Doing research in Indonesia and Sweden on the ambivalence of care and masculinity in ECEC; challenging dominant norms through ethnographic methodology

ABSTRACT

The aim of the article is to explore norms about care and masculinity in early childhood education and care settings in Indonesia and Sweden. Building on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, it is shown how care in the two nations was produced as ambivalent for men, causing a risk of being accused of working with children for the wrong reasons. Two different strategies were employed by the men to handle this: to avoid caring practices and to renegotiate care, making it part of hegemonic masculinity. In the study, ethnographic methodology building on long-term relations, situated knowledge and trust, was key to gain the two different perspectives. The methodology produced nuanced understandings of how care and masculinity came to be enacted in different social and religious contexts. The extended field work enabled trustful relations to develop, which in turn facilitated shared learning about gendered bodies, fear and shame in relation to care

KEYWORDS:

• Masculinity
• care
• ECEC
• ethnographic methodology
• Indonesia
• Sweden

Introduction

The aim of this paper is to explore the concept of care in relation to masculinity in early childhood education (ECEC) by building on long-term ethnographic studies in Sweden and Indonesia. In this study, hegemonic norms about ‘real men’ in urban west Java, intersected with norms about religion, and in urban west Sweden with norms about gender equality. The fieldnotes emanate from studies in ECEC settings in urban middle-class environments. The purpose is not to compare Indonesia and Sweden as national units, but to use examples from local ECEC settings and pose questions about how positions such as ‘normal men’ and ‘men as role models’ are produced in relation to professional care, through different local cultural understandings of education. In Indonesia as well as in Sweden, masculinity is fraught with ambiguities on how to relate to care. Through the data, it became possible to see how this ambivalence was manifested and expressed in different ways by men in Indonesia and Sweden. In the paper, I argue that stereotypes of ‘normal men’ did not differ in any significant way across the ECEC contexts. All men who were part of the study in Indonesia as well as in Sweden, were expected to take positions as ‘role models’ and teach discipline or self-control, in relation to local understandings of these positions. At the same time care was seen as ambivalent for all men in the study. However, the way care was negotiated differed as well as how the men handled fear and shame following processes of marginalisation that set them apart from the ‘normal men’.

The ambivalence that the notion of caring carries for men in different professions manifests itself across the globe (Brody 2015). As discussed by researchers within the field of ECEC (Einarsdottir et al. 2014) as well as in studies of gender and ethnicity (Hankivsky 2014), there is a need for more research on care, especially on the way care intersects with other situated norms and values. In this article, I will discuss how care intersects with idealised and marginalised masculinity. However, this kind of ‘sensitive data’ is not easily accessed. My contribution to the field of ethnography and education lies not just in the results of the cross-national study, but also in how this data became possible through ethnographic methodology (Marcus and Fischer 2014). I argue that ethnographic methodology building on long-term relations, situated knowledge and trust, is essential to produce material that otherwise is not only hidden but also non-existent.

Theoretical framework: gender and care

As thoroughly described in research on men, masculinities, boys and boyness, hierarchies of gender affect both genders and both genders might have to face consequences of breaking stereotype norms about ‘real’ men and ‘real’ women (Connell and Connell 2000; Whitehead 2002). However, the prospect to transgress gender stereotypes might be even more limited for men and boys than for women and girls due to gender hierarchies. When boys and men do transgress hegemonic norms of gender, they not only break norms, but also transgress them towards actions/phenomena linked to femininity, that in contemporary society often are given less value. Further, as shown in critical masculinity studies, men and boys transgression towards actions linked to girls, women and femininity (such as care) are at risk of marginalisation, ridicule, and even shaming(Connell and Connell 2000; Whitehead 2002). This might also be true for women and girls that transgress gender borders. However, due to hierarchies of gender where professions, actions and bodies linked to femininity are often given less value, this is often understood as a step up. Marginalisation, ridicule and shaming is often done by linking transgressing acts (such as men’s work with professional care) to markers of gender borders, aimed at disciplining the actor and preserving borders between genders (Connell and Connell 2000; Whitehead 2002). In ECEC, the position of the paedophile as well as the position of the male homosexual is such strong markers, causing fear and shame for those at risk (Heikkilä and Hellman 2017). These emotions have real effects (Ahmed 2014). An example of these effects is that men worldwide tend to reject professional work with care and young children in ECEC¹ (Brody 2015; Wernersson 2015; Heikkilä and Hellman 2017).

In this paper, I use the concept of norm(s) as a way to understand the way cultural forces regulate and control human notions and behaviour (Butler 1993, 2004). One example is the way some actions in a certain time and space, are linked to individuals or occupations and normalised as feminine or masculine. When the development of education for young children (kindergartens) was in process in Indonesia and Sweden, in both contexts (albeit at different times) it was done through symbolic representations of the loving and caring mother as the ideal for the teachers. As highlighted by Warin and Gannerud (2014), care in ECEC settings became firmly linked to women and femininity. In national contexts where care has been provided at home traditionally, and is unpaid, the value of care is low and there have been difficulties in accepting care as part of professional labour. This connection to home and unpaid services also means that men (as expected ‘breadwinners’) were not seen as natural caregivers. Men thereby became excluded from these professions, even if they wanted to participate, as it was an inconceivable position for them. It also allowed them to take a position of ‘privileged responsibility’ towards caring duties because it was not seen as work that came naturally to them and they were not considered natural caregivers. At times they could choose to ‘care’ but had no normative responsibility to do so.

However, other discourses position men as needed in ECEC. This is especially true in relation to boys’ underachievement and the idea of men as role models. In Sweden, the discourse of men as role models manifests in the need of men for boys’ ‘normal’ development and identity processes. There are also other ways of understanding the need for men in ECEC, as in Japan where men are said to be needed for both girls and boys normal development of independence (from the position of the caring mother/female teacher) in the shift from 2-year-old to a 4-year-old child (Hellman, Nakazawa, and Kuramochi 2015). As will be shown in the later part of this article, this idea had its counterpart in the kindergartens in Java, where the staff also engaged in an age-related discourse on men as role models for boys and girls. A common theme across the countries was that care very seldom was part of the position given to men as the ‘male role models’ in ECEC. However, all men in the studies had to (re)negotiate the position given to them by (re)negotiating care in relation to local discourses about gender.

Norms of masculinity and care in Indonesia and Sweden

Indonesia is one of the most populated Muslim countries in the world and Islam has a dominant influence on gender formations (femininities and masculinities) in Indonesian society, especially in Java where the study was conducted. A key concept in relation to gender in Islam is Kodrat, which stands for a god-given nature of male and female. Kodrat, has also been integrated into the political environment. Indonesia has a long history of living under authoritarian regimes. The last (before the era of democracy) was known as the New Order Regime (1965–1998). As described by Adriany (2013) using marital law, the government dictated the expected gender relations between husbands and wives. The husband was seen as the breadwinner of the family and the wife as manager of domestic tasks – a strict gender ideology called state family (keluarga). Despite the fact that the new-order government is no longer in power, research has confirmed how their gender ideology remains deeply embedded in the society, including in ECEC settings (Wieringa 2015; Adriany 2013, 2018). As a result, care is increasingly overlooked in ECEC settings in Indonesia and often normalised as an extension of women’s domestic roles and not seen as an integrated aspect of teachers’ professionalism (Newberry and Marpinjun 2018). Hence, kodrat, is a hegemonic way of understanding gender equality in Java, based on a clear division of labour between men and women.

Compared to Indonesia, contemporary discourses of gender equality are a bit different in Sweden. On the one hand men, women, boys, and girls are encouraged to transgress gender stereotypes and most adults work outside home. Swedish ECEC has also been seen as playing an important role in forming children’s gendered identities both through national policy documents for preschool (Skolverket 2018), preschool teacher education and preschool practice. On the other hand, Sweden has a very gender divided labour market where professional care is generally seen as work that engages primarily women. Just like in Indonesia, care is often an un-reflected practice (Hellman 2016). In the past decade, dominant neoliberal discourses about individuality and competence have taken a centre stage in pedagogy. One consequence of this is that care is given less importance in policy and practice. In response to these discourses, researchers have stressed the need to pay far more attention to practices of care and to the way the concept of care operates in early childhood settings. The narrow focus on learning and on the individual and competent child, risks making children’s need of care in the preschool setting invisible (Hellman 2016). To meet this critique, care was more visible in the latest national curriculum for preschool, revised in 2019.

Ethnography, data production and settings

I have conducted ethnographic fieldworks in my own national context, where I had 25 years of professional background as preschool teacher before I became an ethnographic researcher in ECEC as well as in Indonesia, a country I have visited for many years: first as a tourist in 1980, then as a woman living with her children and husband in a village in Sunda for some years during 1995–2005 and finally as a researcher and senior lecturer at preschool teacher programmes at the Universities where I have been working, in both Sweden and Indonesia from 2014. Hence, reflections on time and space, home and returns in fieldwork as well as how hegemonic discourses on gender, care, education, and travels across nations may create similarities in ‘cultures of ECEC’ across nations, have been an important part of my ethnographic reflective work.

Since the time of Malinowski and Geertz, long-term field work and contextual understanding has been paramount in defining ethnography. However, since then, the image of ethnographic journeys and returns has shifted. ‘The field’ has today become much closer. As much as ethnographic researchers return from field work, which might be in their own national context, they also return to the field. Hence, the field has more and more become a return to something familiar rather than anything ‘other’ out there. ‘Long-term’ does not necessarily mean being ‘away’ for a long time but is about building relations over time and space with repeated meetings, communications and exchanges. In the two cases used in this article long-term relations and trust were built in different ways. The point being, not that long-term field ethnography has to have a specific or certain form but that in a time that demands quick returns on research investments it is important to argue for the value of long-term research and slow science.

For this article, I have chosen to present two different ways of working with participation and long-time relations in ethnographic research. It might be important to clarify that the data from the main informants Kent and Yayat, was chosen for two reasons. First, since it illustrates two different examples of long-term relations. And second, it shows how discourses of care and masculinity travels across countries and are (re)negotiated in different ways. The men might have different skills and level of professionalism, but for this particular article, that is not my focus.

The Swedish study was conducted over a total time span of two years. I spent up to one or four days a week in Westcoast Preschool in Sweden, more frequent at the beginning of the study than in the end, but in total 143 days between 2007 until 2009. The Indonesian study conducted in the Kindergarten of West Java is an ongoing study, designed in a slightly different way. When I was first invited to join the research group of West Java University, we started research collaboration on ECEC. One part was to conduct fieldwork and I started an ethnographic study during which I stayed in one of the kindergartens for one month in 2016, a couple of days each week for 10 days. The data was discussed (and if needed translated) in the research group together with the Indonesian gender and ECEC researchers. I have since 2016, been invited every year for about a month or two each time, to continue to work with the research group of West Java, and hereby been able to pursue the ethnographic research as an ongoing longitudinal study together with the local research group.

The ethnographic data used for this article, has been analysed in relation to the specific focus of care and masculinity in Indonesia and Sweden. As pointed out by researchers within the field of transnational, translocal and cross-border studies, it is important to move away from the methodologies of comparing nations as ‘closed units’ and to reflect on new possible ways of using relevant analytical units beyond methodological nationalism (Amelina et al. 2012). This study as well as the material and analysis were made possible due to the fact that the author conducted long-term projects in both settings and was also speaking the languages used in both contexts, Bahasa Indonesia respectively Swedish. Based on situated knowledge from both contexts, men and masculinity was developed as a unit of special importance to be analysed across the borders. Despite their differences in terms of what is meant by gender equality, the different contexts show similarities in terms of men’s ambivalence towards care and how men in both contexts (re)negotiate care in order to be seen as ‘normal’ in a professional caring environment. The specific ECEC setting in Indonesia, located in a middle-class urban area, was chosen with the help of the research group. The setting in Sweden, located in a middle-class urban area, was chosen with the help of my own local knowledge.

In the ethnographic tradition I have been working in, data is understood as being produced through ‘reflexive ethnography’, in encounters between the ethnographer and the informants (Marcus and Fischer 2014). The position I tried to take in the encounters in Sweden as well as in Indonesia, was one of building relations and trust on a long-term basis. The positions given to me by my main informant in the Indonesian context included his knowledge about me as a Swedish researcher from the global north who had been living with her children in Indonesia. Discussing how children grow up in the village was a good path towards discussions on their work with care and children and that also explained why a university professor took interest in their personal views on their professional work. The interviews and observations were conducted in collaboration with researchers from the Indonesian research group, who could translate our conversations to the local language if needed.² As will be further developed in the results, the positions initially bestowed upon me by the Swedish informant, as an educator from the preschool teacher programme, was to begin with, quite intimidating to him.

The methods used were primarily participant observations over an extended period of time. Different approaches were used during the process of data collection. At times, the participation in the activities with the children and teachers was direct and at other times observations from a distance were more convenient (for me and the informants). Decisions as to the levels of ‘participation’ were made in situ, in response to particular people and situations which could not be known a priori (Albon and Rosen 2014). Additionally, I collected oral material including daily informal conversations with preschool teachers and young children as well as more formal, semi-structured interviews. Data analysis was carried out during and after data collection. All names of settings or persons in both studies are fictitious. The informants will be presented in relation to the ethnographic data in the result section.

In terms of ethics, it is important to note that researchers, especially in my case as I am also a former preschool teacher, are perceived as quite ‘ordinary’ in the ECEC environment after a while. This is the aim of participant observations in one way, but this position also has to be handled with extra care. Even if it is clear that the researcher is conducting research that probably will be published later, it is not always easy for people to understand the consequences of participating in such a research. This is the case for adults and even more so for the children. One needs to take into consideration the fact that if personal information is being provided then to ensure that no trust deficit exists, extra caution needs to be taken.

Results: care and masculinity through reflexive ethnography, participation and time

A general pattern in the study is that care generally was understood as ambivalent for boys and men, at the same time as it was normalised for girls and women. Men (and boys) were at constant risk of being labelled as ‘not normal’ and male preschool teachers of not being in ECEC for the ‘right reasons’. I will start to unpack this pattern by discussing men as role models in the Swedish and in the Indonesian study. I will then turn to a discussion on how norms on ambivalent caring masculinities manifest and how the ambivalence was expressed by men in the two studies.

Men as role models; the kindergarten of West Java and the preschool of West Sweden

Fieldnotes from one of my first days of doing fieldwork in Sweden, comprise data on how one of the male care workers, was expected to perform certain tasks and emotions, such as keeping order and disciplining the boys. I will use these notes to discuss the discourse on male role models for boys in Sweden and the tasks men through this discourse, are expected (or not expected) to perform. I will then shift to the kindergarten of West Java and a discussion on male role models in the Indonesian context.

The municipal urban ‘West Preschool’ was located in a middle-class area in one of the larger cities in Sweden. The quality of the preschool was considered quite good and akin to all Swedish preschools, it had obligations stated in the national curriculum to counteract gender stereotypes and inequalities among the staff and children. However, gender was not a concept reflected much upon in the daily work, especially not in relation to care and discipline. When I started my fieldwork, the female teachers and female management discussed some of the boys they found troublesome and rowdy, disturbing other children. They decided that an assistant ‘pedagogic support’ was needed in order to (as it was put) discipline the rowdy boys and from time to time, separate them from the other children and thereby calm down the preschool classroom atmosphere (and address the complaints from some of the parents). Different arguments were put forward regarding the qualifications of the person being hired. Some had the opinion that the most important thing was to have a person good at pedagogy and understanding special needs, since the children in question needed extra care, and attention. However, most teachers as well as some parents wanted the preschool to hire a person who could ‘set boundaries’, and for that they wanted a man. As it happened, a man was found who seemed to be good at setting boundaries, however uneducated, but the low salary he was asking for and the fact that he was (according to some of the teachers) ‘a real man’ was put forward as qualities needed. The man was hired. Kent started to work with tasks such as to keep three boys who were called rowdy, away from the others in a small group for some hours every day and to give them lessons on their behaviour.

The Swedish study spanned over two years. During year one, I noted that several children, especially the boys in Kent’s group, were a bit afraid of him. Tony said

He is always yelling at us and telling us off. We used to hide from him, that is quite fun. We run and he chases us around.

When I asked Kent about his work during year one, he talked about how troublesome the boys were and how that probably had to do with the children’s family background, as some of the boys did not have the support of their fathers. The lack of a father figure in the home could, according to him, well be the reason why the boys were rowdy, a common explanation also given by the female teachers, which strengthened the legitimacy of his work in the preschool.

The need of men as ‘compensatory father figures’ and role models for boys has been problematised by critical masculinity researchers since the role model discourse builds on essential notions about gender where boys (but not girls) are seen as ‘in need’ of men (Whitehead 2002; Connell and Connell 2000). As described in my fieldnotes, Kent was very much wanted as a male role model in the preschool environment. However, he was not expected to perform care, but rather to discipline, a practice often described in masculinity research as a space where hegemonic masculinity tend to be constructed (Connell and Connell 2000; Whitehead 2002). It is also notable that Kent was not employed as a role model for the boys described by the teachers as ‘nice’ or ‘competent’, neither for the girls, but for the boys described as ‘problematic’ and ‘acting out’, a pattern also evident in research among older children and youth in other contexts, such as Connell’s study among youth in Australia. This is a pattern that also evident in my later studies on care and masculinity among Swedish male preschool teachers (Heikkilä and Hellman 2017).

To fully understand the working of hegemonic masculinity or male role models, it has to be analysed in relation to specific contexts. In that way the universal and local aspects are important. I use an example taken from the Indonesian study, which is in slight contrast to the findings in Sweden; it is how discourses on male role models in the Javanese context, intersected with the religion of Islam. In this case, the concept of kodrat becomes central.

My main informant in the Indonesian study was Yayat, whom I met the first time as a preschool teacher student, then as preschool teacher, and eventually as a master student. In the Indonesian context, as in Sweden, it took some time to build trust before it was possible to discuss issues about shame and fear and the ambivalence about men, masculinities and care.

The municipal kindergarten of West Java was linked to the university that sent researchers to the kindergarten where they could conduct research. The kindergarten was considered to be of high quality and seen as a model for Indonesian ECEC. When I first met Yayat, he talked about how men were needed as a complement to women, the ECEC environment was an ideal home and men were seen as father figures, a discourse also common in Swedish preschools as discussed earlier. At first, I interpreted Yayat’s ideas about the potential contribution of men to ECEC through discourses I was familiar with from Sweden about male role models for young boys, but after several meetings I understood that the discourse on role models differed in Java compared to the data from the Swedish preschool. Men are often described as important and much needed role models and father figures for boys in Sweden, but in Java men were seen as important and much needed role models and father figures for both boys and girls, especially in relation to something essential in the Javanese context, namely, to learn self-control. Yayat discusses the need for male teachers in the following statement:

Male teachers are needed to develop good characters in boys like teaching bravery, discipline and self-control. They are also needed for girls’ self-control; otherwise, girls use too many emotions.

According to Yayat, male teachers are perceived as necessary to ensure that boys will learn discipline and bravery but are also recognised as being beneficial for girls, using a derogatory discourse about emotions. In the Swedish context, as a man Kent was seen as being the most suitable for teaching control and discipline, but only towards the ‘rowdy’ boys. In Java, men are needed in ECEC to ensure specific ‘good’ influences, such as teaching of self-control, for boys as well as for girls. Hence, control seems to be essential for the learning process, for both boys and girls. These statements about the Javanese context, might also be interpreted through the traditional Javanese discourse on the related concepts of ‘halus’ and ‘kasar’ behaviour, where learning self-control is important for children in order to be ‘civilised’. Through the concept of kodrat, men are projected as the most suitable people to teach this behaviour to boys as well as girls. These traditional discourses helped me to understand the way some of the men managed to renegotiate care in order to incorporate it within ideals about hegemonic masculinity and hence make ‘care’ a part of men’s natural kodrat. I will explore this further in the following section.

The way care was discussed in my earlier visits to Java puzzled the research group. The men used to play with the children in the kindergarten and they discussed how they were more caring than the female teachers and highlighted care as something very important in ECEC. One example is that of Yayat who says

The female teachers, they are stricter. They always pinch the children when the children do not behave. But we (male teachers), we don't do that. The children love us because we always play with them. Yes, the female teachers are too strict. But we, we always speak in soft voices. We never yell at the children.

The research group did not think that the men were caring, but maybe because of my presence they wanted to project themselves as ‘excellent teachers’ and ‘natural caring leaders’. However, we needed more ways of understanding this and when we started to discuss it in relation to studies on ‘civilised’ behaviour in Java, we found a way forward.

The construction of masculinity in Indonesia is very much influenced by Javanese cultures, including the concepts of kasar (rough) and halus (refined) behaviours. To behave in a halus way is to both demonstrate and gain power. The ruling class of Java, such as officials and their extended families has traditionally, just like ruling classes elsewhere in the world, distinguished themselves from the rest of the population by specific lifestyles and behaviours – in Java labelled as halus. Anderson explains how these ideals may be understood as a set of ethical values emerging from the high status ‘Priyayi’ from the Ramayana and Mahabharata mythologies. Typically, the way to gain power/energy is from ‘outside – in’ starting with regulating behaviours that produce an internal refinement through hard work (Anderson and Richard 1990). According to Geertz, halus means smoothness of spirit (self-control) smoothness of appearance (beauty, elegance) and smoothness of behaviour (politeness, sensitivity). The opposite of halus is kasar, meaning lack of control, imbalance and irregularity, disharmony, ugliness, coarseness and impurity. All individuals are born ‘kasar’ and require a process of civilisation which demands constant bodywork as well as concentration and implies a particular emphasis on children's moral, spiritual and religious development (Geertz 1973). Within this ideology, there is a particular emphasis on children’s feelings of shame (malu) and an awareness of the age at which they develop the capacity to experience these feelings. Feelings of shame are considered important in order to be able to internalise gazes on ‘civilised’ men, women, girls, and boys (Whitehead 2002). To be ‘civilised’ in this context is hereby to relate to Islamic notions of kodrat, classed and cultural norms about halus behaviour as well as to the ideas about the state family.

Yayat’s statement may be understood in terms of a way of performing caring relations with the children and simultaneously it positions men as professional educators, linking them to the national curriculum with its emphasis on developmental psychology as well as to traditional Javanese norms on classed and civilised (halus) behaviour. These ideas mean that the self-control of the teacher is especially important. So, when Yayat describes the ‘yelling’ and ‘pinching’ behaviour, he is critical of this form of controlling the children. Perceptions about the nature of care and best forms of care for young children are interrelated to norms about civilised and refined behaviour. These ideas are articulated by some of the male trainees in order to establish the superiority of male teachers over their female counterparts, ideas that are also learned by children. In this way ‘halus’ is related to hegemonic masculinity and in this context of childcare, it is used in order to establish and normalise caring masculinities, as well as male superiority.

Care as part of hegemonic masculinity?

When I first met Yayat, I noticed that his role in the kindergarten often would be to play football with the boys to organise activities or to do administrative jobs, but to do less of the caring tasks such as helping the children at meals or helping them to wash their hands before dinner or helping them when they visited the toilet. I asked him if he found any difficulties being a man in kindergarten, but at that time he did not want to discuss any of those observations. When I came back during the following year and we got to know each other better, it was easier. Also, Yayat had been able to get more opportunities to reflect on the questions, since he had been working longer as a male teacher. We then started to discuss the vocational nature of ECEC and the entry of men into ECEC positions as gender pioneers. This makes the job ‘more’ than a traditional male choice of job especially since men become hyper-visible and there is a risk of normalising gazes being directed towards them from others on the ambivalence of men and care in relation to young children.

Only after a number of conversations, Yayat as well as another male preschool teacher, Erik, described their own experiences, and potential experiences, of ‘shame’ (malu) and ‘fear’. Although working in the ECEC sector they harboured deep seated fears relating to dominant principles about the ‘state family (keluarga)’. They thought the implicit heterosexuality, regulated through violent political homophobia, that is informally sanctioned by the state would be used to question their choice of workplace and the practices of male care in kindergartens. Yayat and Erik were concerned about public suspicions that they might have ‘other’ intentions and motivations for their choices rather than wanting to work to care for young children and help them with the learning process. Erik discussed how several of his friends had asked him why he had taken the kindergarten teacher programme and that he should be aware that his choice could turn into him into a homosexual person. Yayat confirmed this view and added that some parents were afraid that the male teachers would sexually assault their children.

As discussed earlier, when men transgress gender borders and practice actions linked to women and femininity (such as care), the transgression might be followed by disciplining markers aiming at keeping normality in place. In the fieldnotes related above, Erik and Yayat discuss two very common markers, namely the position of the paedophile and the position of the homosexual man, both of them having real effects on men working in ECEC, installing feelings such as fear and shame, but at times anger and resistance also, and a will to include care in normal masculinity (Hellman 2016).

Fear about a suspicious gaze on the sexuality of male ECEC teachers is not only confined to Indonesia. However, in Indonesia this gaze on men who provide professional childcare, becomes even stronger through the discourse about God-given gender differences (kodrat). Embedded in this suspicious gaze is an implicit heterosexual nuclear family model, promoted through the Indonesian state as well as Indonesian ECEC. Even if Indonesia should be viewed as a heterosexist rather than a homophobic country, and even if there were less violence against gay men and women in Indonesia compared to other countries, there still exists real threats of violence against non-hetero masculinities, especially through actions of collective violence and political homophobia (Boellstorff 2004). The fear described by Erik and Yayat, is a real fear, especially since the violence is sanctioned by the state as a way to construct an ideal family. Hence, to be ‘national’ and ‘civilised’ is to be heterosexual.

This fear was also expressed in conversations with some male kindergarten teachers and master students during my last stay at the University of West Java in 2020. Adik and Ketut described how it has now become even harder in Indonesia, since the government is leaning more and more on proper kodrat for men and women. Questioning the role of kodrat can even result in accusations of blasphemy. This also affects the way boys and girls play at the kindergarten and at home. Adik described how some teachers and parents believe that a man or a boy would become homosexual if they performed tasks linked to femininity. Adik also reflected upon how these norms had changed; it used to be considered masculine in west Java to be a good dancer. However, in a contemporary society with advancing political Islam, these practices are made ‘feminine’ and hereby also made suspicious for men to perform.

Fear and shame was present among men in my study conducted on care and masculinity in Indonesia as well as in Sweden. Across national borders, expressing these emotions was often followed by silence and was not easily accessed in the research process. It often took a long time of building trust before data on these issues was collected. In the Indonesian study, this happened step by step after having returned to the field a couple of times. In the Swedish study, this started to happen during the second year of the study and was initiated by a situation where the children discussed marriage in play.

Kent and I were present as adults ‘overlooking’ the children from one of the tables in the play hall. The girls were playing princess, trying to convince the boys to participate as grooms or princes, so they could continue to enjoy the ‘princess play’ in a ‘proper’ way with girls/princesses as passive (captured in a prison built under some chairs), the boys/princes/heroes (who rescued them), and the whole thing followed by a big wedding. The role play was like a script, the girls were very active in getting the boys to participate. However, the two boys supposed to play ‘heroes’ refused. One of the boys, Gustaf tells the girls that he did not want to rescue them and referred to his mother who had told him that it is good to learn how to handle things on your own. I do not want to play marriage, says Gustaf: ‘Mother says that marriage is for adults! And by the way, if I marry it will be with my best friend Kalle (a boy)’. Kent then said to the children: ‘Hey kids, you know you boys do not have to marry any of the girls when you grow up. Take me for example, I am married to a man and that is just fine’. The boys scream Yeeehey and the girls, a bit worried about how to now continue their wedding play, organised the play with dolls instead.

Kent and I discussed the situation when we sat at one of the tables. He laughed and I laughed back, and he said the girls really wanted to enact the play in traditional ways. He also said that he felt that it was important to support the boys, all the wedding plays made him sick he said. I told him that I completely understood; also, I found it problematic for many reasons.

As described in the field notes, Kent reacted to the quite fixed ‘script’ in the play and also to the boys’ unwillingness to ‘playing it straight’. In a sense Kent was renegotiating the former ‘disciplining’ position given to him and showing care towards the boys and supporting them, even if it meant that while doing that, he also became visible to me (the writing researcher) and the children as a homosexual man. Through this caring position, Kent opened up for new understandings by telling the children about the possibility of same sex relations and marriage. Also, the boy Gustaf opened up for new negotiations through the discourse of competent children where passive roles for girls are not an option (Hellman, Heikkilä, and Sundhall 2014). In the same vein, Taylor and Rickardson assert how children are able to transgress heteronormative and stereotypical gender boundaries in their preschool plays. Since children and their caretakers, are exposed to different and competing discourses on gender and sexuality new kinds of gender identities are possible to construct by performing gender differently, not necessarily complying with gender stereotypes and heterosexual norms (Taylor and Richardson 2005).

Kent then continued to talk about the importance of long-time relations and trust. He said he had not trusted me from the beginning and almost felt a bit scared of me. It was not so much the fact that I was a woman or that we lived in different family constellations, but rather the fact that I was a former preschool teacher, now working as an educator at the preschool teacher programme and on top of that also a researcher documenting (among other things) the way he acted among the boys in the group. We continued to talk about the situation in a recorded interview during the afternoon when Kent developed his views some more

I remember one situation when I had worked here with the boys for a while. In the beginning, it was fine, I felt like I had got a better job than the one I had before, but after a while, it was horrible really because as soon as the boys saw me, they just ran away. As it happened, I saw you sitting there writing as you often do, and I thought, what is she writing about me? What kind of person will I be in her book? What kind of person have I become here?

Now, this year the rowdy boys are already in school, so my role has shifted. There is no longer a need for me to perform that aggressive role, now I’m just here for extra help. I do sometimes think of that time and I also think that it might have been easier for me then to take that expected ‘rough’ role towards the kids. I mean … It might be hard for men anyway to be here, being accused to be a paedophile if they express their care or make a child sit on their knee, but for me? Even more suspicious. Much easier it is then, to skip the caring part and be more hard and tough towards the children– as expected, especially since we were supposed to be on our own in a small group.

But Anette, I can tell you this. I have now met you here for almost two years, you would never have seen me replying to the kids as I did today, if I had not got to know you better. These things are not so easy to say or talk about … I know that you probably will write about this and other stuff about me, but I have read some of your writings from the first year and they were not so bad. Better than I had expected anyway, like you tried to understand my situation as well as that of the kids.

Researchers in the field of gender and ECEC, have discussed the importance of safety and fairness in order to make gender transgression possible. We are, as human beings always entangled in power relations, always trying to take or are given different positions, through which the data are constructed (Naughton et al. 2010). Understood in relation to Kent’s statements and reflexive ethnography, it is important to notice that processes of reflection are vital in long-time fieldwork, both for the informants in relation to the researcher, but also for the researcher in understanding the relations in field. It would not have been possible for me to get data on the fear and shame described by Kent, during my early days in the preschool. Even if I tried to take a position as an ethnographic researcher where Kent and I would be able to talk about his work with the boys, I was not seen as a trustworthy researcher, and hence this particular data could not materialise.

Conclusions

Research has problematised the way dominant discourses about individuality and competence have emerged in pedagogy policy and practice where care has become blurred, unreflected and marginalised in relation to learning. As pointed out in research on gender and space (Massey 1994), norms about femininities and masculinities are not always reproduced in stereotypical ways. However, in spaces where teachers’ self-reflection tends to be low, such as in practices of care in contemporary ECEC, there is a tendency that stereotypes (such as women as natural caregivers) are understood as ‘common sense’, and thereby are easily normalised.

In this article, I have explored the concept of care in relation to masculinity in ECEC contexts and I have shown how masculinity and care comes to be enacted in different social, cultural and religious contexts. The aim has not been to compare two countries, two ECEC settings or even two male ECEC workers, but rather to discuss how discourses of care and masculinity travel across countries such as Indonesia and Sweden and manifest locally in similar or shifting ways. The results show that men were often encouraged to work in ECEC: this is especially true in relation to the discourse about men as role models. In west Java, this meant they were expected to be a role model for boys and girls and to teach them necessary skills about self-control and civilised behaviour. In Sweden, it meant that men were expected to be a role model only for boys and to discipline the ‘unruly’ boys. At the same time, men in both contexts were cast as ‘dangerous’. This was especially the case in relation to certain tasks such as care. Providing care was generally conceived of as ambivalent for boys and men (but normalised for girls and women). Men (and boys) were at constant risk of being labelled as ‘not normal’ and male preschool teachers of not being in ECEC for the ‘right’ reasons. Normalisation of traditional gender roles and heterosexuality as well as fear and shame in relation to boys’ and men’s performance of care, was discussed in both the urban ECEC settings in the study. Given this fear and shame across borders, it might not be a surprise that the number of men in ECEC is about the same across the globe, about 4 per cent (Brody 2015).

In the studies however, men’s renegotiation of the ambivalence in caring masculinities was also evident in relation to discourses of sexuality. In the Swedish study, Kent showed care for some of the boys in the wedding play who did not want to participate in the play in the normatively ‘proper’ way. Moving away from the positions given to him as a stereotyped role model expected to perform discipline, he now had the courage to become another kind of role model for the boys: not only as a caring man, but also as a male role model who points to other family constellations than the heterosexual script played out by the children. Given that the Swedish national curriculum for preschools promotes gender equality and different family constellations, this is a possible position to take. In practice however, it might still be difficult for men in general and homosexual men in particular, to work with care in ECEC without being subjected to the risk of being accused of sexual harassment towards children.

Care was renegotiated in slightly different ways in the Indonesian study. Here the men on the one hand used the discourse of kodrat to establish that there were essential differences between men and women. However, men’s particular ways of performing care was constructed as part of the highest form of civilised behaviour in Java, namely, to act in a refined, halus, way. Hereby this highest form of caring leadership also became a new form of hegemonic masculinity in ECEC in the kindergartens of West Java and of importance to boys as well as girls.

In this paper, I have aimed to show how long-term relations and participation in ethnographic fieldwork might open up possibilities for a qualitative different knowledge that is perceptive to nuances and shifts of meaning. Further, long-term relations and participation, produce material otherwise not only hidden but non-existent as well, such as some of the data on the ambivalence of masculinities and care presented in this paper. Given the different discourses of gender equality in the Swedish and Indonesian ECEC environments, it is important to reflect on how discourses on sexuality in relation to children in ECEC become surrounded with aversion as well as silence and how fear and shame among the men is evident in both contexts. The way norms about sexuality as well as norms about care are overlooked, under theorised and unreflected in contemporary ECEC, is a very important aspect of any study undertaken, or analysis made in order to develop deeper understandings of the functioning of care in early childhood education. With the help of ethnographic methodology, we may be able to make some everyday experiences among men in ECEC visible and by that challenge dominant norms on care as ‘naturalised’ for girls and women, but not for men and boys. We might also begin to understand how new forms of hegemonic masculinity are developed in relation to care.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The number of men working in ECEC today is about 3–4 per cent in countries where studies/statistics on this theme have been conducted (Brody 2015).

2 Bahasa Sunda