By: Luke Litz

“Don’t be a wuss.”

“No balls, you won’t.”

“Man up.”

Growing up, I heard these phrases and others like them come from my peers to pressure me to do things. I remember multiple experiences where I was told that I needed to wrestle, play football, or perform a silly dare just to “prove” that I was a man. If I did not feel like doing any of those things, I was a “wuss.” The idea that my friends were advancing was not so much concern over whether or not I was having a good time, but whether or not I fit into traditional ideas of “manhood.” Men were supposed to be tough, occasionally reckless, and brave. Most of all, though, men were not supposed to be emotional. What separated us from “the girls” was that we were not sensitive. We were not to have insecurities. Deeply rooted fears were things that were not talked about. We did not practice showing empathy to one another.

Many of you can resonate with this traditional ideal of masculinity, as it has dominated our society over the last several decades. Just as many of my childhood friends had this mindset, my father’s childhood friends did as well. As ideas about what it means to be a man are passed down from one generation to another, it becomes important to consider the implications that those ideas have on not only our friendships but on our father-child relationships as well.

Michael Fellers and Paul Schrodt are communications researchers from West Virginia University and Texas Christian University, respectively. They conducted a study published in the Journal of Family Communication. They wanted to know how the way that a young adult perceived their father’s masculinity affected their level of closeness and satisfaction with their relationship with their father. Specifically, the researchers wanted to see what the difference was between the perception of traditional masculinity and what the researchers called “new masculinity.” They said that traditional masculinity is characterized by the expectation that men be tough, dominant, and powerful. In contrast, new masculinity is characterized by the ability of men to be sensitive, emotionally open, and the willingness to accept equal gender roles.

To find out how masculinity affected the relationship between a father and their adult child, researchers surveyed 227 college students and asked them to complete an online questionnaire. The questionnaire asked students to gauge how traditionally masculine they perceived their fathers to be, how newly masculine they perceived their fathers to be, how much confirmation and affirmation they received from their father, their father’s level of affectionate communication, their relational satisfaction with their father, and their relational closeness on a 7-point scale. They wanted to know whether or not new masculinity led to better relationships between fathers and their adult children.

The researchers found that there was a clear inverse relationship between perceptions of traditional masculinity and feelings of closeness and relational satisfaction with the father. In other words, the more traditionally masculine the child thought their dad was, the less close they felt to him. Also, they found that children who perceived their fathers as displaying high levels of new masculinity tended to also evaluate their relational closeness with their fathers as high. The researchers reasoned that this relationship could be due to traditionally masculine fathers using fewer methods of affirmation and confirmation with their children than fathers who display new masculinity. Fathers who displayed characteristics of new masculinity were not afraid to be nurturing or emotionally supportive for their kids, and that led to closer relationships. As it turns out, children need to be affirmed by their dads.

The findings of this study illustrate the importance of changing our societal expectations revolving around masculinity. Research shows that traditional masculinity is harmful, and it keeps fathers from being close to their children. For men, a willingness to be emotionally open is healthy. As a society, we have begun to change these norms, but more work is needed. Hopefully one day we can be in a place where instead of our kids evaluating their male friends by determining whether or not they are a “wuss,” our children will judge their friendships in a way that encourages kindness, emotional support, and inclusivity.