Learning to Care: Men’s Parental Caregiving for Sons and Daughters in Peru

Abstract

Research on men performing care has become a critical site to explore changes in masculinities. While studies have focused on caring masculinities, Stay-at-home-fathers, and involved fathers in the Global North, this study explores how Peruvian men conceive and perform care. While gender systems and relations in Latin America are changing, the involvement of men as caregivers has not yet been incorporated in efforts to achieve gender equality. Drawing on fourteen semi-structured interviews with male caregivers of adult children with severe mental illness in Lima, this study examines how local gendered expectations shape how men conceive and perform care. I argue that Peruvian men rework the relationship between care and masculinity by engaging with caregiving as a transformative experience. However, they also reproduce hegemonic masculinity, as caregiving becomes valuable when they share their journeys with peers to be casted in good light and regain status. Findings suggest that the men in this study conceptualize care as a skill to be learned; share their journeys as caregivers both to help other and regain status; and are more involved in caring for adult sons than for adult daughters. By providing evidence of experiences of impoverished men in the Global South, this study nuances and advances the scholarship on caring masculinities.