Teachers can either be committed or uncom-mitted to their caring for children. Their construc-tion of teaching as caring is based on their own philosophies about learning and about children. Biological sex, as well as sexual orientation, has evidently little to do with whether or not men are or can be effective as primary teachers. Socially con-structed gender roles, and their effective deployment, is teaching. It is, therefore, others’ use of their own perceptions of caring and their automatic suspicions about men’s acts of caring that are the real problems with men in primary teaching. For all teachers it is the complex, multi-layered understanding about gen-dered behavior, about professional role expectations, and about intentions behind acts of caring that are in need of continuous investigation. Caring for children in our teaching is something that we constantly build, monitor, and reshape based on the evolving relation-ship between the one caring and the one being cared for. At this time, part of that construction for men who do choose to teach young children is awareness of what others are making of our caring.

Note

I am grateful to the Childhood Education Writing Group at USF for their careful reading and helpful comments on this manuscript.

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