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The Relational male: Reflections on the role of men in Child and Youth Care practice

Thom Garfat

I have been a male Child Care Worker for over thirty years. And during those thirty years I have had the good fortune of being able to pursue direct practice, writing, training and teaching. Mostly, I have worked in the Canadian context, but more recently I have been working in Ireland, which is perhaps the reason why I was approached to write this chapter by Dr Niall McElwee – having had the experience now of being a male Child and Youth Care Worker in both of these contexts. In all of these situations the fact that I was male made a difference, both to me and to those with whom I worked. Not always a positive difference, but a difference none-the-less.

I remember clearly the role as it was first prescribed to me in residential care. I was working at my first job as a Child Care Worker in an emergency shelter for troubled adolescents. Young people came from everywhere, with every possible problem and were placed in this programme because no one knew what else to do with them. Part of our job – a large part – was to keep the place “under control” – to maintain order and discipline. This was, after all, the primary characteristic for evaluating the effectiveness of residential programmes in those days. There were two staff on for every shift, one male and one female. The males role as “protector/enforcer” was clear.

My first interview
It was the spring of 1969, I was in my early 20s, and I had decided I wanted to “work with people”. I had been washing the floors of the local welfare office when I fell into a conversation with the woman who was the Director. I asked her how one got to work with people. She told me to go and see her friend who ran the local emergency shelter for adolescents. “They are always looking for men”, she said. Encouraged by my obvious eligibility for this new work, I phoned up her friend and asked for an interview. He saw me the following day. After a brief conversation, I was immediately put on the temporary casual list and called to work the next day, where I was partnered with a woman who was to become my first teacher in this field.

After about a week of working casual shifts whenever they called, I was asked back in for another interview “this time to decide if they would put me on their permanent casual list.

This is a part of my memory of that interview.

Director: Well, Thom, things seem to have gone pretty well for you this past week. I’ve had some good feedback from the other workers. It seems you are not afraid to get involved with the kids, especially the guys.

Thom: That’s good to hear. I do like the kids.

Director: You don’t feel nervous about the guys? Some of them can be pretty aggressive.

Thom: Well, no. I think I can handle myself if they get physical if that’s what you mean.

Director: So, you’re not concerned that you might have to get physical, like to restrain one of the boys?

Thom: No, not really. Should I be?

Director: Well, a lot of the people who come to work here worry about that. And as you know, we have a number of women on staff so we have to rely on the males pretty much when things get a little out of control. Are you okay with that?

Was I okay with that? Well, of course I was. It fit right in to my underdeveloped adolescent male, rescue the woman, fantasies. It was a part of what guys were supposed to do. It was part of “being a guy", looking after the women in your life. The white knight. The saviour. I knew I could look after the women.

Thom: Well, sure. It’s a part of the role, isn’t it? I can handle it.

Director: Okay, that’s good. Just remember, some of the boys will challenge you, just because you are new, and they will want to see what you are made of, you know, test you.

I knew what he was talking about. I had watched the cowboy movies. A new gunslinger in town – everyone wants to give him a try. See how good he really is. My fantasies were running rampant. Here was a job where I got to be the white knight, and the sheriff. Protector and enforcer. I was going to like this work.

Thom: (chest swelling). That’s okay, I’ve been tested before.

So, in the end I was hired: the new male in the programme, all ready to defend the women, control the children and make the world a safer and better place. Eventually, I was to find out that the protector/enforcer wasn’t the only role for men in Child and Youth Care practice. There was, I would discover, a place for that other side of being male, the side that is sometimes described as sensitive, or feminine, as if somehow the characteristics associated with being this way were the domain of women. But for many years this was the only accepted way to be a male in a programme for adolescents, and for many years it was the role I accepted. And then the transition started.

Beginning the transition
I remember the beginning of the transition like it happened only yesterday. I had been working in the field for a number of years then, comfortable in my role as male. It was still mostly defined by the protector, enforcer, controller, back-up guy characteristics, but with the connections I had made with other men, and with the changing role of men in society, there was also a slowly evolving place for being what I have come to call the “relational male” – one concerned with the quality of the connectedness between myself and the youth. As men, we were slowly finding a role to play in helping young men discover that there is something to being male other than the controlling macho side – that being male does not mean you have to have a hard heart. But this was not a strongly emphasized part of the role. It was mostly, it seems now, a slightly secret, almost subversive movement. From a management and programme perspective, men were still mostly hired for their perceived physical presence and strength.

It was a warm spring evening and there were two boys playing pool in the activity room. We, my partner Susan and I, had decided that one of the boys, Mike, needed to be confronted about something that had just happened. Mike was a young man who had a history of responding aggressively, frequently breaking out into actual physical violence directed towards staff or other youth. Together Susan and I prepared for the necessary confrontation.

Susan: Well, there’s really no choice. He has to be confronted about his actions and it has to be now, because it just happened and if we wait until later he’s just going to deny it.

Thom: I agree. So, Let’s do it together. I'll confront him and you look after any reaction from Bill (the other youth).

Susan: I’d like to do it differently. I'll confront him myself, and if there is a problem, then you can support me.

Thom: But Susan, you know that Mike’s likely to get really upset and we know what happens then. There is a chance he’s gonna get physical.

Susan: I know. But we are always having the men do the confrontation and I think it just teaches the boys that men are the strong ones, the disciplinarians. I don’t think that’s right so I want to do it.

Thom: But what if he gets physical? We always have the men do the heavy confrontations. What if he has to be restrained?

Susan: Then I'll just have to decide what to do. Thom, we've talked about this, me and the other women in the programme, and we are tired of how the men are always doing the heavy discipline. We think that it undermines us with the kids.

Thom: Well, fine, if that’s what you want, do it.

So, off we went to the activity room to confront Mike. I was a little angry with Susan because of her last comment.

Tired of the role, was she? Wanted to take over mine, did she? Fine, let her do it. And she can just handle the consequences of it too!

And she did. We went in, she approached Mike and in a manner very different than mine, she confronted him. As we had predicted he got angry, and Susan dealt with it effectively. In the end, Mike did what he needed to do, there was no physical aggression and no need for physical restraint. The truth is, he was also a little less aggressive and resistant than I had expected him to be. And I was angry with Susan. Not just because of what she had said, but on some strange level, I was also angry with her because her intervention had worked. I hadn’t been needed. I didn’t know it then but I was upset because my role, as it had been defined to date, had just been usurped. I was feeling displaced.

A few weeks later in the team meeting, the whole issue of gender, roles, stereotypes and what we were teaching the young people came up for discussion. The women on the team were angry. They felt that we had all been stuck in pre-defined roles with the young people – and that by being stuck in those roles, we were modelling for the young people that women were weaker and that men were the “real strength” in the programme. They were worried that we were teaching the boys that force is good, physical strength puts you on top. They were concerned that because the men were often ending up in physical confrontations with the boys that ended in restraint, we were teaching the youth that “might makes right”. They wanted a more participatory role in the overall discipline of the youth. They didn’t want us being so protective.

As the discussion unfolded, it turned out the men were angry too. Angry at being, they felt, assigned the role of the protector and enforcer for all these years. They too felt stuck in a role from which they were unsure how to escape. They wanted to be a part of that other aspect of the caring and treatment of troubled young people. They wanted the opportunity to allow the other side of themselves to emerge in practice. But the truth is, no-one really knew what that would look like. Here are some of the questions I remember being raised:

• If the male isn’t going to be the enforcer, what will he do?

• How will the kids, especially the boys, relate to men being “softer”?

• Can a man be less controlling without being perceived as too soft?

• Will the boys loose their respect for the men if the men become less controlling?

• If we don’t use our perceived strength, how will we control the young people?

And, as one angry, confused man on the team put it, “Well, if I am not going to be what I have been raised to be, then what the hell am I going to be?”

Well, we struggled. It wasn’t easy. Not only did we males have to start letting go of our preconditioned, societally reinforced (and demanded) role as the protector, enforcer, controller, but so did everyone else. The females on the staff had to adjust, the kids had to adjust, the parents had to adjust, and the other professionals had to adjust. And it didn’t happen overnight. Twenty-five, thirty or more years of cultural conditioning isn’t easy to shake off. But we started.

One day, years and years later, after I thought I had adjusted, after I thought I had become a relational male, I was visiting a group care programme and watched an interaction between the Child Care Worker and two youth. The two youth, large and aggressive, were in the middle of a confrontation I was sure was headed towards a physical battle. The Child Care Worker, Sylviane, excused herself from our conversation and headed over to where the two boys were in the middle of their confrontation.

All my male protectiveness came rushing back. Even though I was only a visitor, I prepared myself to intervene. It wasn’t necessary. It wasn’t even close to necessary. Sylviane walked over to the two boys, adjusted her presentation of self, got them focussed on her, diffused the situation, re-directed the two boys, and came back to our conversation. No male could have handled it better. No person could have handled it better. I was impressed. I was stunned. I was somewhat deflated but relieved. And, I realised, I had just witnessed the end of the need for males as protectors/enforcers. It was over. Men, as previously constructed in Child and Youth Care practice, were no longer necessary. So, now what?

What do men do now?
I have been fortunate, in both my life and my work, to be engaged with women who were willing and able to help me learn about other ways to be male (Ricks and Garfat, 1992). But it has been my experience that not all men have been so fortunate. Even to this date, I would argue, the role of men in Child and Youth Care is still to a great extent, in many programmes, defined by their perceived ability to be physical. Still, in many programmes, men occupy the traditional role of men in a society, which also has maintained a strong emphasis on the physical male, the emotionally distant person, the classic male (see, for example, Smith 2003b).

Yet at the same time, there has been a strong demand, in many programmes, for the man to be different, for him to model characteristics of maleness other than those associated with the traditional role. And the reality is, I believe, that many of us, as males, are not sure how to do this, or even, truth be told, if we want to do this. The question still remains, for many of the males I meet in my work, “if I am not going to be what I have been raised to be, what the hell am I going to be?”

Recently there have begun to be published articles which reflect a concern about the shortage of males in Child and Youth Care work (See, for example, McElwee 2001; McElwee, Jackson and McKenna-McElwee, 2001) and a concern about how men can/will be in Child and Youth Care practice (See, for example, Smith, 2003a). People are wondering out loud, “Where have all the good men gone?” (McElwee, McKenna-McElwee and Cameron, 2003).

It seems that many men are unsure about how to be male when the role of protector/enforcer is no longer needed. When I was first hired, I was offered a role as a male Child Care Worker, which was fairly clear, and more importantly, it was consistent with the role that I perceived males to play in our culture. Thus, moving into that role was fairly non-stressful. It did not require me to change my perception of self, to adopt behaviours with which I was unfamiliar or, quite frankly, to change. It was easy.

But as I changed, and as the programmes I worked in changed, we found it becoming harder and harder to hire the “type” of male we were looking for to work with youth. It seemed that our desire to hire “relational males” out-paced the changes in the cultures in which we worked. Constantly in interviews we met men who were still embedded in the traditional role, who perceived themselves as the protector/enforcer. It seemed that Child and Youth Care practice was evolving at a different pace than the general society. Under the old definitions we were able to find lots of “good men”. Under the new definition we were struggling to find the men that we wanted. So, for us, it was not so much a question of “where have all the good men gone?” so much as it was a question of “where are the new men?”. We found ourselves looking, in the end, for males who we believed would be open to change. Males who could become what we believed the young people
needed them to be.

All of this has lead me to wonder: If the way we are defining the role of men in Child and Youth Care practice is incongruent with the generally perceived role of men in society, why would they bother to apply to work with us? If what we offer the average male is the demand to be different than the way he has constructed himself then why should he want to apply? Why would anyone want to work in a place where he, as he knows himself to be, is not actually wanted? Where the characteristics he has spent years developing, are the very characteristics that programmes are asking him to give up?

I am not suggesting that all males are still raised, and develop, within the traditional model. There are many relational men in the world. But the change to the “new” male in our society has not progressed as rapidly as some might have wished. There are still a majority of males who are living within the traditionally prescribed roles.

Why are we having trouble attracting males to the field?
Here are some reasons why I, based solely on my practice experience in both Canada and Ireland, think we are having trouble attracting males in to the field:

• The role of male as it is now becoming defined in the field is still incongruent with the general norm for males in our society.

• Our invitation to males to participate in our programmes implies to many of them a demand that they change who and how they experience themselves to be.

• Now that the male role of protector/enforcer is less in demand, and the role of Child and Youth Care Worker has shifted to be less controlling and more therapeutic, many males do not see a role for themselves. Caring is still seen, in general, as a female duty.

• The role of the relational male is still viewed with some suspicion, as if it is somehow a deviant role.

In essence, then, I believe that we are having trouble attracting the type of male we are wanting to the field is because the average male does not see a clear role for himself which fits with his image of himself.

Helping men to change
Recently, in one of his regular columns in CYC-Net (https://www.cyc-net.org) Mark Smith was reflecting on “Why should men care” (Smith, 2003b). In this column he identified that an organisation in Scotland recently received a grant to attract men to Child and Youth Care and to develop a particular training programme for those men so recruited. This is undoubtedly a wonderful opportunity and one which may provide important information for the field. It raises the question, however, of “how does one help men to change?” and the equally intriguing question of “which men can and will change?”. Surely we do not think that all men can easily develop into the relational male. Or that all programmes can support such a change? And what about the men who are currently in programmes, where the traditional male role is, and has been for years, supported by the structures of the programme? How will we help them to change?

Changing how and who you are is not an easy task, even for those of us involved in the helping field. For men to change within their programmes there needs to be a concurrent change in the programme itself. For if a programme continues to demand that men play the traditional role, they will. For men to change, they will need:

• The opportunity to explore with other men what it means to be male.

• The opportunity to explore what it means to be men in the helping field.

• The chance to do this exploration with women as well as with men.

• Programme changes, which reflect the newly defined role of men (philosophy, values, beliefs) and women.

• Support for those times when they struggle with the role change.

• Supervision which supports an exploration of their maleness in the role of helper.

• Help in developing different skills associated with being more relational.

• Supports in their non-work life for these changes.

• A lifting of the veil of secrecy which surrounds the expression of men's experiences, as men, in working with young people.

• Committed male role models who have been through the process of change themselves.

If we are going to help men to be different, then we have to create a context which will support this change. It is not enough to simply demand that change occur, as we all know too well from our work with young people. Somehow, we have to define the role of men in Child and Youth Care so that it becomes attractive to the type of males we wish to attract. We need to be specific about why we want other men to join with us in this field.

An afterword or two
The field of Child and Youth Care has historically involved men in a role that was congruent with the culturally perceived role of men. As the field has changed, it seems less and less men are attracted to it. Part of the reason for this may be that we are asking men to assume a role in Child and Youth Care which is still inconsistent with the predominant perception of the role of men.

Some of us have been fortunate to have had experiences which have demanded, and provided the context for, us to allow a different part of our male selves to emerge. We have had the support, and sometimes the guidance, to encourage this change. Not all men have had this experience.

If we are to attract more men in to the field, we have to find a way to describe and advertise the experience of men in the field in a manner which is attractive to men. We need to be talking about what it means to be male in this field, and we need to be able to explain why we need men in the field. We need to create the conditions in our programmes which will support men in being different.

Young boys and girls need to have the experience of meeting men, and women, who are able to successfully inhabit their roles in ways other than the traditionally defined ones. They need to encounter men who are non-controlling, emotionally less distant, able to explore self, willing to engage in healthy emotional relationships and capable of facilitation rather than direction. It is only through encountering such men that young people can learn that there are alternatives for themselves as well.

When I first started in this field the role of men was fairly clearly prescribed. Now, it seems, as programmes have changed, the role is less clear. Perhaps this is where we need to begin if we are to attract more “good men” to the field. We need to answer, publicly, the question asked so many years ago by that angry and confused male, when he demanded, “if I am not going to be what I have been raised to be, what the hell am I going to be?”

If we can’t answer this question clearly, then we will continue to have trouble attracting men to the field.

References

McElwee, C.N. (March, 2001) “Male Practitioners in Child and Youth Care: An endangered species?” International Child and Youth Care Network. CYC-Online. Issue 26. Retrieved from:
https://www.cyc-net.org/CYC-Online /cycol-0401-irishideas.html

McElwee, C.N., Jackson, A.and McKenna-McElwee, S. (2001). Fewer Men on Campus: Student Perceptions of Gender Imbalance in Studying Social Care/Child and Youth Care at the Athlone Institute of Technology, Ireland. Athlone: Resident Managers. Association/SocSci Publishing.

McElwee, C.N, Cameron, B. and McKenna-McElwee, S. (Aug. 2003). Where Have all the Good Men Gone? Exploring Aspects of Maleness in Child and Youth Care. Conference presentation. 7th International Child and Youth Care Conference, Victoria, B.C. Canada.

Ricks, F., and Garfat, T. (1992). Educating the enemy: A correspondence on feminist influences in Child and Youth Care. Journal of Child and Youth Care, 7;2. pp. 75-94.

Smith, M. (2003a) “Rub a Dub, Dub: Three Men in a Pub”. CYC-Net On-line. Retrieved from:
https://www.cyc-net.org/CYC-Online /cycol-0603-smith.html

Smith, M. (2003b). Why Should Men Care? CYC-Net Online. Retrieved from:
https://www.cyc-net.org/CYC-Online /cycol-1003-smith.html

This feature: Chapter 3 from McElwee, N., McKenna-McElwee, S., Jackson, A. and Cameron, B. (2004). Where have all the good men gone? Exploring males in Child and Youth Care in Ireland. Center for Child and Youth Care Learning, Athlone Institute of Technology, pages 20-27