Men's Health Blog Series: Andy's Story

Andy Thompson

School Manager for SEPD

My identity as a father is overwhelmingly positive. However, the balance of work and parenting is hard, and though I’ve navigated it generally unscathed, I have had blips in my mental and physical health caused by the strain.

Andy Thompson, School Manager (SEPD)

For week 3 of our Men's Health blog series, Andy Thompson has very kindly shared his personal experience of becoming a father and balancing it with work. Thank you so much Andy, for sharing this with us ...

The challenges of fatherhood in the workplace

My wife is undertaking a PhD whilst looking after our son who is ten months (we also have a daughter who is nearly four). Seeing the sacrifices she has made in her career and the physical and emotional toil of early motherhood leaves me in perpetual admiration - and guilt that I’m not a stay-at-home dad. We live increasingly in a society acknowledging the demands of mothers and their impossible forced career/family choices – even if not always adequately addressed these same issues. There also seems to be better awareness and support for same-sex couples raising children, single parents, and those adopting among many other less traditional scenarios. Fatherhood is no different, and the support seems to have improved from days of yore.

Yet, becoming a father in my previous role with our first-born daughter, I realised that I felt second fiddle to the parenting tune. Beginning with health professionals, who rightly focussing on mum and baby, rarely ask how you are as a father, despite our roles often being fundamental to the support of the family unit. Like almost all new fathers I was back at work two weeks after my daughter’s birth with statutory paternity leave; your head still spinning from “traditionally unmanly” emotions – like crying from joy/sleep induced hysteria and through those same baggy eyes still squinting at the road signs figuring out which turn to take in your new identity, with many wrong directions and with right turns happening more by chance than design.

Like most fathers the constant guilt-infused tug-o-war that is wanting to see your children and putting 100% into a demanding day job is a hard ask. You have a baby and, sometimes, mother to worry about, so… you get on with the second fiddle. And therein lies the crux of the conundrum faced by modern dads. I am not saying a father’s plight is harder than a mother’s (I feel the need to shout that). Indeed, it isn’t harder - it’s different.

Our culture doesn’t seem to have caught up with this. I felt returning to work after a fortnight as though nothing had changed to be taken for granted, which perhaps speaks to something deeper about the traditional expectations of men. Importantly, I’m not good at talking about the emotional fatherhood challenges with other men. I’m probably not alone in saying my “peer support” was a blowout in the pub when you do finally get a night off, rather than meaningful discussions found amongst new mother support groups.

My identity as a father is overwhelmingly positive. However, the balance of work and parenting is hard, and though I’ve navigated it generally unscathed, I have had blips in my mental and physical health caused by the strain and found I just couldn’t ask for help, even if it had been dancing in front of me with a sign “this is support”. I can completely see how others, perhaps in harder conditions than I, could really crumple to some of these challenges and be looking around unsure how people will respond even when the support is clearly known to them. Paradoxically, I’ve found strength I never knew existed that my children drew out of me. There are rewards as a father that only we dads will ever know, and I am so deeply thankful for my wife and children for giving me this.

Make no mistake though the expectations of society with the relative lack of meaningful support does seem to undervalue and leave vulnerable those of us who lucky enough to be doing it and, at times, I have felt that keenly.