Caring Moments and Their Men: Masculine Emotion Practice in Nursing

Theory on men and masculinities has emphasized practice—situated action—as the key site to analyze masculinity. Individual and organizational practices as well as cultural resources are sites to investigate gender dominance. Similarly, though more recently, theory on emotion has called for a shift toward an emotion-as-practice approach in which emotion is seen as both an outcome and resource situationally activated and embodied by constrained actors. Using empirical work on men in nursing, this article develops a synthesis of masculine and emotion practice. Bourdieu’s [(1990). The logic of practice. (R. Nice, Trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press] broader notion of social practice provides a link between the two fields. Reflections from men in nursing suggest a new masculine ideal centered on the emotionally adept man. Rather than signal an alternative form of masculinity that challenges gender dominance, these changes might signal a new hegemony—a reconfiguration of practices better suited to an era of post-industrialization. Economic shifts, including an increase in both the number of middle-class women in the labor force and the number of emotionally demanding, service-based jobs, may be the catalyst for a new ideal, particularly for white, middle-class men.