I think that need to prove dissipates as one learns to accept oneself. Even then an insecurity can trigger competitive urges.

I learned to shave from TV and movies, not my dad. My uncle taught me how to tie a necktie. A school friend taught me how to ride a bicycle. Another friend taught me how to shoot pool. And it wasn't until I went away to college that a school friend taught me how to eat in a restaurant. I'm not really sure what my dad taught me at all, come to think of it...

I have a theory on some of this fatherly neglect. Not all mind you just some.
My dad was born to an imigrant father who was from the dirbs and drabs I've gotten since I recalled a mean SOB. He made grandma blind in one eye from the beatings. It wasn't until I was 30 or so on a fathers day that I took him out for a ferry ride across SF Bay to the city and we went to a bar in North Beach for a beer. After we got served the guy went back over to his friends and started speaking Italian again. My dad leaned into me and said he just told them he made a mistake and didn't charge us enough he thought we were locals. That is how I learned my father spoke Italian.
The point being from the earliest times of immigrants comeing tyo America they wanted to leave the past behind so they made their children AMERICAN! by denying them anything the had bad memories of growing up. A lot of people also denied their children knowldge of the old language to make sure the kid was not taken as an immigrant. Immigrants weren't usually treated very well at all. They were all seen as rubes and legitimate targets for theft and other dishonest dealings that took away their money.
So I wonder sometimes if that wasn't a part of why so many of us second generation and third generation Americans feel so lost and have a very short family history to look back on. Our forbears chose to put it all behind us by denying us the knowledge of the old country so we would not be subject to the old prejudices they grew up under.

I think it applies to some of my siblings who I've come to realize have no idea that I was not taught the same things they were inside the family. None of them get how outside the family I am. And when I ask they deny me for some reason I cannot get from them either.
I only know I was literally kept like a mushroom for the purpose of preventing me from knowing things which I freely spoke of to people, which they did not want me to. I do clearly remember telling people that stopped to coo at me in the supermarket that I was not being taught anything from as early as 2 maybe earlier. I was precosious.
So my life was complicated by early abuse which was the cause of a lot of the denial of information I endured. Yet I am sure a lot of folks were intentionally denied information out of good intent.
Maybe this went to fathers simply keeping distant from their sons for fear of the vampire legend. I have no doubt my father was initiated into the abuse regimen he inflicted on my siblings by his own father. And I think these things are still common back in Europe in the small towns where they all came from.
Just a thought.

Wow that is exactly whay is happening to me. I do not have to shave a lot but I have to do it several times a week for spotty hair. It is linked to "being a man".

Another big thing for me is buying men's underwear. Just going to the store and passing by the underwear section has a huge sexual charge for me. I can't explain the feeling very well.

Basically, all related to "recognition".