“He’s the man and I’m the woman. And at the end of the day, when you have a child, all the care for that child is based on the woman,” said one woman, aged 37, in a 2018 study on maternal self-reliance (McNamara et al, 2018). Her words reflect a widely held belief that men are not only less suited, but also less obligated to participate in caring for a child postpartum.

This statement - and the world-view upon which it is based - is fundamentally false. Not only can (and do) men provide critical support throughout the peripartum experience, involvement from men can have a significant positive effect on women’s mental health and the effective utilization of maternal health services (Yargawa & Leonardi-Bee, 2015). It ought to be noted, too, that this issue is partly a cultural one. Research from the northern Indian region of Rishikesh, for example, found that men were already integrated into the maternal health ecosystem, supporting their spouses with childcare, scheduling antenatal care visits and monitoring their spouses’ health (Dochania et al, 2025).

Evidence from the United States, however, tells a different story. Despite reporting feeling excited about and ready for the challenge of parenting, fathers in the United States lack some crucial information about women’s health and the ways they can better support their partners (Griffith et al, 2023). In the United States, fathers – especially first-time fathers – experience a range of barriers to involvement in perinatal care. Recent research findings indicate that as low as 13.0% of American fathers are active, able and supported in terms of their own and their family’s health (Wynter et al, 2023), meaning the remaining 87% of fathers face some barrier to health literacy.

Part of this is the result of a postnatal health system which fails to consider the health impacts (physical and mental) of having a child upon fathers, who may experience a high level of stress and become unable to prioritize their own wellbeing (Griffith et al, 2023). It is easy to imagine how a postpartum health ecosystem which rightfully focuses on the health of mothers and children might make men feel less empowered and more marginalized. There are, however, an increasing number of programs which utilize antenatal care visits as opportunities to capture and improve the health of fathers (Salvessen von Essen et al, 2021). Incorporating men more deeply into maternal healthcare has the potential to improve their health, but also their agency and empowerment to support women through the various challenges of postpartum care.

More is being done, also, to educate men about perinatal health. There is a global rise in peer-to-peer education activities, community mobilization campaigns and workplace initiatives which aim to inform men about the importance of their roles in the prenatal and postnatal periods (Ivanova, 2015). These efforts have been shown to improve communication between partners, and also increase attendance at postpartum medical visits (Ivanova, 2015).

The myth that postpartum care (of women and children) is women’s work is a pernicious one. It not only amplifies the pressure and distress women experience around pregnancy, but also prevents them from even considering the crucial role their partners and male loved ones might play in supporting them through an exceedingly difficult life experience.