THAT'S MEN:Men want good health, harmony and a bit of social respect rather than sex and money, writes Pádraig Ó Moráin
WHAT DO men want? Booze, sex and fast cars, in that order?
That's the stereotype. But the stereotype is contradicted by research that gathered responses from 27,000 men in eight countries.
Good health, a harmonious family life and a good relationship with a partner or wife are the three most important contributors to quality of life, the men told the researchers.
These were the top choices of more than 75 per cent of the 27,000 men.
Only 11 per cent chose "enjoying life to the fullest" as the most important quality of life issue. This suggests to me that most men understand that enjoying life to the fullest isn't always compatible with harmonious relationships or, indeed, with good health.
More surprisingly, perhaps, only 4 per cent put a satisfying work life or career in the top slot when it comes to quality of life. This is surprising only if you take the view that we all get a big kick out of our daily trudge to the corporate jungle.
I expect that work in most eras has been done more out of necessity than for fulfilment or enjoyment, and these responses bear this out.
They also bear out the utter failure of the modern era, with all its wonders, to make work connect with people's lives in a more satisfying way. Indeed, in many ways work has become more depersonalised and less satisfying over the past number of decades.
Also way down on the list of priorities was having a nice home. This was the number one choice of only 3 per cent of men. Would the result for women be different?
The traditional view of women would suggest that a higher proportion of them - than of men - would give a priority to having a nice home. But as this research shows, stereotypes are an unreliable guide to how people are in reality.
It may be that both genders see having a nice home as simply a contributor to a harmonious family life. Without the harmonious family life, the nice home counts for very little.
The most intriguing finding was that a satisfying sex life was seen by only 3 per cent of men as the most important component of quality of life.
Once again, this contradicts stereotypes.
The report on this interesting study is published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. The lead author is Michael Sand of the pharmaceutical company Boehringer-Ingelheim Pharma. A number of universities and academic organisations, including the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, were involved in the research.
The 27,000 men were selected at random in Germany, the US, the UK, Spain, Brazil, Mexico, Italy and France. The study is part of the Men's Attitudes to Life Events and Sexuality (Males) project.
What do men see as the most important aspects of their own masculinity? What makes you a real man? Money, sex, success with women? Fewer than 10 per cent of men think so, according to this research.
For men from France, Spain, Brazil, Mexico and the US as a group, "being seen as a man of honour" came out on top.
For men from the UK, Germany and Italy as a group, "being in control of your own life" came first.
What would the response from Irish men have been had the researchers included us?
It seems to me that we locate ourselves, culturally, somewhere between Manchester and Manhattan - so I would expect that "being seen as a man of honour" and "being in control of your own life" would vie for top place in our rankings.
What all this tells us is that Jack the Lad is not really representative of how men feel or of what we see as important.
We far prefer good health and harmony and a bit of social respect, as the researchers called it, to sex and money.
The oldest swinger in town is definitely not one of us - or maybe he'd gladly hang up his gold chain if he could become one of us.
It's not that we don't value sex and money - but when it comes to satisfaction with our lives and ourselves, we know that you just can't beat good relationships.
• Pádraig Ó Moráin is a counsellor. His book That's Men - the best of the That's Men column from The Irish Timesis published by Veritas