Why Are We Here?
Perhaps you work in a service designed to support women and those giving birth, or perhaps you are part of a service designed to support families and find yourself primarily supporting mothers and their children. Is this course for you?
Yes!
According to wider research, between 5-15% of people who identify as fathers will experience perinatal mental health issues (Darwin et al. 2020; Cameron, Sedov, and Tomfohr-Madsen 2016).
We know that perinatal mental illness in a parent contributes to an increased risk of adverse outcomes for child mental health and development (S. D. Fisher et al. 2021). Evidence also shows that support from a partner (for example the baby’s dad) is a protective factor against the development of maternal perinatal mental illness, and that this support has a positive effect on outcomes for those who are experiencing perinatal mental illness (Darwin et al. 2020).
According to the World Health Organisation, “mental health is a basic human right for all people” (2023), but it is clear that where a dad is a part of a family, maintaining their mental health and wellbeing is also a key component in protecting the mental health and wellbeing of the family as a whole.
Including and supporting dads in every aspect of the perinatal journey also changes societal narratives given to women and birthing people about the (often unachievable) expectations placed on them, it challenges traditional gender expectations and promotes greater equality in care-giving.
To understand what is happening, and work towards woman-centred care, we need to do more than think ‘outside the box’. We need to think about the box itself and take a critical look at the accepted norms and the messages being transmitted to women as they become mothers.
(Reed, 2021)
Dads who are present and engaged in their families experience improvements in their own wellbeing, provide better support to co-parents and bond more closely with their children.
In this course we refer explicitly to dads. We use this term to encompass the following groups: biological fathers cohabiting with their child, biological dads who are separated from the baby’s other parent and/or not cohabiting with their child, single dads, male partners who are not the biological father of the child but who represent a father figure, adoptive fathers and foster fathers.
The use of this term (as opposed to more generic terms such as ‘parent’) is reflective of some of the findings of both this work and wider research, that dads are more engaged when they are specifically addressed as such.
We acknowledge that this term, and the contents of this course does not cover the experiences of co-parents of other genders. This is not to minimise the importance of those experiences and the support needs of those groups, but rather to ensure that these resources address the specific needs and experiences of people who identify as dads and do not attempt to generalise or minimise the needs of others who have different experiences and needs by subsuming them into the same category.
This course also sometimes refers to mums. Many dads that contributed to the development of this course were parenting alongside someone who identified as a mother and had given birth - some of the materials in this course specifically address these experiences. These specific materials can be disregarded for those working specifically with dads parenting alongside other dads or parenting alone. We also refer to co-parents in recognition of the fact that some dads co-parent alongside a person who identifies as another gender and/or who has not given birth.
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Darwin, Zoe, Jill Domoney, Jane Iles, Florence Bristow, Jasmine Siew, and Vaheshta Sethna. 2020. “Assessing the Mental Health of Fathers, Other Co-Parents, and Partners in the Perinatal Period: Mixed Methods Evidence Synthesis.” Frontiers in Psychiatry / Frontiers Research Foundation 11: 585479.
Fisher, Sheehan D., Jesus Cobo, Barbara Figueiredo, Richard Fletcher, Craig F. Garfield, Jane Hanley, Paul Ramchandani, and Daniel B. Singley. 2021. “Expanding the International Conversation with Fathers’ Mental Health: Toward an Era of Inclusion in Perinatal Research and Practice.” Archives of Women’s Mental Health 24 (5): 841–48.
Reed, Rachel. 2021. Reclaiming Childbirth as a Rite of Passage: Weaving Ancient Wisdom with Modern Knowledge. Word Witch Press.
World Health Organisation. 2023. “Mental Health: Promoting and Protecting Human Rights.” World Health Organisation. 2023. https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/mental-health-promoting-and-protecting-human-rights#:~:text=Mental%20health%20is%20a%20basic,attainable%20standard%20of%20mental%20health.