It’s Not That Men Don’t Care, It’s That Caring Is Socially Risky

Men are often less likely to publicly express concern about issues that are framed around care, climate change being a familiar example. The usual explanations come quickly: politics, denial, lack of information, or indifference. Those factors matter. But new research suggests something else is also at work. For many men, the question is not whether they care, but whether showing that care feels socially safe.

This idea draws on what social psychologists call precarious manhood, the notion that masculinity is not automatic or permanent, but something that must be earned, displayed, and defended in social settings (Vandello et al., 2008; Vandello & Bosson, 2013). When masculinity feels fragile, men become more attentive to how their actions and attitudes will be judged by others.

A recent study by Haselhuhn (2025) examined this dynamic by looking not just at differences between men and women, but at differences among men. Across several large surveys and experiments conducted in different countries, researchers asked how strongly men felt pressure to maintain their masculinity and how that pressure related to their views about climate change. Importantly, the study does not claim that masculinity is the main driver of climate attitudes, nor that it replaces politics, education, or real-world conditions. Instead, it focuses on how masculinity concerns shape what men feel comfortable expressing in public.

The core finding is straightforward but revealing. Men who express concern about climate change tend to be seen as more caring, compassionate, and warm. These qualities are widely viewed as positive, but they are also commonly coded as feminine. For men who feel pressure to appear masculine, this creates a dilemma. Expressing concern can risk being seen as less masculine, even if the concern itself is genuine.

This helps explain why disengagement is often misunderstood. The study does not suggest that men lack values or concern. Rather, it shows how men manage social judgment. When masculinity feels like something that can be easily questioned or lost, men may avoid publicly aligning themselves with issues that carry a gendered social cost.

It is important to be clear about what these findings do, and do not, show. The relationships identified in the study are statistically small. Masculinity concerns are not the strongest predictor of climate attitudes, and they do not outweigh political ideology, education, or material incentives. But these effects are consistent and comparable in size to the overall gender gap in climate concern itself. That makes them meaningful as a background social pressure, one that quietly shapes who feels able to speak up and who stays silent.

The study also identifies a key mechanism behind this pattern. Masculinity concerns mattered most when warmth and care were strongly seen as feminine traits. In other words, it is not care itself that drives disengagement, but how care is socially defined. This reinforces a relational view of masculinity: men respond to the expectations and penalties embedded in social norms, not just to their own beliefs.

There is also a hopeful insight here. When care and warmth are not tightly linked to femininity, the influence of masculinity concerns weakens. That means these dynamics are not fixed or inevitable. Gender norms are social creations, and social meanings can change.

This matters well beyond climate change. The same pattern shows up across men’s health and public health more broadly, in prevention, mental health, and help-seeking. Men often disengage when responsibility, vulnerability, or care feel socially risky. Public health efforts that focus only on information or motivation, without addressing these social meanings, are likely to fall short.

A relational masculinity approach offers a different path. Instead of asking men to abandon their identities, it asks how systems, messages, and institutions can make care feel legitimate, respected, and compatible with masculinity. The real question is not “Why don’t men care?” but “When does caring feel safe?”

Changing the answer to that question has implications not just for climate action, but for how we invite men into shared responsibility across many of the challenges we face.

References

• Haselhuhn, M. P. (2025). Man enough to save the planet? Masculinity concerns predict attitudes toward climate change. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 107, 102772.

• Vandello, J. A., & Bosson, J. K. (2013). Hard won and easily lost: A review and synthesis of theory and research on precarious manhood. Psychology of Men and Masculinity, 14, 101–113.

• Vandello, J. A., Cohen, D., Burnaford, R. M., & Weaver, J. R. (2008). Precarious manhood. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 1325–1339.