I've definitely heard the saying "Men give love to get sex and women give sex to get love" and stuff along those lines. I was raised to not look 'easy' or desperate. Girls were not allowed to call boys, for example. I know plenty of women who believe they can change their men. And of course we have the typical double standard for promiscuity. Oh, and anything that is the least bit wrong with a kid is the mother's fault. Like, if they have their shirt on backwards or a dirty face, you feel like a bad mom. If the dad so much as picks the kid up and shows affection in public, let alone take the kid to the doctor, he's like some kind of benevolent God.
I don't think it's quite the same thing as you're describing in the south.
But there is definitely the idea that the man is supposed to be the spiritual head of his house (at last in Protestant circles I've been exposed to). He is most definitely supposed to provide for his family and provide leadership. It's kind of shameful for the wife to 'wear the pants.'
I get in trouble for that because my husband is even more introverted than I am so I try to pick up the slack by doing the talking when we're out and about. People sometimes try to bypass me and deal with him like I'm some kind of harpy. I also do almost all of the driving when we go places together and generally pay for everything because he hates driving and handling money and those are kind of considered masculine things here.
Yeah everything you say here, and lol at "wearing the pants." You go girl, with your bad pants on.
I'm very different than many members of my family. In my family there are a lot of tee totalers, I didn't really see alcohol at all growing up, except among severely alcoholic relatives. No one drank wine with dinner. I was shocked one time when I was sixteen to see a (one,1) beer in the fridge that was used to marinate the steaks my grandfather and his wife were grilling.
There was also this kind of attitude that "women are smarter than men, but we let them believe they're smarter" wink wink nudge nudge.
It always seemed really disgusting to me, like I didn't want a husband, I didn't want to have to play that game to let somebody think he was smarter than me if he really wasn't ... and I think that kind of attitude creates a lot of "baby men" who never quite grow up or take full responsibility for themselves, in the sense that women expect men to be bad or fuck up somehow or that they "save" them upon their wedding day or some such.
That's why I always am taken aback when men say that old-school or patriarchal ways actually let women get away with murder or "do nothing" because as far as I knew growing up, if men worked hard to support women, it was because women did every other damn thing, including pick up their husbands dirty socks, clean his toilet, make excuses for his emotionally crippled behavior, and potentially save him from a life of debauchery or just quietly tolerate his meanness.
I did see good men growing up, don't get me wrong, I saw great men, old-fashioned men with ideas about things like God and glory and love and honor...but erm yeah.
It still exists in Latino culture as well, I see a lot of parallels of the two, the Latina women are uber-Catholic and good wives and in Mexico in some small towns the women don't drink, but the men do, and mothers may favor or spoil their sons, but expect more responsibility from their daughters.