By Laura Newberry, Illustration: Jim Cooke/Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, October 10, 2023
I’ve written quite a bit about disconnection in this space: the loneliness of being immunocompromised, the dearth of intergenerational relationships in Western culture, and why the need to belong is so human (and what can happen when we feel like we don’t).
What I haven’t acknowledged fully, though, is that how we relate to others is profoundly shaped by our social conditioning, or what we’re trained to think, believe, feel and want based on our various identities and where we live in the world. And so much of that conditioning hinges on gender. From the time we’re born, we receive explicit and unspoken messages from our families, our teachers, our religious institutions, the media and our peer groups about what it means to be a man or a woman.
A reader sent us a question that touches on how gender socialization inevitably seeps into our relationships: “How is the epidemic of loneliness experienced by men? Are we doing enough to support men’s mental health?”
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