ABSTRACT
The term masculinities has garnered immense attention over the past decade in both the social and scholarly arenas. Within family science, however, that attention has been far more limited. Responding to both this gap in our discipline as well as the growing public recognition of and discourse surrounding masculinities, this special issue seeks to bring a necessary focus to how masculinities are conceptualized, operationalized, and theorized within family science. Encompassing a range of trans- and inter-disciplinary perspectives, the 18 articles that comprise this special issue critique, expand, and transform our understanding of masculinities—and of masculinities within families—in a way that is timely, sociopolitically relevant, intersectional, and reflexive. In this introductory article, we situate the need for the special issue, clarify the meaning of critical masculinities in families, provide an overview of the articles included herein, and offer recommendations for the future of theorizing masculinities and of gender more broadly within our field.