Blue, my husband and his brother were born in Ireland. Irish men tend to be be babied by their mothers. It is typical that they still live at home in their late twenties, for example. The sisters and mother do all the housework, and the mother still makes the sons' beds and does their laundry into adulthood. Irish men marry later than any other men on earth, on average. If you didn't see the movie "The Matchmaker" it is available on video. It is quite funny and has a really good message, also. One of the themes is the lack of maturity of Irish men, and how the women pretty much hold things together.
There has also been a general destruction of self esteem over the last several hundred years, as Ireland was colonized by the English. The women have been able to work as domestics and at other low-skilled tasks, when the men have had much higher levels of unemployment. A large number of the Catholic men in Northern Ireland, for example, are permanently unemployed, and very demoralized. There is a lot of tranquilizer use. The Irish have the highest rate of mental illness in Europe, a lot of it because of emotional damage over many generations because of being dominated by England. If you scrape the surface, you will find most Irish people are still absolutely furious about the Potato Famine in the 1840's, for example. There is a lot of outright hatred.
Things are starting to change there now, as more women move into the work force and are more highly educated. But typically, Irish men are fairly inhibited about their feelings, and one of the purposes of drinking is to provide a safe place where they can express them (and act the idiot and hug all the men in the bar, as well). The Catholic Church has usually done a number on them, ideologically speaking, although this is also changing as more Irish reject the Church teachings because of general disgust over the hypocrisy and avoidance of responsibility in all the child molestation scandals.
The Irish tend to be very good with words, and sing beautifully. They are very romantic, but a little shy sexually. Really aggressive women tend to scare them away. But still waters run deep, or something!
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