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.

Keywords

aging men masculinity ideologies masculinities and aging

The subject of later life masculinities deserves more attention. Most studies on men focus on the efforts made by young adults and boys to embody masculinities through sport, muscularity, sexuality, or as fathers. The history of thinking about men and masculinities in these narrow contexts is problematic because it continues to render invisible the masculinities that exist in later life (Hearn 1995; E. Thompson 1994; Venn, Davidson, and Arber 2011). Furthermore, in later life, men’s gendered behavior is often performed outside public spaces and away from most others’ recognition (Smith and Winchester 1998). The cumulative effect is that the cultural guidelines for older men and the masculinities they perform are largely unacknowledged.

This is not entirely surprising. Connell (1995; Carrigan, Connell, and Lee 1985; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005) and others (e.g., Hearn 2004) have argued that in most social contexts one group of men or set of masculinities is hegemonic. Historically, growing old earned status and older men were venerated (Fischer 1977). In time, the hegemony of the agrarian patriarch was replaced by the new practice of “separate spheres” and a “cult of youth” that idealized the strong, self-confident, independent, common man (Achenbaum 1974; Fischer 1977). This ideological shift did two things at once: it promoted gerontophobic masculinity ideals while privileging the qualities and practices of younger men (Oberg 2003) and it produced new forms of domination (Bourdieu 2001; Dowd, Levit, and McGinley 2012).

By the mid-twentieth century, masculinities were deeply ageist. Much as Goffman (1963, 128) recognized fifty years ago in his discussion of stigma, “In an important sense there is only one complete unblushing male in America—young, married, white, urban, northern heterosexual Protestant father of college education, fully employed of good complexion, weight and height, and a recent record in sports” (our italics). Anyone missing one of these valued attributes is a step below in the hierarchy of masculinities. Men who lack several of these characteristics are further subordinated, if not marginalized (cf. Chen 1999; Cheng 1999).

In Western cultures, not only is aging accompanied by diminishing social capital, it is often thought of as degendering—socially, politically, and sexually (Silver 2003; Slevin and Linneman 2010; Spector-Mersel 2006). E. Thompson (2006) found that when people were asked to complete the sentence “An old man …,” older men were depicted in terms of diminished masculinity, principally as unremarkable, and asexual. Older men themselves are mindful of the prevailing demasculinization discourses and anti-aging rhetoric (Canham 2009; Marshall 2009). Additionally, they are aware of the dissonance between the limitations of their aging body and their earlier gendered habitus (Tulle 2008). The stigma of aging can spark a sense of emasculation (Oberg 2003). Again, it was Goffman’s (1963, 128) insight that “Any male who fails to qualify in any one of these ways is likely to view himself—during moments at least—as unworthy, incomplete, and inferior.”

However, unlike the imagery of demasculinization caused by aging, the premise we begin with is that masculinities always matter in men’s lives. A striving for a continuity of gendered practices and identities is expected. We understand that masculine embodiment changes during the life course since it is affected by age, gender and place norms, and aging bodies (Featherstone and Hepworth 1998; Laz 2003; Slevin 2008). Postmodern and poststructuralist theorizing about gender urge us to recognize that men perform a repertoire of continuous masculinities that are central to their identity management. The ways in which men live out their daily lives are organic as they integrate bodily capabilities and age norms (cf. Biggs 1997).

Recognizing that the self of the past is the underpinning of the self of the present, we theorize that most men who embodied the “ordinary” masculinities (Edley 2001) of the 1950s and 1960s as younger men continue to position their subjective self in relation to those constructions. This premise is not unrivaled. Spector-Mersel (2006) has persuasively argued that in the absence of cultural guidelines for being an aging man in Western cultures, men’s narrative selves are never-aging stories. Holstein and Gubrium (2000), Kaufman (1986), and Coles and Vassarotti (2012) also urge us to recognize that identities and performances certainly change as men age, yet without the negation of the self. To be perceived as “normal” when they grew up during the 1950s and 1960s, the cohorts of men now aged sixty-five and older were expected to abide by the conventional heteronormative masculinities and succeed in a career, as husbands, and as fathers (cf. Townsend 2002). The gendered order of the time urged each man to adopt the separate spheres arrangement resonant within the nation’s patriarchal culture. (Connell 1987, 1995; L. Thompson and Walker 1989). Men’s identities were negotiated and defined based on their ability to uphold the expectations associated with manhood, earn other men’s respect, and distinguish himself from all women.

We also know from existing theoretical and empirical work that masculinities are in flux, yet a principal or dominant definition always exists (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; Hearn 2004). This begs the question, without clear cultural guidelines for being an older man, what masculinity expectations guide older men’s lives? Prior empirical work has begun to map the ways in which masculinities and aging are jointly embodied. Some of this body of work puts gender into a life course context and listens to the stories of old men negotiating their masculinities (e.g., Alex et al. 2008; J. Smith et al. 2007). This work is based on narrative and/or grounded theory studies and has voiced aging men’s masculinity practices. It provides important “near experience” commentary on the ways that masculinities are performed in later life. Our thematic analysis (Luborsky 1994) of the discourses voiced within prior studies was designed to provide insight into the cultural beliefs and values that shape older men’s lives in the absence of distinctive cultural guidelines for being an old man.

Method

Current cohorts of old men are from the generations when gender identities and practices were scripted by clear heteronormative and ageist masculinity directives. These somber, highly valued but often contradictory cultural norms (e.g., to be a gentleman and to be dominant over women) provided men with a “blueprint” (Brannon 1976) for their behavior and emotions. Brannon (1976) argued that four interlaced injunctions underlie the dominant masculinities found in the 1950s and 1960s:

No Sissy Stuff: Above all else, men must avoid anything vaguely feminine, never show any weaknesses, and keep intimate aspects of one’s life “backstage.” A man who shows emotional vulnerability reveals interests that have been labeled as “feminine” or fails to present himself as “a man” is stigmatized.

The Big Wheel: Men must strive to be respected and admired. To gain and retain respect and power, men are expected to seek success in all they undertake. A man must consider all interactions as a form of competition in which he must be successful.

The Sturdy Oak: This dimension is best captured by the phrase “the strong silent type.” To project the manly air of confidence, and self-reliance, the mandate is to remain calm even in the most hectic and frightening situations (be a rock) and handle difficult problems (be a pillar).

Give ‘em Hell: This mandate underscores the never give up “tough guy,” and the lore of risk taking, adventure, danger, and, at times, violence—live life on the edge.

For this study, we closely read the narrative and interview data within prior research to assess to what extent old men use the 1950s and 1960s masculinity blueprint as a guide for both their gendered behavior and their identity work. Studies were identified by a search of the Ageline, Google Scholar, PubMed, PsycINFO, and SocIndex electronic databases. In each database, we searched within the title and abstract for the key words “masculinities and aging,” synonyms such as masculinity, manliness, manhood, or male body, and paired words such as old men, older men, aging men, or aging masculinities. Two criteria defined data for our study. First, so that the voices of the men were primary, only studies published in English since 2000 where the presentation of findings included first-person accounts and/or quotes were selected for inclusion. Studies solely based on quantitative data (e.g., epidemiological patterns and questionnaire responses), and articles closely analyzing masculinities and aging within media presentations (e.g., Saxton and Cole 2012) were set aside as references but excluded as data. Second, studies had to be readily available in peer-reviewed journals or chapters in edited volumes. Thus, dissertations, conference papers, other unpublished theses, novels, memoirs, and personal blogs were also excluded. Given these criteria, ninety-eight sources of data were located that voiced aging men’s consciousness of their masculinity practices.

A tenet from the field of narrative studies is that in the telling of personal stories, men engage in a process of claiming identities and constructing meaningful lives (Bamberg 2006; Biggs 2004; Frank 1991). Their stories reveal evidence of embodied masculinities as much as the cultural guidelines that influenced the ways personal stories are constructed. The objective for this study was to identify the discourses within old(er) men’s talk about masculinities and aging. Luborsky (1994) has defined two criteria necessary for thematic analysis—the identification of recurrent matters or testimony that reflect underlying beliefs, values, or sentiments and candid statements of importance or salience by the informants. We were particularly attentive when diverse groups of men tell very similar personal stories, especially when their experiences should be as diverse as the men telling the stories. This would suggest that personal stories are also speaking about master narratives about older men. To identify discourses within the data, the constant comparative method of grounded theory (Charmaz, 2000, 2006; Glaser and Strauss 1967; Strauss 1987) served as our guide. Defining components of this method include constructing analytic categories from the data (e.g., men do not disclose worries and men are stoic), and, as more analogous, nearly overlapping themes are discovered comparable themes are collapsed into a common one (e.g., “the sturdy oak”).

Findings

Few men talked about themselves as old, however, many spoke of their age and aging in terms of rethinking their images of themselves as old(er) men. Older men drew upon four master discourses when discussing their experiences with aging and age-based bodily changes. Thematically, these discourses mimicked the larger cultural injunctions that shape “traditional” masculinities, with some modifications and variation. As we show, at the heart of their narratives, older men considered their identities and performances to be guided by traditional masculinities.

No Sissy Stuff

Renunciation of what is perceived as feminine and not admitting to or revealing weakness have been identified as core to performing masculinity for the cohort of men born near World War II (Brannon 1976). The performances might range from maintaining a stiff upper lip while living with chronic pain, not asking for help when needed, masking one’s self doubt, berating others instead of admitting one’s failings, or keeping secret one’s worries and emotions. For example, even though vulnerability is not weakness per se, the guidance of traditional masculinity discourses equates vulnerability with weakness and brands both as unmasculine. Recent studies provide abundant evidence of how older men frame their ill health, aging bodies, or experience of widowerhood in terms of a “no sissy stuff” discourse.

Ussher and Perz (2010) examined the self-silencing among men who were carers of a cancer patient. They unexpectedly found that men were more self-silencing than women when it came to putting the needs of others before the self, and men were more likely to refrain from disclosing feelings when they reasoned that doing so would cause friction (p. 237). One man caring for his wife with gynecological cancer told them:

I suppose when stuff like that happens then sadness creeps in and you don’t want it to, you try to keep it back at the door, stay away, if you see what I mean. (Ussher and Perz 2010, 235)

The authors argued that men’s accounts for not voicing their feelings or needs, for withholding their vulnerabilities, and for putting up an upbeat front “draw on hegemonic discourses of masculinity wherein emotional expression is positioned as weakness” (p. 238).

O’Brien, Hunt, and Hart (2005, 2009) listened to men’s reasoning for why they were unwilling to seek medical help. Generally, the discourse underscored how men prioritized “doing masculinity” over health. Some men voiced their awareness that self-disclosure of one’s vulnerability would be negatively sanctioned (cf. Mansfield et al. 2008) and how men who engaged in salutogenic health practices were less masculine (cf. Dunlop and Beauchamp 2013). O’Brien and colleagues found that it was common for the men to masculinize their avoidance of help seeking for “minor” symptoms—they didn’t want to “make a fuss about nothing” and practiced being “strong and silent” (p. 507). Minimizing and believing that troubling feelings would “probably go away” was a mark of masculinity. As one man who had had a bypass commented:

A man is not likely to go to the doctor as readily as a woman is. You might get a pain and say, ‘well I’ll not bother going to a doctor.’ That’s what a man is more inclined to do. He’ll not say until it’s really bad, ‘look, I’ve got a pain.’ There’s something wrong here’ …. (O’Brien, Hunt, and Hart 2005, 510)

Another man summarized, “Unfortunately … I know it’s completely moronic, I mean, it’s caveman stuff, but that is to a certain extent how guys still operate” (p. 513).

Verdonk, Seesing, and de Rijk (2010) also observed that men talk about seeking medical care and taking care of their health without harming their masculinity ideals by “outsourcing” self-care to female partners or having a wife initiate the right time to consult a physician (cf. Oliffe 2009). The traditional “her kitchen” part of the separate spheres ideology frees men to attribute their health patterns to wives:

When we married my wife automatically started cooking the meals. It was the way it happened in those days. The kitchen is her domain. She knows all the good things that are in the foods we eat. I just eat them. (Drummond and Smith 2006, 58)

The traditional gendered divisions of labor and spousal involvement is an acceptable way for older men to pay attention to their health (Fergus 2011; Gast and Peak 2011), and even for the discursive practice of a couple-based illness narrative where men “do what is necessary” while their wives “do emotions” (Seymour-Smith and Wetherell 2006, 123).

Bennett (2007; Bennett, Hughes, and Smith 2003) examined old men’s experiences of bereavement and the ways they manage themselves in terms of dilemma of expressing emotions. Listening to sixty widowers’ stories, the majority kept their emotions to themselves and conceded their compliance with the dominant view of masculinity. Even though many could not maintain the guise—“Well there’s hardly a day goes by without having a good cry” (Bennett 2007, 351)—these men chose to suffer in silence (p. 354). They reported that they do not cry in front of others because to do so is “sissy stuff.” Black (2009, 87) discussed the interviews with an old man who likewise developed talents to mask his grief as well as present his self-reliant guise of being his own “one man band.” The men Bennett (2007) interviewed felt that they were expected to masquerade themselves, and when a man did not suppress or deny the emotional impact of being a widower, others reminded him to “not go on so much”:

I mean we got a new guy on the table some months back—he’s not been back since—but he started spouting about how his sisters had let him down and a couple of guys said to him, ‘We know how you feel but we’re all here.’ In other words you know, ‘I’ve got my load to carry—I can’t carry yours as well. (p. 351)

Widowers also developed two discursive constructions that reveal the no sissy stuff theme. They spoke of immersing themselves in various types of work as a masculinized strategy to abstain from sissy stuff (e.g., talking about their loss) and manage the depression and anguish that were endemic to their bereavement. Telling stories of others’ suffering more than their own functioned to help widowers’ rehearse and demonstrate their “masculine credentials, even during the interview” (p. 354).

The mask of masculinity is, as Biggs (2004, 51) observed, a “trick of identity management.” In Bennett’s study, the men confront the painful loss of a life partner as men who live within the broader context of expected gender performances. They are caught up in the dilemma of revealing their identity and grief as (former) husbands versus maintaining their public no sissy stuff self-presentations as a man. The widowers typically opt to emphasize their public selves. By comparison, older men living with debilitating cancer often talk about their age-related identity battle as a discursive strategy to quash their illness-related defeats: “I’m 70, so what do I expect?” (Cecil, McCaughan, and Parahoo 2009, 506; cf. Clarke and Bennett 2013, 348). Commenting on his altered body image following his mastectomy, one man storied his self-consciousness:

Of course it doesn’t matter to bloke[s], but I wouldn’t go swimming anymore … I could tell a very good tale about how I was in the Hussars or something and get away with it. I am very conscious about it (the scar), I wouldn’t display my chest to the boys or my grandchildren. (France et al. 2000, 345)

Consistent with no sissy stuff values are the generations of older men born in the 1920s and 1930s who have had very little direct experience with meal preparation, since the kitchen was their mother’s and wife’s space. If they cooked and cooked well, they typically denigrate their acquired skills to mask their competencies in feminine tasks (Moss et al. 2007, 319–20). The older men that Moss and colleagues interviewed, especially the not-currently-married (or lone) men, relied heavily on meal practices that involved heating up prepared foods rather than cooking. In Hughes, Bennett, and Hetherington’s (2004) study of older men living alone, one man flatly reported, “Well first of all can I tell you this I don’t eat greens or fruit. I hate them” (2004, 274). A married man commented, “When she’s away, I am good—very expert—at defrosting things she’s left me. And then I cook them in a microwave or toaster oven” (Moss et al. 2007, 321). Married men also emphasized their personal efficacy, independence, and feelings of personal control in their decisions to depend on their wives’ preferences, or if not married to not eat healthy, they viewed eating in instrumental terms as getting fueled up (cf. Newcombe et al. 2012). Such food practices help older men confirm the continuity of their masculine identity (Davidson, Arber, and Marshall 2009).

Finally, a modified no sissy stuff discourse was sometimes found when men talked about being grandfathers. The issues were not whether you masked feelings, rather whether you “wimped out” of getting on with children’s interests. One grandfather used this seemingly counter-discourse in the following: “I would say it is a lot easier and more enjoyable being a granddad [than a father]. You can appreciate them and you can be more flexible. You have got more time to explain … I can dance, cook, iron (laughs) and I can tell them off” (Sorensen and Cooper 2010, 128). A pair of grandfathers detailed the effort they make to facilitate enjoyable experiences and indulge their grandchildren:

I read to the grandkids as much as they will do it. I mean they like it and we often go to the library and get books out. I think when they pick out a book they’re more interested in it. After reading the same book 5 or 10 times though it does make you sleepy. But reading to them is fun. (Bates 2009, 344)

As they’re getting bigger it is quite difficult but, when I go and see them they’ll run across the room, the road, the drive or whatever, leap up in the air, arms round my neck and sort of swing on me, which at the ages of … oh I don’t know, 4 and 1 or something was quite fun, but erm, now I feel as though my neck’s about to be broken. (Tarrant 2010, 193)

Another grandfather was aware of his physical limitations, yet consciously wanted to also do masculine practices such as physical play:

The grandchildren will start the chasing game you know ‘catch me grandpa if you can’ and I could do myself a mischief so … I’m aware that I can’t do it without you know sooner or later, I’ll harm myself …. (Tarrant 2013, 203)

Grandfathering required doing a generative masculinity amid often being engaged in what the men once perceived as feminine activities, yet the discursive no sissy stuff talk was about men as grandfathers had a “safe” avenue for providing affection (Mann and Leeson 2010, 241–42) and how this can be rejuvenating:

It rejuvenates you physically—you want to be active with them … including you want to dress properly when you get up … when I’m visiting them in their home, and as the kids are [now] grown up, I make sure I go comb my hair, I shave, I don’t look older than I have to (laughs) …. (Lesperance 2010, 205)

The Big Wheel

The mandate for men to be successful and to garner respect in the eyes of other men is said to be unending. Traditionally, this injunction underscored the importance of goal-directed performances in public spaces, earning the admiration of others, being the “breadwinner,” and never forfeiting opportunities to assure one’s clout or “being looked up to.” After reaching retirement age, masculine identities begin to shift from paid work and draw on ‘doing something useful’ (Davidson, Daly, and Arber 2003, 84) and “being active” (Gunnarsson 2009, 4041). A number of studies provide rich evidence of how older men’s discursive constructions and “big wheel” discourse never lose touch with this canon of masculinity.

Bamberg (2006) and Phoenix and Sparkes (2009) argue that storytelling is an ontological activity that imposes order on experiences. Narratives involve the performance of identity. They blend together “big stories” that reflect broader cultural discourses about working hard to make the most of life and the “small stories” that disclose the individual’s circumstances and experiences. The old man, Fred, that Phoenix and Sparkes (2009) present is an active seventy year old. Fred came to the attention of the researchers when a news story reported how he organized and played in a football (soccer) game. He framed his narrative in terms of a big story about maximizing masculine capital—“Life is what you make of it” (p. 230). His episodes of illness and his aging experiences were storied as ordinary parts of living (p. 225), not as biographical ruptures undermining his sense of himself as a man. The notion of “getting on with it” was core to this man’s embodiment of aging and masculinity (p. 225), as shown in the following quote (p. 226):

I think it’s like everything, what people need to realize is that nothing comes easy and you’ve got to keep going back and trying, whatever it is. But that means enjoying each day as it comes along … from my point of view, I do believe that you are what you can make of yourself and you’ve got to keep going haven’t you for as long as you can ….

Fred’s narrative is infused by the coexisting masculinity discourses that stress being successful and respected. His core identity is a man who is striving to be a fit old man with a full, “leisurely” life. His identity is centered on maintaining a “busy” everyday life (p. 231; cf. Ekerdt 1986).

As Fred’s story demonstrated, old-age masculinities can include involvement in competitive sports. However, participation in competitive sport teams typically fades out of men’s lives due to physical abilities and a lack of competitive sports leagues for older adults. Drummond (2003, 2008) theorizes that as the level of bodily proficiency diminishes with age, men who were once athletic reclaim masculine capital by taking up different challenges. He discovered that older men often maintain their competitive posture even when engaging in solitary activities. For example, in mall walking, their competitiveness leaks out by attempting to walk longer or faster. A sixty-seven-year-old man in Wiersma and Cheeser’s (2011, 254) study of masculinities, aging bodies, and leisure talked about his relative athletic capability:

At this last Tai Chi thing … I was working together with a young woman … I think maybe she was 45 or 50. Somebody would say that’s not young but anyway we worked together doing our thing … And she said, ‘Oscar, you’ve got good muscle tone in your shoulders, you know, not like most of the old people I work with.’ And I was hugging this beautiful younger woman and feeling very masculine and not particularly sexual but just feeling that kind of thing and she was comparing me to these old people that she works with.

Eman (2011) similarly found in her study of old athletes aged sixty-eight to ninety that all but one of the nine men had stopped competing. Yet, the majority positioned themselves in activities that preserved feelings of competitiveness and success, such as golf or fitness walking. One man talked proudly about how he engaged in physical activities that would hinder his age peers: “I have cousins of the same age as me who can’t even touch the floor, whilst I am able to ski 20 miles” (Eman 2011, 52). In Jolanki’s (2009) focus group interviews, men’s “border-talk” called attention to hiking, attending a gym club, and riding bikes as means to position themselves as fit and active rather than as aged. Likewise, a retired man’s “small story” describes his continuing need to garner respect from his achievements:

It’s like I need to keep proving to myself that I can do stuff, so whenever I commit to something I say it has to be on my terms, so it has to be when I’m able to do it but I’ll do it. I need to keep having accomplishments. (Oliffe et al. 2013, 1633)

The discourse particularizes men’s interest in continuing to be accomplished and respected for their accomplishments.

Alex et al. (2008) found that older Swedish men continued to strive to be “in the male center” through narratives that often emphasized being proud over their financial affairs. One man said, “Well, I’ve made a home of my own and things have gone very well and I don’t owe a penny on this house. I don’t owe anybody anything and I think that this is something important I’ve done” (p. 454). This echoes the master narrative of the American Dream and the good life in retirement (F. Smith and Dougherty 2012). Analogously, when asked about household decision making, most long-term married men modify the master patriarchal narrative to suggest that they negotiate a joint decision; however, some men linked their masculinity to this master narrative, as this man disclosed about who has the last word: “Me, oh guaranteed. Well, I don’t classify myself as boss, but sort of head of the family …” (Barnes and Parry 2004, 227). These voiced opinions about the importance of men’s identities at home as successful and/or traditional husbands are supported by the Men’s Attitudes to Life Events and Sexuality study (Sand et al. 2008), where the perceptions of masculinity were examined among men from eight countries: United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Mexico, and Brazil. The primary finding was that men in all age cohorts described the key aspects of masculinity as being seen as honorable, self-reliant, respected, and in control of one’s life, much more than the capability to have coital sex. The men emphasized the big story. Wentzell (2013) also found that many older, working-class Mexican men living with decreasing erectile function constructed a discourse as “good” men invested in their marriage, work, and overall health and as resistant to the anti-aging model for manhood that urges men to seek erection-enhancing pharmaceuticals.

Similar big wheel inspired discourses are evident in studies of men renegotiating their identity near and following retirement (e.g., Berger 2006; Mann 2007; Savishinsky 2000; Weiss 2005) and their continued use of class-based masculinities to define their experiences as retired men (Emslie, Hunt, and O’Brien 2004). Most older men remain significantly invested in their work identities (Reitzes and Mutran 2006). For tradesmen, it is their physical capacity to work and their financial needs rather than chronological age that affect retirement considerations and masculine identities. One aging builder who Marchant (2013, 852) interviewed commented,

I know I can’t do the stuff I was doing five years ago, it does, it wears you down … I get home at 4 o’clock … My wife says ‘let’s go for a walk’ and I say ‘no I’ve had a big day.’

Beginning new types of work such as starting a business or teaching a technical course were options tradesmen considered, but more often they were hopeful of continuing to do what they had been doing—working in their trade.

Whether outdoors or indoors, the workplace remains a privileging context for most men. Reminiscing, one British man talked about carrying his achieved status further:

… if I could actually do something I don’t know, fundraising or something like that, and got paid for it, I wouldn’t mind doing that, on my own terms and when it suits me, but I don’t think I’d want to go back full time …. (I. Jones, Leontowitsch, and Higgs 2010, 111)

Retired men reassess their channels for achievement and success, and most men find activities and new spaces to affirm their masculinities. From men’s accounts of the work of providing care for a frail wife, Black and colleagues (2008) heard parallel stories of men’s self-worth derived from their talk about prior careers, commitment to care work, or volunteering at a local prison. Lundgren (2010) studied men engaged in elementary school class-grandfathering projects and their stories of self-worth. Liechty and Genoe (2013) found that most participants in their study discussed retirement as an opportunity to use the skills and wisdom gained during working years. One of the men interviewed disclosed:

I don’t want to become elderly, I want to become an elder … an elderly is just somebody whose hair turn[s] white and play[s] golf … I want to be able to contribute to society for the next 10–15 years, whatever I have left. (Liechty and Genoe 2013, 445)

Ekerdt (1986, 239) observed, “Just as there is a work ethic that holds industriousness and self-reliance as virtues, so, too, there is a ‘busy ethic’ for retirement that honors an active life.” Cutting out paper dolls for granddaughters is not good enough, and volunteering in the town’s Department of Public Works’ effort to create a nature trail is consistent with the busy ethic and doing masculinity.

The Sturdy Oak

The “sturdy oak” metaphor is a striking symbol to suggest how performing masculinity means standing tall, weathering, enduring, and supporting. The metaphor embodies conduct and emotions that are represented by resilience, self-sufficiency, robustness, independence, and hardiness. Despite the challenge of bodily aging to men’s independence, control, and self-reliance, evidence suggests that old men use a discourse that presents an active and agentic assessment of themselves. Men are eager to portray themselves in control of their lives and bodies regardless of the implications, and they are opposed to being “policed” (Koch, Kralik, and Taylor 2000; Liburd, Namageyo-Fuma, and Jack 2007, 556).

In older men’s self-presentations, sturdy oak discourses often epitomize the principle that men do not really think much about their bodily health:

Like my father always said, if you treat a cold it will last 7 days, if you don’t treat it it’ll last a week. So I never bothered treating myself. My philosophy has always been that my body will heal itself. (Tannenbaum and Frank 2011, 246)

The challenge of bodily aging and chronic illness can strengthen men’s grit to endure. As McVittie and Willock (2006) point out, serious bodily challenges are typically framed as uncontrollable external events affecting the man—“you can’t fight windmills” (p. 794). Men then talk about the (re)construction of their identities, and their spirited talk is akin to “achievement” and “avoiding weakness” discourses (McVittie and Willock 2006), yet the discourse is about independence and resilience. In a case study of a widower who was dating a younger woman, he voiced his decision to not use erectile dysfunction (ED) medication as evidence of being in control and still masculine: “I can’t say I never have kissed her, but it’s hardly been—there are lots of things at my age, as you’ll recognize that you can’t do. I wouldn’t try. I guess they have medicines, but I don’t want any of that” (Canham 2009, 92). J. Smith and colleagues (2007) similarly observed that much of the talk by the men they studied pivoted on a discourse of being independent. As one seventy-four-year-old, Ben, commented,

I can tell you what my wife thinks. She thinks I’m pigheaded and stubborn … I’m pretty independent, I’ll acknowledge that. I don’t like relying on other people. But sometimes you have to. (J. Smith et al. 2007, 339)

O’Brien, Hunt, and Hart (2005, 2007) discovered a sturdy oak discourse in two variants. First, older men not yet seriously threatened by a health challenge considered their ability to live with health troubles to be a masculinity practice:

You don’t like to make a fuss because it’s a macho thing just to say you’re being the strong silent type. You’ll endure it, you can take it. So if there is something wrong you won’t talk to anyone about it. You have to be bed-ridden or half dead before you’ll go (to the doctor’s). (O’Brien, Hunt, and Hart 2005, 508)

But unlike the older man talking about his masculinized practice to not seek medical assistance because enduring was integral to “being a man,” O’Brien, Hunt, and Hart (2005, 514) detected that once a man’s health became more seriously compromised, the men reformulated the practice of being strong and silent to being “strong and wise.” This second variant of the sturdy oak discourse is about how a man should be independent minded and not hesitate to “step up” and address his health needs in order to reclaim masculinities that were threatened by illness:

I think that’s kind of been good for me, in the fact that I’ve never run from this, I’ve always faced it face on. I’m not going to hide; I want to be around as long as I can …. (Galdas et al. 2010, 22)

Men diagnosed with prostate cancer, for example, talk about how seeking help, accepting emasculating treatment, and remaining alive was doing masculinity (Oliffe 2005, 2009; Waller and Pattison 2013). Their roundabout conversation addresses how actively man aging their survival trumped the value casting oneself as invulnerable (O’Brien, Hart, and Hunt 2007, 187–88). Their sturdy oak discourse centers on owning up to the rotten consequences of external factors—a cancer and its treatment. Embodying the cancer was a way for men to preserve their masculinity by smartly “standing out from the herd” (O’Brien, Hart, and Hunt 2007). Noone and Stephen (2008) similarly reported that rural men positioned themselves as independent and viewed men who resisted seeking help as less manly. By attending to their bodies, the old men changed masculinity strategies, now preferring to maintain control and distinguish themselves from what they deem as easier, less masculine avoidance behaviors.

Bennett, Hughes, and Smith (2003) theorized that when men become widowers they face a threat to their sense of themselves as sturdy oaks (2003, p. 422). The brute reality of losing a wife certainly could undermine a widower’s equilibrium as someone who is in control of his life and emotions (van den Hoonaard, Bennett, and Evans 2014). Contrary to their expectations, Bennett et al. found that most widowers adapted quickly to having been rocked by the loss of a wife. Even when willing to admit to having been shaken and depressed, the men recounted how they rebounded. One man commented (p. 420),

I said I’m suffering from depression. And the old chap says, ‘There’s only one way of getting rid of it … Do some hard work!’ … He said, ‘In about a month’s time you’ll feel it going out of your hair and your fingernails.’ Which it did.

This observation of widowers reclaiming masculine capital by being resilient sturdy oaks is not isolated. Lund and Caserta (2001) and Moore and Stratton (2003) similarly found that older widowers’ were quick to recapture feelings of control and present themselves as thriving.

Finally, care work is another way older men “quietly” perform masculinity and talk about their care experiences in a sturdy oak discourse. One man commented about his invisibility and the other his choice to be invisible:

Out of sight out of mind … I guess that’s how it works. Whenever anyone comes over, they run right to Connie and see how she’s doing. Just the other day, some friends came over and Connie was sitting in that chair over there … and ah, you can see it from the door. When I answered the door they saw her and walked right past me … like I wasn’t even there! (Russell 2007, 306)

I’d rather just, I’d spend a lot of time visiting [my wife] while she was in hospital and I tended to almost, not get resentful but shielded myself from phone calls with the answering machine because I wanted to be with her and just support her quietly. (Ussher, Wong, and Perz 2010, 656)

Men’s identities shift from being ordinary husbands to caring husbands to “visiting” husbands when wives become long-term care residents (Eriksson and Sandberg 2008; Sanders and Power 2009). Russell (2007) and Kirsi, Hervonen, and Jylha (2004) observed that within the narratives of older husband carers are stories of success and struggles that reveal resilience and innovativeness. Their successes included the great pleasure gained from of their ability to “pick up” the intricateness to care work “like a trade” (Calasanti and King 2007, 519; Calasanti 2006, 273–77) and how their management-nurturing style emphasizes caring for and caring about their wives (Russell 2007, 309–10; Calasanti 2003, 22).

I have all of that mess to clean up and [she] does worse you know sometimes … I get her out of there and get her back in the bed, and I clean up the floors and all. It’s a job. (Calasanti and King 2007, 520)

Well … she was taken to the hospital and the next day … she had an MRI the next day … the next day a doctor … gosh, I’ll never forget this … the doctor said that it may be time to begin looking for a nursing home for her. My first feeling was one of incredible loss and how much I’d miss her at home … and miss … miss caring for her … but then I brushed it aside … I had to brush it aside and get on with what had to be done. (Russell 2007, 307)

Their struggle is more obvious—it is men’s uncommon experiences with the world of daily care work.

Well, I feel no shame. [?] I feel no shame because it’s better to be like this [caring for his wife] and hear people say ‘he’s a sissy’ or something like that rather than to hear them say ‘look at him, his wife is at home, and he is over there, at the bar or whatever’. (Ribeiro, Paul, and Nogueira 2007, 306)

Caring does not diminish the sense of manhood. Instead, as Davidson (2013) reasoned, men turned to discourses that spotlighted the values of resilience and stoicism.

Give ‘em Hell

Masculinity guidelines were also theorized (Brannon 1976) as encouragements for men to be risk takers. The evidence is that readiness to participate in risk taking and competitive practices is very distinctive of young men (Wilson and Daly 1985). As men age, they are less prone to take risks (Blais and Weber 2006). Mayr and his colleagues (2012) suggest that men’s risk-taking interactions typically peak near age fifty. However, evidence of lesser risk taking in later life does not signify that older men abandon the injunction to take risks nor abandon a discourse of self-determination. Older men are required to make and act on risk-taking decisions every day, whether it is food choices, retirement investments, aggressive skiing, avoidance of health care, ignoring medical advice, driving with impaired vision, or willingness to refuse life-sustaining treatment. We found clear evidence of an ongoing “give ‘em hell” discourse as men talked about their lives as aging men.

In contrast to the risk of avoiding health care, Medved and Brockmeier (2011) proposed a masculinity twist—namely, that older men take risks after a cardiac incident. They typically approached rehabilitation in an instrumental and determined way, affirming their toughness by engaging in strenuous activity or by defying rehabilitation restrictions to recapture a sense of being masculine. As these two men asserted,

I think, being a man, men like to do more bodily things if you know what I mean … I think exercising machines and that are more of a natural progression to a man than yoga. (Robertson, Sheikh, and Moore 2010, 700)

I do whatever they say, you know, start running five miles a day, I’ll run five miles a day. If I got to lose weight, I’ll lose weight. (Medved and Brockmeier 2011, 328)

Medved and Brockmeier also observed that some men actively resisted their bypass surgery rehabilitation restrictions and consciously take risks. One man commented (2011, 325),

… so some of it is pretty heavy work, digging postholes and lifting bags of concrete and stuff. Okay, I continue to do that. I haven’t really stopped, yeah, I haven’t stopped doing anything really.

Kelly (2009) and Gray and colleagues (2002) equally discovered that men rehabilitating from prostate cancer surgery pushed themselves hard and were disgruntled with their wives who tried to pamper them: “I said that she was keeping me a prisoner and could she please just ease up a bit” (Gray et al. 2002, 52). The principal mantra is self-determination, for the gains in masculinity capital by “keeping myself in a fit state” in order to remain working (Kelly 2009, 157) or offsetting the master narrative of decline that is associated with aging (Phoenix 2010; Phoenix and Smith 2011).

The same mantra helps explain why the road to driving cessation is never smooth. It means becoming transportation dependent. For older men, the preference to drive for as long as possible is related to defining one’s self in terms of normative masculinity (Davidson 2008). Moreover, finding alternative transportation is not easy, and this compounds the reluctance to give up the car keys. Adler and Rottunda (2006) found that most men were “reluctant acceptors.” They will admit to their diminished driving skills, yet go through a slow process of resignation. Here is one example, “I just barely passed the sight test … and thought it was probably my last driver’s license” (2006, 230). Cessation of driving challenges men’s sense of themselves as men. After he quit driving, another man reported, “… [I] lost a lot of confidence in myself. Don’t feel like I did when I could do it all alone. Means more for a guy, I think, the masculinity issue. Don’t feel like the whole man I was” (2006, 231). Adler and Rottunda retold stories of men who resisted and continued to drive even after knowing their reflexes were hazardous, forgetting to turn the car off for over two hours, or falling asleep at stop-light intersections.

Integral to the pitch within the pharmaceutical industry’s anti-aging advertising to rescue older men from a masculinity crisis and revive their “erectile quality” (Wienke 2005) is the give ‘em hell discourse that encourages men to combat bodily aging with medication, reclaim threatened masculinity, and be “forever functional” (Marshall and Katz 2002; Potts 2004). In this discourse, the capacity for penetrative sexual activity is synonymous with masculinity. But the use of ED drugs to counteract developmental changes in sexual capacity as men age increases the risk of blowback from a partner who has adjusted to sexual intimacy emphasizing foreplay, negotiation, and without regular intercourse (Potts et al. 2003). Men in long-term relationships tend to accept changes in their sexual capacity—“In my mind, they [older people] are lying naked together caressing each other’s bodies and saying nice and tender words” (Sandberg 2013, 269) or “I don’t think that’s [penile penetration] what makes you a man, I’m sure it’s not” (Potts et al. 2006, 319). However, older men returning to the dating marketplace are more likely to follow the anti-aging give ‘em hell message and use ED drugs (S. Jones et al. 2013). The evidence shows that when again dating and involved with more than one partner, decisions to not use condoms are not uncommon and increase older men’s risk of contracting a sexually transmitted infection and passing it on (Bodley-Tickell et al. 2008; Cooperman, Arnsten, and Klein 2007; Gott 2001; Jena et al. 2010; K. Smith and Christakis 2009).

Finally, as self-sufficiency became a hallmark of healthy aging, positioning oneself to maintain masculine capital can involve disagreeing with unending medical care. The decision to refuse or forego life-sustaining treatment not only exemplifies public recognition and judicial support of people’s “right” to personal autonomy (Miles and August 1990), it also can exemplify a masculine form of potency and self-determination, as Broom and Cavenagh (2010) discovered. In old men’s talk about a “good death,” very often there is symmetry between “not wishing to experience further erosion of the masculine self” and “ending it now” talk:

I don’t know, I can only put it from a male point of view, possibly, ‘cause I know we men, and probably women too, to a great degree as well … we’re all very proud of our own independence, our own abilities to see ourselves through life, with ah, the provision of a roof over our head, and ah, bringing our children up, well fed and protected and sheltered, sort of thing…So it’s very, very hard when it comes to, when we start to get frail …. (Broom and Cavenagh 2010, 872)

This is a discursive construction that is managed in talk more than action. As one man in the same study commented,

Getting it over and done with, and ah, have my funeral and ah, my wife suffer very little if possible. I know it will be a trying time for her. But, you see, there’s no light bulb to switch off, you just, you’ve gotta lie here until nature takes its course. (p. 872)

Similarly, some older men’s decision to end their own lives by suicide or self-euthanasia is part of the discourse on masculine potency guided by give ‘em hell values. The gradient of suicide incidence by age and gender is highest among older, disadvantaged men. Perhaps as Canetto (1992) and Cleary (2012) theorize, older men may anticipate being ridiculed if they survive a suicide attempt and thus men use lethal means to “manly” end their suffering. The Hemlock Society differentiates between two types of suicide. One is constructed as self-murder and is often associated with clinical depression and social isolation. The other is viewed as rational self-deliverance, such as when a man is living with a terminal illness and plans his end-of-life (Brock 1992; Humphry 1987). It is an overt form of self-determination. Paradoxically, the suicide decision has a life-sustaining quality in the mind’s eye of the man who seeks to forego the perceive emasculation associated with the end-stages of an illness such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s (cf. Coston and Kimmel 2013; Nazen et al. 2008). As Durkheim (1951) proposed, the motive for a man’s give ‘em hell action may well be believed to be altruistic—to honor a masculine ideal (Stice and Canetto 2008), notwithstanding the possibility of a Hemingwayesque life history of self-indulgence and heightened vulnerability.

Conclusions and Discussion

In sum, older men appear to have embodied masculinities and acquired a gender habitus which resembles the “blueprint of manhood” that Brannon (1976) outlined in the mid-1970s. The evidence we mined from more than ninety-eight studies suggests that older men’s narratives and small stories (Bamberg 2006) about their gendered behaviors and emotions are fairly consistent with the no sissy stuff, big wheel, sturdy oak, and give ‘em hell masculinity injunctions. However, these observed patterns may be limited to white men whose work histories represent the middle class and/or the “settled-living” working class (cf. Rubin 1976), because very little interview and narrative data voiced the stories of other than white United States, Canadian, and European men who had been or remained involved in stable careers and families.

The men within the narrative data distinctly voiced traditional masculinities. The substance of older men’s statements about themselves and their behavior and emotions strongly suggests that there was a motivating cultural mandate that older men used as a point of reference. In the absence of distinctive cultural guidelines as to how to be an aging man (Spector-Mersel 2006), the rules that older men followed were nuanced versions of the idealized masculinity script. For example, motivated by a fear of standing out from the herd because of how his prostate cancer and its treatment causes impotence, an older man weighs the comparative costs of reclaiming masculinity by boldly speaking out about his illness and its treatment versus not disclosing and avoiding the punishing embarrassment he anticipates as a man who has lost his “natural” masculinity (O’Brien, Hart, and Hunt 2007). Considering the cultural vagueness about how older men should do masculinity, we found that the men typically present narrative identities in keeping with the hegemonic young man model of masculinity and, most likely, their former selves. They live by the mandates to acquire and retain others’ respect, to project an aura of toughness and independence, and to be courageous risk takers when necessary. The diverse strategies they employ to keep reputable selves attests to both the lived ambiguities of being aging men in an ageist culture and the resilience of the men.

After analyzing the first-person accounts within studies that examined the nuanced ways older men manage their lives, two themes that we have not explicitly addressed also warrant attention. The first draws on collective wisdom that masculinities matter and are diverse. Recognizing that gender is a master status encourages an appreciation that masculinities do not fade to background in later life. As much as theorists and researchers may acknowledge that masculinities vary across people, across contexts, across an individual’s life span or that multiple, competing conceptions of masculinity coexist, the picture that emerges from our analysis is of ageless masculinity guidelines that older men embody. Old men remain bound by the unmistakable ideological hegemonies guiding younger and middle-aged men as much as the history of masculinities individually constructed within their homes and communities.

However, neither their context-based masculinities nor the backdrop of ageless guidelines may be the exact touchstones aging men continue to use to maintain their identities as men. Men’s bodily aging is not much different than how an acquired physical impairment forces men to recognize that “they are at odds with the expectations of the dominant culture” (Gerschick and Miller 1994, 35; Zola 1982). There is a need to better understand older men’s masculinities and in what ways they are ageless and/or age specific. Knowing that masculinity expectations and performances are context specific, more research is also needed to ferret out what masculinities cross contexts, apply to the majority of older men, and are ageless or not.

The second theme is that “older men were not grumblers.” Many of the studies included in our analysis exposed the personal troubles and emotional strain older men struggled with as a result of the mismatch between their aging and ageless masculinity expectations. They were not pleased with the demasculinized way they were treated within ageist encounters nor their occupy of an “otherness” status (Meadows and Davidson 2006). However, we did not find evidence of a benign “protest masculinity” (cf. Walker 2006) disputing of the ageless ideal of hegemonic masculinity. Individually and collectively, the men were more often self-silencing in terms of adopting a critical stance toward the inherent ageism within ageless guidelines. It would be interesting to monitor the emerging generation of older men who are the front edge of the boomers to see if this generation’s history of constructing diverse masculinities extends to reconstructing the premise that masculinities are ageless.

Is the masculinity ideology that older men adhere to a source of distress because it is ageist? Or, have older men renegotiated the ways in which they can maximize their masculine capital by maintaining others’ respect and using their experiential wisdom? Unfortunately, no measure of masculinity ideologies operationalizes the ways that older men may uniquely maintain capital. Narrative studies and thematic analyses are now needed that focus upon the identity talk of older men as older men, how they go about managing their subordinate status in ageist societies, and what strategies of resistance and reformulation to ageless guidelines are adopted.

In closing, our study suggests that performances of masculinities remain important to older men, and these findings add doubt to suppositions in both sociology and gerontology that “getting old” acts to degender men (cf. Silver 2003). This article supports the argument that whatever the make up of the ageless masculinity ideology that exists, they remain salient in the lives of older men. Studies are needed that direct attention to men’s aging bodies (Turner 2008), the masculinities that older men embody, and how these affect their identity work (cf. Sherman 1994) and everyday performances.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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