Father’s Day cards, mental health, and men talking about their feelings

Jun 14

"By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he’s wrong”. – Charles Wadsworth

As the quote shows, being a dad has never been easy. Even when Dad says or does the right thing, others might see it as wrong. However once a year fathers get a chance to be unequivocally appreciated. Special days like Father’s Day (which is the third Sunday of June each year in most countries) and Mother’s Day might be dismissed as grossly commercialised, but at least they are an opportunity to let our parents know – putting other misgivings on hold - our love and gratitude for them.

In the US in 2024, around $33.5 billion was spent for Mother’s Day gifts and $22.4 billion for Father’s Day. Around 10% of that expenditure goes on cards. Last year I saw an article about Father’s Day cards. It was about a survey of 1,000 men as part of Hallmark’s launch of a new range of Father’s Day cards. The title of the article was “SPEAK UP. Half of men struggle to express their feelings verbally as they fear it makes them look weak, poll finds.” The subtitle of the article added “The top 10 reasons why men hesitate with voicing their feelings - and where to get help for mental health”. On the one hand this could be taken as a genuine attempt to help men, and without a doubt it’s important for men to express how they feel. On the other hand the reasons listed in this newspaper article were not – in my opinion - explored in a helpful way.

Let’s look at the list of reasons men said they hesitate to voice their feelings. Top of the list was “Feeling awkward”, and second was “Not being understood”. Hmmm. Why would men feel awkward, and think they wouldn’t be understood? Could it be that they have had experiences of opening up but then not being understood, in fact so many experiences that any time they try to open up they automatically feel awkward?

“We can’t just criticise men for not talking about how they feel, when doing so leaves so many feeling awkward and misunderstood. We need to ask ourselves why we are not better at listening to what men are saying.”

It’s often said that men speak to therapists less than women do because defects in masculinity that prevent them from seeking help and talking about their feelings, but perhaps the reality is they want to open up but find people don’t listen. A survey of 4000 men in the UK, Australia, Canada and the USA found 41% of men regretted opening up, usually because they didn’t feel respected, or they felt misunderstood. That’s a lot of men left feeling awkward and misunderstood. We can’t just criticise men for not talking about how they feel, when doing so leaves so many feeling awkward and misunderstood. We need to ask ourselves why we are not better at listening to what men are saying.

“Perhaps the protector role is not just about physical protection, but includes protecting the feelings of others, even at the expense of expressing one’s own.”

Third on the list of reasons men said they hesitate to voice their feelings was “Not wanting to be a burden”. It reminds me of the comment on the Time to Talk survey by Mark Winstanley, CEO of Rethink Mental Illness, that many "people are pretending they are fine because they don’t want to worry others". This is an important insight, and suggests a tendency to protect the feelings of others. It suggests perhaps the protector role is not just about physical protection, but includes protecting the feelings of others, even at the expense of expressing one’s own. It also has implications for how we understand help-seeking – what looks like a reluctance to reach out is more a reluctance to impose on others. But this nuanced interpretation of men’s behaviour is very much lacking in masculinity research and the media narrative about men and masculinity, where not talking about your feelings is typically seen as a dysfunctional aspect of masculinity.

“Concern over ‘being seen as weak’ is typically scoffed at as being a ‘silly man’ thing, but behind this might be a real concern that admitting vulnerability will lead to harm rather than help.”

The next on the list – “Being seen as weak” - was the fourth most common reason men said they hesitate to voice their feelings. Concern over ‘being seen as weak’ is typically scoffed at as being a ‘silly man’ thing, but behind this might be a real concern that admitting vulnerability will lead to harm rather than help. For example, a survey of 1500 adults in the US found 54% were equivocal or unwilling to hire or work with colleagues who have a mental health condition. Indeed for some jobs in the military, security services, aviation and law enforcement, mental health issues can be a barrier to entry, especially if severe or recent. Note that men are a clear majority in many of these four job groups – 80% or more in most cases - and we should have some sympathy if people in these sectors are reluctant to discuss their mental health issues if it might be interpreted as making them unfit for their role.

And now we get to a key issue: apart from the fact that the newspaper article didn’t properly explore why men might be concerned about being seen as weak, why was the ‘weakness’ reason – which was fourth on the list – elevated to the headline of the article? Perhaps it simply made the headline more clickable, feeding readers’ jaundiced stereotypes about men.

This tendency to promote less important points to the headline is a common enough problem in research into men and masculinity, where behaviours such as men not talking about their problems are typically attributed to masculinity rather than a lack of people who know how to listen to men when they talk about their problems. Unfortunately this misdirection of attention away from the key issue to less significant issues means that the more significant issues – such as relationship breakdown or the lack of adequate training for therapists working with male clients - don’t get the attention they deserve.

This Father’s Day card article, and the newspaper that published it, aren’t to be blamed for not understanding men’s mental health. To be fair, most media outlets are doing the same thing or worse, and at least the article included helpline information. This lack of genuine curiosity about men’s problems is widespread not only in the media, but in academia, government, the legal system, and even the entertainment industry. There was a brief possibility a year or two ago when AI, such as ChatGPT, might have saved the day by making good information freely and widely available. However it turns out that AI is just reinforcing the problems by regurgitating exactly the same trite ‘insights’ as everybody else. So although you might blame lazy journalism, a bigger question is why misunderstandings about men’s mental health are so widespread, and how many more Father’s Days will pass before we start to get it right.

If you want to learn more about men and masculinity, take one of the Centre for Male Psychology online courses.

Recommended reading and resources

Seager, M., Barry, J.A. (2019). Positive Masculinity: Including Masculinity as a Valued Aspect of Humanity. In: Barry, J.A., Kingerlee, R., Seager, M., Sullivan, L. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Male Psychology and Mental Health. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04384-1_6

Barry, John; Walker, Rob; Liddon, Louise; & Seager, Martin. (2020). Reactions to contemporary narratives about masculinity: A pilot study. Psychreg Journal of Psychology, 4(2), 8–21. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3871217

Liddon, L., & Barry, J. (2021). Perspectives in male psychology: An introduction. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN: 978-1-119-68535-7

Barry J. (2023). The belief that masculinity has a negative influence on one's behavior is related to reduced mental well-being. Int J Health Sci (Qassim). PMID: 37416841

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