. So while young men are trending in one direction, young women are largely not following. That creates a notable gap within the same generation, with men and women arriving at very different conclusions about what a marriage should look like, even though they’re growing up in the same world.
It’s not consistent across every question.
What makes this more interesting is that Gen Z men aren’t traditionally minded about everything. The same survey found they were the group most likely to say that a woman with a successful career is attractive, with 41% agreeing, compared to 27% of Boomers of both genders. So there’s a contradiction sitting right at the heart of this. Many of these young men admire professional ambition in women, while simultaneously believing wives should defer to their husbands. Those two ideas don’t sit together easily, but apparently they do coexist.
Nearly a quarter think women shouldn’t seem too independent.
Beyond marriage specifically, almost a quarter of Gen Z men agreed that a woman should not appear too independent or self-sufficient. Only 15% of Gen Z women felt the same way. That particular finding speaks to something broader than just views on marriage. It suggests that for a significant portion of young men, female independence itself feels like something to be cautious about or kept in check, which is a different kind of concern to the question of who makes decisions at home.
What people personally believe versus what they think society expects.
One of the more nuanced findings from the survey was the gap between personal views and perceived social expectations. In the UK specifically, only 14% of people personally felt that women should take on most of the responsibility for childcare, but 43% believed that society expected them to.
A similar pattern showed up around men and earning money. People’s own views were often more equal than the norms they imagined were expected of them. That’s a worth sitting with because it suggests social pressure and perceived norms are doing a lot of work here, even when individual beliefs are more moderate.
The internet is doing some of the heavy lifting.
The manosphere, which is a loose collection of online communities that promote very traditional or sometimes outright hostile ideas about gender, has grown significantly in reach over the past decade. Young men who spend time in those spaces are exposed repeatedly to a specific version of masculinity, one that’s built around dominance, traditional roles and scepticism towards gender equality.
Research consistently shows that repeated exposure to any set of ideas tends to normalise them, and online spaces are particularly good at creating environments where fringe views start to feel mainstream. That doesn’t mean every young man holding traditional views has been radicalised. But it does mean the internet has become a significant factor in shaping how young men think about these things.
It’s not just the extremes.
The influence doesn’t have to come from explicitly extreme corners of the internet, either. Plenty of mainstream male influencers and public figures talk about gender roles in ways that emphasise traditional masculinity without going anywhere near the more aggressive end of that spectrum.
The message that men should be providers, protectors and decision-makers gets reinforced in subtle ways across a lot of fairly ordinary content. When that’s what a teenage boy is watching and listening to, it shapes his understanding of what’s expected of him, and by extension what he expects of women.
Young men might also be feeling left behind.
There’s another layer to this worth considering. Gen Z men have grown up during a period where conversations about gender equality have been loud, visible, and often framed in ways that centre women’s advancement. That’s not a criticism of those conversations, but it’s worth acknowledging that some young men have experienced this as a shift in where they fit.
Boys are falling behind girls in education. Men’s mental health has had far less attention than women’s for a long time. Some of the appeal of traditional gender roles might be less about wanting to control women and more about wanting clarity, structure, and a sense of purpose in a period where those things feel uncertain.
The gap between generations matters.
The fact that younger men are more traditional than older ones on this topic challenges the assumption that social progress moves in a straight line. Boomers grew up in a world with far more rigid gender roles as the actual legal and social norm, and yet they’ve ended up less attached to those norms than the generation that followed them. That tells you that exposure to traditional ideas matters more than the era someone grew up in, and that progress can go backwards if the cultural environment shifts in a particular direction.
This isn’t a reason to write off a generation.
A third of Gen Z men is a significant number, but it’s still a third, not a majority. Two thirds of young men either hold more equal views or haven’t been drawn into traditional thinking about marriage. And views formed in your teens and early twenties are not fixed. The survey is a snapshot, not a verdict. What it does point to is the need for better conversations with young men about gender, ones that don’t just lecture them about equality but actually engage with the pressures, expectations, and confusions they’re navigating.
