New dads share how fatherhood has modified them : NPR
From left: Dr. Nilay Mahajan together with his spouse, Dr. Charu Srivasta, and their daughter, Tarini; Manik Seghal together with his son, Gunagyaa; and Ajas Ahmed, his spouse, Reshma, and son, Naseer.
From left: household picture; household picture; household picture
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From left: household picture; household picture; household picture
That they had at all times been a group. However when his son Naseer was born in Might 2025, Ajas Ahmed had by no means felt so helpless.
His spouse had endured a tough labor. The newborn was breech and she or he struggled for over ten hours in ache. For per week, she lay bedridden in a hospital in Chennai, in southern India, recovering from the start. Ahmed, a 27-year-old personal chauffeur, stayed by her facet.
“She wanted my help. I made positive I used to be there for her,” he says.
Luckily, Ahmed’s employer allowed him the day without work. However lengthy earlier than Naseer’s start, fatherhood had already begun reshaping his life. After his daughter, now 3, was born, he give up his job as an ambulance driver as a result of the hours had been punishing and the stress relentless. He wished work that may permit him to come back residence, spend time together with his youngster and be current in methods his personal father’s era could not have anticipated of males.
Ahmed’s story displays a central rigidity recognized within the 2026 State of the World’s Fathers report: There is a persistent concept that males are suppliers first and caregivers second.
However the report finds that males are sometimes invested in childcare, particularly in households with a small variety of children. And the researchers got here up with a stunning perception from their interviews with over 5,000 fathers. As males do extra hands-on childcare, they face extra stress … however they discover which means in it. 9 out of ten fathers interviewed felt that caring for kids is a deep supply of happiness, says Taveeshi Gupta, one of many report’s lead authors this 12 months.
“We did not see that one coming,” says Gary Barker, CEO of Equimundo: Heart for Masculinities and Social Justice, the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group that ready the report and that encourages males and boys to change into allies within the effort to realize gender equality.
“Loads of our messaging has been: Males, you should do extra,” he says. “And maybe it got here with a scolding — from a feminist perspective, as a result of girls’s time poverty is actual, and we did have to push males to do our fair proportion. However the report confirmed what these of us who’re fathers and concerned in care had been already saying: that is happiness in life.”
Not all of the fathers interviewed had been on board. Youthful males and older males skew extra to conventional gender roles, the report present in its interviews.
And hands-on dads could generally really feel they’re coming into uncharted territory.
“Once I was a part-time stay-at-home dad with my very own daughter 28 years in the past, it was apparent that the world checked out me in two methods,” Barker says. “Both I acquired particular credit score for being a reliable caregiver — as if a person doing this was a superhero — when in actuality I used to be only a bumbling caregiver like all of us are. Or I used to be seen as incompetent or invisible as a result of males do not actually do that work.”
This is how three new dads within the patriarchal society of India are navigating their lives — and discovering pleasure in fatherhood.
‘I am the diaper man”
Dr. Nilay Mahajan, 36, is an orthopedic surgeon based mostly in Bareilly, within the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Since welcoming his daughter, Tarini, in February, he says fatherhood has made him extra empathetic — particularly towards his pediatric sufferers.
“The second you maintain your child in your arms, your mind wiring modifications. So do your priorities,” he says. His spouse, Dr. Charu Srivastava, is a gynecologist with a demanding schedule of her personal, however the couple have been discovering methods to share the load.
“Once I’m residence, I am the diaper man,” he jokes. At evening, after his spouse breastfeeds, he burps the newborn and rocks her to sleep. When he has a few hours between surgical procedures, he drives residence, simply 5 minutes from the hospital, to spend that point with Tarini.
“Each time I am residence, I attempt to be current within the second — to carry, rock and feed her,” he says. “I attempt to help my spouse after I can. If she has an emergency surgical procedure to carry out or one in all her sufferers wants her, I take day without work from my apply to accommodate that. Ideally, elevating a toddler ought to by no means be a single particular person’s duty. It is simply too draining in any other case.”
His method displays a dramatic change in parenting in India, he says. As extra girls pursue careers, extra males have gotten extra conscious of the necessity to share home and caregiving obligations.
“Fathers are extra proactive now,” he says.
Rising up, nonetheless, Mahajan noticed a special mannequin. His father, a neurosurgeon, had a demanding schedule, which meant that a lot of the parenting fell to Mahajan’s mom.
Mahajan needs one thing completely different for his daughter. He doesn’t need Tarini to develop up in a world with inflexible gender roles.
“I’ve to indicate her by my actions, and by being supportive, that women and men will be equal companions. I need her to really feel like she will do something she units her coronary heart on,” he says.
‘I am extra conscious about my journey’
Manik Sehgal, 44, lives in Faridabad, about an hour from India’s capital, New Delhi.
In January, he and his spouse, Manjulika Pramod, welcomed their first youngster — a son they named Gunagyaa. The couple first met a decade in the past as colleagues once they each labored in telecommunications. Seghal, now a marketing consultant at Deloitte, says having a child has modified his life in methods he had not even imagined earlier. For one, it is helped him prioritize household time.
“I used to stay out of a suitcase, taking 5-6 flights a month for work,” he says. “Right now, I am extra conscious about my journey, selecting to chop again every time I can, to spend time with my household,” he says. He has taken over child care duties after 9 p.m, typically tending to his 5-month-old late at evening so his spouse can get some relaxation.
His ideas are drifting to the surroundings and to different world occasions — by the lens of a brand new dad. “I am pondering extra in regards to the air we breathe,” Seghal says. “As prices of dwelling go up in all places, with wars including to inflation, air pollution and local weather change, I fear in regards to the world we’re abandoning for our youngsters. All of a sudden, every little thing is private.”
“Fathers more and more wish to care”
Within the report on fathers, researchers requested males what makes a great father. In India, says researcher Gupta, there was quite a lot of emphasis on the supplier position.
“That may be a cross-cutting discovering throughout the World North and World South: manhood, and what it means to be a great man or a great father, continues to be typically tied to being a breadwinner and supplier,” says Gupta.
And that is largely due to a phenomenon known as financial precarity, she says. “It refers to a generalized anxiousness that it doesn’t matter what you do, you could by no means have monetary stability in your life or future.”
Financial precarity is not simply felt by folks dwelling with poverty. Even the comparatively well-off can expertise it as they fear in regards to the influence of wars, AI coming into the labor drive, stagnant wages and rising residence costs. All this “makes stability really feel out of attain,” says Gupta.
When researchers measured financial precarity amongst mother and father, their statistics present how deep it’s. Welcoming a brand new youngster can change a household’s revenue as moms are likely to take day without work. Three in 4 fathers interviewed for the report stated they had been shedding sleep over their monetary future. A majority felt residence possession was out of attain. Greater than half of fathers had taken on a number of jobs, modified jobs or had been working time beyond regulation. “Financial precarity was linked to each different indicator we measured — psychological well being, how joyful they really feel about being caregivers and different life outcomes,” says Gupta.
The report doesn’t describe caregiving itself as a burden, as a result of their knowledge exhibits that folks discover pleasure in care. And roughly half of the fathers interviewed had younger kids (ages 0-7), who require extra consideration than older children.
One answer the report suggests is totally paid go away for fathers — lasting so long as maternity go away. The researchers additionally counsel money stipends or different social safety insurance policies for lower-income households, and livable minimal wage ensures.
“The message is obvious: Fathers more and more wish to care, however they want societies, employers and well being techniques that make caregiving doable,” says Barker. And naturally — “that is the sort of help that may assist moms too.”
“Being a father means extra than simply incomes for your loved ones”
For Ajas, his spouse’s keep within the hospital made one factor clear, whilst he struggles to deal with spiraling monetary pressures that include life in a giant metropolis.
“Being a father means extra than simply incomes for your loved ones. It means being there for them, particularly once they want you probably the most,” he says.
Kamala Thiagarajan is a contract journalist based mostly in Madurai, Southern India. She experiences on world well being, science and improvement and has been revealed in The New York Instances, The British Medical Journal, the BBC, The Guardian and different shops. You could find her on X @kamal_t
