According to the AARP 2025 report on caregiving, of the 11 to 15 million people serving as full-time primary caregivers to their loved ones with disability or dementia, 39% are men.
We can discuss whether that number should be higher, but my point is 39% of 11 million people is a lot of guys. It’s really hard to generalize the attitudes and behaviors of a cohort that large.
And yet, we do it anyway. We say that men only want to “fix things.” That they lack empathy or patience with problems that come with cognitive loss. That caregiving is “women’s work.” I know a hundred male caregivers (and even more female caregivers) who prove those assumptions dead wrong.
Most literature on caregiving is written by women. The advisory board for that AARP study was almost all women. If the community around caregiving is predominantly female, and if the wider culture still thinks of caregiving as a thing that women do and men don’t do, then of course lots of men are going to feel left out.
We know from the research that men are less likely to join support groups and less likely to seek help when they’re having problems caregiving for a loved one. None of this helps their loved ones at all.
Men are only 39% of the caregiving army but their ranks are growing. They, as much as women, are the future of caregiving. We should stop thinking otherwise.
The Manly Caregiver 
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