Non-fiction literature is full of narratives of new motherhood, starting from pregnancy to the nuanced documentation of postpartum struggles, joys, pressures, and changed identities and priorities. But when it comes to new fatherhood, there is little to be found. This gap suggests the momentousness of fatherhood is not recognised – neither by publishers, nor by readers, but most of all, by society.

Patriarchy, arguably, comes with perks and pitfalls. Surprisingly, when the Government of India launched KIRAN, a mental health rehabilitation helpline, in September 2020, seven out of ten callers were men. The question we must ask is this: Was it again privilege that had allowed them to access health infrastructure? Or was it pain instead?

I’ll die on the hill that more men than women define their self-worth by their monetary worth. This is certainly a privilege, in many ways, because money is equitable to agency, but to say that money just provides, and not robs us of certain joys of life would be a huge mistake.

Indian Fathers Have Traditionally Been Authoritarian; It's Time They Became Authoritative Instead

Both women and men are biologically primed for parenting. But because the experience of pregnancy and giving birth is so viscerally the mother’s, most people assume that not much changes for a man physiologically with fatherhood. This is simply not true.

Loneliness is not gendered, but the pandemic of men feeling socially isolated as they grow older has been hiding in broad daylight for far too long in front of us. That loneliness is a secular, long-term, culture-agnostic trend for adult men nearly everywhere is something that both empirical evidence and everyday experience confirm.