There is one change to early family life in our society which could reduce rates of postnatal depression and help prevent family violence and therefore improve child health outcomes. What’s more, it’s a men’s health intervention worth all of us growing moustaches for a month.



Connect dads. Early. To information, services and advice. But as importantly, to other dads. Do it, and you nurture the most important connections – at home.

Here’s why: in the heterosexual families most commonly studied, children fare better when dads are present. This means enough physical and mental presence, in which Dad is tuned in to life at home. Relationships grow better. A parenting relationship with more warmth and less critical behaviour is protective for children.

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I see in my perinatal psychiatry practice that children recover better when their parent’s post-natal depression is prevented or treated early. I also find that post-natal depression in either parent gets better sooner in households where Dad is well-connected.

As is sadly the case for most clinicians, I find evidence of family violence in my work at times. In many such families, dads are frightening, controlling and harming their kin. It’s never excusable, and we make every effort to ensure the unacceptable behaviours change. While there are no excuses, preventing family violence requires us to seek explanations. Most of these dads suffer with stress, illness, isolation and disenfranchisement. We can trace much of that back to a lack of connection.

So how do we connect dads? Make it normal, widely supported and expected. Start as early as possible, teaching school kids how important connected healthy fatherhood is. Boys can start thinking about the man and dad they can become one day. The better educated they are, the more likely that day will arrive by choice, with a woman they respect, care for and trust.

Normalise dads-to-be attending antenatal care including education and discussion groups with other men. Ensure men’s experiences of birth and maternity care recognise them as equal to mums in importance. In those crucial early days, help new dads be with and care for their baby and its mother, and seek every chance for men to de-stress and meet other dads on the ward.

Then once the baby is at home, make it normal that new dads form a local group, just as mums get a new mums’ group. Mixed parenting groups definitely have their benefitsbut as is the case for most mums, dads can get a sense of companionship and security in dad-only groups. Begin online or with a staff-led session to gets things going. Online follow-up can include useful information, opportunities for men to seek help swiftly and anonymously, but as importantly, can keep the men sharing content and checking in with one another.

My clinical experience shows clear patterns over years: men are often tentative at first but nearly always end up glad they did meet and hear from other dads at similar stages of family life. Get them talking with one another and they want to keep talking. This can be a smart mix of face-to-face and online: smartphone technology has been shown to reach dads effectively. It’s a rare health intervention that is both cheap to run and priceless to so many dads and their families.

Beyond this, provide and normalise dads’ playgroups – make them as commonplace and enticing as sausage sizzles outside hardware stores. Men often connect side-by-side, whether sizzling sausages or playing tiggy with delighted squealing toddlers.

Ensure workplaces walk the talk on flexibility. This could include flexible leave, flexible hours and working from home, but also programs for the dads of the organisation around men’s health and family wellbeing. Don’t wait till the Christmas barbecue to get dads who work together relaxing and playing with their kids together.

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Employers can invest in their man as he becomes a dad, for big dividends in future. Dads I’ve met who have found their workplace supportive of their fatherhood speak with loyalty and enthusiasm about their work. With work and home in balance, men’s stress levels are usually lower, and as most men’s health issues are in some way stress-related, that could mean less sick leave and better productivity. It’s win-win.

Finally, make it normal for dads to nurture their adult intimate relationships. It’s great that we have made “date night” normal – something most parents just do for their relationship. But what most dads I work with need more is a weekly daylight hour of time off from parenting, side-by-side with the mother of their child, free of pressure to have a wonderful night out. Then they can best work out together how to meet everyone’s needs in their new family. Make that daylight adult couple time like swimming lessons for kids – just what we do.

Connected dads are healthier men with healthier families. In a generation’s time, their sons will find themselves echoing and mimicking their dad in their fatherhood of new babies. Would you want to be one of those little humans? That’s the question to keep at the heart of our thinking as we design early family life now.