The role of fathers in infant mental health has changed – but mostly at the level of discourse, not practice. Across Latin America, fatherhood is evolving within societies shaped by a strong tradition of gendered caregiving, where women assume primary responsibility and men are providers (Herrera et al., 2018). Today, fathers are increasingly expected to be present, emotionally engaged, and involved in early care. Yet the systems that support families during the perinatal period have not kept pace. Fathers may be more visible in guidelines, research, and policy discussions – but they are seldom recognized as legitimate caregivers in everyday practice. This gap between expectation and recognition reflects a deep uncertainty about what fathers are, and what they are allowed to be, within the caregiving system. And it matters: when fathers are not recognized as caregivers, opportunities to support attachment, co-regulation, and healthy development are lost (Feldman, 2017).
There is a decisive difference between visibility and legitimacy. Across health systems and social policies, fathers occupy an ambiguous position: expected to be present, rarely equipped to be effective, and almost never treated as full partners in the caregiving project. This is not a minor oversight – it is a systemic contradiction, and it costs mothers, infants, families, and societies far more than we acknowledge.
The Discourse Has Changed. The Systems Have Not.
Ask a perinatal health professional in Latin America whether fathers matter, and the answer will probably be “of course.” Yet this is often followed by a familiar explanation: fathers are not around, or not interested. Their absence is taken as evidence of disengagement rather than as a question worth examining. Even within clinical settings, fathers continue to be framed through a deficit lens — as unreliable, peripheral, or optional. Many fathers are genuinely willing to be involved, and very little is done to support them. The question is not only why fathers do not engage, but why systems do so little to engage those who would.
A different picture emerges when we examine how systems are actually designed. Was the last antenatal appointment structured to include fathers? Are fathers routinely assessed in perinatal mental health care? Do current leave policies allow men the time needed to enter caregiving meaningfully? The answers are often no. The issue may not be lack of interest – but lack of recognition and structural support.
The field is also implicitly governed by a maternal template. Fathers are expected to engage in the same ways, through the same pathways, and under the same conditions as mothers. Being a “good father” is often equated with approximating a “good mother” – which overlooks fathers’ potentially distinct contributions to early caregiving (Volling & Cabrera, 2025) and sets them up for systematic misalignment with services never designed with them in mind.
This is the visibility trap. Fathers are visible enough to carry expectations – of emotional availability, active participation, of being an attachment figure – but not visible enough to receive the institutional scaffolding those expectations require. We have raised the bar without building the ladder.
Chile: A Rapid Transition Under Pressure
Chile offers a sharp illustration of this tension. Over the past two decades, Chilean society has undergone a marked shift in gender ideals, with younger fathers strongly endorsing involved, emotionally engaged caregiving. The aspiration is genuine. The structural reality is not.
Chile’s paternity leave remains among the shortest in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), with a modest transferable portion of maternity leave that few fathers use, partly because workplace cultures discourage it (OECD, 2023). Perinatal services are organized around maternal care. There is no routine screening for paternal perinatal mental health, no assessment of father–infant bonding, and no standardized pathway for fathers who are struggling. What emerges is a predictable failure: systems invite fathers in ways that do not align with their realities, then read their limited participation as confirmation of disengagement – reproducing the very exclusion they claim to address.
Involvement Is Not a Personality Trait
Policy and clinical frameworks have long treated paternal involvement as a matter of individual motivation – which is inaccurate and actively harmful. It locates the problem in men rather than in the conditions surrounding them.
The evidence is clear: paternal engagement is profoundly shaped by structural factors (Cabrera et al., 2014). Leave duration and wage replacement rates predict uptake (Patnaik, 2019). Clinical inclusion – being addressed directly, being offered services – predicts fathers’ engagement with perinatal mental health systems (Darwin et al., 2021). These conditions directly shape the father–infant relationship: interaction patterns, emotional availability, and the child’s developing sense of relational security (Feldman, 2017).
Unsupported fathers are fathers at risk. Paternal perinatal depression affects approximately 8% of fathers globally, with likely higher rates in vulnerable contexts and, in much of Latin America, with no available treatment options. Untreated paternal depression is associated with disrupted father–infant interaction, increased couple conflict, and elevated risk of emotional and behavioral difficulties in children (Bruno et al., 2020; Culpin et al., 2025). The cost of ignoring fathers is ultimately paid by infants And yet: when fathers are supported as legitimate caregivers, they become active contributors to children’s resilience, emotional development, and maternal wellbeing (Volling & Cabrera, 2025).
Legitimating Fathers: From Individual Practice to Systemic Change
For those working in infant mental health, the question is no longer whether fathers should be included, but how each of us promotes or hinders their inclusion. Systems are enacted daily through ordinary decisions: who is addressed in a consultation, whose experience is assessed, who is assumed not to attend. These practices accumulate into patterns of recognition – or misrecognition – that determine whether fathers can take up a legitimate place in the caregiving system.
Expanding the role of fathers requires alignment across levels: from micro-practices of care to macro-decisions by governments. A clinician who speaks directly to a father, a midwife who invites his participation, a service that measures paternal mental health – these are not marginal gestures. They are the infrastructure of change. The question is not whether this transformation is possible, but whether we are willing to recognize our role in making it cumulative.
References
Bruno, A., Celebre, L., Mento, C., Rizzo, A., Silvestri, M. C., De Stefano, R., … & Muscatello, M. R. A. (2020). When fathers begin to falter: a comprehensive review on paternal perinatal depression. International journal of environmental research and public health, 17(4), 1139. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17041139
Cabrera, N. J., Fitzgerald, H. E., & Bradley, R. H. (2014). The ecology of father-child relationships: An expanded model. Journal of Family Theory and Review, 6(4), 336–354. https://doi.org/10.1111/jftr.12054
Culpin, I., Pearson, R. M., Wright, N., Stein, A., Bornstein, M. H., Tiemeier, H., … & Hammerton, G. (2025). Paternal postnatal depression and child development at age 7 years in a UK-birth cohort: the mediating roles of paternal parenting confidence, warmth, and conflict. Frontiers in child and adolescent psychiatry, 4, 1650799. https://doi.org 10.3389/frcha.2025.1650799
Darwin, Z., Domoney, J., Iles, J., Bristow, F., Siew, J., & Sethna, V. (2021). Assessing the mental health of fathers, other co-parents, and partners in the perinatal period: Mixed methods evidence synthesis. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 11, 585656. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2020.585656
Feldman, R. (2017). The neurobiology of human attachments. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 21(2), 80–99. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2016.11.007
Herrera, F., Aguayo, F., & Weil, J. G. (2018). Proveer, cuidar y criar: evidencias, discursos y experiencias sobre paternidad en América Latina. Polis. Revista Latinoamericana, (50).
OECD. (2023). PF2.1: Parental leave systems. OECD Family Database. https://www.oecd.org/els/soc/PF2_1_Parental_leave_systems.pdf
Patnaik, A. (2019). Reserving time for daddy: The consequences of fathers’ quotas. Journal of Labor Economics, 37(4), 1009–1059. https://doi.org/10.1086/703115
Volling, B. L., & Cabrera, N. J. (2025). Loving, laughing, and learning: How father–child relationships contribute to children’s development in early childhood. Annual Review of Developmental Psychology, 7.
Authors
Aldoney, Daniela
Facultad de Psicología, Universidad del Desarrollo (UDD),
Chile
Coo, Soledad
Facultad de Psicología, Universidad del Desarrollo (UDD),
Chile
