Father’s Day and the Mental Health of Men:

Expanding the Conversation

Father’s Day often brings forward appreciation for what fathers offer. The steady presence. The responsibility carried over time. These expressions of care are meaningful and continue to shape lives in profound and lasting ways.

Fatherhood, like all forms of care, is not limited to a single way of being. A more gender-expansive understanding of parenting invites a wider recognition of how care is lived and expressed. Qualities often associated with fatherhood, such as guidance, protection, presence, and support, move across a broader range of human experience, shaped by relationship rather than confined by expectation.

A gender-expansive lens recognizes that identity and expression exist beyond fixed or binary definitions. Within this understanding, fatherhood can be embodied in ways that reflect diverse lived experiences, allowing care to be defined through presence, commitment, and relationship rather than limited roles. It creates space for people to show up fully, in ways that feel authentic, while still honoring the essence of what it means to nurture and support life.

Research over many years has found strong correlations between conforming to so-called traditional masculine norms like, primacy at work, emotional control, self-reliance, and competiton and mental illness, which may be because these norms discourage help-seeking. These traits too run counter to the well established research on the importance of social and emotional connection as the single most important predictor of wellbeing.

Despite this research on the importance of social connections, those who identify as male, according to a 2021 report from the Survey Center on American Life, have experienced a steep decline in close friendship. Thirty years ago, a majority of men (55 percent) reported having at least six close friends. Today, that number has been cut in half. Slightly more than one in four (27 percent) men have six or more close friends today. Fifteen percent of men have no close friendships at all, a fivefold increase since 1990.

A key to fostering male friendships is appropriately paced, vulnerability and self-disclosure. Joining men’s support groups or other organizations devoted to helping men build self-awareness and connection with other men, like the Mankind Project can help men realize they’re not alone in their desire to have authentic connection with other men.

This Father’s Day consider a more expansive sense of strength. One that includes presence and connection alongside endurance and power. One that allows connection to be felt as part of well-being. One that welcomes a broader expression of human experience.

Father’s Day, in this light, becomes more than a moment of gratitude. It becomes a moment of attention. A way of seeing care more fully, and of honoring the many ways it has been lived.

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