In a working class housing estate in North Tyneside in England, something is happening which may be but a small tremor in global terms, but to me marks what could be a long-awaited shift in the continental plate of male consciousness.

According to a recent report in The Guardian, a group of young fathers got together two years ago, to form their own support group to examine the role and responsibilities of being a father. In an area where male unemployment can reach as high as 50%, the group has shared their experiences of their own often unhappy experiences of family life, with drunken/abusive/absent fathers, and have decided to change things for the better.

They have just launched an exhibition called "Dad Is?" which explores the positive side of fathering, and have been invited to schools to talk to young people about sexual responsibility. They bake cakes for their kids at their meetings. They call themselves the Canny Lads.

Now I'm well aware that men's groups have been going for quite some time, and that many pioneering men have been struggling for years to come up with the response that feminism demands. However, in the main, these have been mostly educated middle-class men, for whom machismo was not a difficult skin to shed. In other arenas too, most especially in 12-step programmes and in the counselling field, men have been "getting in touch with their emotions" for decades. But unfortunately, as my quotation marks indicate, there's something about the New Man which is easy to mock. It is reactive, not proactive; there's nothing more undermining (not to mention insincere) than changing one's behaviour to please others.

hard lads

In the sex war, the New Man is the quisling. For lasting change, the impetus has to come from the inside out; especially in such a nebulous area as sex roles and conditioning. Perhaps man's reclamation of his own humanity, his own wholeness, will come naturally only now, at the end of the Industrial Age. And not by becoming an ersatz hybrid androgyne; but by rediscovering the concept of fatherhood, the joys of nurturing, of loving, of being soft. For their own sake.

Children are great healers, if we let them into our lives; sending men off to work in factories and offices, away from the family home, did (almost) irreparable damage to both fathers and children. In other words, to us.

At the end of their tether, unemployed, and often with the mothers of their children working, these Geordie men, hard lads, have had to face the experience of redundancy in all possible manifestations, and have dug deep inside themselves to find something which can give them back their dignity. This is not a quid pro quo reaction to feminism, for this is not ideologically driven. Economics, if one has to point to a single factor, has brought them to this point, the harsh economic reality of the microchip age, which favours flexible women workers.

This is an existential crisis; if men no longer have the kudos of being breadwinners, if traditional masculine characteristics of toughness and hiding feelings bring nothing but pain and heartache, then what on earth are men good for?

With the arrival of Dolly on the scene in Scotland, and the prospect of men becoming completely unnecessary wastes of space, there has never been a more opportune time for men to come up with some answers. And this answer seems to be coming from the heart. A very good place to start.

emotional

cowards

The transformation of man's self-image from impotent drone to nurturer and caregiver is essential for our collective wellbeing. That it is showing up in an impoverished working-class area of Northern England is not surprising to me. Dignity and soul are not solely middle-class concepts. And despite protestations to the contrary, New Men secretly look to tough working-class men for a glimpse of what real men are like.

On the gay male scene, the working class, tough as old boots, bovver-boy image is cultivated and fetishised, revealing men to be the emotional cowards they are. But if those working-class men start baking cakes and changing nappies and loving it, then there is suddenly a chance for all men to change.

In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindication Of The Rights Of Women. In a heady, revolutionary world, a bright idea shot like a comet through the sky. An essential human dignity was being claimed; the right to be whole, the right to have one's mind and will honoured as well as one's feelings and body. But all bright ideas have their shadow; and great crimes were done in the name of Liberty, Equality And Fraternity. It is not entirely coincidental that her daughter was to write a book called Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus.

If children require good enough parenting, mothers declaring that parenting is not good enough for them can send unintentionally mixed messages to their offspring. To us.

Now, two hundred years later, these Canny Lads are saying that they want to be parents, they want to offer love and softness. This can only be good news for us all.