Masculinity Attitudes Across Rural, Suburban, and Urban Areas in the United States

Abstract

This article uses the 2011–2019 National Survey of Family Growth to explore how masculinity attitudes differ by rural, suburban, and urban contexts across three social axes: sexual identity, race/ethnicity, and education. It examines within-group differences based on spatial context among 17,944 men aged 15–44 who are straight, gay/bisexual, Black, white, and Latino, as well as among men with less than a bachelor’s, a bachelor’s, and more than a bachelor’s. This contributes to existing knowledge in several ways: it is the first project to build on important qualitative studies through the use of a nationally representative sample; it contributes to the scarce research on how rural gay/bisexual, Black, and Latino men understand masculinity; and it examines how education shapes the relationship between spatial context and attitudes about masculinity. Results indicate that spatial context has a stronger relationship to attitudes among white men, straight men, and men without a bachelor’s than among Black men, Latino men, gay/bisexual men, or men with a bachelor’s or above. Theoretically, what this shows is that spatial context is more strongly related to masculinity attitudes for men who are advantaged on the basis of sexuality or race than for men who are marginalized on these axes. When significant differences emerged, rural men were more conservative than urban and suburban men, and suburban men were more conservative than urban men. These results show that there is a relationship between spatial contexts and attitudes about masculinity, but that it depends on social identity and level of education.