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Men and Masculinities

The viral uptake and future of “mankeeping”

Angelica and Dylan standing outside

Angelica Ferrara, Dylan Vergara

In October 2024, Clayman Institute Postdoctoral Fellow Angelica Ferrara and Research Assistant Dylan P. Vergara published a peer-reviewed paper in Psychology of Men & Masculinities advancing the theory of “mankeeping.” Building on the existing sociological term “kinkeeping,” mankeeping describes the unreciprocated work that women do to manage the emotional and social needs of men in their lives, which Ferrara and Vergara see as a contemporary and under-recognized form of labor resulting from men’s declining social networks. The research has since spread feminist language across diverse spaces across the internet globally. This diffusion is changing what people mean when they say “mankeeping.” 

Distinct from parenting or other caregiving relationships, and in contrast to balanced friendships between men and women, a mankeeping dynamic is one in which women teach social skills and do the labor of making and maintaining friendships on behalf of the cisgender, often heterosexual men in their lives. Mankeeping can look like a woman organizing a husband’s social calendar, buying birthday cards on behalf of a boyfriend (for his friends), or providing the primary emotional support for a brother – without receiving similar labor in return. Ferrara’s and Vergara’s research links low levels of emotionally supportive friendships among cisgender men in the U.S. and U.K. to an unbalanced emotional and social demand on the women in their lives. This demand, in turn, may lead to decreased wellbeing for women, when they give more time and emotional resources than they receive in these relationships. Ferrara previously has shared details of this research with the Clayman Institute. This time, however, questions around the meaning of mankeeping’s viral uptake were the center of her recent presentation to the faculty research fellows.

Mankeeping is no longer a specialized academic term hiding behind the paywall of an academic publisher. Magazinesblogslocal news stations, and social media accounts with mass followings reveal a widespread recognition of this dynamic from women across classes and nationalities. Ferrara is surprised and excited by the uptake, saying the term may have the potential to do feminist work when it “gives women language and a sense of empowerment around their grievances.” 

At the same time, popular sources from lifestyle magazines to social media accounts are less likely to attend to the academic nuances of “mankeeping” and instead use it for new and larger contexts, from unfair distributions of mental labor to feeling talked over by men. According to Ferrara, “The concept is taking on new meaning, for better and for worse.” For instance, one woman in a local news report from Jacksonville, Florida, complained about making appointments for a man in her life. This kind of unbalanced labor, while theorized by other feminists, is outside the scope of Ferrara’s research. “That’s not what we studied...but it speaks to a real grievance that women are sharing.”

This transformation has led Ferrara to ask, “When should academics defend the boundaries of our work?” While the wide uptake of mankeeping may be giving women language to speak about unequal relationship dynamics, this broadening also risks muddying the water around Ferrara’s specific insights into men’s social networks and the impact of friendship gaps on women. Ferrara is reluctant to wrest control of language that may be doing feminist work in the real world. She said, “There’s a reflexive desire to say, ‘No, that’s not what we meant,’ but I also realize that something has been co-authored with the culture here.”

Ferrara and Vergara are working to tread this line thoughtfully through offering more accessible insights into their research and its results. Their new article in the print edition of Scientific American , for example, is helping the concept reach “places where it’s hard to find feminist research,” from doctor’s offices, to high school classrooms and Instagram. Ferrara also is currently working on a book about men’s friendships, modern masculinity, and mankeeping. She hopes it will offer a more detailed but also more approachable theorization of these issues for everyday readers and feminists alike. 

The cultural meaning of mankeeping continues to evolve even as its academic definition is still being expanded with a significant degree of distortion. As mankeeping research shifts under the public eye, Ferrara continues to ask, “What are the risks and rewards of a feminist construct like ‘mankeeping’ escaping into the wider culture?”