It's a hot night in Mexico and I'm looking out over the ocean.

Four candlelit tables fill up around me. Not with families or couples, but with lone men, each nursing a Corona and staring vacantly out to sea.

These men are all new fathers. I know this because I watched them play with their toddler boys in the hotel pool earlier.

They're strangers from different corners of the globe, tied together by the experience of being enlivened and exhausted by the choppy, unchartered waters of fatherhood.

While I don't have kids, in my work as a psychologist I'm lucky enough to meet plenty of new dads.

Having a child can trigger distress in itself, but it can also act as the catalyst for men to seek help for issues they've battled with throughout their lives.

These men are brave as they come. They take the leap, opening up about their fears and weaknesses in my office to ensure they are the best they can be for their children and families.

Looking at the four men around me, I can't help but think of my future father self and worry.

To be a father in a time when masculinity is being broken down, reshaped and attempted to be put back together is a daunting task.

It is a time of greater visibility of the fallibility of men, but also of greater accountability — #metoo is here to stay and the world in which our sons grow up, experiment, and learn how to love will hopefully be different to ours because of it.

How to raise good men

We have enormous promises to live up to.

Over and over, parents hear the credo: "We must bring up our boys to be respectful, compassionate, emotional and caring men." New parents are actively invested in the cultivation of "good men".

As someone who researches masculinity extensively, you'd think I'd be better placed to have those conversations with the men in my life. But despite my commitment to feminism, I slip up too, and often.

In a group of men, I let a sexist comment slide as the puppet strings of traditional masculinity tug in a way I am always ashamed of later.

I'd be lying if I said that being vigilant against traditional masculine beliefs wasn't part of my day-to-day.

Good men don't just appear. It takes work, work that begins with these fathers.

Masculinity is not at its core toxic. It is complex, it is diverse, it is useful and it is a way of relating to the world we can't give up on. It just needs some wrangling and some rebranding.

Men are at their core giving, compassionate and loving. We just need the all clear to show it.

Healthy masculinity means not presenting a socially-sanctioned, rigid and often unhealthy version of yourself for perceived cultural capital.

But will I slip up?

I hope our next generation of boys doesn't have to exert as much effort grappling with a rigid patriarchy that professes to offer them so much but delivers so little. If I have a son, I want the world to expect him to be a good man, not be surprised he's one of a few good eggs.

I fear however, that just as I slip up in life, I will slip up in fatherhood.

The ramifications feel much greater when I consider the intergenerational consequences. Men's health, education and crime rates are social epidemics which will take dedication to improve.

Last year shifted the priority of certain lessons in the curriculum of fatherhood, with "Consent 101", "The Diversity of Masculinity" and "Don't be a Weinstein" replacing "Boys don't Cry" and "How to Open Doors for Women".

As 2019 unfolds, it's essential that men actively pass down healthy masculinity — not just soapbox at dinner parties but try it out for size.

I don't want to forget, so I'm writing this article to my future father self, to remind him of this moment in history as the new year begins, where it feels like everything is changing.

Zac Seidler is a Sydney psychologist.

