Conformity to Masculinity and Its Effects on The Psychological Wellbeing of Young Adult Indian Men

Abstract

Masculinity is a set of rituals and practices in which men are inserted in society through their upbringing, family, sub-cultural influences, area and work. The social identities of men uniquely contribute to shape how males perform and experience their masculinities. Such social identities include their diversity in race, culture, ethnicity, age, migration, ability, status, gender identity, sexual orientation, and religious affiliation. It further contributes to their psychological, behavioural and relational outcomes of health in both negative and positive ways. Psychological wellbeing on the other hand involves notions of an individual’s overall quality of life including their happiness, interests, welfare, advantages, utility and leisure. It is a broad category which involves a person’s emotional responses to their conditions, global judgements of satisfaction in life and their satisfaction of domain. These constructs can be studied in their own right, but they substantially correlate with one another. The research is conducted with an effort to study the effect of conformity to masculinity on the psychological wellbeing of young adult Indian men. It emphasised on studying the relationship between conformity to non-traditional masculinity and psychological wellbeing, conformity to traditional masculinity and psychological wellbeing as well as the difference in the psychological well-being of men conforming to traditional and non-traditional masculinity of young adult Indian men. The sample was collected from 300 young adults out of which sample of 170 men was chosen (N=170; 85 males with traditional masculinity and 85 with non-traditional masculinity) through purposive sampling. The findings indicate that there is no significant relationship between conformity to non-traditional masculinity and psychological wellbeing of young men. Similarly, there is no significant relationship between conformity to traditional masculinity and psychological wellbeing of young men. However, the psychological wellbeing of men conforming to non-traditional masculinity is slightly better than men conforming to traditional masculinity.