The Private Man's post An Ugly Social Expectation And More On Female Projection was timely, as I was thinking about how men and women think about fulfillment and satisfaction. Men do look to the role they fulfill within their group (and with respect to other men) -- finding "satisfying" or "meaningful" work today is a pale shadow of this, while our soldiers seem to have a better experience of this primordial masculine need.* A man in his 40s may be fine without a family, but if he does not have satisfying work he will experience spiritual difficulties. In contrast, [most] women, especially as they get older, feel empty without a husband and children. Many women who were influenced by feminism to put career ahead of relationships are now regretting being single and 30-something.
By their natural inclinations, women seem to depend primarily on the family and the role they occupy with respect to the family (both immediate and extended) for happiness. Their other social roles (with neighbors, people who are not-family) are extensions of the feminine self. The single woman (who is not dedicated to some form of the religious life) must find roles that supplement her familial role and replace those of wife and mother.
For a man, on the other hand, being a husband and father is part of his social role(s), which can be more abstract, while those of the woman are focused on concrete personal relationships. (Patriotism and military service can be built upon rather thin notions of community and identity.) Men who have been shut out of political participation and communal life can focus their energies on doing what they can with respect to their family (and neighbors) but this is not the highest form of civic life. It is what men are reduced to doing in a system that is hostile to them and tradition. It seems to me that a man who otherwise focuses exclusively on his family for meaning may be under the influence of excessive sentimentality, ideology, or a bias towards the family that leads to the neglect of his duties to the community.
Women are criticized for their herd instinct -- acquiescing in group think in order to belong. Men do have a "group mentality" and when this is faulty or unhealthy they too will "go along to get along" but it is nonetheless the foundation of functioning within a community.
Saying that men and women are complementary may be accurate in some ways, but taken too far is it just a "nice" way to ignore the real differences between men and women and the roles they play (especially with respect to the exercise of authority within the family and society)? One sometimes gets the impression from certain churchmen that women can and should do everything that men can do, in addition to being a mother (which men cannot be)!
Should Genesis be used to support a traditional understanding of the roles of husband and wife? Some contemporary Catholics might reject such an exegesis out of hand as being outdated and contrary to their feminist inclinations. But if the first woman was created to be a helpmate to the first man, and not vice versa, shouldn't that mean something, especially if it is confirmed in the yearnings of women themselves?
*While it would be wrong to discount the experience of comrades in arms, this brotherhood does have its limitations. Sebastian Junger and others have said that soldiers do not care about the personal lives of others, so long as they do their job properly. I have some who were in combat units express that they do not care if someone is a homosexual, but this is presumably so long as homosexuals keep this aspect to themselves. But victory (or the brotherhood of soldiers) is not the only good to be pursued by men. While private behaviors may not matter so much on the battlefield, it would be incorrect to extend this sort of non-judgmentalism to deliberation concerning communal life at large. Victory is not for its own sake, but for the sake of the community (hence Aristotle's criticism of Sparta), and just because certain behaviors do not get in the way of victory does not mean that they therefore ok for the communal life. I am not referring just to homosexuality, but to almost anything that does not pertain to war-making. Soldiers may be too focused on war to judge things correctly with respect to the community or the common good.
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