Societal factors impacting male turnover in ECEC

This chapter highlights significant findings about societal factors that impact men’s decisions to enter, remain, or leave the ECEC workforce. We use critical theories of both hegemonic and nonhegemonic masculinity to examine whether and how the term manhood influences the participants’ decisions to stay in or leave the profession. Additionally, we draw on insights gained from previous studies regarding the feminization and the status of the ECE field, and we also pay attention to both national and international efforts for increasing men’s participation in a variety of ECEC systems. Lastly, we comprehensively analyse our interview data to generate a substantive discussion of social factors that emerge from the personal examples and the professional experiences of a diverse group of men who either left or decided to stay in ECEC. Our findings show that reactions and supports of family and friends primarily motivate men to enter and stay in the ECEC workforce, while institutional culture, normative division of labour, and low pay significantly influence men’s decisions to leave the sector.