ABSTRACT
By drawing on a 12-country research project, we examine why men stay and why men drop out of ECEC. Rejecting the call for increasing male presence in ECEC based on biological discourses of gender, we show how men negotiate the stigma often associated with men in ECEC as they confront, resist, and reproduce dominant notions of masculinity. Men who persist in ECEC challenge and break gender stereotypes to embrace nurturing and caring. However, men who persist in a feminised profession reproduce masculine power by constructing the presence of men in ECEC as a “rarity” to be valued. Gender boundaries are maintained, as men who drop out demonstrate how ECEC functions to regulate, ridicule, and reproduce hegemonic notions of masculinity. These gendered discourses are produced through peer regulation, gendered norms that disassociate masculinity with nurturing whilst placing men in ECEC under sexual surveillance as both ‘gay’ and sexually suspicious. This chapter shows how hegemonic masculinity underscores men’s narratives of persisting and dropping out of ECEC. Finally, we offer caution in the persistence of male role model theory and biological imperatives which continue to shape dominant reasons to include men in ECEC.
