Boys are rarely taught to be caring. If they were, we could better prevent domestic violence
- Written by: Weekend Times
Following another series of alleged killings of women across Australia, the country has once again found itself asking familiar questions: how many more women have to die before we act? What more
should governments do? Why does this violence keep happening?
These questions are both understandable and necessary. The immediate priorities are clear: protecting women at risk, ensuring perpetrators are held accountable, investing in specialist services, and strengthening the systems that respond to domestic and family violence.
But if we are serious about preventing future violence, we should also ask a different question: how do we stop men being violent in the first place?
As I outline in a new report, one measure that would help is encouraging more men to be caring.
This is not a substitute for the many evidence-based approaches already used to prevent men’s violence against women. Nor is it a soft alternative to accountability.
Rather, it’s an important and underdeveloped part of prevention that deserves more attention.
Making over masculinity
Violence prevention has traditionally focused on reducing risk factors: changing harmful patriarchal norms, teaching respectful relationships, and building more gender-equitable communities.
These strategies matter, and there is good evidence they can make a difference.
However, a growing body of research suggests another complementary pathway. Rather than focusing only on what men should stop doing, we should also pay greater attention to the kinds of men we hope they become.
Researchers increasingly call this “caring masculinities”.
Care is often seen as something women do. Feminist scholars have long argued this assumption is both unfair and socially damaging. Caring for children, partners, friends, relatives and communities is essential work, yet it has historically been undervalued and disproportionately expected of women.
Men are just as capable of care as women. The challenge is that many boys and men are still socialised to see emotional openness, dependence and nurturing as inconsistent with being masculine.
Encouraging men to care is therefore not simply about asking fathers to spend more time with their children, important though that is. It involves fostering empathy, emotional literacy and responsibility throughout men’s lives.
Making violence less likely
These qualities are highly relevant to violence prevention.
Research consistently finds men who strongly endorse traditional ideals of dominance, emotional restriction and entitlement are more likely to use violence against women.
Conversely, empathy, emotional awareness and equitable relationships are associated with lower risks of violence.
Men who are actively involved as nurturing fathers, for example, are generally less likely to use violence against partners and children. Boys who grow up with caring, non-violent fathers are themselves more likely to develop respectful relationships.
Shared caregiving also contributes to greater gender equality within households, one of the broader social conditions associated with lower levels of violence against women.
None of this means care alone prevents violence. Domestic and family violence has complex causes rooted in gender inequality, power and social norms. Effective prevention requires action across many fronts: services, education, community action, and policy.
But a care perspective enriches these efforts by offering a positive vision of masculinity rather than simply a critique of harmful versions.
Empathetic accountability
It also changes how we think about accountability.
Holding perpetrators accountable remains essential. Victim-survivors’ safety must always come first.
Yet accountability need not rely solely on punishment or public condemnation. Emerging approaches emphasise what some practitioners call “compassionate accountability”: engaging men with empathy while making clear they remain responsible for the harm they have caused.
This approach seeks to reduce defensiveness, promote genuine reflection, and support lasting behavioural change rather than compliance born only of fear.
A care perspective also reminds us that violence prevention is not only about reducing harm. It’s about creating the conditions in which healthier relationships can flourish.
Read more: Boys are still in the grip of crippling masculine stereotypes: 6 findings from a new survey
Imagine a society where boys learn from an early age that empathy is a strength rather than a weakness. Where fathers are expected to nurture as much as provide. Where workplaces make caregiving a normal part of men’s lives.
Such changes would benefit women. They would also benefit men themselves, who often pay a heavy price for restrictive masculine expectations that discourage close relationships, help-seeking and emotional expression.
Every time Australia experiences another wave of killings, there are renewed calls for governments to “do more”. Those calls are entirely justified.
But prevention also requires us to broaden our imagination.
Alongside investing in frontline services, strengthening legal responses and promoting gender justice, we should do more to cultivate caring masculinities.
Encouraging men to care will not, by itself, end men’s violence against women. But it represents one important pathway towards the kind of society violence prevention ultimately seeks to build: one in which compassion, responsibility and care are ordinary expectations of men, and in which violence has fewer opportunities to take root.
The author would like to acknowledge researchers Gary Barker, Taveeshi Gupta and Giovanna Lauro for their work on the report that underpins this article.
Michael Flood has received funding from ANROWS, the Australian Primary Health Care Research Institute (APHCRI) Foundation, the Australian Research Council, the Victorian Department of Justice and Community Safety and other organisations.
