The mental health support dads need—but rarely receive

At the playground, he looks like any other dad. He’s tying a shoe with one hand and balancing a juice pouch with the other. Maybe he’s making up a silly story while pushing a stroller up the hill. From the outside, he looks present—engaged, even lucky. But inside? He might be unraveling. A new study from Parents and Verywell Mind surveyed 1,600 American fathers and confirmed what many already suspected: dads are quietly falling apart, and no one’s asking how they’re doing.

Two out of three dads reported feeling at least moderately stressed in the past 30 days. More than 40% of that stress is tied to child care. And 62% said the pressure to provide is their biggest mental load. These aren’t throwaway statistics. They’re the story of emotional labor that’s still invisible when it’s carried by men. We like the idea of involved fathers. But we still don’t know what to do with emotionally vulnerable ones.

Today’s father isn’t distant or uninvolved. He’s cooking dinner, folding laundry, pacing the hallway at 3 a.m. with a teething baby. He’s reading the parenting books, showing up to pediatric appointments, and remembering which kid is allergic to what. And yet—he’s not seen.

A staggering 83% of dads in the survey said they prioritize their family’s needs over their own. But nearly 60% say they don’t get enough credit for how much parenting they do. Among higher-earning fathers (those making more than $75,000 annually), that number jumps to 64%. These are men who are doing more—and feeling like it doesn’t count.

One in four dads say they never talk to their friends about their mental health. Half said they’ve lost touch with their social circles since becoming parents. And more than a third say they don’t even know how to express what they’re feeling.

This is what gendered silence looks like.

Aaron Gouveia, a father and advocate, was one of those men. In 2012, he was struggling with the transition to fatherhood but refused to admit it. “I thought I could power through. Therapy was for people who couldn’t handle it,” he recalled. It wasn’t until his wife invited him—under a false pretense—to one of her counseling sessions that the door cracked open.

“I went because I thought I was helping her,” he says. “Turns out, I was the one who needed help.”

Gouveia isn’t alone. Forty-five percent of dads say they feel judged when they talk about their mental health. One in four who opted not to see a therapist said they didn’t want to be seen differently by their peers. And 40% of dads in the study say they’ve resisted therapy because they didn’t think they needed it. The problem isn’t that dads aren’t struggling. The problem is that our culture doesn’t make space for them to say so.

The cultural script for masculinity hasn’t shifted nearly as fast as the roles men are trying to take on at home. Yes, more dads are stay-at-home parents than ever before—about 7%, according to Pew Research Center data. And 52% of fathers surveyed said they consider themselves the primary caregiver. But these shifts haven’t dismantled the expectation that dads should be providers first, people second.

Mental health? That’s still seen as a luxury. Or worse, a liability. When fathers cry—or break, or need help—it doesn’t fit into the dominant narrative. If moms burn out, we empathize. If dads burn out, we question their toughness. Their commitment. Their worth. As one dad put it: “We’re supposed to be rocks. But the problem with being a rock is people treat you like an inanimate object.”

About 25% of the fathers in the survey said they didn’t talk to anyone about their mental health while growing up. Only 22% say they are currently seeing a therapist. And just 37% took a mental health day in the past year. These aren’t signs of emotional resilience. They’re symptoms of social permission never granted.

Boys are taught to contain. To distract. To joke through the pain. By the time they become fathers, they’ve perfected the art of masking stress with competence. They show up. They get things done. And then they quietly fall apart. No wonder so many dads report feeling unseen.

In a 2022 Parents feature about fatherhood, author Jay Deitcher described the cultural pressures placed on men as the “man box”—a rigid set of expectations around masculinity, stoicism, and role performance.

And it’s still sealed tight.Even as gender roles bend and stretch in real households, the emotional narrative around fatherhood remains narrow. Men are either absentee villains or lovable buffoons. They’re rarely shown as caregivers experiencing real emotional weight—and needing support for it.

Gouveia admits he once bought into the man box. “In traditional gender-based roles, dads are still more likely to be the ones working outside the home,” he says. “That means we often aren’t the default parent. And that perpetuates the idea that we’re not as essential.” Which leads to an insidious feedback loop: men who want to step up as parents feel overlooked; men who feel overlooked begin to disengage; society points to that disengagement as evidence of disinterest. But it’s not disinterest. It’s a quiet defense mechanism.

Anthony Nedelman, a psychology manager in Ohio, remembers going with his wife to a pediatric appointment after their second child was born. The doctor gave her a screening for postpartum depression—and skipped him entirely. He brought up studies showing that fathers experience postpartum depression at nearly the same rates as mothers. The doctor smiled politely and moved on.

“The subject of dads’ mental health is always met with skepticism,” Nedelman said. “There’s always a ‘But what about mom?’ reaction. And of course, moms need care too. But so do we.” This is what stigma looks like in real time: omission, oversight, and a thousand small signals that say, Your pain doesn’t count the same.

More than half of the fathers surveyed say they wish friends and family checked in on them more. And 46% wish others would recognize them more as parents—not just as helpers or babysitters. Dads want to feel seen. Not for ego. For survival.

Family therapist Christy Livingston puts it clearly: “To feel seen is to experience living. When we’re unseen, we feel disconnected—and that disconnection erodes everything.” Livingston says it’s not just about talking more. It’s about redesigning systems of communication and care within families. What are each parent’s goals? How are they working together? What happens when support is missing?

Sometimes the first step is asking the question no one thinks to ask a dad: How are you, really?

The short answer? Everything.

Gouveia describes therapy as “an hour each week where I can talk about whatever I want, to someone who has the time to listen and the tools to help me process it.” That’s not weakness. That’s what emotional infrastructure looks like. Support doesn’t have to be therapy alone. It can be peer groups, fitness rituals, creative outlets, video games, meditation—anything that helps a man access and understand what he’s holding.

But it also means not tearing dads down for sport. Not stereotyping them as useless or inept. Not using social gatherings to compare notes on who’s the most emotionally oblivious partner. One dad said his wife intentionally opts out of that kind of talk. “She complains when she needs to. But she doesn’t trash me for fun. That makes me feel valued.”

There’s a temptation to turn this into a tug-of-war: who carries more? Who sacrifices more? But the real tension isn’t between moms and dads—it’s between silence and support. One can exist alongside the other. Or it can smother it.

When dads are told that stress makes them weak, they bury it. When they’re told to provide first and feel later, they disconnect. When they show up and still get called the “backup parent,” they shrink. And when we ask nothing of them emotionally, we get nothing in return.

Livingston says she often asks parents this question in therapy: “If you woke up tomorrow and everything in your family life felt better, how would you know? What would be different?” For many dads, the answer isn’t complicated. They want to feel part of a parenting team. They want their effort recognized. They want space to say “I’m not okay” without fear of ridicule.

And most of all, they want to raise kids who see emotional honesty as strength—not as a flaw to hide.

The rock metaphor is outdated. It implies immovability, emotional silence, and endurance at all costs. But humans aren’t rocks. We’re not designed to be emotionally inert. We crack. We soften. We feel. So maybe instead of telling dads to be rocks, we tell them it’s okay to be water—steady, responsive, capable of carrying weight without losing shape. Not because water is soft. But because it moves.

And movement, especially emotional movement, is what makes fathers resilient. If your dad friends are quiet, ask anyway. If you're a father carrying more than you're allowed to show, speak anyway. The silence isn’t noble. It’s just lonely. And it doesn’t have to be.