Breadwinner Masculinities

Abstract

Chapter 4 highlighted the importance of paid work in men’s lives showing how central it was to realising a socially valued masculinity. In keeping with this men understood that their principal role in caring was as breadwinner (earner). In one sense this is unsurprising given how in modern Ireland throughout the 20th century to be a primary breadwinner within the marital heterosexual family was the dominant expectation for men (Kennedy 2001; Rush 2004). Ferguson (2002: 124) argues that being the good provider within the heterosexual family, exclusive of a broader concept of masculinity as nurturing, was the traditional way Irish men constructed hegemonic masculinity. In another sense the prominence of breadwinning in the lives of these men is a little surprising considering first the widespread entry of women into the labour market (O’Sullivan 2007), secondly popular discourses depicting men as involved nurturers (Henwood and Procter 2003), and finally the increasingly complex combination of earner–carer relationships in European societies (Daly and Rake 2003: 73). Still studies rank Ireland and Britain amongst the strongest breadwinner models in Europe with France an example of a moderate one and Sweden a weak one (Lewis 1992). Even today, despite women’s radically altered participation in the labour market and the undermining of male breadwinner ideology, male breadwinning practices remain resilient in many European societies (Holter 2007: 431) and especially in Ireland where they comprise a significant minority of household arrangements (Nic Ghiolla Phádraig and Hillard 2007; McGinnity and Russell 2008).