Inviting Men Into the Circle of Care When Support Already Feels Scarce

A father, holding his baby, stands by himself, and looks out of a brightly lit window. Stock Image.

Inviting Men Into the Circle of Care When Support Already Feels Scarce

As a Family Steward, I sit at a complicated intersection.

I work with families at one of the most tender thresholds of their lives, stewarding both parents through their rites of passage into parenthood. And there is an unspoken but undeniable truth I hold alongside this work:

Birthing people do not get enough support.

That truth is not theoretical. It is lived. It is carried in exhausted bodies, fractured sleep, invisible labour, and generations of birthers who learned, often too late, that parenthood in our current systems comes with profound isolation.

So yes, I understand why it can feel confronting, even threatening, to name another truth alongside it:

Non-birthing parents don’t get enough support either. And often, that includes men.

Naming this is not about taking support away from birthers. It is about refusing to pretend that family wellbeing can be built by placing the full weight of care on one person while leaving the rest under-resourced, under-initiated, and under-accountable.

If we want to interrupt cycles of domestic violence, intimate partner violence, and family breakdown, we cannot continue excluding non-birthing parents, and in this article specifically, men, from the circle of care, or leaving them to find their way alone.

Where This Work Was First Taught to Me

This insight did not emerge from working with heterosexual couples, although it would make sense with the growing body of work around mental load and invisible labour being shared, mostly by women, and some leading men, on the internet today. (Looking at you, Zach!)

Rather, it emerged from witnessing Queer families.

In Queer relationships, gender does not automatically assign roles. Who carries the mental load, who feeds the baby, who manages logistics, who rests, who leads, who follows, these things are spoken about. Negotiated. Agreed upon. Shared. Celebrated.

Because nothing is assumed, everything becomes intentional.

And the result is not perfection, but clarity, accountability, and resilience.

When I contrast this with many heterosexual family systems, a painful pattern appears. Expectant parents aren’t speaking about the right things. They’re budgeting for the wrong tools. And they’re falling into unhelpful patterns before they know it. Not because men are inherently incapable, but because they are rarely initiated.

Having Children Is Not the Same as Becoming a Father

Many men reach puberty. Many men can create children. But far fewer have been taught what it means to be a father. (There are many reasons for this, but I’ll focus on one).

Without coming-of-age ceremonies, mentorship, or clear instruction, adulthood becomes something men age into rather than step into. And too often, when a baby is born, mothers discover they are caring not only for a newborn, but for a partner who has never been guided into emotional adulthood.

This is not an individual failure. It is a cultural one.

Developmental psychology has long shown us that under stress, humans revert to their last integrated stage of development. John Bowlby and other attachment researchers observed that when safety is compromised, our nervous systems default to earlier survival strategies. This is not conscious. It is adaptive.

So when new parents are overwhelmed, sleep-deprived, hormonally flooded, and emotionally raw, they do not rise to the occasion. They regress to the stage they were last fully supported through.

For many adults today, that stage is not adolescence. It is childhood.

What Colonization Removed, and What We Are Living With Now

When Patriarchy colonized communities, it did not only reorganize power. It dismantled rites of passage.

Across Indigenous cultures, coming-of-age ceremonies marked a clear transition from child to young adult. While practices vary widely across Nations and geographies, many share a common structure. Youth sit with a council of adults who are not their parents. They receive teachings about responsibility, relationships, sexuality, conflict, community care, and accountability. They are Witnessed. Challenged. Claimed.

Anthropologist Joseph Campbell described these ceremonies as essential psychological thresholds. Without them, people may age, but they do not necessarily mature.

When these ceremonies were disrupted or erased, we lost a collective technology for adulthood.

What remains is a culture where people are expected to perform adult roles, including parenting, partnership, and leadership, without ever being taught how to hold them.

So when stress arrives, and new parenthood is nothing if not stressful, people default to their earliest coping patterns. Defensiveness. Withdrawal. Avoidance. Tantrums. Dependency. Control.

Not because they are bad partners.
But because no one ever walked them across the threshold.

This Is Not About Patriarchy vs. Matriarchy

When people hear the work of Family Stewards is reinforcing matriarchy, it is natural in Western society to assume there is a binary at stake.

When they hear restoring matriarchal societies, they often imagine the pyramid flipped, women on top, men beneath.

That is not what matriarchal systems offer.

Matriarchal societies build circles, not hierarchies. They recognize that all genders, again not binary, are necessary to collective wellbeing, and that care, responsibility, and authority are shared.

They also remind us of something essential:

We do not become parents when we have children.
We become parents when we stop acting like children.

In healthy communities, every adult holds responsibility for the wellbeing of all children, not only those they biologically create. When care is shared, children thrive. When responsibility is distributed, families stabilize. And the wellbeing of our birthers can once again be restored.

Why Men Belong in the Circle of Family Stewardship

Inviting men into the circle of care does not dilute support for mothers, it strengthens it. And if I’m being a little bold, when men begin to see themselves as beneficiaries of this care, they may also begin to help fund and sustain it.

When I tell people I am a Family Steward or a birth worker, many men assume this work is by women for women, and they check out. But if I stay with them just a moment longer, I often see something soften. A longing. Sometimes grief. A quiet recognition of something they were never offered, but deeply needed.

That response tells me this work is not irrelevant to men. It has simply never been framed as including them.

And inclusion, as any meaningful DEI practice reminds us, is not just about invitation. It is about belonging. It is about access. It is about having a seat in the room where decisions are made, responsibilities are shared, and care is designed.

Inviting men into the circle of Family Stewardship means more than welcoming their presence.

It means expecting their participation. Resourcing their learning. Holding them accountable. And allowing them to be shaped by the work, not as observers or helpers, but as intended beneficiaries alongside mothers, partners, and community.

When men are witnessed, coached, and held accountable, emotional labour becomes shared, conflict becomes navigable rather than explosive, parenting becomes collaborative instead of compensatory, and children grow up seeing care modelled across genders. This has multigenerational consequence which cannot be undervalued.

Until men see themselves in the circle care, rather on the margins, we will continue reproducing the same patriarchal systems that are failing families, women, children, and men alike.

Family Stewardship is not about rescuing anyone.
It is about initiation. It is about responsibility. It is about building family systems that can last.

And that means widening the circle of care, not shrinking it.

Reflection and Integration

Before moving on, I invite you to pause and notice what this brought up for you.

• What emotions arose as you read this, defensiveness, relief, grief, anger, curiosity, hope?

• Where did you feel tension in your body when men were named as needing care too?

• What developmental stage were you supported through, and where were you left to figure things out alone?

• In your family of origin, who carried the emotional and relational labour, and who was excused from it?

• How might uninitiated adulthood show up in moments of stress or conflict in your home?

• What might become possible for mothers if fathers and non-birthing parents were better supported, coached, and initiated?

• What might become possible for children if all adults understood themselves as responsible for their wellbeing?

• If support were abundant rather than scarce, what would you want for your family, your partner, and your community?

Integration begins with honesty.
Change begins with desire.

And desire grows when we imagine something better than what we have inherited.