As psychiatrists and family therapists, we spend a great deal of time working with men on issues of fatherhood including the themes of communication, commitment, identity, intimacy and trust. The men we work with come to us because they have difficulties in their personal lives relating to the people they love most. They yearn for their children to be happy and successful, yet they often lack the skills and ability to model a way to help them accomplish this.
The problem is that many men continue to operate under the rules of Male Code (1), a rigid set of social guidelines, both spoken and unspoken, that equates masculinity with stoicism, silence, and strength. These "rules of the road" have been in place in the US for nearly 200 years (2). While traditional male behaviors have ensured that men acquire positions of privilege, prestige and power, they can be detrimental to men's health and relationships, particularly in parenting their children. Poor attention to their physical health, and lack of emotional engagement in their marriages have resulted in men's shortened life spans and increases in their partners initiating divorce today (3,4).
As men are now being called upon to spend more time and participate in the direct care of their kids (5), they often find themselves emotionally overwhelmed trying to balance work, relationship and family demands. In our national survey, we found that men with higher emotional intimacy (EI) skills did better in their relationships with their children (6). The following guidelines can help men overcome the limitations of traditional male code and better navigate the complicated pathways of modern fatherhood.
[For more of this story, written by Michael Ascher and Robert Garfield, go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...hp_ref=mental-health]
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