Experiences of care labour, gender and work for men who teach young children

Suzanne O’Keeffe

doi:10.1057/s41599-018-0093-9

Abstract

This paper explores five Irish male primary teachers’ daily experiences of care labour and gender in contemporary Irish schools. Taking a feminist poststructural approach, the study employs three data-collection phases using the interview as the primary method of enquiry. It employs a voice-centred relational method of data analysis, which involves four readings of data with each reading troubling the data in different ways. This paper places specific focus on three everyday phenomena: care, emotions and the body. The evolving dynamic between gender and work is discussed in terms of a socio-cultural tension that informs the experiences of men who work with young children. Overall, two major challenges are identified. First, emotions are considered as individual, internal and private responses to situations. Yet, we absorb the norms and values of our society in the form of social and cultural practices that preserve society, which bring emotions into line with the rules proposed by society. Second, teaching is considered a soft option career for men and an essentially feminised occupation rather than a masculine one. As softness is very often associated with weakness, primary teaching does not align with traditional views of masculinities that are built on rationality, individualisation and heroism. This is a further challenge for male teachers to care in schools. Overall, male teachers are required to reproduce accounts of themselves in terms of valued masculine attributes due to the historical association between women, emotionality and care.

Highlights

Men have historically dominated the main spheres of public life
This research draws on feminist poststructural enquiry to address the research question, what are male teachers’ understandings of masculinities and how do they impact on their daily lives? Working together and separately, the participants and I paved the way through the terrain of masculinities in Irish primary schools; exploring established ways of thinking about care labour, gender and work that has an effect on male teachers’ everyday realities
A key aspect of male teachers’ identity in relation to care and emotions is the performance of a public masculinity

Summary

Introduction

Men have historically dominated the main spheres of public life. Privileged hegemonic positions have been maintained by male-dominant ideals that have been presented and accepted for a long time. Jaggar’s (2008a, 2008b, p 4) depiction of the “culturally masculine”, which depict diplomatic and military histories as ‘silencing people with less social power and confidence’ can be read in relation to Kimmel’s (2013, p 6) depiction of men’s lives as “political leaders, military heroes, scientists, writers, artists” With this in mind, caring for young children in the public sphere can come at a personal cost to many males. Working against public approval is the Cartesian habit of mind that supports oppositional binaries: men and women, mind and body, and reason and emotion This so-called Cartesian vision, Butler (1999) contends, has “conventionally produced, maintained, and rationalised” the “implicit gender hierarchy” (p 17). The starting point of this paper is the belief that social practices interact with biological, cultural, historical and philosophical situations

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Discussion

Conclusion