Older Men’s Blueprint for “Being a Man”

Abstract

Does the cultural blueprint for “being a man” direct older men into patterns of conduct and emotions similar to younger men? In the absence of cultural guidelines for aging as a man, this theoretically grounded article discusses the masculinity standards that are likely to influence how older men go about their lives. Framed by Brannon’s mid-1970s conceptualization of masculinity as an ideology, we reexamined existing narrative and interview-based research within ninety-eight prior studies to identify the masculinities voiced by older men. The narratives mirrored Brannon’s four-dimension model of the cultural guidelines for being a man. Masculinity matters, and without unique guidelines for being an older man, men live by and struggle with traditional masculinities that have influenced them across their life course.