Masculinities in Prospect: The Life Course and Chronology

Abstract

Chapters 3 and 4 made the spatialities of home and work their focus. Time was nonetheless important, whether historical time and associated changes in the nature of work and home, biographical time and the shifts within men’s occupational histories and home lives, or everyday time’s unstable division into the porous categories of ‘work’ time and ‘free’ time. This chapter develops the implications of particular temporalities for the contingent nature of masculinity as men move between occupational and domestic environments. Chapter 3 made time recalled by older men its focus, but here we engage with prospective time and the configurations of masculinity which are imagined and indeed planned for. Through data from among younger men and female partners, we explore the implications of both occupationally specific notions of ageing and also heterosexual coupledom (see also, Hockey et al., 2009).