Towards Affective Equality

This study has considered the care-free dynamic of Irish masculinities, but within a wider global context wherein men are expected to have fewer caring obligations than women. Chapter 4 explained how carefree and care-less masculinities result from men’s practices constructed to avoid feeling inferior in the face of the hegemonic imperatives men encounter. Chapter 5 emphasised men’s recognition, esteem, and dependence on nurturing femininities as a valuable caring social good as well as their anxiety arising from their fear that they might not be able to access it. Chapter 6 demonstrated men’s ongoing ambivalence about their involvement in caring against a background of breadwinner expectations and the pressures of paid work. Chapter 7 highlighted how the men negotiated the meanings of masculinities against the dominance of care defined as feminine nurturing. Chapter 8 exposed how the men narrated their childhood care stories in accounting for the caring practices in their lives and how these recollections are used to both reform masculinity as well as defend care-free practices. Chapter 9 defined how men defend their caring practices by drawing on four care-free gender discourses. Chapter 10 outlined the men’s perspectives about how influential caring practices were in transforming masculinities and creating more caring men. In this final chapter I offer some brief concluding thoughts and reflections on the study and on the prospects for affective equality.