Men and Loss: New Perspectives on Men, Masculinity and Bereavement

This important book draws together new research and theories about bereavement, on the one hand, and men and masculinities on the other, to increase our understanding of men’s experience of loss and contribute towards improving support services for men following bereavement.

Bereavement and loss are unavoidable events in life and can be challenging experiences for anyone, regardless of gender. However, in contemporary western cultures, men’s experience of bereavement continues to be framed by socially constructed ideas surrounding masculinity, which dictate that men must be stoic following a loss, with grief manifesting in either anger or despair. Men who do not grieve in accepted ’masculine’ ways can feel judged, alienated or disenfranchised. This interdisciplinary and interprofessional collection presents theoretical analysis, reports of research findings, reviews of support and interventions, and a wealth of personal accounts. It includes chapters discussing partner loss, childhood bereavement, perinatal loss and bereavement through suicide, as well as bereavement at all stages of the life course.

Men and Loss is an essential read for advanced students and researchers with an interest in men’s health and bereavement studies from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, including nursing, medicine, counselling, sociology, social work and psychology.

Martin Robb is a Senior Lecturer in Health and Social Care at The Open University, where his research has focused on issues of gender and care and has included studies of fatherhood, men working in childcare, and young masculinities. He is the author of Men, Masculinities and the Care of Children: Images, Ideas and Identities (Routledge, 2020). Martin is co-editor of the journal Children & Society and host of the Careful Thinking podcast. He was the academic advisor for the BBC3 documentary, James Arthur: Out of our Minds, which explored issues in men’s mental health

Kerry Jones is a Senior Lecturer in End-of-Life Care at The Open University, where her research and teaching focus on death, dying, grief and bereavement and end-of-life care. Kerry has published and presented her research on men’s experience of loss, stillbirth neonatal death, parental bereavement, paediatric palliative care, brain injury, dementia, and suicide. More recently, her focus has turned to the impact of loss during the COVID-19 pandemic, in particular men’s grief, death anxiety among children and young people, and healthcare workers’ experiences. Kerry has been an academic consultant on death and dying for programmes for national media, including A Time to Live on BBC 2, and for BBC Radio 3.