ABSTRACT
The choices that men make to enter, remain in, and leave ECE can be theorised as occurring at the intersection of structural influences and personal agency. So we need theoretical lenses that enable us to look simultaneously at a broad contextual picture that reveals socio-cultural and political structural influences. We also need to go close-up and observe the micro-sociological detail of everyday practices. This chapter is structured through a consideration of different levels of theoretical analysis: micro, meso, and macro. This multi-level approach is also a strategy for mining the combined theoretical experiences that are represented in our large authorial collaboration derived from our varying subject disciplines: developmental psychology, sociology of education, masculinity studies, sexualities, linguistics, and early childhood education. This theoretical framework also has a gender dimension. We reject biological essentialist theories of gender, recognising instead that ECEC men experience intrapersonal and interpersonal conflicts in relation to dominant ideas about masculinity as they simultaneously break and reproduce gender stereotypes, disrupt, and reinforce gender binary thinking.
