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RESEARCH
Loneliness and isolation are creating significant problems for men and boys. This loneliness, in turn, impacts others at the relational, institutional, and societal levels. It further impacts those (regardless of gender) who partner with, are parented by, or are otherwise in relationships with men and boys. Perhaps most relevant for this newsletter is that loneliness and isolation are risk factors for sexually abusive behaviors. Conversely, treatment that involves relationship skills and the capacity to thrive in one’s community can produce the most effective outcomes.
One possible effect of loneliness and isolation can be the development of antisocial values. This can take the form of exposure to worldviews that lead young men to isolate themselves further from positive social connections and subsequently from pro-social values and norms within the community. Boys and young men who retreat from their surroundings into isolation with their thoughts and ideas with minimal connection to others are at-risk in many ways. One of the tasks of developing into adulthood is to have others in one’s life with whom we can check our thoughts, attitudes, and beliefs. It is no wonder that many who commit severe crimes did not have people in their lives who could give them feedback and guidance.
Niobe Way has been studying boys and friendships for decades, and we recommend a 2013 study that still has resonance and relevance. In it, Way highlights longitudinal research that finds boys of all races indicating that 1) emotionally intimate friendships with other boys are important to them; 2) those friendships are critical for their mental health; and 3) while many boys have these intimate friendships during early and middle adolescence, they too often lose those friendships into late adolescence, partly because they perceived the maintenance of them as “girly” or “gay” or in some way discordant with images of masculinity they were being presented with, though they continued to want those friendships and grieve their loss.
We then look to Ferrara and Vergara to add some texture to this analysis. They note the robust evidence that women’s social networks are stronger than men’s, but also a two-fold observation: that men come to rely increasingly on their female romantic partners to compensate for their social isolation, and that women take on a specific kind of emotional labor related to both caring for men they are in romantic relationships with as well as being the builders and maintainers of men’s social networks, which perpetuates gender inequality because there is both temporal and affective labor involved. Although less empirically driven than Way’s study, it offers food for thought on the current state of men and boys’ connections to others.
LIMITATIONS
An obvious limitation for this newsletter is that we are weaving together conclusions from a variety of sources and fields, none without the potential for bias and without reference to the broader literature beyond. On the other hand, so much of our work involves the synthesis of multidisciplinary studies and perspectives.
People are complicated and parsing out the interplay of risk and protective factors at all levels of the social-ecological model–individual, relational, institutional or micro-community, community, and societal–is inexact. What it can provide us is useful guideposts for how to structure our interventions.
Ferrara and Vergara note that what they are observing is not a global phenomenon, but in fact unique to the context of the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and Western Europe. In fact, they cite other examples from Way’s scholarship that boys from cultures espousing ideals of masculinity that include affection with and closeness to other boys and men (that study specifically names Puerto Rican and Dominican boys, but is inclusive of some Arab, Middle Eastern, and South Asian cultures) continue to maintain larger and more robust networks of male friendship.
Ferrara and Vergara further note that the phenomenon of “mankeeping” (a term referring to the toll on females of males relying on them for emotional support in the absence of male networks) is not a hallmark of all cross-gender, heterosexual relationships, and that there is additional scholarship needed about queer (in both sexuality and gender identity) relationships.
IMPLICATIONS FOR PROFESSIONALS
A major implication for professionals is the need to understand and work within the changing nature of social networks for men and boys. When our field discusses children and youth with problem sexual behaviors, we often talk about working to equip them to participate safely and meaningfully in social, romantic, and sexual relationships as they grow and develop. Often, we are talking about the tools young people need to get back in sync developmentally with their more-skilled or better-resourced peers. But in the case of boys’ friendships, what happens when their peers without PSBs are also struggling to maintain emotionally and experientially intimate relationships?
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FIELD
Ferrara and Vergara’s research highlights the expectation of emotional caretaking in romantic relationships. However, in a range of settings (e.g. academic, social, familial) where girls are tasked with the emotional caretaking of boys, it can create the scaffolding for these relationship expectations in adolescence and adulthood. And, as we see from Way, boys are still craving closer relationships with their male peers even as they are decreasingly presented with positive reinforcement for having them or the skills to maintain them.
Our field has recently focused on sexual wellness and healthy romantic relationships for youth with histories of problem sexual behaviors, but we are encountering a scenario where we need our partners in the social-emotional development of young people to apply that same skill-building energy to non-romantic, non-sexual relationships. Simply put, boys need skill-development opportunities for building and maintaining friendships as well as for romantic and sexual relationships.
CITATIONS
Ferrara, A. and Vergara, P. 2024. Theorizing mankeeeping: the male friendship recession and women’s associated labor as a structural component of gender inequality. Psychology of Men and Masculinities 25(4): 391-401.
Way, N. 2013. Boys’ friendships during adolescence: intimacy, desire, and loss. Journal of Research on Adolescence 23(2): 201-213.
ABSTRACTS
Ferrara and Vergara: Many men’s social support systems are romantically centered, with fewer men than women reporting regular emotional disclosure and intimacy outside of heterosexual romantic bonds. The field has not yet reckoned with the ways that shortcomings in men’s social networks may further instantiate women’s disproportionate emotional work on men’s behalf. The current article theorizes an increasing and unequal dependency on close bonds with women in response to the decline of men’s social networks through a discrete form of gendered labor we call mankeeping. Specifically, mankeeping is defined as the labor that women take on to shore up losses in men’s social networks and reduce the burden of men’s isolation on families, the heterosexual bond, and on men. Three testable postulates scaffold this theory that (a) women tend to provide increased emotional support to men who do not have it elsewhere, (b) women’s provision of this support is a form of labor, and (c) women experience a burden on their time and well-being when this labor is not equally reciprocated. Mankeeping, a new extension of Carolyn Rosenthal’s theory of kinkeeping, is framed in relation to the future of men and masculinities research to advance a fuller understanding of the impact of men’s changing social networks on society at large.
Way: Longitudinal, mixed method research on friendships, conducted over the past two decades with Black, Latino, Asian, and European American boys, reveals three themes: (1) the importance for boys of being able to share their secrets with their close friends; (2) the importance of close friendships for boys' mental health; and (3) the loss of but continued desire for close male friendships as boys transitioned from middle to late adolescence. While boys often had intimate male friendships during early and middle adolescence, they typically lost such friendships by late adolescence, even though they continued to want them. Other researchers have reported similar patterns over the past century, suggesting a need to revise our conceptions of boys' friendships as well as of boys themselves.
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