Everything You Wanted to Know About Mankeeping

(But were too afraid to ask). An interview between psychologist Angelica Ferrara and El País journalist Andrea Insa Marco about mankeeping.

Date With an Angel (1987) Cover

I’ve looked at the poster for the 1987 film Date With an Angel a hundred times. The room for interpretation draws me in: it’s unclear whether this man carries a barefoot angel through a busy city sidewalk, or if her presence allows him to walk surefooted through the world. She’s draped around him, wings outstretched, radiant and ethereal, suspended just above the pavement. He beams, holding her shoes like a proud errand boy or a triumphant suitor. We get the sense that the world around them carries on without anyone noticing the angel in their midst.

There’s a romance and absurdity to it. And for many women, a visual metaphor recognizable for those without wings: the exhausting role of lifting men emotionally while being expected to float weightlessly through the demands of modern life. What is perhaps most striking is that the two are not on equal footing.

What’s depicted in this image is also revealed in my research. In October, my colleague and research assistant Dylan Vergara and I put out a paper called “Theorizing Mankeeping: The Male Friendship Recession and Women’s Associated Labor as a Structural Component of Gender Inequality” (A title so academic that even I’m tired reading it) in a journal from the American Psychological Association called Psychology of Men and Masculinities. In it, we name the labor many women take on to facilitate men’s emotional worlds, especially when men lack deep friendships of their own. We called it mankeeping.

We were struck by - and honestly totally unprepared for - the amount of media attention given to the paper. Women wrote to us from around the world to say “this is me,” with mankeeping soon translated into French, Russian, Italian, Spanish, and other languages. Illustrations describing our work went viral online. From Vanity Fair to The Daily Mail, Forbes to local news stations around the US, people were talking about mankeeping. A lot of what’s out there is sensationalized, turning our research into clickbait.

Mankeeping has escaped the ivory tower, for better and for worse. I want to add back a nuance that not everyone will see or hear, but that the curious and nuance-minded (you, if you’re reading this) might find and appreciate. With Dylan’s help, I keep trying to set the record straight. Our newest article, “The Hidden Costs of Men’s Declining Social Networks” in Scientific American, out in print in May, works to provide some of the nuance we often feel is lost.

That commitment to nuance and transparency is why I was excited to talk to Andrea Insa Marco at El País, Spain’s most widely read newspaper, to answer a few common questions about the topic. Andrea’s article will come out sometime soon, but I’ve gotten her permission to publish our entire conversation. So without further delay, here’s everything you might want to know about mankeeping — but haven’t asked, maybe because of the clickbait, or the dense academic article behind it.

Andrea: The first one is quite obvious. What is Mankeeping? Where does it come from?

Angelica: Mankeeping is the labor that women do to help compensate for the ways that men often have lacking social networks, and it can take many forms. It’s important to remember that mankeeping doesn’t have to be between romantic partners - it can also be between family members, friends, or coworkers. The term was coined by me, but its roots come from sociologist Carolyn Rosenthal. She introduced the concept of kinkeeping to describe the often invisible labor that women do within their families, like remembering birthdays and maintaining harmony between members of the family.

Andrea: How does Mankeeping connect with kinkeeping? What are the differences between both theories?

Angelica: Mankeeping is a specification and extension of the work on kinkeeping. While kinkeeping speaks to the work women do in the nuclear family, mankeeping is specific to bonds between men and women. Both constructs are a form of feminine labor that are part of how gender inequality can manifest in our private lives.

Andrea: What are the components of Mankeeping? Can you explain them?

Angelica: Mankeeping has three main components. First, there’s social facilitation—when women act as behind-the-scenes managers of men’s friendships. Think: “You should call your friend back,” or “Let’s invite your old roommate over for dinner.” Second is emotional outsourcing: men receiving disproportionate emotional support from women because they’re not getting it from their friends. Third is emotional education: women teaching men how to communicate, empathize, and even name their own feelings. These components often blur together, but they all speak to an imbalance in how care circulates across gendered lines. It’s important to mention, too, that the reason why women often don’t require social facilitation, emotional outsourcing, and emotional education from men, especially their romantic partners, is because most women are having those needs met, and relational skills strengthened, in their friendship groups.

Andrea: Is mankeeping a type of gender inequality? How do people experience this kind of gender inequality?

Angelica: I think so! Mankeeping is an under-theorized and under-appreciated form of it. It’s often mistaken for personality differences or “just the way things are,” and it is typically experienced privately, which can make it feel so isolating. Women experience it as exhaustion, as the invisible burden of tending to someone else’s emotional and social needs on top of their own. Men, on the other hand, might experience it as comfort, or worse, dependency, without realizing that someone else is doing the invisible labor of making their emotional life work (thinking back to the Date With an Angel poster). We sometimes think of this as just features of heterosexual dynamics, but we should see it instead as a way inequality manifests and is made real in the most intimate parts of our lives.

Andrea: Women compensate for the losses in men's social networks. But, is this phenomenon reciprocated? Do women with male romantic partners seek emotional support inside or outside the relationship?

Angelica: That’s one of the core asymmetries. The research my colleague Dylan and I highlight in our original paper shows that women are more likely seek and receive emotional support from multiple sources—friends, family, therapists, community members, spiritual leaders, etc. But many men rely heavily, even exclusively, on their romantic partner or on a woman friend or coworker. This creates a lopsided dynamic where women are sometimes supported but are nearly always supporters, while men are primarily supported. It’s not that men don’t care - our research shows that clearly. It’s that they have, through living in patriarchy, been encouraged not to show or maintain the skills that make for excellent friends and partners: listening, perspective taking, and empathy.

Andrea: Does the phenomenon of Mankeeping only happen in romantic relationships, or does it also occur between friends and family members?

Angelica: Mankeeping is everywhere, unfortunately. You see it in sisters coaching brothers through breakups, in female friends reminding their male friends to check in on each other, in coworkers gently nudging male colleagues toward vulnerability. Romantic relationships are often where it’s most concentrated, but it’s by no means confined there. Anywhere that emotional labor and gender norms intersect, mankeeping can and often does show up.

Andrea: What are the most common manifestations of mankeeping?

Angelica: The everyday forms of mankeeping are often the most revealing. A woman reminding her boyfriend to call his dad. A sister texting her brother’s friends to organize a birthday dinner. A girlfriend teaching her partner how to apologize sincerely. A female friend offering therapeutic support on a level that borders on unpaid counseling. These moments add up in time and energy, and as we’re trying to emphasize, in emotional toll.

Andrea: Can you name a few more examples of mankeeping and why they are such problems?

Angelica: If there’s a marked lack of reciprocity, a sense of burden experienced by the woman doing the caring, and if its worsened by the man involved having few or no other confidants, these all count as mankeeping: A girlfriend planning all the social outings because otherwise her boyfriend wouldn’t see his friends is mankeeping. A woman listening to a male coworker’s ongoing marital issues, offering emotional support that’s not part of her job description is mankeeping. A daughter being her father’s only emotional confidant is mankeeping. What makes these examples “mankeeping” is that the emotional labor flows primarily in one direction, and that flow is shaped by gendered norms and expectations.

Andrea: What is the "male friendship recession" and why is that related to mankeeping?

Angelica: The male friendship recession refers to the long-term decline in close male friendships, particularly in the U.S. and U.K. Many men report having fewer confidants than they did decades ago. Structural changes, like the loss of third spaces, covid, lower participation in churches and clubs, and increased mobility, have eroded traditional sites of male bonding, whereas women have been accustomed to seeking out their friends with care and intention in public and private. But it’s also a cultural issue. Masculinity has often discouraged vulnerability, intimacy, and emotional expression, all of which are among the bedrocks of real friendship. Mankeeping is upheld by men’s lack of social support beyond women, so the two phenomenona are linked.

Andrea: How do societal expectations shape the way men and women interact in relationships?

Angelica: To speak really generally, our culture typically expects women to be emotionally fluent and men to be emotionally stoic. That expectation shows up everywhere, from who’s expected to notice a partner’s mood shift, to who’s expected to initiate a hard conversation, to who’s expected to be “the rock.” These norms don’t just affect what we do; they shape what we believe is even possible, and what can be seen as “normal” in a relationship. Feminists like myself are always trying to get people to question if what’s “normal” is how things have to be. Many people think mankeeping is part and parcel of heterosexuality and the “natural” state of affairs between men and women. I think that’s a myth.

Andrea: How do societal expectations of masculinity influence the way men express and receive care?

Angelica: Masculinity as it exists in the dominant culture has often defined care as weakness and emotional need as something to be overcome rather than met. That means many men have been socialized to be wary of intimacy, to distrust vulnerability, and to feel shame when they need support - especially around other men, who are positioned as their competitors rather than their companions. This doesn’t mean men don’t want to be cared for or that they aren’t cable of showing others real care—it means they often haven’t been given the tools, language, or models to receive care in ways that are reciprocal with others. Women, on the other hand, have been expected to be overly attuned to the needs of others at the expense of their own voice and needs. I call this a “skill differential” between men and women. Men are on the side of that differential that causes learned relational incompetence - pardon my harshness. A lot of the things that society expects from men are directly at odds with the things that make someone a joy to be with as a partner or friend - that’s a big problem that my work wants to help solve, and that so many men are ready to work on.

Andrea: Does mankeeping show how modern relationships work?

Angelica: It shows how some modern relationships work by giving us a hint at what is missing. We often think of modern relationships as egalitarian, but mankeeping reminds us that gender inequality is alive within public and private spheres. Emotional labor doesn’t show up on chore charts or income statements, but it shapes who feels held and who feels worn out. It’s a hidden infrastructure that modern love still relies on between many couples, friends, and families around the world.