I. INTRODUCTION

Elementary school teaching is a gendered occupation. In the United States, 88% of elementary school teachers and 60% of elementary school principals are female. In the primary grades (kindergarten through third grades), women comprise 98% of the teachers. The elementary school environment has been described as a site of children's transition from the family to the public sphere (Best, 1983). The gender composition of the occupation has not changed in forty years aside from the marked increase in the proportion of female principals. Elementary school teaching is one of the few predominately female occupations that are considered professional. Most occupations with equivalent pay, autonomy, and privilege are predominately male. (Williams, 1993)
Because the phenomenon of gendered organizations has been recognized as an important locus of analysis for feminist research, considerable literature is available. Understandably the focus has been on the problems faced by women in trying to enter predominately male jobs. There has, however, been some work into the issue of males "crossing over" into female jobs. (Reskin & Roos, 1990) Elementary school teaching, like social work, librarianship, and nursing, has been identified as a site worth examining to determine what happens to men who do "women's work". (Williams, 1989) The issue of why the occupation remains so gendered is still open to interpretation as is the question of how this genderedness integrates into, and supports, the larger division of labor.
This paper examines what male elementary school teachers, particularly those in the primary grades, actually experience and what that experience means to them. It looks at how they construct their own masculinities on a daily basis, how they perceive their dramatic under-representation in the occupation and what meanings this arrangement has for them. Finally, it describes their feelings and ideas about the issue of increasing the number of males in elementary teaching. I believe that this knowledge will help in the identification of any mechanisms that work to reproduce the gender order by obstructing men's entrance into predominately female occupations.

II. RESEARCH CONTEXT

My research settles in among several bodies of literature: the literature of the gendered nature of organizations and work, the developing literature of the social construction of masculinities, and the literature on doing feminist research. A brief overview of each is all that is necessary to show their relevance and to position this research relative to them.
In order to increase the opportunities for women and break down the barriers that exist between them and positions of power, privilege, and prestige, many scholars have called for an assessment of the manner by which we reconstitute the gender order on a regular basis. Of particular interest is the way we continue to reproduce the gender order through the sexual division of labor, particularly the way we reproduce the hierarchy of gendered jobs and occupations. (Acker, 1988; Cockburn, 1983; Kanter, 1977; Leidner, 1991; Reskin & Roos, 1990; Williams, 1989)
While most studies are centered on the experiences of women, some (Bradley, 1989 & 1993; England & Herbert, 1993; Williams, 1989 & 1991) looked at the phenomenon of men working in predominately female occupations. Several themes occur across many of these studies. First, is the apparent ease with which males promote to higher positions within the female occupations (Williams, 1991). Second, males enjoy a kind of peaceful coexistence with female coworkers as compared with women in predominately male occupations who experience discrimination and harassment (Acker, 1990). Finally, the major concern for men in women's work, according to most of these studies was the psychological stress of operating outside the norms of masculinity. (Levine, 1978; Williams, 1989) Most studies listed elementary school teaching as a prime example of an occupation replete with these patterns.
The gendered division of labor is, for many feminists, the basis for the subordination of women. Heidi Hartmann (1981), in exploring the relationship between patriarchal ideology and capitalism (dual system theory), suggests that there is an affinity between the stereotypical characteristics associated with masculinity and the needs of capitalism. It is through socialization, she argues, that men take up these characteristics and by doing so ensure their opportunity for success. Sandra Harding (1981) explains that the societal division of labor that puts children into the exclusive care of women not only supports, but creates, the patriarchal ideology as children learn their gender identity along with the ideology. Taking the mothering-capitalism nexus a bit further, Nancy Chodorow (1979), using Freudian theories of child development, says that women, through mothering, reproduce workers for the capitalist system in addition to reproducing more mothers. So there is a sex-based division of values as well as labor that must be addressed. This division was addressed by scholars from the Frankfurt School, particularly Horkheimer (1936), and stressed by Slater (1970). Their thesis is that males are ideologically socialized to be productive workers in the capitalist system. Slater suggests that males may have no identity whatsoever outside the world of work. He details the kinds of personality traits that are most functional in the capitalist work world and demonstrates the price men pay in terms of limited emotionality and expression, leading ultimately to "loneliness," the logical and devastating endpoint of the quest for individualism. Robert Connell (1987) describes the structure of gender as having three pillars: a hierarchy of power, division of labor, and distribution of cathexsis. He maintains that in any given period and place there are multiple masculinities and femininities with one form of masculinity having hegemony and one form of femininity being emphasized. Subordinated masculinities can be found in the lives of working class and gay men and men of color. Gerschick and Miller (1994) would add men with physical disabilities to the list of subordinated masculinities and I am suggesting with this article that some men who choose "feminine" vocations should also be considered subordinated.
To get a clear picture of the structure of gender and its relationship to capitalist patriarchy, Nancy Hartsock (1983) suggests a "feminist standpoint," a perspective based in the lived experiences of women. Much like Freire's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" (1984), a feminist standpoint critiques the gender order from the perspective of those with the least vested interest in the existing relations. From this marginalized perspective, one can view two important phenomena. First, we are provided with a view of the mechanisms of oppression and how they operate on a daily basis. Second, we can gain an unbiased insight into the lived experiences of non-hegemonic men and women. Hartsock claims that from the feminist standpoint one can conceive of an image of a society that is not dependent on any form of "abstract masculinity," but rather a "fully human community." It is my intention to repair what I see as "theoretical failure" (Burawoy, 1991) in some strands of socialist/feminist theory. Through my research I intend to add a different standpoint for consideration: one that is rooted in the lived experiences of males who purposely live their lives through non-hegemonic ways of doing masculinity.

III. RESEARCH METHODS

To paraphrase Oakley (1981), I wanted to talk with men about the very personal business of being male in a predominately female occupation. Franklin (1984) and Kimmell (1991) are among those who call for new ways of deeply penetrating the surface of men's lives. I wanted to pose questions to men that are more often posed to women about their experiences entering and remaining in gender-atypical occupations. Bell and Yalum (1990) advise us that men do not see themselves as gendered. At least they do not see gender as an organizing force in their lives.
I selected qualitative research methods because I didn't know a priori what I was looking for and because I wanted to generate data rich in detail embedded in context. For this reason I chose in-depth interviewing, or "ethnographic" interviewing (Spradley, 1979). The interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed. The transcripts were reviewed and extensive analytical memos written. Interviews began with an open-ended question such as asking them to tell me about getting into teaching. Subsequent questions flowed from my list of prompts designed to elicit rich detail. Other questions were framed around what problems the participants encountered in the course of their work lives (Harper, 1994).
Each initial interview lasted approximately one hour to 90 minutes. I asked each participant for permission to return if I needed to clarify or expand on responses. I ensured that my questions, demeanor, and interview style framed the conversations in egalitarian terms. Interviews, in other words, were conversational, non-hierarchical and based in an ethic of caring (Patton, 1990). My own stance reflected a kind of naive ignorance, inviting them to teach me about their lives. The idea was to catch men in what would not typically be considered routine stances in terms of what they say, how they say it and who among them express these. Rubin (1984) and Komarovsky (1962) both point to the issue of the lack of emotionality and expressiveness on the part of males in interviews. It is possible that this is over-generalized and I went into the project challenging some of these stereotypes and assuming for the moment that the stereotypes are not true (Cohen, 1991)
In speaking with men it is important to listen carefully to what they say, treat what they say as real and honest responses, and not conclude that we are hearing falsifications. I wanted to listen keenly to what aspects of teaching men actually emphasized. I expressed respect for, and concern about, others by learning about them, their perspective, their world, and by being personally involved (Patton, 1990). Norman Denzin offers up the idea of interpretive interactional approach. The basic question is how people live and give meaning to lives and capture these meanings in written, narrative, and oral forms (Denzin, 1989). Robert Traver (1987) says narrative has long been a way to measure our culture. There is a kind of generalizability that comes out of sharing stories and finding the commonalties that may exist. One of my challenges was to help men give voice to their lives in ways they have not done before.
My sampling strategy was fairly straight forward. I used a directory published by the local Office of Education (a public document available to anyone who wishes to purchase it) to determine the school addresses of male teachers. I then sent them personal letters at their respective school addresses. At the end of each interview I requested the names of any male teachers that the participant could provide for further interviews. My target was to interview as many K-3 teachers as possible. I focused on K-3 because it is at this grade level that males are most under-represented. Several of the teachers I interviewed have reassigned since the directory was published and therefore were not in my target grades at the time of the interview. The directory showed that within the district there are 131 elementary schools with 132,000 students. 62% of the principals are female, 13% of the K-6 teachers are male, and 2% (fifty) of those teaching K-3 are male. My goal was to interview at least thirty teachers. Many of the males who are listed in the directory teach "special courses," such as computer classes or physical education. Since I am interested in the experiences associated with long-term relationships with children, I will not be focusing on this group at this time. A secondary aim in my sampling is to increase the diversity of my sample as much as possible along race class, sexuality, experience, and marital and family status parameters. This goal was not entirely within my control since I can only draw from the total population of fifty currently employed in the county. My objective, however, was diversity, rather than some kind of representativeness. I ultimately interviewed eighteen men.
The analysis of interview data was an ongoing process. Coding took place often during the transcription process itself. Codes were inductively generated primarily, but some were taken from the existing literature and from my previous research, what Miles and Huberman (1984) would call a "start list." In general, the analysis followed the grounded theory approach with some of the particular techniques coming from James Spradley's "Developmental Research Sequence." (Spradley, 1979). The reason for this is that by using the framework of Spradley and the coding logic of grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) the process lent itself well to computer-aided analysis and I used the NUD-IST program. NUD-IST (non-numerical, unstructured data indexing, searching, and theorizing) allows the researcher to introduce any text document into the program and search the text for emerging patterns of meaning (Richards and Richards, 1994). Memoing, categorizing, and theorizing can be accomplished from within the program and these become further data for coding. Subsequent interview transcripts are added according to the "constant comparison" method of Glaser and Strauss. This means that all interview transcripts are re-analyzed upon the addition of each new transcript.
Finally, there are two issues that I believe must be addressed in any research: the perspective of the researcher and protection of the human participants. My perspective is best understood in the context of the evolution of the research topic itself. This project began as a simple survey of teachers in which I asked them what they liked "most" and "least" about teaching. The most significant finding was that there were several responses that appeared on male teachers' response forms that did not appear on females'. These dislikes pertained mostly to issues of differential job assignments, closer scrutiny, and constraints on teaching style. A separate project, involving interviewing children about television programs and gender, took me into the classrooms of two male teachers with whom I had informal discussions regarding their teaching experiences. Some of the remarks made by these men resonated with the responses I had obtained on the earlier survey. This piqued my interest in a more organized approach to researching the lives of male elementary school teachers and I subsequently interviewed seven for a project associated with a qualitative methods seminar. This background propels me deeper into the lived experiences of male teachers and means that I bring a certain amount of background knowledge with me to the project. In addition, I was the "stay-at-home" primary parent for my children for several years and worked as a paramedic - an occupation with many "feminine" care-giving characteristics- for almost fifteen years. For the last several years, I have been part of a small group of men who present alternative visions of gender and masculinity to young males through guest presentations at local schools. Through these experiences I feel I bring with me considerable sensitivity to gender-atypical situations.
Some early findings clearly indicated that many of the responses from these men could put them at risk in their employment. First, some are quite critical of the administration of the school in general. Second, like employees in other bureaucracies, many have opted to operate outside what they define as overly rigid, constraining, and unproductive work rules. Third, almost all are fearful that some portions of what they have to say may be misconstrued by administrators, peers, parents of children, or the public. For these reasons, I have taken all necessary precautions to ensure that the comments these men make to me cannot be linked to them in any way. All identifiers have been purged from the report prior to publication.

IV. FINDINGS

patterns have emerged from male teachers' narratives and are used here to organize the findings of the project. First, they all acknowledge being under closer scrutiny than their female peers regarding contact with the children. Second, the issue of "providing a male role model" is problematic for many of the men. In particular, there is ambiguity regarding what kind of male role model they feel they are expected to portray. Third, there are tasks that are assigned according to gender that they describe in terms of being impediments to their teaching. Fourth, they frequently receive unsolicited information alluding to their appropriateness for positions away from small children. I devote the last two sections to their ideas about increasing the number of male teachers and to their descriptions of the culture in which they are immersed.

Closer scrutiny

Most school districts have adopted policies regarding contact with the children. Whether these policies are related to issues of molestation, corporal punishment, or simply invasion of privacy, each district has in one way or another instructed personnel on how to negotiate the issue of being close enough to respond to students' needs while maintaining enough distance to protect teachers and the district from any legal claims. All of the teachers contend that these policies are enforced differentially for males and females. Although many claim that they understand the greater concern over male personnel, they also state that this differential application results in significant modifications in their approach to teaching, thus exacerbating the difference between them and their female peers.
Adam, who teaches second grade, told me that he feels as though he has to make special arrangements in order to accomplish what his female peers seemingly manage to do without much preparation. This idea of having to do more in order to fulfill job obligations arose in many forms throughout this project.

The women can take off with their classes without another adult and no one says anything. Let me do that and I'd be up for discipline. I can't even have one of the kids' dads accompany me, it has to be a woman. They don't give any explanation, just give me that "of course this should make perfect sense" look.

Eduardo, a combination third/fourth grade teacher also expressed some anger over being under suspicion.

It's no wonder that the kids feel better around the women. We have district guidelines about touching the children. Basically, if you don't have to, don't. The women fairly well ignore the rules, as they should, we all should. These kids need hugs and hand holding at their age. The problem is when the women do it, they're just doing what's natural. If I do it, I get hard looks. I even got lectured to by one of the district staff. I was told outright that as a man, my actions with children are, of course, more open to criticism. Why of course?

The question, "Why of course?" points to a deeper dissatisfaction than simply that attached to being under scrutiny. It also indicates that the men are unhappy with the principle being so imbedded into the teaching culture that it apparently needs no further explanation, even when, on that rare occasion, someone protests.
It is interesting how the notion of elementary teaching as an extension of women's "natural" talents and propensities so frequently arises in the narratives of these men. Bill, a kindergarten teacher, admits that within his classroom he operates with one part of himself always monitoring his activities as though from the perspective of a critical observer.

Uh huh. It's the society we live in; males are suspect more than females. Females in this profession working with children are allowed by society, as a whole, teachers, parents, students - to be more physical with children. Female teachers at school can have a child sitting on their lap during class-time, & very few people would give it a second thought. It's natural, it's common. No one would ever think that there was anything wrong going on. But, if someone walked into this room, & I had someone, a child, sitting on my lap, immediately some red flags would go up in most people's minds about "Is this right? Is this common?"

Without realizing it, much of the energy expended by the men in this study was in terms of avoiding situations that could be interpreted negatively. In this respect, they seem to be guided more by proscription than prescription. Sam Keen (1991:6) makes an analogy between the lives of contemporary men and "involvement in a night battle in a jungle against an unseen foe" in which voices shout out criticisms of presumably undesirable behavior without supplying clues as to what to do.
Barbara Reskin (1991) talks about how women's assignment to child care falls under the "natural" talents of women. Men are relieved from it and the work is devalued . Society obtains cheap child care and women are handicapped by it. When things are "natural" they are not rewarded. She also takes a conflict view by proposing that the separation of men and women prevents them from working as equals which would diminish the superiority of men. In addition she suggests that the social construction of primary teachers has been laden with the features that surround the construction of "mother" and "female." There are also negative constructs such as "homosexual" and "pedophile". Allan (1993) proposes that these negative images act as a kind of social control mechanism to keep the number of male teachers at a minimum. Foucault (1978) Sedgewick (1985) and Owens (1992) all suggest that the social construction of homophobia is a ritualized mechanism of social control. Male homosexuality has been conveniently conflated with pedophilia.
James King (1995) tells of how we openly recruit men into teaching while covertly sabotaging them by scrutinizing those that are not married or those that "act funny". Nais (1989) describes primary teaching as requiring teaching from personal values, especially from an ethic of caring. The process of teaching at the primary grades is one that builds and maintains close relationships. This is congruent with Gilligan (1982) and her idea of feminist views of female moral development. The emphasis in primary teaching is on the nurturing of the individual with substantive material being introduced in the process. The teacher must "be there" for the student (Noddings, 1984). The overwhelming evidence is that men do, in fact, interact with children in these ways so the question remains why they are still so under represented.

Male role model

Jim Allan (1993) found that male teachers are faced with conflict and contradictions in trying to walk a very thin line between hyper- and hypo-masculinity. Being perceived as a masculine role model puts an extra burden on male teachers. Trying to negotiate the contradictions throughout each day can take an incredible emotional toll. Allan's fear is that men are being forced out of elementary teaching by the strong gender presence. Their leaving reproduces the gendered structure of the occupation. Seifert (1988) discusses the contradiction involved in hiring more males in order to provide role models. If nurturing males are hired, they will not reflect the model that many parents are asking for, a traditional male. Seifert calls this his "compensation hypothesis".
The proportion of children who are growing up in single parent household is on the increase. The majority of these parents are women and almost every teacher I interviewed told me that these parents expressed relief that their sons would have a male influence. Javier, a third grade teacher, echoed what became a common theme in these interviews.

I've had so many parents, especially single moms, come in and tell me how happy they are that their son is going to have a male teacher. I asked one woman why that made her so happy and she told me she was becoming concerned because her son was getting into art and poetry a little too much. God, I love poetry and try to get all my students hooked on it. I didn't know what to say to her.

The ambiguity of the situation was not lost on Keith, a gay man who teaches first grade.

You know, it begs the question, like well, what's, what is their standard. 'Cause it's all you know, in the eye of the beholder. What is their standard of masculinity? What is masculine to them? If it's the testosterone you know, beer drinking, football playing, uh, bowling night on Wednesday, and poker night on Friday you know, smoking the cigars men, that ain't me, you know. (Laughs)

Interestingly, it was not just children of single parents who would supposedly benefit from a male role model. Roger, a kindergarten teacher, can compare his time teaching in an impoverished area with his current assignment in a school predominately populated by children from upper socioeconomic strata.

What we find in this area… and this is my personal I think insight, we find in this area that's very affluent that the majority of mothers stay in the home, choose to work at home, or work as a housewife if you will and so the fathers are out there being doctors and lawyers and they work A LOT! and it's my opinion that these students don't have a lot of interaction with their fathers and so I kind of take that on. I don't, no I don't take that on, I fill that role for them I think in many capacities.

When I asked the men to describe their perceptions of modeling masculinity for the girls in their classes, their responses were a bit different. Here are narratives from Dave, a fifth grade teacher, and Keith, first grade.

[Dave]: They need to see that men are not the kind of people that will leave their families, um, that will beat their kids, uh, that will withhold their child support, that will get drunk on Friday nights, or whatever.

[Keith]: And all I'm providing is an alternate. Or supplemental male role model so that they can grow up having experience with other males. (Using a child's voice) "Oh well, I know my daddy, and now I know my teacher, and they're both males. And they're both alike in some ways, and they're both very different in some ways."

Typically, answers regarding interactions with girls were framed in a more "proactive" form of speech than responses about boys. More of the teachers expressed the idea that they consciously strategized about their presentation of self to girls and this strategizing involved an element of counter-stereotyping.
Williams' (1989) discovered that when workers enter gender-atypical occupations, they do not change the gendered nature of the occupation at all but somehow manage to renegotiate the internal workings so that they actually emphasize their own stereotypical gendered characteristics. I appears that many of these teachers are doing just the opposite. But often this involves treading a delicately fine path between displaying enough "maleness" to satisfy the perceived needs of father-deficient children (and to allay any suspicions) and providing the kind of warmth and closeness to meet the needs of young children. We need to look at how men negotiate these contradictions between being "real men" and "real teachers." Gold and Reis (1982) surveyed the empirical research on a couple of issues: the effects of gender on children and a survey of the literature on the relative masculinity of males in such a predominately female occupation. They found no significant advantage in having males teach. Their conclusion, however, is based on the fact that boys with male teacher didn't score any higher on tests for "masculine sex-role identification" than boys with female teachers. Their position ultimately comes down to there being no advantage to hiring male teachers. On the other hand, their own meta-analysis could be interpreted to demonstrate that males do not seem to pass on stereotypical roles any more than female teachers do. Allan's (1993) criticism of the research is that much of this material has legitimized some "folk theories" regarding male teachers. One is that some of the men are just "doing time" until they can get promoted to more lucrative, powerful positions. Another is that those who are interested in doing "women's work" are effeminate. Allan says all of this ignores the real lived experiences of men who do this work. However, missing from Allan's critique is any assessment of the consequences arising from these myths, particularly the need for the men themselves to negotiate around and through them.
Go to page2

MENSIGHT About Archive Links Advertise TMC Home SPONSOR Syndicated careers columnist Dr. Marty Nemko offers open public access to his archive of career advise: How Do I Become  a Sponsor?
MENSIGHT Discuss this article on The Men's Center Forum.	E-mail: , Webmaster  Copyright © 1998-2001 by The Men's Resource Network, Inc./TheMensCenter.com.  All rights reserved. Revised:10 Dec 2004