| This online study examined attachment and masculinity in men and their ability to provide support to a woman in a romantic relationship. Participants comprised 150 heterosexual, adult males from 32 states, ranging from 18 to 72 years of age. They completed an online survey that assessed for secure/insecure attachment and masculinity (Four subscales: Success, Power, and Competition; Restrictive Emotionality; Restrictive Affectionate behavior Between Men; and Conflict Between Work and Family Relations), and provided open-ended responses to three relational vignettes, which were rated by graduate students on level of support. Binary and Ordinal Logistic Regression analyses were conducted to analyze the data. Results showed that men with high masculinity were less likely to be supportive in relationships. Attachment security/insecurity and participants' ages did not show a significant difference in regard to level of support; however, men who endorsed high conflict between work and family relations were more likely to have a high level of support. This finding may have emerged because the majority of participants were at a stage of life in which they were balancing the demands of family and career. Masculinity and attachment were not found to influence each other in regard to participants' support behaviors. Clinical implications of the findings as well as suggestions for future research are discussed. Limitations included recruitment and data collection from only participants who had either received an email, seen the recruitment advertisement online, or were recruited by a participant research recruitment site; the use of multiple self-report measures; and the lack of generalizability due to restriction of sample ethnicity. |
