Blokes’ blueprint
Why real men don’t cry
A generation of men who don’t show emotion are holding on to personality traits that came from stoic war veterans.
That comes not just from a new study on ageing men, but from an ageing man who ought to know: All Blacks legend Sir Colin Meads.
Speaking for the first time since he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, Meads, 80, responded to a study showing older men follow a blueprint of masculinity, which includes refraining from emotion and remaining strong.
Meads, known as Pinetree, said his generation emulated the returned servicemen who came before them.
‘‘They were great men, but they didn’t want to talk about it. It was sort of instilled, the ways that they were.
‘‘You don’t cry and you certainly don’t show a lot emotion.’’
The comprehensive United States review combed close to 100 studies on ageing men, finding this blueprint of masculinity left them ill-equipped for handling emotions or facing the challenges that come with old age.
‘‘Who you are in the past is embedded in you,’’ co-author and doctoral student Kaitlyn Barnes Langendoerfer, of Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, said.
‘‘Men have trouble dealing with older age because they’ve followed a masculinity script that left little room for them to negotiate unavoidable problems.
‘‘They have to renegotiate their masculinity in order to deal with what life is bringing their way.’’
Meads, who has been described by his brother, Stan, as a ‘‘pretty tough character’’, has battled cancer since early this year.
Meads has made no secret of the fact his cancer diagnosis has been ‘‘bloody hard’’ on his wife, Verna, and his family.
He said there was still a place in rural New Zealand for the stoic man, the ones who ‘‘get on with it’’.
‘‘I think it depends a lot on the background you have come from. Here in Te Kuiti, a lot of people in town are meatworkers and farmers and it’s a different type of person,’’ Meads said. ’’But life’s changing and we see it on the sports field now. When someone gets a try, they rush and pat him on the back. In my day we just went back to halfway.
‘‘It wasn’t a manly thing to be hugging another man.’’
Fellow All Blacks great Sir Brian Lochore, 76, said that, despite the findings, he had no problem talking about feelings.
‘‘I certainly share my problems. Some bottle it up and some talk freely about their problems, certainly to their mates.’’
He still kept in close contact with his former teammates from the late 1960s, and said tests sometimes left them away from home as long as five months at a time.