Older men’s experiences of masculine identities across the lifespan.
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Date
2023
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Abstract
The primary focus of this research was to investigate how men have experienced
their masculinity across their life journeys as men, as revealed in retrospective accounts of
life transitions. The research especially sought to understand how masculine identities were
narrated and negotiated across the lifespan in retrospective accounts as, to date, most
research on masculinity has adopted a cross-sectional perspective that does not consider the
challenges of ageing in producing and maintaining a masculine identity across the lifespan.
With a theoretical framework combining thematic analysis (TA) and interpretative
phenomenological analysis (IPA), and honouring the idiographic commitment of IPA to
small samples of very detailed interviews, multiple in-depth narrative interviews were
undertaken with 10 men who were 60 years or older. These volunteers were sampled with
purposive and convenience snowballing. Although the research took place in a specific
context of South Africa in which the population is highly diverse and complex, the sample
was relatively homogenous due to the research (1) an intentional focus on exploring ageing
for men who previously had access to access to resources and the (2) the location of the
study in retirement villages that are still racially homogenous a quarter of a century after
apartheid. In-depth, repeated, partly unstructured interviews were used to access
retrospective accounts of masculine identities across the lifespan. Five areas were focused
on in the analysis: productivity along the lifespan, family / relationships, health in the
present and over the lifespan, ageing and living in Africa.
The men defined themselves by traditional masculine identities and did not freely
volunteer non-traditional masculine experiences. Their accounts of masculinity were
oriented to the lifespan social clock, in other words, to accounting for achieving various
milestones (or not) of masculinity on schedule (or not). Although these older men did not
fulfil the hegemonic or dominant ideals, such as being young and virile, they did not present
themselves as being invisible or genderless.
Various strategies were used to protect, maintain and reframe their masculine
identities, for example, stoic acceptance, denial and relying on their wives to bridge the gap,
such as accessing medical intervention, while the men were able to continue
Mostly the men presented their masculine identities as being consistent with
dominant norms and unchallenged (denying age-related decline by omission). Where the
men spoke of being in subjugated positions they often followed this account in various ways in which the subjugated position was discounted and their hegemonic status re-established
by emphasising hegemonic qualities that they possessed or subscribed to. In the present
study, men avoided discussing the inevitability of old age when recounting their life journey
as men retrospectively. However, the perspective of time is still an important concept in
understanding how they produced their masculinity.
The present study shows that social expectations for masculine identities are
dynamic, evolve over the lifespan and are sensitive to the “social clock”, in other words, to
normative expectations about what men should do and achieve at different life stages. Men
are pressured to achieve masculine developmental social expectations on time, despite it
becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the accepted standards of hegemonic and
dominant masculinities. The implications for understanding masculinity in relation to ageing
are discussed.
Description
Doctoral Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg.