13. Fatherhood, Pressure, and the Things Dads Aren’t Saying Out Loud

Fatherhood is something we don’t talk about nearly enough….but it’s time to change that.

In this episode, I want to broaden the conversation on fatherhood. I recently gathered responses from over 100 fathers in my community, and explored fatherhood through three lenses: my husband’s experience, what other dads shared, and what we know clinically about paternal mental health. 

What stood out most? Fathers are deeply involved, deeply committed, and often carry a quiet weight (even though they’re super unsure and overwhelmed themselves).

Many fathers shared that they feel pressure to handle everything on their own, believing that asking for help is a sign of weakness. Yeah…that belief didn’t come out of thin air! It’s rooted in long-standing expectations about what society deems to “be a man”.

At the end of the day, what stood out most from these fathers was their love, effort, and desire to get it right. Dads are “just trying to figure it out, too”. 

Supporting fathers, strengthening relationships, and caring for parental mental health aren’t separate conversations. They’re how we build healthier families, together!

Episode Recap:

• Why fatherhood is a conversation we need to be having more openly
• The hardest transitions into fatherhood
• Key themes from 100+ fathers who took an anonymous survey
• Real thoughts from my husband regarding fatherhood
• The very real mental load fathers carry + how societal expectations have shaped this
• How paternal mental health is impacted by maternal mental health
• The evolving role of fathers & shift toward deeper emotional connection w/their kids
• How parenthood truly changes relationships
• The importance of preparing your relationship (not just your home) for a baby
• Why supporting fathers, strengthening relationships, and prioritizing mental health are vital for building healthier families

**Disclaimer: The content shared in this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for therapy or mental health care. If you’re struggling or need support, please reach out to a licensed mental health professional in your area, because you don’t have to go through it alone.

Links/Resources:

• Take the Fatherhood Survey
• Follow on Instagram @tztherapy
• Check out my website

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi friends, welcome to Reproductively Speaking. I'm Taryn Sweiger, and every week we will explore the intersection of parenthood, purpose, and mental well-being for honest stories, expert insights, and practical tools for everyday life. Grab your coffee, take a deep breath, and let's get into today's episode. Hey everyone, welcome back to Reproductively Speaking. I'm really glad that you're here today. Today's episode is a little different and a little personal. Recently, I asked my husband a question that I thought would be interesting both as a partner and as a therapist who works with parents every single day. So I asked him, you know, what was the hardest transition for you when you became a dad? And as someone who works in perinatal mental health, I spend a lot of time talking with moms primarily, and about motherhood, you know, pregnancy, postpartum, identity shifts, and relationship changes, but not as often are we talking openly about the internal shifts that are happening for fathers. And the things that my husband shared with me really stuck with me. You know, he said things like realizing you're not first anymore, figuring out how to feel confident caring for your children, and losing the ability to just sort of do whatever you want, whatever you want. Right. And then when we talked about like the changes to our relationship after kids, he mentioned things like feeling divided at times because of our different parenting styles or sort of trying to find what our new normal is for our relationship. And oftentimes feeling like our relationship came last. And honestly, those are things that I hear from individuals or couples all the time in therapy. And over the last couple of years, I've really wanted to broaden this conversation beyond just my husband's perspective, right? Because that's just one perspective. And so I asked dads in my community to anonymously share about their experiences with fatherhood and also the mental health side of things. And the responses were incredibly honest. So if you were one of those dads that took the survey, I really appreciate it. But today we are going to talk about fatherhood through three lenses. So we're going to talk a little bit about what my husband said. We're going to talk about what other dads shared in the survey. And we're also going to talk about what we know clinically regarding paternal mental health. So before we dive into the transitions that my husband talked about, I wanted to share just a little bit about what came out of the survey. So over a hundred fathers responded, and these were ranging from men in their 20s all the way to men in their 50s with children as young as newborns, up to adult children. And some of the biggest challenges that fathers reported were balancing work and family life, the financial pressure and the expectation to provide, navigating relationship changes with their partner, feeling unsure about their parenting skills, and trying to build emotional connection with their kids. But something else really stood out to me, and that was that many of the dads described themselves as very involved parents. And they talked about, you know, preparing meals for their kids, their bedtime routines, attending school events, helping with homework, just playing and coaching their kids sports. So this narrative that I think sometimes we hear that dads are or can be disengaged or uninvolved doesn't really match what many of the fathers described in the survey. And I definitely think that over time and in the most recent, you know, decade or so, that fathers have been more involved. But even with that involvement, many also said that they still feel pressure to handle everything quietly. And one dad wrote, you know, we're just trying to figure it out too, and we get overwhelmed, but we can't say anything. And that really stayed with me because why, why have they been made to feel like they can't say anything? I think that's part of the issue, right? So the first thing my husband said when I asked him about becoming a dad was this idea of like changing the way that you think and that you're not first anymore. And this is such a profound mental shift because before kids, most of us structure our lives around our own personal needs. So when we get to wake up, how we spend our time, what we do, what we want to do. But when we become a parent, our brain starts to sort of constantly scan for someone else's needs. So are the kids hungry? Does the baby need a diaper change? Uh, do we need to leave this event because bedtime's coming? And, you know, if the kids don't go to bed on time, then we have to deal with the consequences of that, right? So our identity starts to make the shift from an individual system to the family system. And something that I tell my clients often with this idea is that two things can be true at the same time. We can love our kids deeply, and we can still grieve the parts of our life that we had before them. So we can have this grief for being able to be spontaneous. We can have grief for the freedom that existed, um, and we can have grief for even the simplicity that used to exist before these sweet, loving, but complicated creatures entered our life, right? And this doesn't mean that someone regrets becoming a parent. It just means that their life has fundamentally changed, and that's okay. Another thing that my husband mentioned was feeling confident in his ability to properly care for his kids. And this is something that came up in the survey responses, too. Several of the dads said that they struggled with a lack of parenting knowledge or uncertainty about how to connect emotionally with their children. And then just like this constant wondering if they were doing it right. And when we think about culturally, I feel like we often position mothers as the default parent, uh, the person who is expected to know how to soothe the baby, to anticipate everybody's needs, to manage the schedules. But the truth is, confidence in parenting doesn't magically disappear. It develops over time through experiences, through diaper changes, through bedtime routines, through learning how to calm your toddlers who's having a meltdown. And it it grows through participation. And honestly, parenthood isn't always intuitive for moms either. We also are learning how to soothe our baby and how to make bedtime a little bit smoother and how our toddler likes their sandwich cut, all of this through trial and error, right? And this is why oftentimes in session, when I'm working with moms, I'm always trying to encourage moms to not be afraid to just take a step back and let dads do their learning through doing as well. Another thing that my husband said was not being able to do what I want when I want. And honestly, every parent understands this one. Your life becomes so structured around nap schedules and bedtimes and school routines and sports practices. And something important here to normalize is that this feeling of missing freedom doesn't mean that we're regretting becoming a parent, right? It just means like we're adjusting to this new lifestyle. And one of the responses that one of the dads said in the survey was something that I loved. And he said, you know, you only get 18 summers. And I think that that really captures sort of like this bittersweet nature of parenting, which is also something that I talk so often about with many of the clients. Just parenting is bittersweet, you know, we can we can't wait for them to finally sleep through the night or finally be able to be a little bit independent. And then it's almost sometimes within the same breath that we're grieving and sad for how quickly they're growing and changing and even not needing us as much anymore. One of the challenges that my husband said was like the hardest part of changes that happened in our relationship was this idea of feeling like the relationship sometimes comes last, right? And a couple of years ago, I had an opportunity to take a training uh with Dr. Dan Singley on paternal mental health. And something that he said that was so interesting to me and that I completely look at, you know, the relationship dynamics and even just thinking about my partner in general is because of this sort of like societal expectation that we have placed on men, right? Um, and and sort of this patriarchal system that exists, that a lot of times for men, their primary emotional support system is their partner. So if, you know, for a man, it might be his wife or his girlfriend or whatever. And so imagine that being your safe place, your primary emotional support person, then having a baby, requiring a lot of time, attention, just taking time away from the relationship. And now you're left feeling isolated and alone, alone, not only in you navigating this transition as well, because you're part of this family system. But also if your partner is struggling, not maybe feeling like there's space for you to struggle, because how are you going to go to your person, your primary emotional support person who's also struggling, and then lay it on them that you're struggling to, right? Um, and I think this is also just part of why having these conversations about how are we going to prepare for this? You know, how are we gonna make sure that our communication is is good and that we can reach out to each other when we need support or that we can communicate when we're struggling before babies enter our lives is so, so important. Something else really important came out of the survey, and that was that many fathers reported experiencing mental health challenges since becoming dads. And some of the most common were stress, anxiety, depression, burnout, and sleep deprivation. And many of them said that they feel overwhelmed either sometimes or often. But at the same time, many of them that said that they had been struggling had not sought professional help. And when asked why, the most common responses were lack of time, financial barriers, not knowing where to get help. And one response that came up again and again was I feel like I should be able to handle it on my own. And this aligns with so much about what I feel like we know about paternal mental health. And one of the biggest barriers to men seeking support just in general is the belief that strength means handling everything alone. And let's be honest, like that belief doesn't come out of nowhere, right? This belief is deeply rooted in the patriarchal systems that many of us were raised in, where masculinity has historically been defined as self-reliance, being having this sort of like emotional restraint and the expectation that men should be the providers and protectors above all else. And how much stress and responsibility does that sound like? And within this framework, vulnerability can sometimes be interpreted as weakness. And that's where we sort of start to see what people often refer to as toxic masculinity. So, not masculinity in self, but this narrow definition of masculinity that says men shouldn't have emotional needs, men shouldn't ask for help, and that they should just push through whatever they're experiencing. Uh, but the reality is that those expectations can be incredibly isolating and damaging because when fathers feel like they're supposed to hold everything together, they may feel like there isn't space to say, this is hard for me too, or I'm struggling, I'm having a hard time, you know, whatever it is. And something really interesting from the research is that a mother's experience with postpartum depression or anxiety is actually one of the strongest predictors of whether fathers will struggle emotionally too. So we know that when moms are struggling, that dads are often struggling too. They're navigating the same sleep deprivation, the same life changes, the same pressures, but they just may be expressing that stress differently. And something I think is really important to say here is this when we talk about dismantling harmful patriarchal norms, supporting a father's emotional well-being is actually part of that work too. Because when men are allowed to be emotionally present or vulnerable or supported, it benefits their partners, it benefits their children, and it just benefits this entire family system. And healthy masculinity includes caregiving, it includes emotional presence and it includes asking for support. Another major theme in the survey was societal expectations of fathers. Many dads said that they believe society expects men to be uh the primary breadwinner, to be emotionally strong, to not show vulnerability and be less emotionally involved with their kids. But here's the interesting part when asked about the most rewarding part of fatherhood, the most common answers were watching their children grow, building emotional bonds with them, teaching and guiding them, and receiving love and affection from them. So there's this tension, right? Like society is often telling men to be emotionally distant, emotionally closed off, but fatherhood actually invites men into this sort of deep emotional connection. And many fathers are stepping into a role in ways that challenge some of these old expectations or old narratives that they have in their minds. When I asked my husband about the hardest challenges or changes in our relationship, he mentioned a lot of things that I oftentimes hear from couples, things like parenting style differences, the redefining of roles within the system, um, and feeling like the relationship sometimes comes last. And one dad in the survey wrote: if you don't have good communication as a couple, forget becoming a parent. And honestly, there's a lot of truth in that. Parenthood changes this entire ecosystem of your relationship. The way that we're communicating changes, the way that we're dividing the responsibilities of the household, of just our daily life changes, our time together changes, and our priorities shift. And every couple has to work to sort of renegotiate their partnership after kids come into the picture. Something that I've noticed, both personally and professionally, is that this part of the transition is rarely something that couples prepare for ahead of time. And when people, you know, are preparing for a baby, the focus is often on things like, oh, we got to get the nursery ready and we got to choose what's the best car seat or stroller, and we have to have this birth plan. And then I have to, you know, pack my hospital bag and plan for the baby shower. And like all of those things matter, but often what doesn't get talked about enough is preparing the relationship for this transition into parenthood. And there needs to be conversations like how do we communicate when we're exhausted? How do we plan to divide responsibilities? How are we going to handle those moments that we know are going to come up when there's parenting decisions and we're having a conflict because we have, we have different beliefs or we have different wants or needs. And what does support actually look like for us? Because babies, again, don't just change our schedule, but they also change this dynamic between partners. And if couples haven't had conversations about expectations or how they plan to navigate stress together, those differences can surface really quickly once a baby arrives. And, you know, this doesn't mean that something is wrong with the relationship. It just means that you're entering this new stage of partnership and this transition to parenthood, it's asking for two people to move from being partners to now we have to be teammates and we sort of have to tag team this, right? And like raising a human. And if we know anything about being on a team or what being a good teammate means, like this means we have to have a lot of good communication and there has to be some flexibility and reciprocation and a lot of grace because healthy parenting doesn't come from two perfect parents. It comes from partners who know how to repair and reconnect with one another whenever things get hard, because spoiler alert, shit's gonna get hard. And this is a skill that we can start practicing even before we have a baby. But it's not often something that's prioritized, right? And so this is one of the reasons that I feel like I care so much about the work that I do with either individuals or couples during this period, because preparing for a baby isn't just about the logistics of bringing a child into the world. It's also about preparing this relationship system that the child is entering. And it's something that I wish that I would have done differently. It's something that I wish me and my husband would have even like thought would have been a priority or something important. And here's one takeaway, I guess, from this conversation is like supporting fathers and strengthening relationships and preparing couples for the reality of parenting. These aren't separate conversations. This is all part of like building healthier families and healthier systems who want to bring some more of these little humans into the world. As I was reading through the responses from the dads who participated in the survey, one thing really stood out to me. And that was that over and over again, fathers described a deep sense of responsibility and love for their children and a desire to show up well for their families, even when they weren't always sure how. And one dad wrote, We're just trying to figure it out too. And another one said, Everyone struggles sometimes, it's okay. And the one that really stuck with me was that you only get 18 summers, right? So parenthood is complicated. It's exhausting, it's overwhelming, it's full of pressure, but it can also be incredibly meaningful and deeply rewarding. And something I've been thinking about a lot lately is that we just have so much that we can still learn about fathers' experiences during this transition. And that's part of why I had created the survey that I mentioned in this episode, because, you know, hearing directly from fathers, hearing about their challenges and their joys and their struggles, this all helps us to build a fuller picture of what families are actually experiencing. So if you're a father and you're listening to this episode, or if you're a mama and you want to share this with that dad in your life, like I would truly love to hear from you. I am always continuing to collect responses, and I will include a link to the survey in the show notes. So the survey is completely anonymous and your perspective could really just help shape some of these future conversations about fatherhood and mental health. Because when we support fathers, we're supporting partners and children and families as a whole. Thank you so much for being here and for being a part of this conversation. If this episode resonated with you, you know, consider sharing it with a dad in your life. I'll see you next time on Reproductively Speaking. Hey, thanks for being here and spending some time with me on Reproductively Speaking. I hope today's conversation left you feeling a little more seen, supported, and maybe even inspired. If it did, share this episode with a friend who might need it. And don't forget to subscribe or leave a review. It truly makes a difference. Until next time, take care of your mind, your relationship, and yourself. You got this.