27: Dads Need Dad Friends

Hello and welcome to The Nice-ish Rambling Podcast with me, The Nice-ish Psychologist, where today I'm going to be broaching the topic of dads needing dad friends. Now, while I can appreciate that most of what I am about to discuss can be viewed from a mother’s perspective, too – and indeed while researching this topic I found an Guardian article that discusses a similar topic from a mother’s perspective (or even a birthing person’s perspective to use gender neutral terms) – at the same time I am not too sure how often this kind of thing is discussed in terms of fathers. Also, this particular episode was inspired by recent events in my life, which was a kind of epiphany moment and so I thought I would talk about it and see if could be beneficial to any other dads. But like I said, there is a high likelihood that everything discussed in this episode can be experienced by all parents. And perhaps for some listening there might be some “no shit Sherlock” responses. Which would be fair. Also, as you may have noted, I referred to gender-neutral parenting earlier. While this episode is focused mostly on the experiences of fathers, where relevant and necessary I will endeavour to use gender neutral terms, too. Also, also, if you find any value in today’s episode, please do rate it, share it, or leave a comment where you can. It all goes a long way to letting others know if this is a podcast worth listening to, or if it a bag of shit.

So, I guess this particular episode begins a bit further back than the last few weeks, because while reflecting on this episode I remembered listening to an amazing audiobook version of My Child and other Mistakes, written by comedian Ellie Taylor. My partner had read the book and recommended it to me because, in her words: “She [Ellie Taylor] has the same view of parenting as you do, so you might appreciate it.” And she wasn’t wrong. My Child and other Mistakes is what I would call a very realistic parenting guide. As well as being funny, it highlights a rather brutal reality of parenting that is perhaps left out of the usual narrative of having children and becoming a parent; which in a nutshell is that parenting is usually this magical, wonderful, time where you help small human beings that you created with your partner, grow and develop, and it’s all cute and sweet and fun… which, for some it is. But for others, like Ellie Taylor and myself, it’s not necessarily our reality. I won’t spoil the book, but for anyone who, like me, has asked themselves what they fuck is going on in terms of being a parent, then My Child and other Mistakes is an utterly validating book.

Having said that, while I connected with a lot of what Ellie Taylor wrote about, there was obviously a lot I could not connect with. One of the more obviously aspects is the fact that Ellie Taylor is a biological female and much of her parenting experience involved all the ups and down that go hand-in-hand with being the person who grows and then gives birth to a child. Which I, being a biological male, can’t - and therefore did not - have that experience and therefore could not relate to. All of that was fine. The thing that did really hit me in the face, though, was when Ellie Taylor talked about the support she received as a mother. Especially when she talked about social media groups that she was a part of with other new mothers, which is something recommended by antenatal classes as a way to maintain a support network in the early years of parenting. When my partner and I joined one such antenatal group, a group was set up for the mothers by the mothers and one was set up for the father by the fathers (it was called, “DadsDadsDads”, which I must admit is a great name). The thing is, and this is what was reflected in Ellie Taylor’s book, is that my partner is still connected to some of our original antenatal group through social media , while I on occasion will wave to one of the fathers from that group if I see him locally and perhaps have a brief “How’s life?” chat in the local Tesco car park if we happen to be leaving and arriving at the same time (which has happened once or twice).

In the early months and years, my partner was connected to the other mothers, seeking and giving advice, sharing stories, getting and sharing milestone updates, being invited to birthday parties and all that jazz; while we fathers maybe met up once or twice for a curry and a beer, and pretty much kept making promises to see more of each other, all of which has fizzled out. And I couldn’t even tell you if anyone is still in that social media group because I have not received a message in it for years and I have also not bothered to check it. And I didn’t really mind this at the time, because I didn’t see them as a support network. I am not particularly proud of this, but I saw these people - these other men - as random strangers that although I had a shared experience with did not necessarily want to be friends with because I likely would not have chosen to be their friends, or made plans to go out with them socially, if we hadn’t all been having children within the same six month window. Additionally, although I have loads of male friends, I have always found making friends with other men a bit awkward. Men like to talk about sport a lot and I do not like talking about sport at all. A very grand generalisation, but something I have experienced a fair bit in my life. And it’s not just sports-talk that has generally put me off making friends with men. That’s rooted in historical experiences or going to an all-boys school and the less than pleasant way in which boys can relate to each other.

However, fast forward another year or so and I am listening to Ellie Taylor’s book, and I am connecting with her struggles and feeling fully validated by the conflicting feelings that can come with being a parent, which can flick from full-on undiluted love and adoration to near blinding rage in what seems like an instant. And I’m thinking, “Finally, someone gets it, and someone is putting how I feel into words and fuck does it feel good to be acknowledged.” And then she goes on to talk about how she managed to get through a lot of what she experienced through sharing her struggles with other mothers that were going through it too. And I felt a gut-punch. I remember sitting in that same Tesco car park where I on occasion had passing commentary exchanges with one of the dads from my antenatal class and feeling like such a twat. Because I has had a similar opportunity to have a support base, and I had essentially rejected the idea, based on a silly notion of not wanting to have to make friends with other men I did not know. And since then, had pretty much felt like I was the only person struggling in the way that I was.

OK, that sounds slightly dramatic, and is not quite true because my partner and I have had many conversations about my struggles as a parent, and we have often had conversation about how I have a view that some people are just more naturally inclined towards being parents (which is the camp I believe my partner falls into), and then there are others – like me – who I think struggle more and for whom parenting maybe doesn’t come quite as naturally. I know this is a very broad and simplistic view of things, but I have had a few conversations with other parents about this and, although not robust enough to stand up to academic scrutiny, the theory seems to be shared by them too. But despite being able to talk to my partner about my struggles with parenting, and the fact that my brother-in-law is also a father, I still felt quite isolated as a father. Now, for me, my circumstances are pretty unique in that I live quite far away from my own family and that my friendship network is scattered not only across the county, but also across the world. So, while I do have male friends and a loving and supportive family, they are not very local. But I am also not one to help myself, because, along with not wanting to make friends with antenatal dads as mentioned earlier, I believe I am of an age where I just can’t be arsed to make new friends – and, as a parent who struggles with parenting – I don’t really have a lot of energy to want to socialise with new people anyway. So, I haven’t done myself any favours.

However, despite my own circumstances, research suggests that it is not uncommon for new fathers to feel isolated. The Movember Foundation – a charity aimed at improving awareness, research, and funding for mental physical and mental health for men, commissioned a piece of research published in 2019 called “Fatherhood and Social Connections”. The research was based on a survey conducted on 4,000 men between the ages of 18 to 75 from the UK, the USA, Canada and Australia (so, 1,000 men per country), 45% of whom were fathers. The survey found the following data. 23% of men stated that they felt isolated when they first became a father, leading them to conclude that becoming a father can be an isolating experience. Interestingly, and sadly, 20% of fathers reported that the number of close friends they had decreased in the 12 months after becoming a father. Which, if you think about the first statistic, may contribute to why fatherhood could be an isolating experience. Which, again, if you think about it, makes sense. If you are someone that doesn’t have kids, and your mate now has a kid, there is a high probability that the new father might spend a lot of time talking about their kid – I know this is a generalisation, but still. And people who don’t have kids don’t really get – or necessarily care, for understandable reasons – why people talk about their kids as much as they do. And maybe it’s just me, but I tend to talk about my kids a lot – both about the good and the tough stuff. But that’s because at this point in my life they are pretty much occupying all of my time. Which is another reason why friendships might fade. It would make sense that in terms of going out and socialising that there might be less times for new fathers to go out and socialise with their friends. Especially within the first few years of a child’s life. Then if someone has more than on child that gets extended for another few years. And it’s very possible that friends might then give up asking new dads to socialise, cos what’s the point, right? So, it would make sense that some new fathers might feel their friendship group diminish over time.

Something else to think about is that the Movember research found that men and fathers don’t always recognise the importance of friendships. When asked to list three important aspects of their lives, less than a fifth of men (18% to be exact) listed having close friends as important. And coupled with this it was noted that over half of the men survey (51%) reported that even if they were satisfied with the quality of their friendships, they felt they could not talk to their friends about their problems. Then potentially linked to that, it was reported that fathers without close friends reported that their stress levels increased a lot. Which is significant, because in general 70% of men reported that their stress level increased a lot within the first 12 months of becoming a father. The report also goes on to highlight that in general, 1 in 10 new fathers experience depression after the birth of their child, and that fathers with perinatal mental health problems are 47 times more likely to be considered a risk of suicide than at any other point in their lives. All of which is important to note, because there is tonnes of literature out there to support the fact that a person’s psychological well-being is determined by the quality of their social connections and that having mutually supportive friendships can serve as a protective factor against anxiety and depression.

So, as you can see, my feelings of isolation, while specific to my own context and situation, is not something uncommon amongst new fathers. And clearly social connection is important. None of which I knew or thought about when I was rejecting the notion of getting to know the dads from my antenatal class. Something that I first came to regret when listening to Ellie Taylor talk about how helpful social connection was in her book, and the importance of which has become more abundantly clean more recently.

And yes, I was very much a psychologist at this time in my life and I still managed to have this blind spot.

The back story to this epiphany happened a few weeks ago at a soft play birthday party. Yes, a soft play birthday party. One of those surreal arenas of organised chaos where you kind of get to relax because your kids are in an enclosed area with padded climbing frames and slides, where theoretically they should be able to knacker themselves out with their friends, but there is the slim chance (as is with me) that your kids might come crying to you because they have somehow managed to injure themselves (or someone else) with over enthusiastic playing.

The birthday party was for an old nursery school friend, and I was there with my partner. A few other dads who I knew from the nursery school days had come with their wives and partners, too. And we got to chatting a bit as we sometimes do, which I always found awkward for the reasons already listed above. But these guys are always nice and I like being polite. So there we were. When all of a sudden, one of them turns to me and says “We were planning on going for a beer on Wednesday night. Do you fancy a pint?” And I was a little stumped for words. I had never been asked this in a soft play. On a Sunday. And it had been a long, looong, time since I had been asked out for a cheeky beverage on a weekday… a fucking weekday. At 8 o’clock on a weekday. Usually at 8 o’clock on a weekday I am recovering from bath and bed time on the sofa and then I myself am off to bed by about 9:30.

It took me a while to answer, because while my partner and I aren’t massively sociable at this time of our lives, there are occasions when will have some fries or family over. Or my partner might go to a yoga class. So, I mentally checked out calendar for the week, and after a bit of an awkward pause – which could have been construed as me looking for a reason to say no – I agreed.

And I’m not going to lie, because of all the reasons listed earlier in this episode, I was pretty apprehensive about it. Mostly about the 8 o’clock start time. Come the Wednesday night after my partner and I had done the bedtime routine I complained that I had to now go out and have a beer. Socially. With people I don’t know that well! Anyway, I got over that, hopped into the car and went to go meet these men. And do you know what – it was great. It really was.

Firstly, it was one of the most validating experiences I have had as a father in a long time. As you might have gathered, parenthood has been a bit of a struggle for me, and due to not really being around any other fathers I felt that I was the only one struggling in the way that I was. Now, I guess you might be wondering if there haven’t been any other parents around that I could have spoken to and who could have validated my experiences? And you would not be wrong – however, they were mostly mothers and those who had given birth to their children. I can’t say for definite, but I think it is a very different experience being the non-birthing parent – in this case a father. There is a whole host of research that focuses on the experiences that occur between a child and a mother or birthing parent, like the focus on attachment and the importance of this. While I am unaware of there being as much of a focus on non-birthing parents and what that’s like. And while the overall experience of parenting can be very similar for both the birthing and non-birthing parents, there are subtle and quite powerful differences that have, in my experience, the capacity to shape how one feels as a parent.

One of these experiences was shared with this new dad crew of mine, and that is the idea of what I call being the “bad parent”. Now there’s possibly a lot of attachment stuff that could relate to this, but from a parental perspective and trying not to think about with too much of a psychological mind, what I mean by the “bad parent” is the one who is not able to offer support or comfort to a child when they are distressed. And that child only being soothed or comforted by the other parent, who for the sake of this experience could be thought of as the “good parent”. Again, from an attachment perspective it makes sense that children are more likely to be comforted by one particular parent – in my case it is my partner, a mother. And while I don’t definitely know this for a fact, I would argue that it is the mother or the birthing parent that is more often than not in the position to comfort and sooth. Now, while I can appreciate that this might be a burden in some way, it can challenge the non-birthing parent’s perception of themselves as a “good parent”, or a competent parent. Or a parent that is loved by their child. Now, I know that cognitively I can tell myself that I am loved by my children as much as they love my partner, but it does take its toll to be screamed at and told to go away and that they only want mommy when they are upset. It can make you feel pretty crap and make you judge yourself as shit, incompetent, and useless.

But, low and behold, I was not the only father to experience this amongst my new posse of dad pals. And that felt like such a relief. I was also relieved to find out that I was not the only one that shared the view or felt like they were not a natural parent. One dad described it as having to “work hard every day to be a good parent”.

It wasn’t just the similarities that were validating, but the differences, too. There were stories, which I won’t share here as they are of a more private nature, that highlighted that while I thought my life had been massively impacted by becoming a parent, others’ lives were impacted in other ways, and in some instances in more challenging ways that I could not imagine for myself and my family. But I also learned that my child was not the only one potentially experiencing bullying, or falling out with friends, or getting into relationships. I know it sounds really stupid to say it out loud, but it was just so bizarre to find out how much I had in common with these men and that I was not, as it were, the only father going through some seriously confusing, challenging, and tiring shit with trying to raise children. I was not alone in my struggles. And that was, I am not going to lie, such a weight of my shoulder.

And so, to conclude, this one experience of going out with other dads has taught me that dads definitely need dad friends. It’s validating. It’s cathartic. It’s makes you feel less alone. And, if you are like me, you might find another dad that is even more grumpy than you are.

And just to end. While I know this episode is about dads needing dad friends, it is clear that social connections and good quality friends are super important for fathers, especially new ones. Therefore, at the same time it makes sense for fathers to have friends who aren’t parents, because actually it is probably very helpful for parents and fathers to go out and do stuff and talk about stuff that doesn’t relate to being a parent. So, I guess, again while this is about dads needing dad friends, maybe this podcast is also for men who may have friends who are fathers, or who are soon to be fathers, or who may one day be fathers – even if you don’t have kids of our own, your friendship and connection will be really valuable and helpful to you dad friend.

Anyway, that’s it from me for now. As I said at the start, if you found any value in this episode of know of anyone who may benefit from it, please share it with them. As always, the invitation is there for you to come find me on social media and say hello. You know where to find me by now, I’m sure.

As always, hope you have a great day. Or not. No pressure.

Music

• Opening: “Chilled Ambient Minimal”

• Closing: “Seven” - Tobu