Nurture & Care

Our next call is on Monday before the election. It is a perfect time to step away from the fray and bring our attention to who we are becoming. Not because of an election. But because of our purpose and intention. Our commitment to become better men.

I was struck by research on voting and the gender gap (Michael Sokolove opinion piece behind NY Times paywall). It seems that:

Women tend to cast votes based on what they perceive as the overall benefit to the nation and their communities. Men are more self-interested.

[I]ssues are not equally salient for them. The man cares; he just doesn’t care as much. His main concern is more likely to be the balance in his 401(k) account.

“Women think about government in terms of the well-being of the country,” says Melissa Deckman, a professor of political science at Washington College in Maryland who has written extensively on the gender gap. “Men are much more likely to think about it in terms of their wallet. Their bottom line is, how does this affect me?”

I’ve heard it said that the opposite of rape culture is nurturance culture. It seems we have a pattern where men care less for the whole. It’s like we have offloaded that responsibility to women. 

We also know that we tend to have a harder time connecting. We tend more towards loneliness. None of these are universally true. But they are patterns that merit our attention. I wonder if getting better at connection would also make us care more for each other and the whole.

What would it take to care more?

Historically, men have been willing to lay their lives for the well being of the nation or the people. It seems then that we do care.

Can we turn care into nurture?

It would be good to bridge this gender gap. Elections seem to hinge on it.

Saludos,

Gibrán