Acknowledging Dads

“It was as if I was absent”

Research tells us that when perinatal professionals engage with dads the benefits to mothers and babies are significant across a range of issues (for example infant feeding and mental health). The perinatal system is set up to place birthing people and their babies at its centre and whilst the centrality of these two is crucial, this can come at the expense of the experiences and therefore functioning of dads.

Engagement of dads is not routine practice in perinatal systems (Burgess and Goldman 2022) and for the dads that we spoke with, this had clear implications for dads’ wellbeing. Dads said things like:

“I felt as though I didn’t exist’.” 

“I was just in the way. Unimportant. It made me feel helpless.”

One dad told us that he went to nearly all appointments with his partner. On one occasion his partner was asked to leave the room to collect something:

‘This would have been the perfect opportunity to ask me how I was doing, or even to ask how she was doing from my perspective, just to engage with me on some level, but instead we sat in awkward silence.’ 

It can be easy to think that the challenges to engaging dads are insurmountable. Squeezing budgets, higher levels of need and endless tasks can loom large. But consider these quotes from other men that we spoke to, who had different experiences and how transformative being recognised was for them. These are real quotes from dads in Kent:

“They made me feel seen, heard and listened to.”

“The recognised me, saw the responsibility I had.”

“We were both included. Because of that I felt like I knew how to support.”