Since the women’s movement of the 1970s, there has been an increasing tendency to identify and describe an ever-growing number of different "masculinities," such as inclusive masculinity, caring masculinity, toxic masculinity, flexible masculinity, and hegemonic masculinity.1 The study of men is at risk of becoming a study of typologies of masculinities.

Masculinity and femininity are concepts of a certain historical era that have outgrown their usefulness. Women and men have been thought of as having fundamentally different and complementary characteristics, most frequently measured in psychological traits. In addition, the relationship structure between men and women has been hierarchical, with men in the dominant position.

Recent efforts to define masculinity are studying what is called caring masculinities. Sociologist Karla Elliott proposes that caring masculinities are masculine identities that reject domination and its associated traits and embrace the values of care such as positive emotion, interdependence, and relationality.2 Men’s practice of caring is theorized to lead to fundamentally different ways for men and women to relate to each other in public and private places.

For much of human history, “femininity” and “masculinity” were unknown terms. In the 19th and 20th centuries, scholars and researchers began using these constructions to describe how people conform to or transgress gendered expectations.3 Masculinity and femininity are a way of thinking about men and women that has become so widely accepted that it seems like a natural or inherent part of life rather than a new or novel idea.

Our concepts of masculinity and femininity came along with the separation of men and women into "separate spheres" of living that the Industrial Revolution produced. The feminist movement brought masculinity to the forefront of sociological and psychological study. Raewyn Connell and her colleagues popularized the study of "masculinities."4 Connell reminds us that "masculinity" as we now use it is a recent historical product.

One couple’s coach coined the idea that........

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