Not Your Father’s Fatherhood: How to Become a Conscious Dad

“I’m having a hard time," a new father tells me.

“What does it feel like?” I ask.

“Exhausting. Confusing. Above all, disorienting.”

He pauses and then remarks, “How am I supposed to fill all these new roles, become the father I never had, and be a super husband when I can barely take care of myself?”

As a new parent myself, I get it. The shifting identities, new responsibilities, and major changes of having a child can be a real struggle.

Unlike mothers who go through an enormously difficult and visible journey to parenthood, fathers face an invisible labor: giving birth to a new identity that must hold the tensions of traditional masculinity and modern manhood.

New Dad’s Postpartum Disorientation

“Postpartum disorientation” is a period of reorientation and self-redefinition, where old roles and identities dissolve, yet new ones haven’t been fully formed.

For fathers, this muddle of self-redefinition is exacerbated by the ever-changing social expectations of men’s roles in family affairs and the ways men are conditioned to withhold vulnerability. New fathers may feel isolated in this disorientation yet feel the pressure to appear strong.

There are four interrelated processes that make the postpartum period especially challenging for new dads:

• Grieving who you were before you had kids.
• Becoming someone you’ve never been—a father.
• Managing internal expectations about what it means to be a dad.
• Contending with what society tells you a “good” dad should be.

While postpartum care for new moms is still woefully inadequate—a minefield of hypocrisy when it comes to expectations placed on moms—naming these growing pains of new fatherhood is essential if we want to support men in becoming the types of fathers they desire to be (and the types of men our children need).

1. Grieving Who You Were

Fatherhood does not necessitate a complete loss of your previous identities. It does, however, mean letting go (or at least putting on hold) some past routines, habits, and even relationships. Some things must fall away to make space for your identity as a father to emerge.

Grieving can be hard for men. Patriarchal masculinity teaches men not to feel and not to share. It’s easy to fall prey to social scripts that say, “Suck it up and be strong. Don’t let your emotions get the best of you.”

While there’s a time and place for compartmentalizing feelings and forging ahead, failing to properly grieve keeps these emotions locked up inside. With nowhere to go, feelings fester and foment. Eventually, you may come to resent your new life as a dad.

Grieving does not need to be overly dramatic, but it does require actually feeling your body. Sigh. Cry. Take a primal yell or a deep breath. Do whatever it takes to truly feel your feelings. You need to slow down enough to recognize that you’ve ended a chapter of your life, but that doesn’t mean you’ve lost a part of yourself.

There’s no particular grieving script to follow, but here are a few questions to guide you:

• What am I holding onto from my previous life? Who would I be if I let that go?
• What am I most afraid to admit to myself about becoming a father?
• What are my deepest fears or apprehensions about parenthood?
• What makes me enthusiastic about entering into this new chapter of life?

2. Releasing the Heroic Performance

For many men, when feeling disoriented, it is natural to grasp the familiar role of a heroic performer. Whether it is performing at work, in sports, in bed, or among friends, men are used to deriving purpose from performance. Traditional masculinity ascribes worth through competition and value from winning.

The question for new dads is where competition and performance fit into new conceptions of fatherhood. The “superhero dad” ideal furthers the belief that masculinity, strength, and heroics are one and the same. This can lead men to see fatherhood as a way of “saving” their vulnerable partners and babies under the guise of a protector. If the household is clean, the diapers are stocked, your finances are in good order, and your partner has every possible need met, you might have just rescued your family from near disaster. Admirable, perhaps, but ultimately disempowering to everyone.

Even if you’re in a single-parent household, holding yourself to unrealistic expectations about what you can achieve is not helping you or your baby. Don’t confuse your self-worth as a man with your ability to be a hero.

Your family doesn’t need a hero. As childhood psychologist Laura Markham writes, “What your child needs from you is a model of how to be a gracious human. That means admitting when you've been wrong. Being willing to grow. Giving yourself support to do better.”

3. Having a Willingness to Fail

As you learn to don your daddy identity alongside existing roles as a worker, partner, and friend, it becomes abundantly clear that this may not be as simple or easy as you once thought. Becoming someone new requires practice and a willingness to fail. This is especially true when trying to break free from outdated templates of manhood without having a clear vision of what a “modern man” looks like for you.

“How can I aspire to become the father I never had?” a dear friend confides. “I don’t want to become a replica of my dad, but I recognize these patterns are within me. I want to role-model something better to my child, but I’m not sure where to start.”

This is a legitimate question. Fathers who aspire to move beyond stereotypical notions of masculinity have been given few, if any, resources to create it. How can we expect men to be emotionally vulnerable with their children when they might struggle to be emotionally vulnerable with themselves?

Men need chances to fumble into fatherhood without worrying about being judged or emasculated by other men. Unfortunately, this type of supportive, caring role is increasingly rare among men, and many men place an undue burden upon women for emotional support.

Practicing who you want to be as a father takes courage to transgress highly gendered binaries and to build intimate friendships with other fathers. While challenging, it doesn’t need to be overly complicated. You can start by asking yourself: “How would the father I'd like to be do the things I'm about to do?”

4. Integrating Social Expectations With Personal Values

Fatherhood today is not completely entrenched in traditional patriarchal structures nor fully liberated into an inclusive society that promotes the rights and well-being of all individuals. The result is a lot of tension between the heteronormative roles of old and new ways men can show up as stay-at-home fathers, engaged partners, or LGBTIQ+ families.

There is no clear roadmap for new dads to integrate the old and the new: to go from wielding disproportionate power to sharing power responsibly as an engaged and equitable partner.

This is where postpartum disorientation becomes especially pronounced for some men. It taps into the larger existential angst men have about their shifting role in society.

If being a conscious father means standing against systems that perpetuate gender inequality and patriarchal structures of power and privilege, then aspiring to a more inclusive and progressive vision of fatherhood that challenges traditional heteronormative ideas of masculinity is not only noble; it is also necessary.

Ushering in new conceptions of fatherhood and family will inevitably be disorienting. New fathers need space to see if and how gendered roles fit into their particular family circumstances and, if not, chances to create new roles with their partners that serve everyone better.

To this end, I suggest that new fathers ask these questions first:

• How are existing family models and household roles adequate or inadequate for my aspiration of fatherhood?
• What aspects of my masculinity do I want to role model as a dad? What do I want to leave behind?
• What type of world do I want my children to inherit? What am I willing to risk to help create it?”

Consider how to bring these values to life in the ways you parent, recognizing that if you truly desire a more egalitarian and inclusive society, you must build it yourself.

Overcoming Postpartum Disorientation

Trying to right the historical wrongs of patriarchy, reshape social expectations of gender equity, share in both the emotional and household labor, and contribute to family finances is a lot to ask. Doing all of that without becoming a self-sacrificing martyr or a superhero savior is even harder. This is the challenge new fathers are up against.

Thankfully, parental leave is slowly getting more respect and attention, and some states offer paternity leave to fathers to care for their newborn or adopted child. While this is a step in the right direction, new fathers don’t just need time to be with their babies and partners; they also need friendship with other men going through the same process.

Friendship between fathers provides support to move through this disorienting transition without feeling like you're alone. A community of caring dads can create space for grieving, give structure to a significant life transition, reinforce open-hearted vulnerability, and allow men to practice, and sometimes fail, at being the parents they aspire to become.