The Paternal Mental Health, Difficulties for Fathers with Children in Early Infancy, and Their Educational Support Needs

Purpose: The purpose is to identify what difficulties fathers have with the roles of fatherhood during pregnancy and early infancy, and to make apparent what their educational support needs are. Methods: This study follows a qualitative descriptive design. The subjects were new first-time fathers of Japanese nationality. Subjects participated in semi-structured interviews administered according to interview guidelines. Results: There were 15 subjects in total. The average age of the subjects’ children was 5.5 months. Fathers’ difficulties with their new roles were abstracted in to five main categories: \u3c Difficulties during early engagement with child \u3e, \u3c Difficulties related to child crying \u3e, \u3c Difficulties arising after getting through the early engagement stage \u3e, \u3c Difficulties related to support of partner \u3e, and \u3c Mental burdens associated with childrearing \u3e. Additionally, the types of support fathers requested to help maintain their mental health after the birth of their infants were abstracted into three main categories: \u3c Support with childcare knowledge/acquiring skills \u3e, \u3c Support in building a positive marital relationship \u3e, and \u3c Support in maintaining own mental health \u3e. Conclusions: 1) The stress experienced by fathers from the birth of their child through early infancy, originating in two elements of fatherhood (engagement with the child and spousal support), placed a great mental burden upon them in a multi-layered structure; 2) The support that needs fathers expressed to maintain their mental health pre- and postpartum is based on the difficulties they experienced with paternal roles; 3) There is a disparity between the needs of fathers expressed through the results of this study and current paternal support practices in Japan. The supplementation and revision of existing paternal support practices is an issue that merits further consideration. Furthermore, the existing group interview method suffers from low attendance, and attending has become increasingly difficult due to the COVID-19 pandemic spreading throughout Japan. It is necessary to consider alternative methods of educational support moving forward