What gets in the way of fathers accessing care and how services can respond?
Fathers’ involvement in healthcare during early parenthood benefits the whole family. But many fathers face barriers to accessing care. Two reviews show that while these barriers exist at multiple levels, many are shaped by how health services are organised and point to practical opportunities for change.
Key Messages from the authors
From Elisa Mancinelli, University of Padova, Lead Author:
“What stops dads from reaching out isn’t one thing — it’s a whole chain of steps. First they have to notice something isn’t right, then figure out what their options are, then decide to actually do something about it. At every step along the way, we saw the same barriers coming up: dads not sure their feelings count as a ‘real’ problem, beliefs that a good father should just cope, and services that aren’t really looking for them. Interestingly, digital resources kept coming up as something that helps — they’re private, they’re available out of hours, and they’re often the first door dads will walk through.”
(Mancinelli & Filippi, 2025)
From Associate Professor Jacqui Macdonald, Deakin University, Senior Author:
“What our review really showed is that health services hold most of the cards here. When appointment times don’t fit around work, or when the posters and pamphlets are all addressed to ‘Mum,’ or when the person on the phone only ever asks for the mother’s details, it sends a pretty clear signal that dads aren’t really expected to show up. We also found some great opportunities: things like ‘gateway’ consultations, where it doesn’t matter who dads ask for help, they can be linked to the supports they need, and investing in staff training so health professionals feel confident working with fathers. The barriers are real, but none of them are unfixable.”
(Wynter et al., 2024)
Review
Help-seeking in perinatal fathers: a scoping review of needs, barriers, facilitators, and access to support
EClinicalMedicine | 2025
Elisa Mancinelli
Bianca Filippi
Access the review:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41048663/
Review
Barriers and opportunities for health service access among fathers: A review of empirical evidence
Health Promotion Journal of Australia | 2024
Karen Wynter,
Kayla A. Mansour,
Faye Forbes,
Jacqui A. Macdonald
Access the review:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hpja.846
summary of Reviews
In 2024 and 2025, two reviews brought together international evidence on why fathers often do not engage with health services and what could support better access to care.
Wynter and colleagues (2024) drew on 52 Australian studies and 44 international reviews to describe the barriers and opportunities for fathers’ access to health services more broadly. The clearest finding was that the biggest barriers sit at the level of the health service itself, not in fathers’ individual attitudes. These include ‘surface’ factors such as appointment times limited to business hours, and ‘deeper’ factors such as policies and framings that position mothers as caregivers and fathers as supporters or providers. The authors identified practical opportunities including father-specific resources, training for health professionals in working with fathers, and ‘gateway consultations’, where brief encounters open a door to directed care. They argue that top-down policy change is needed to support fathers as infant caregivers within a family-based model of care.
Mancinelli and Filippi (2025) specifically reviewed supports in the perinatal period from pregnancy through the first 12 months after birth. Their scoping review of 47 studies applied a well-established four-stage model of help-seeking: recognising a need, generating options, making a decision, and evaluating the outcome. At every stage, fathers encountered barriers that were individual (e.g., not recognising symptoms, beliefs about masculinity), socio-cultural (e.g., stigma and expectations of fatherhood), and practical (e.g., services that do not reach out to fathers). Digital resources such as online information, apps, and remote services, emerged as a consistent facilitator across all stages.
Read together, the two reviews paint a consistent picture. Fathers face barriers at every level - how they see themselves, how their communities see them, and how health services are structured - but the system-level barriers are doing most of the work, and they are also the most changeable. Routine engagement of fathers through existing maternal and child health touchpoints, father-inclusive materials and language, training for health professionals, and investment in digital resources are all practical levers. Policy leadership is needed to make father-inclusive care the norm rather than the exception.
Further reading
The Wynter et al. review is an update of a broader literature review led by Associate Professor Macdonald for the Australian Department of Health and Aged Care:
Men’s and boys’ barriers to health system access: a literature review
Page last updated May 2025