“I mean, I’ve always been real close to family, [but] my mother, she passed away, and then my father passed away. So it’s really my girl—I call her my girl—we’ve been together over 20 years. Her parents and my brother, we all need each other … It’s mostly just my family.”— Douglas
Douglas is a 40-year-old man from South Carolina. He works for a moving company by day, and restores old chainsaws in his spare time. Douglas lost his two closest friends: one to suicide and one to prison. He also lost his only mentor in life—his father—when he died. And he lost his only attachment to community—weekly church attendance—when his grandmother and mother passed away in close succession, and he stopped going.
Family is all Douglas has left. Supporting his family is his core source of purpose in life, and his wife and brother are the only people he can turn to for support. For Douglas, family is the one remaining commitment that gives his life meaning, and the one remaining thread in the relational safety net that has not broken.
‘Nobody to Call’
Douglas is one of the 30 men my colleague, Soren Duggan, interviewed for Nobody to Call, our qualitative research project on friendship, community, and purpose among men without college degrees.1 Like Douglas, many of the men we spoke to had a strong connection to their families. In fact, the sense of purpose and social support that familial relationships offered emerged as the sole bright spot across our conversations.
For the working-class men we interviewed, it was family, and nothing else.
But also, like Douglas, family was often all these men had left. Many had no close friends, no community, no mentors, and no sense of purpose beyond supporting their families. It wasn’t just one thing that was missing for living a flourishing, connected life; it was almost everything.
What follows is a synthesis of what we heard across our interviews: the purpose that emerged through familial relationships, the tenuousness of these family ties, and the questions about working-class men and family life we’re asking on the other side of this project.
Family is often described as the anchor or foundation of a robust relational life. It’s seen as the one association we inherit that can embed us in many other overlapping webs of association we participate in throughout life. But this wasn’t the case for the working-class men we interviewed. For them, it was family, and nothing else.
Family as Purpose
Family was everything for most of the men we spoke to. Whether their primary familial role was father, uncle, spouse, or brother, supporting their families was often the source of purpose and meaning in life.
For these men, there was nothing better than becoming a dad. Where men felt any sense of purpose, it was almost always related to providing and caring for their children. Notably, many of them rarely felt needed elsewhere—not at work, not in their communities. It was at home, with their kids and spouses, where they felt their contributions made a difference.
“I have two daughters, so most of my time goes to my kids. I’m a single father, so … I’m just trying to be there, trying to support all the stuff that they come up with,” said Cedric, a 31-year-old from Texas. “I just try to support everything, because I never know what’s going to stick. And that’s why I feel like that’s my purpose—just being there for my kids.”
Many men described the experience of becoming fathers as transformational. There was life before fatherhood: irresponsible, aimless, at times unmoored. Then there was life as fathers: committed, purposeful, even hopeful. These men spoke emotionally, both about the maturation they experienced and how their newfound purpose made even the hardest days better. This was the case for Javon, a 28-year-old father of two from Pennsylvania:
Being able to provide my kids and my wife with the best life that I possibly can is my purpose … Before my kids, man, I’m not even gonna lie—I was a drinker. I was going out and partying and things like that. Ever since my kids, that stopped because I can’t be six beers deep around a two-year-old and a four-year-old. That’s just not doable. It definitely helped with my addiction. Especially on the long days — the long shifts at work—my kids and my wife are what I look forward to when I come home.
Family was also a source of purpose for uncles, especially those without children. For these men, it was in the role of uncle where they felt both needed and responsible. Uncles described how supporting and serving as role models to their nieces and nephews imbued their lives with meaning and fulfillment they wouldn’t otherwise have. Josiah, a 40-year-old from South Carolina, directly connected his active role as uncle to his purpose in life:
I’ve been spending a lot of time the past few months with [my nieces and nephews], because their parents are going through a divorce, and … the kids sometimes get forgotten when the parents are fighting. So I’m trying to alleviate that in the best way I can … That actually has given me a great sense of [purpose] … if I didn’t have that, I really wouldn’t [have any] … It’s restabilizing my identity as Josiah. Otherwise, I would be adrift in the wind.
Other men without kids talked about the purpose that came from being needed by their spouses, parents, siblings, in-laws, and extended families. Many of these men described need in mutual or reciprocal terms. They spoke of their sense of being needed by family members, but also a sense of needing them for support. Some version of Douglas’ “We all need each other” refrain came up a few times during our interviews.
“There’s a lot of stuff going on right now, personally, where [our] family is trying to step up and deal with a major illness. My grandmother is very sick,” explained Kyle, a 34-year-old from Kansas. “So, the rest of the family is all looking to each other—trying to lean on each other.”
Family, and Nothing Else
For most of the men we interviewed, family was all they had left. Familial relationships weren’t the foundation of a flourishing life. Instead, they were often the only thing standing between these men and complete isolation, and, at times, even made relationship-formation outside the family more difficult. These few remaining family ties were often tenuously held, and when they broke, men often found themselves alone with nobody to call.
Interview after interview, we heard a similar refrain: family, and nothing else.
Here’s Josiah again: “Except for my family, I don’t regularly do anything with anybody.” Here’s what Darryl, a 37-year-old from Michigan, had to say: “I’m needed by my family. Outside of that, I don’t know anything else.” Or, as Silvio, a 28-year-old from Washington, put it: “Close friends? Other than my parents? I would say no.”
We also heard another refrain: family consumes everything else. Men with caregiving roles saw their familial obligations as preventing them from building relationships outside the family. These men described the responsibilities of caregiving as so time- and energy-intensive that they precluded them from doing anythi
