Men Do Cry

Men cry.

That is a biological and behavioral observation before it is a political statement. The more complicated question is what men learn about when, where, and in front of whom those tears are socially safe.

Research on masculinity and emotional expression suggests that boys and men do not simply have fewer emotions. Gender norms can organize which emotions are considered acceptable, which are hidden, and which are converted into other forms of behavior.

Crying Is Not the Same as Losing Control

MacArthur (2019) examined beliefs about men’s crying in competitive sports and found that beliefs about emotion are closely tied to beliefs about gender. The cultural meaning attached to a man’s tears changes how observers interpret them.

Crying can occur during effective emotional processing. It can coexist with decision-making, speech, presence, and self-control. A man can cry and keep talking. A man can grieve and remain responsible. A man can name fear without becoming incapable.

Some Emotions Come With Better Scripts Than Others

Traditional masculine norms often reward emotional control, toughness, self-reliance, and the appearance of invulnerability. Wong and colleagues’ (2017) meta-analysis found that conformity to masculine norms was associated overall with less favorable mental-health-related outcomes and attitudes toward psychological help-seeking. Self-reliance was among the norms most consistently associated with negative outcomes.

Self-reliance can be adaptive. Problems emerge when needing another person becomes incompatible with a man’s identity.

Black Men’s Help-Seeking Has to Be Understood in Context

Powell and colleagues (2016) studied 458 African American men and examined masculinity norms together with everyday racism, racial identity, sense of control, and depressive symptoms. More frequent experiences of everyday racism and stronger salience of masculinity norms were associated with greater barriers to help-seeking.

A Black man may have learned that vulnerability is punished at work, misunderstood by institutions, used against him in relationships, or unsafe in environments where he is already stereotyped as threatening or incompetent. Mental-health services themselves may be inaccessible, unaffordable, culturally mismatched, or experienced as untrustworthy.

Anger May Be More Socially Legible Than Grief

Creighton, Oliffe, Butterwick, and Saewyc (2013), studying young men grieving the death of a male friend, found prominent experiences of emptiness, anger, stoicism, and sentimentality. Participants described tension between vulnerability and ideals of masculine strength. The study was not specific to Black men and should not be racialized beyond its evidence.

For Black men, trauma and racialized stress add another layer. Qualitative research on young Black male survivors of gun violence has described intersections among systemic oppression, trauma, masculinity, and identity (Bailey et al., 2024).

Help-Seeking Does Not Have to Require Surrendering Masculinity

A more useful model expands masculinity rather than abolishing it. Strength can include tolerating emotion without immediately escaping it. Protection can include protecting one’s own health. Responsibility can include seeking treatment before distress becomes crisis. Self-control can include choosing language instead of retaliation. Independence can include deciding for oneself when support is necessary.

What the Research Can and Cannot Say

Research supports associations among masculinity norms, emotional-display beliefs, and help-seeking. Research specific to African American men supports the importance of racism, sense of control, and depressive symptoms in understanding barriers to care.

It does not establish that every Black man suppresses emotion, that crying is always therapeutic, or that anger is secretly grief in every case. The strongest conclusion is simpler: men already possess emotional lives. Mental-health systems work better when they increase the number of safe ways those emotions can be recognized, expressed, and treated.

References

Bailey, A., Bailey, R., Newman, G., Barrett, A., Nguyen, M., & Lindsay, J. (2024). Deconstructing the trauma-altered identity of Black men. Journal of Child & Adolescent Trauma, 17, 999–1012. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40653-023-00526-0

Creighton, G., Oliffe, J. L., Butterwick, S., & Saewyc, E. (2013). After the death of a friend: Young men’s grief and masculine identities. Social Science & Medicine, 84, 35–43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.02.022

MacArthur, H. J. (2019). Beliefs about emotion are tied to beliefs about gender: The case of men’s crying in competitive sports. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 2765. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02765

Powell, W., Adams, L. B., Cole-Lewis, Y., Agyemang, A., & Upton, R. D. (2016). Masculinity and race-related factors as barriers to health help-seeking among African American men. Behavioral Medicine, 42(3), 150–163. https://doi.org/10.1080/08964289.2016.1165174

Wong, Y. J., Ho, M.-H. R., Wang, S.-Y., & Miller, I. S. K. (2017). Meta-analyses of the relationship between conformity to masculine norms and mental health-related outcomes. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 64(1), 80–93. https://doi.org/10.1037/cou0000176