Prelims

Half Title Page

Debating Childhood Masculinities

Endorsements

Praise for Debating Childhood Masculinities

How are boys taught to be boys and girls taught to be girls? This simple question is deeply political, power-laden and possibly even unsettling […] Through a critical feminist, queer and anti-colonial approach to gender and childhood, this important book provides us with the tools and frameworks to start thinking about this question.

—Shannon Philip , Lecturer in Sociology, University of East Anglia

Series Title Page

Emerald Advances in Masculinities

Series Editors: Steven Roberts, Tess Bartlett, and Rosemary Ricciardelli

Emerald Advances in Masculinities brings together diverse discussions of masculinities to develop alternative voices and perspectives that push the boundaries in discussions of masculinities.

The books in the series explore some of the major current concepts that traverse a range of methodologies, theoretical perspectives and conceptualisations related to the critical studies of men and masculinities.

Editorial Advisory Board

• Professor Michael Atkinson

• University of Toronto, Canada

• Assoc/Professor Dag Balkmar

• Orebro University, Sweden

• Assoc/Prof Tristan Bridges

• University of California, USA

• Professor Chandrima Chakraborty

• McMaster University, Canada

• Professor Wing Hong Chui

• City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

• Professor Ben Crewe

• University of Cambridge, UK

• Dr Ranjana Das

• University of Surrey, UK

• Dr Karla Elliott

• Monash University, Australia

• Dr Santokh Gill

• University of Huddersfield, UK

• Professor Nicola Ingram

• Manchester Metropolitan University, UK

• Professor Mark McCormack

• University of Roehampton, UK

• Dr Jennifer Rainbow

• Sheffield Hallam University, UK

• Dr Baker A. Rogers

• Georgia Southern University, Georgia

• Professor Tamara Shefer

• University of the Western Cape, South Africa

• Dr Andrea Waling

• La Trobe University, Australia

Title Page

Debating Childhood Masculinities: Rethinking the Interplay of Age, Gender and Social Change

Edited by

Utsa Mukherjee

Brunel University London, UK

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Emerald Publishing, Floor 5, Northspring, 21-23 Wellington Street, Leeds LS1 4DL

First edition 2024

Editorial matter and selection © 2024 Utsa Mukherjee.

Individual chapters © 2024 The authors.

Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited.

Reprints and permissions service

Contact: www.copyright.com

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters' suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-80455-391-6 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-80455-390-9 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-80455-392-3 (Epub)

List of Contributors

Foreword

When I was growing up in settler colonial Australia in the 1950s, the prevailing view about boys and girls was summarised in a little rhyme, almost a proverb, that everyone knew:

What are little boys made of?

Frogs and snails, and puppy-dogs' tails!

What are little girls made of?

Sugar and spice, and everything nice!

No wonder it was boys who grew up to scheme, fight and rule the world, while the girls practiced their niceness!

Of course gender difference appeared more complicated if you gave the matter serious thought. For instance, my father was a gentle and courteous man who never hit his children and despised flag-waving politicians. Nevertheless, when the war against fascism came, he joined the Royal Australian Navy and went off to hunt Japanese and German submarines and try to kill their crews. (As far as I know, his ship never found any.) My aunt, who was definitely more spice than sugar, joined the army and went off to the same war. However, she went as a nurse, not as a combatant, and ended up caring for sick prisoners in an internment camp. The prevailing view remained that combat was natural for boys and men, while caring work was natural for girls and women.

By the time I had grown up and began to do research with boys and girls, such ideas were changing. The women's liberation movement arrived, ideas of gender equality were in the air and there was strong criticism of the idea of fixed, natural characteristics separating girls from boys. Increasingly, the prevailing view – at least among those who were not busy defending the patriarchy – was that masculinity and femininity were learnt. There was a ‘male role’ and a ‘female role’ in society. The norms for these roles were taught by agents of socialisation such as parents, role models, mass media, churches and peer groups. Under this pressure, children gradually internalised the roles and so acquired the characteristics (aggressiveness, dominance, passivity, niceness, etc.) that society thought appropriate for men and women.

The idea of sex roles mattered for education, providing a kind of map of how young people learnt gender. For those critical of gender inequality, it also provided a strategy of change. Change the role norms, and the process of socialisation would move the world in another direction. Many educational programmes attempted to do just that – with limited success.

Sex-role theory is still around but is not now the cutting edge. It was never very good at understanding power, or dealing with diversity or explaining change. Other things have happened in social research that have pushed our understanding of masculinities and femininities in new directions. Post-structuralism offered subtle ideas of discourse and subject position. Queer theory invited us to question taken-for-granted ideas about embodiment, especially sexuality. More attention has been given to the multiple forms of gender, including the diverse forms of masculinity from which ideas of hegemonic, marginalised and hybrid masculinities arose. A strong revival of post-colonial thought (perhaps better, anti-colonial thought) has challenged the way ideas from the global North – and mainly about the global North – have provided the framework for social science across the world. We now look to the majority world for intellectual resources, as well as to Harvard, Oxbridge and the Sorbonne.

These changes have posed serious challenges to studies of childhood and studies of gender, but they have also opened new pathways. This book responds to the challenges and shows how to use new perspectives. Its chapters present research and practical experience from seven different countries, and they use a variety of theoretical frameworks. The research participants range from relatively privileged youth in stable family and school situations, to refugees and other migrants, and youth expelled from schooling. Some of the studies include girls as well as boys, giving a valuable point of reference, though the main concern throughout is with boys and masculinities.

In this book, the reader will find fresh evidence about familiar concerns, such as the learning of gender hierarchies, the significance of sports, boys' concealment of fear or anxiety and the gendered relationships between boys and their fathers and mothers. You will also find evidence about violence – fighting among boys, sexual abuse of children by adults, pressure to ‘play hurt’ in sports – and about the impact of disciplinary practices in schools and families. You will see the material side of childhood interacting with social relations: the equipment of informal sport, the forms of dress, the household rooms allocated to boys and girls, their differing possibilities of privacy and the spaces in which children are, and are not, allowed to move.

The book is notable for its attention to the emotional dimension of gender. A particular strength is the authors' recognition of what psychoanalysis calls ‘ambivalence’, or what we might call the contradictory character of emotional life. We have examples of boys who acknowledge social conventions about masculinity but also reject them or find them uncomfortable. We have discussions of ‘effeminacy’ among boys and negative, abusive or sometimes supportive responses from adults. We see social controls, and also resistance to controls, or evasions and silences.

All this comes into view because the studies on which this book is based have a close focus. Most of the authors worked with small groups, using interviews, focus groups and field observations. These methods, well used, provide vivid pictures of children's social worlds, in their intricacy, uncertainty and flux. Children are active makers of their social worlds, including gender identities and gender relations. However, they do not make them out of thin air. They work with materials mostly from the societies around them, which are still (though in varying ways) gender-divided and patriarchal. And young people are indeed young: their capabilities and their funds of experience are limited, though both grow through childhood and adolescence.

This said, Debating Childhood Masculinities provides strong warnings against the common habit of underestimating children's capacities. Children from very early are inventive in their use of materials, in their relations with adults and their views of themselves. They create stories; they may supply themselves with imagined friends or imagined lives. By adolescence, they are able to conceive utopias, other ways of ordering society: we see this today in the environmental movement among youth. This is not just a matter of fantasy. To the extent it shapes young people's practices, it becomes ontoformative, making new social realities.

Good social research has the capacity to surprise us, and there are surprises to look for in this book. The surprises include the marked ambivalences in some boys’ responses to conventions of masculinity; the resistance by girls to family surveillance, at least in one of the studies; and the striking finding that some youth who are already stigmatised as troublemakers actually believe that taking responsibility is a key part of masculinity.

There are other surprises, but I leave them to the readers. There are lots of interesting details about children's worlds in this book, and there are serious conceptual arguments to engage with. My best wishes to the research participants, authors and readers in building our shared understanding of childhoods and masculinities.

Raewyn Connell

Sydney

November 2023