Three women and a blog, “There is No One Experience of Being a Man”: The Myths That Erases the Childless Man and Male Childlessness

Hadley, Robin ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4254-7648 (2025) Three women and a blog, “There is No One Experience of Being a Man”: The Myths That Erases the Childless Man and Male Childlessness. World Childless Week.

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Abstract

In a previous blog (1) for WCW, I highlighted how ‘It all happens in November when it comes to men: First, the whole month is ‘Movember.’ Second, every 19th November is International Men’s Day (IMD). They all have a common theme – they all are concerned about men and particularly men’s health and well-being.’ However, the focus of this blog is on masculinity and male childlessness across the lifecourse. Here I draw on Kaufman’s (2) argument that, “There is no single masculinity or one experience of being a man.” For decades, however, public discourse, academia, and policy have ignored this crucial truth. The experiences of men, particularly those who are involuntarily childless, are subject to significant and overlooked exclusion, minimisation, and dismissal because society attempts to fit all men into a narrow, singular definition of "Manhood": ‘meneralization ’ (4, 5). This rigid worldview fails to acknowledge that the ‘ways-of-being’ a man and of ‘doing-being’ (6-8) is not a fixed, inherent trait; it is a fluid, contextual performance (9-11). This fixed thinking renders involuntarily childless men invisible, treating them as a "non-category" whose profound emotional experiences, critical health needs, and social identity are systematically dismissed (6-8, 12).