What do trad-caths, pro-natalists, and anti man-keepers have in common?
Summary: Jason Mangone, our Executive Director, writes about his reflections on our research with Movember, a charity focusing on men’s health. While our results are not public, you can email us at usmedia@moreincommon.com to speak with our research team and learn more.
Earlier this month, I was at a Veterans Day dinner catching up with an old friend with whom I have a lot in common. In addition to being former Marines, we’re both Italian, we each have four young kids, we were raised and still actively worship in the Catholic Church, and we have recently moved back to our hometowns to raise our kids around extended family.
“Have you noticed that our background has become a thing online?” I asked.
“Yeah,” my friend replied, “I go to church, I moved home, I had a bunch of kids. Do I have to be a pro-natalist now?”
Online discourse has been statistically proven to be weird. This is especially true when talking about issues related to men and masculinity. Concepts that once emerged through family and other institutions are now run through the engagement machine. They come out the other side optimized for shareability and reach, rebuilt to rapidly inspire big movements more than steadily inform regular, and often boring, habits. (Case in point: my younger colleague informed me it’s now embarrassing to have a boyfriend.)
There’s a common feature in much of More in Common’s research: most Americans believe in pretty straightforward things, but those beliefs don’t motivate engagement as strongly as more extreme views. The exhausted majority is a phenomenon, but not a mobilizable base.
In my effort to highlight the maw of the engagement machine, I went to Twitter and typed “masculinity” into the search bar. I discovered that this week’s online debate centers on a VICE article about “Mankeeping,” or “the emotional labor women end up doing in heterosexual relationships.”
The VICE article, which was originally posted in June but for some reason went viral this week, gives a cursory overview of a much more nuanced talk given by a Stanford Professor in the Spring of 2024. Having run through the engagement machine’s spin cycle, none of the most-engaged-with posts reference the original talk given 18 months ago; nearly all of them have snippets of video and reactions-to-reactions.
Meanwhile, millions of Americans go on with their lives, navigating relationships, raising kids, going to work, and watching football. And their views change very little, if at all.
In research More in Common conducted in early 2025 in partnership with the men’s health charity Movember, we found a set of perspectives on men and masculinity that are much more boring and normal than the engagement machine would lead you to believe. We asked Americans to choose, from a list of seventeen traits, “which do you think are most important that men try to exemplify nowadays?” The top answer, chosen by 36 percent of all respondents, is “Providing for your family.” This answer remains the most popular across gender, generation, income, religion, and political party.
Other answers chosen by 20 percent or more of respondents include: “Keeping loved ones safe,” “Being a loving partner,” “Standing up for what’s right,” and “Learning and growing from mistakes.”
Even more boring: most Americans don’t view discussions about men’s issues to be zero sum. An overwhelming majority – 77 percent – of Americans agree that “Addressing men’s issues and women’s issues are both important and talking about one doesn’t reduce support for the other,” compared to only 12 percent who agree that “Discussions about men’s issues take attention away from addressing the challenges women face today.” This is true across all seven segments of our Hidden Tribes:
Before Twitter, having four kids didn’t make me a “pro-natalist;” going to Mass and raising my kids in the faith didn’t make me a “Trad Cath;” and being a good husband didn’t require me to rail against “mankeeping.” Like my friend said: “This is just what we do. You don’t have to make such a big deal about it.”
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Is there a link to the full report? I am curious about the methodology used in this research. I'm also wondering if this will be done next year to track trends over time.