Men Are Dumping Their Social Lives On The Women In Their Lives, And It's Called "Mankeeping"

Here’s a quick mental exercise for you, Pandas: think about the men in your lives; how many friends does each of them have? When you start counting, you might be surprised. As American comedian John Mulaney said in one of his stand-up routines, “My dad has no friends, and your dad has no friends. If you think your dad has friends, you’re wrong. Your mom has friends, and they have husbands. Those are not your dad’s friends.”

It’s a joke, of course, but it makes a point about how men are traditionally less inclined to socialize and tend to have fewer friendships than women. In heterosexual relationships, that often means that a man’s “friends” are his wife’s or girlfriend’s friends’ boyfriends or husbands. That usually happens because the woman pushes her partner to “have more friends” and socialize.

And here’s where the term “mankeeping” comes in: the emotional labor that women do to make sure their male partners have a social life, relationships, and are overall emotionally stable. Sounds a lot like a therapist? Perhaps because it is. Lately, more and more women have been calling it out and realizing they’re doing unpaid labor in the form of “mankeeping” and that their partners are not doing the same in return.

Bored Panda decided to delve deeper into the phenomenon. What is “mankeeping?” How did we come to the point of women doing emotional and social labor for their male partners? And are men the only ones to blame, or are women guilty of enabling and willingly “mankeeping” as well? See what mental health specialists, marriage and family therapists, and relationship and intimacy coaches have to say about it and what advice they have to offer for both men and women.