Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Men Caught in the Gender Bind of Early Childhood Education

This paper presents the results of a series of in-depth interviews with men who work in early childhood education (ECE), their women peers, their supervisors, and faculty members of colleges of education. The findings cast considerable doubt on the prevailing idea that men are “high status tokens” in ECE. In addition, the narratives of all involved give clear indication that repairing the low participation of men in ECE will require changes in deeply entrenched institutional practices rather than in the perspectives or behaviors of individual men.