In praise of men's sheds...

When I was 8 my male school teacher, who was probably in his late 50s, retired.  Retirement was a foreign concept to me then, just as it is now.  Anyway, one week later I read in the newspaper that he died.  I remember at the time wondering that if you take someone's vocation away from them, do they just shrivel up and die?  Are these the consequences of retirement?   Knowing what I know now, I wonder about his death and the causes, and the consequences for men in general who retire.  So much of a man's identity seems to be caught up in what he does for a living.  That can be a source of great pride, but also the consequences are huge when that ends.  Often one of the first things two men who meet each other ask is, "What do you do?"  So when so much of a man's self-definition is caught up in his work role, and that is taken away on retirement or disability, you have to wonder about what comes after.

A brilliant meeting place for those men dealing with retirement (or younger men with some time on their hands) has sprung up in towns and cities across Australia.  It's called the Men's Shed.  This movement is amazing.  Basically, these sheds are meeting places for men that may have common interests, including technical skills (i.e., fixing stuff), arts, crafts, gardening, etc.  At their heart, the Men's Shed promotes shared interests and often involves activities built around the things that would be done in a traditional Australian back yard shed but done in a communal way, thereby introducing social interaction among participants that is an important part of promoting health and well-being.  So, in many ways the sheds act as a de facto work place for men where they can go and share time with fellow men in a non-threatening environment.

The importance of meeting places like the sheds for men cannot be understated.  Generally speaking, when men gather in groups, it is more likely "to do something" together, rather than to sit around talking to each other (of course, that happens, but it is the function of the doing, rather than vice versa).  The sharing of action-oriented activities is a way for boys and men to develop friendships.  Compared to females who might develop relationships through disclosure of personal information through discussion, men develop friendships through shared activities, particularly physical or skill-based activities.  Although there may well be less exchanges of intimate personal information, men can nevertheless develop pretty strong friendships in this way.  Unfortunately there has been a marked tendency by many helping professionals to judge male friendships and the way they are formed from the perspective of how female relationships come about.  When they are judged by this standard, they may across as lacking because for men, there may be initially very little verbal  sharing about one's inner life with another man.  I would argue that the way men go about friendships is a bit more covert, and that emotional closeness is indeed developed through self-disclosure that can occur in the context of shared activities.  There is research out there that supports this notion, that Men's Sheds become a haven for men to share details about their lives while doing other things, thus developing a support group culture, without the support group stigma.

This is why the Men's Sheds have been so successful.  They take into account men's relational styles and means of establishing friendships, and respect and support them wholeheartedly in building a place that is more than just about "fixing things".