Piling on the pressure for a fairer deal for dads

Welcome back from the summer - we hope you had a relaxing one.

We spent ours piling on the pressure for a fairer deal for UK dads, in response to two key Government consultations:

• The Department of Health & Social Care’s call for evidence about its proposed Men’s Health Strategy for England (expected to launch later this year)

  
  

• An evidence call for the Department for Business & Trade and Department for Work & Pensions’ Parental Leave Review (running until early 2027)

To the politicians behind them, and to the wider public, these reviews might not seem closely connected. For us they’re joined at the hip.

When you stop and think about it, it’s obvious that for our children to have the best start in life, we need dads to be in good health and have protected time to bond with and care for their babies.

The problem is, successive Governments haven’t stopped and thought about it. So our policies and publicly funded services do almost nothing to support men through the transition to early parenthood: the point in life where they’re inducted into the most important job they’ll ever get.

Together, the Men’s Health Strategy and Parental Leave Review represent a once-in-a-generation chance for the Government to start addressing this oversight.

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New fathers’ health

We know that in general, men are less likely than women to access NHS primary care and secondary care services, and when they become fathers – as most men do at some point in their life – this pattern of non-engagement persists.

Men’s health initiatives often start with the question ‘why don’t men engage with services?’ Our Looking out for dad campaign starts with a different but arguably more important question: ‘why don’t services engage with men?’

Fathers’ availability for engagement by health professionals in the period before and after their baby’s birth is unparalleled: almost all (90%+) expectant fathers accompany their partner to antenatal appointments and scans, the birth and increasingly, IVF services.

Recent estimates suggest around 20% of fathers smoke, mainly in the home; around half are overweight or obese; around 10% of new fathers experience depression, and 14% perinatal stress.

But incredibly, these men – already ‘in the room’ – are still viewed as ‘nobody’s patient’. That’s a huge lost opportunity, since the conception and birth of each child has been called the ‘golden opportunity moment’ to provide tailored preventative engagement with men, improving their health literacy, health behaviours and relationships.

Men’s health strategies and action plans in Australia, Ireland and Brazil include a ‘fatherhood focus’. Our vision is for England’s to do the same, requiring basic engagement with expectant and new fathers via their GPs and/or other perinatal services, supporting their health at a key point in their life course.

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Dads at the doctors

Fatherhood Institute analysis of GP Patient Survey 2025 data confirms that in the first quarter of 2025:

• 37% of fathers hadn’t seen their current GP in at least six months (or ever) - compared to 21% of mothers

  
  

• Fathers working full-time were particularly likely to report lower contact with their GP: they were twice as likely as full-time working mothers (18% vs 9%) to have last seen their GP more than a year ago – and six times more likely (6% vs 1%) to have never seen their current GP (see Table 1)

• 50% of fathers said they had physical or mental health conditions or illnesses lasting or expected to last 12 months or more (see Table 2). The three most common long-term conditions or illnesses among fathers were arthritis, back or joint problems (14%), high blood pressure (12%) and mental health conditions (9%)

• 38% of fathers said they hadn’t had enough support from local services or organisations in the last year, to help them manage their conditions or illnesses (see Table 3)

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A pathway to reform

Our submissions to the Men’s Health Strategy consultation [response to question 1; response to question 3; appendix] set out a national fatherhood pathway for NHS perinatal health services, centred on a ‘New Dad Health Check’, to be piloted and eventually scaled into a national offer, available to all new fathers. This could bring multiple benefits, including:

For families:

• Improvements in expectant and new fathers’ health literacy

• Improvements in men’s parenting self-efficacy

• Improvements in fathers’ and mothers’ mental health, wellbeing, and satisfaction with services

For services:

• Higher engagement with expectant and new fathers

• Improved practitioner knowledge about fathers’ roles and impacts, and self-efficacy in father-engagement

• More and better data about expectant and new fathers’ health characteristics, behaviours, attitudes, perceptions, and preferences

• Better identification of fathers’, and their families’, unmet needs; and identification of paternal risks

For Government and NHS provider bodies:

• Better systems to support ongoing father-engagement

• Linking of information about fathers’ and children’s health to support improved child safeguarding

• Longer-term ‘population-level’ benefits that could include improved health outcomes for fathers (who account for a large proportion of the male population), knock-on effects for their sons’ (and daughters’, and wives/partners’) health

• Plus a range of wider social and economic benefits

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A fairer deal

Fatherhood is a rite of passage most men experience – often 20-odd years after having regular contact with the NHS in their own childhoods.

As evidenced in our Parental Leave Review submission, this key life stage for men has been an afterthought in the UK’s policies and services, which give them just 2% of the overall parental leave budget, plus the ‘dad-shaped’ hole in perinatal health support we’ve described above.

If the Government really wants to court younger male voters, offering them a fairer deal when they become fathers would show it meant business. This summer we’ve shown them what that would look like: 6 weeks for dads, and an NHS that takes you seriously.

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Support our campaigns

Join our Dads' Panel

Sign our open letter to the Health Secretary

Donate

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Tables

Table 1: When was your last GP appointment?

	Father	Father in full-time work	Mother	Mother in full-time work
[A] <6months	62%	61%	78%	76%
[B] 6-12m ago	15%	15%	12%	14%
[C] >12m ago	16%	18%	8%	9%
[D] No appt with current GP	6%	6%	1%	1%
[B+C+D]Haven't seen GP in >6m or ever	37%	39%	21%	24%
#people in these categories who answered this question	77,157	62,221	96,236	42,678

Table 2: Do you have any physical or mental health conditions or illnesses lasting or expected to last 12 months or more?

	Father	Mother
Yes	50%	48%
No	46%	47%
Rather not say	5%	5%
#people in these categories who answered this question	73,580	92,382

Table 3: In the last 12 months, have you had enough support from local services or organisations to help you manage your conditions or illnesses?

	Father	Mother
Yes, definitely	27%	25%
Yes, to some extent	35%	39%
No	38%	36%
#people in these categories who answered this question	28,225	35,270

Source: GP Patient Survey

An annual NHS survey of patients randomly selected from all GP practices in England, with approximately 700,000 respondents. It includes questions largely about primary care, dentistry and pharmacy. Data for the 2025 survey was collected by online and postal surveys from 30 December 2024 to 01 April 2025.

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