My name is Iman Amrani and I'm a journalist at the Guardian
and in this week's episode of Modern Masculinity,
we're going to be looking at dads.
Now, there are so many different areas
you could look at when it comes to fatherhood,
but I'm looking specifically at new fathers
and how restrictions and the pandemic are affecting this new experience in life for them.
I think it does help to talk about the issues you face
and the challenges that everyone has but
men are still quite closed off.
I was really in a dark place, I'd let it just manifest.
If I did speak out during that, it wouldn't have gone into the dark place it did.
So it is really difficult to open up this conversation because
it's not about mums v dads.
Of course mothers go through so many things
and I personally feel like I have an awareness of some of the challenges they face
but I know a lot less about what dads go through so I thought it would be important
to start a conversation and ask fathers what the experience has been like for them.
I thought I'd start this journey by reaching out to Mark Williams
who is a father's mental health campaigner.
He happened to be coming to London the week that I called him and he said that he
was going to be presenting a document that he made in lockdown
collating loads of information
and statistics about father's mental health which he wanted to deliver to his MP.
So I went to go meet him at Westminster
with a number of other campaigners.
They're topless, they're topless!
Sorry.
You would come with this report being like, 'this is really important,
it's about children, it's about mental health, it's about protecting people ...'
But you can't compete with people coming out and doing a topless protest.
I mean, where are the cameras going to be at?
So this report explains 10 years of all the work I've done speaking to all the parents and
it's backed up with research from professors, doctors, everyone who's got a massive interest in
parenting and mental health.
It's also saying that one in 10 fathers suffer from post depression itself,
fathers are suffering from PTSD after witnessing birth trauma and they're not getting that support.
I wanted to have a proper conversation with Mark about the work he's doing especially because
at the moment it really does feel like it's difficult to put a spotlight on these kinds
of issues but with everything else going on in the world.
So I went to go meet him at his home in Bridgend.
Do you want a cup of tea, or ...?
Do you know what, I'd love a cup of tea?
Yeah, Mark, I would love a cup of tea.
We'll be there in about eight minutes.
Hello!
Just don't film the wall, we're doing the wallpaper so there are a couple of things ...
So don't film that.
You know, when we're talking about the issues that dads are facing, all the stresses ...
What's the kind of main concern?
Yeah, like, so ... Like myself, I've got an undiagnosed disorder called ADHD
so you're self-managing that before you became a dad
so like dads go bipolar, schizophrenia, depression, anxiety before they become dads.
Lack of sleep can cause a massive impact in mental health
and I also didn't get that bonding attachment as well
which is overwhelming feeling that love that society tells us, you know?
I just, I was really in a dark place, very dark place.
I'd let it just manifest to a point where
what I know now if I did speak out during that, it wouldn't have gone into the dark place it did.
It's interesting to hear your story but it's also quite terrifying to think of that in the context
that we're in now.
What would you say to a father that's struggling at the moment?
My journey has always been about having good to come from something bad
and it's my personal experience
is to say like don't suffer in silence, I know that everyone says that but literally you need
to talk to somebody.
All these conversations were happening with mums years ago but the conversation
are changing, people are realising about post depression mums now or parenting in mental health.
But with fathers my work's never been about taking the attention away from mums either.
What I'm saying is we have to look after dads as well because we've got same gendered parents,
you know, stayed home dads, single dads ...
There's different pressures now than when I was a new dad.
You've got social media, you know,
there's perfection, being a perfect parent which doesn't exist.
I mean, women have all these other issues they face as mothers but I kind of feel like,
I'm a bit more aware of those.
It feels like that conversation with dads in terms of family
and their expectations and like, what the stresses are going to be,
that conversation isn't actually at the same point yet.
No, society has changed now, you know, mum is up in Westminster now
and in different jobs, dad's at home.
We got to look at the services, look at the services differently now
and think of a more family approach.
How many men do we encourage into the maternity services,
to be a midwife or health visitor as well, you know what I mean?
We encourage more women out to go
into other industries and rightly so
but we need to encourage men as well, to go into maternity services,
so maybe possibly they could have those conversations.
If fathers aren't doing well, that's awful for them individually
but ultimately if that impacts on their partner, if it impacts on mum,
it's going to impact on the kids as well.
It's all about supporting all parents for their mental health.
We all got mental health, either good or bad, and giving them the right tools ...
And some dads just need an understanding
what they're going through, knowing that there is other fathers out there
that just feel that guilt or, you know, I'm gonna bond attachment and that could be enough.
But what happens is if that early prevention and support in place it just goes on and on
and on and to the point where we know now that suicide up to 47 times more likely
a risk of suicide in fathers than any other time in a man's life
and that's shocking when you think of it.
We have to look at people's behaviours rather than judge them.
Why is that person behaving in a certain way since babies were born?
Or during pregnancy and that's what we need to do.
Hello!
Hello. – Hi.
This is all recorded by the way.
I thought we would, like, I thought we'd do some instructions first and then like record it but no ...
So I wanted to speak to some fathers that have young children at this time and a friend of mine
reached out to a couple of people he knew in dad's Whatsapp groups that he belongs
to because they exist, dad's Whatsapp groups.
I didn't know that but it is a thing.
I think there's lots of Whatsapp groups. Is everybody from the same one?
I'm in the Forest Gate dads
which is mostly DIY tips, asking if you can borrow a ladder.
Local takeaway knowledge.
Yeah! Local takeaway.
I've made quite a few friends out of it though, I'm assuming the other guys have as well.
We've had nights out, pre-covid, we've had nights out ...
So ... sounds like a difficult job at the best of times even when there's not a global pandemic going on,
but what with the restrictions, child care, working from home and everything else just including life
that goes on, I thought it'd be a good idea to get some dads together so that they could even speak
to one another about their own experiences.
I have a two-year-old, he'll be three in May,
and a 11-month-old, he'll be one in a month as you could do the math.
I also had a son born in 2016
and he died in 2018.
So ... that was sort of, we were sort of starting to feel like we might
kind of re-enter the world when lockdown happened so that timing was wasn't great.
It's been tough. My father passed away in January last year
and my mum is on her own and so that's been a little
bit hard because she's been shielding as well and so it's like time you want to be rallying around.
Obviously the kids are really starting to notice things now, especially my four-year-old.
My two-year-old he's old enough to realise it's different or that it's frustrating but too young
to understand it really.
I do worry about things, like, how much interaction my son gets with
other children.
You all focus on your children which is great but when you think about
yourself personally the challenges for fathers,
what would you kind of say the main ones have been?
Sometimes I think the lack of sleep as in like, you know, my son was young and didn't sleep very
well and then you sort of getting up and all I was doing was commuting upstairs
to go to work all day and you feel just shattered.
I miss having other ...
I don't know how to phrase this, sort of, you know, other aspects of your identity.
You know, like, when I'm teaching a class, I'm a teacher when I'm in a meeting,
in person it's a very different thing to when I'm on Microsoft teams ...
It does feel like you don't have any other aspects of your identity right now
because you always you don't see anyone else,
you're around your kids all the time, it's just relentless.
I feel like the time I'm spending with my children is not as it's not quality time,
I feel like I'm not focused.
I'm sure women feel like that, my wife feels like that too,
she's probably laughing
because you know she's felt this for years because
she's had to juggle motherhood and working
for the last four years now so
and she works from home all the time so, you know, I've just discovered it in
the last year.
It's probably something to do with the generation we are of dads.
I feel like, certainly different to our dad's experience of fatherhood.
You sort of need to be a bit more
woke about it or I certainly feel that a bit of pressure almost to be like that, you know.
One of the things I'd spoken to this guy, Mark, about fathers and mental health,
he was saying about,
when you know the health workers come to check on the pregnant women in the home
and he was saying he kind of recommends that they check in on dad
and see how dad's doing as well and that
that doesn't always happen but that it would be useful if they did do that,
what do you guys think about that?
Did you get asked about how you were doing when you had your kids?
No? – No, never.
But it's a tricky thing because it's like, it's like, you know, like with maternity leave
is a lot longer than paternity leave, like, as it probably should be
especially if someone's breastfeeding, the health visitors don't really talk to you ...
They don't ask about you, you know, you go to appointments if your wife's
and whoever's there will talk to your wife so it's sort of this tricky thing
where it's like, James and Matt were saying like, we're maybe the first generation to be as involved
as we are, we're doing things that the kind of systems aren't set up for
but we're also not set up for it like we were talking about that Whatsapp group
and the mums group is all about
child care stuff and the dad's group is all about DIY, I mean it's like such a cliche but
we're all really involved dads but we don't talk about it.
This is probably the first conversation,
in-depth conversation, I've had with other dads about being a dad, you know we just don't really ...
It's like we're involved but we don't talk about it and other people don't talk about it with us.
Do you think it's useful to talk about it?
Yeah, I do. I've got a good friend who I've talked a lot about it.
I mean, I don't know if I was that like, happy like over the moon to become a dad.
I think everybody expects you to be super happy that this baby turns up in your life but
yeah nobody asks you ...
It took a real long a really long time to bond with
my children but yeah, you never talk about it, no.
Yeah, like, you just don't.
Our children are all of ages where we've bonded and we're kind of in it but like that first,
yeah, the first six months for me was ... I had a real feeling of like inadequacy and kind of.
Not feeling good enough somehow because of that and, like, loss of identity.
I experienced a lot of them.
Men are still quite closed off as you know, we are, it is still that sort of man up culture,
and, you know, get on with it and focus should be on the mum and all that
which is what it should be but it's just the way things are, I think, but maybe I'm being naive.
Overwhelmingly I have, like, felt a sense of the fact that you are all good, you're all
good dads, is the impression that I get, it doesn't sound bad,
it just sounds a bit tired.
Yeah, very tired.
Always tired.
So, it's been fascinating having these conversations
for me personally because I do have an awareness of some
of the things that mums go through, I've spoken to people in my family about it
but I don't really hear dads talking about these things
and to hear them say that they feel like there's a loss of
their identity or to hear that the statistics for suicide are so much worse after becoming a father,
I just think that's absolutely terrifying and it concerns everyone, it concerns the kids, it concerns,
you know, mum or the partner and just think it's really important that we can try and have these
conversations and also just looking forward, I hope that with the new announcement
we've had and the sun coming out hopefully
we can start to move forward into a more positive space
and I would just like to hear if any of you have got any things
you'd like us to look at for this series,
please leave a comment or get in touch with me on social media.
Like, comment and subscribe
to stay up to date with the series
and yeah, that's it I'm done.
I've nothing else, I've nothing else to give.