Why are dad's clumsy at emotion management?

Image Credit: Photo by Raneesh Ravi on Unsplash

I am a dad - twice over now - and I have years of experience of being the son of my dad. So, I can claim to possess a reasonable level of experience on the subject of fathers and emotion management - and my verdict is that All Fathers are, in general, very poor at emotion management?

To begin with, look at the very characteristic constipated expression of the Dad in the photo above. I am sure he is so elated, happy, his heart palpitating, but his face betrays all of that - the contrast being the expressions of the kid on his lap. But many of you in general would agree that most of your dads would be the same - their happiness would be subdued, so would their sorrow; at best some dad's are good at showing off their anger - we often label such dad's as toxic, but I believe (or at least sincerely hope so!) that these are far fewer than the good dad's out there, who are even incapable of dealing with anger as an emotion.

As I stood outside the NICU yesterday, waiting for the duty doctor to come and update me about the health of my newborn, I myself was taken over by intense emotions on the inside but as usual I displayed a very calm exterior. After, I met the doctor, and my nerves calmed down enough, I started to analyze my own response - and analytical as I am - I tried figuring out why I was so poor at managing my emotions. 

To be fair, managing emotions is difficult for everyone at times of strain, especially when it involves your offspring. Nevertheless, fathers tend to do worse than mothers, and that has been cited as one of the key reasons for a higher rate of cardiovascular diseases in men over women. Even worse, their inability to manage emotions is also responsible for them to not even acknowledge the health troubles they face, or recognize when explicitly communicated about those.

... boys and men who enact behaviors more closely aligned with stereotypical gender norms in their social environment are less likely to report receiving diagnoses or treatment for cardiovascular disease risk factors

Some people believe that men are less emotional than women - this myth however has been shattered by careful studies and scientific research. Men / Fathers experience emotions with the same intensity as women / mothers - but they're simply poor at managing / displaying them. Quoting below from a study:

Common sense tells us that women have better social skills, and are especially better at understanding of others’ emotions [5, 6, 7, 8, 9]. Indeed, research has shown that women often score higher on emotional intelligence or empathy tests than men. One would expect that these beliefs and scores on self-report tests also reflect actual differences in emotion recognition performance.  

Although previous reviews and meta-analyses [16, 17, 18] have shown a small to moderate female advantage, recent studies have not always replicated this difference, leading to discussions about the extent to which and the circumstances in which women would outperform men, and how this should be explained [19].  

In the present research based on a community sample of more than 5000 participants, we tested the emotional sensitivity hypothesis, stating that women are more sensitive to perceive subtle, i.e. low intense or ambiguous, emotion cues. We found no support for the emotional sensitivity account, as both genders rated the target emotions as similarly intense at both levels of stimulus intensity. 

Gender stereotyping, and a general social expectation from men to not display their emotions aside, I believe there is a fundamental biological reason why men have not developed the mental muscle to deal with emotions over centuries of evolution: the lack of hormonal triggers. 

Childbirth involves a load of hormonal changes in women, and while a father undergoes a lot of emotional changes, there is no hormonal change in men either leading up to or after the birth of a child. Most men undergo only one hormonal transformation during their lifetime, which is during puberty. However, most life changing events occur much later in their lives, especially in the present modern day society. For women, bodies trigger hormonal and emotional changes together, which may make it harder, but also aid women in handling the emotional changes better given that their bodies and minds are in sync.

This of course, has cascading effects - having processed the previous cycle of emotions better, women go on becoming better at processing emotions as they age, their cognitive skills helping sharpen their emotional processing capacities. It definitely helps that many women may continue to be in caregiving roles, but even if not so, the initial impetus does set them up on a path which makes it easier in later life to process all kinds of emotions, whether it is happiness, grief or pain.

Men on the other hand are handicapped to begin with, and with societal expectations of being 'strong', men neither develop a mental muscle to deal with their emotions, nor have any biological support to deal with them, making them susceptible to the 'constipated look' often displayed when faced with intense happiness, and stone-face when faced with intense grief.

There is no shortcut to resolving this menace - nature is not going to reprogram millennia of evolutionary memory and men are never going to experience a hormonal transformation on major life events. The only way out is probably social awakening towards mental wellbeing of men on the lines of the Movember movement. While Movember is meant for a more general awareness about men's health, sub-events under it can focus on mental health specifically. And within mental health, while there may be an effort to cover the specific cases of trauma or distress, it is more important to highlight the more commonplace challenges faced by almost every man - even the ones who have always been in happy situations - of their incapacity and evolutionary handicap to have a means to deal with their emotions.

There needs to be special attention paid to this in schools - just like girls are taken through special classes on mensural health, boys need to be given dedicated education on mental health in their pre-teens and teens. These are difficult conversations and probably need trained instructors, or specific training to teachers dealing in these subjects.

If there is a quiet takeaway I want to leave you with, it is this: fathers are not emotionally absent by choice, nor deficient by nature alone - they are often simply unequipped. Behind the calm exterior, the stiff smile, and the stone-faced silence is usually a man experiencing emotion at full intensity, but without language, training, or permission to process it. 

Recognizing this is not about excusing harmful behavior or lowering expectations; it is about replacing judgment with understanding and neglect with intention. If we want healthier men, healthier fathers, and healthier families, we must stop assuming emotional competence will emerge on its own and start treating it as a skill that deserves to be taught, practiced, and supported - early, openly, and without shame.

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