Patrescence Meets Grief, Too

I recently wrote about matrescence and baby loss. It would be remiss not to talk about patrescence, too.

Fathers are not acknowledged enough for their role in society, their place within the family, or their experience of grief. Their transition into fatherhood can be profound, complicated and deeply personal – yet we don't talk about it nearly enough.

My daughter was a temperamentally sensitive child from the moment she was born. She is a gorgeous human, and she is relationally and emotionally complex. As an infant, she was colicky and would not be soothed by him. This made his transition to fatherhood protracted, uncertain and complicated. His patrescence was not an easy one.

When Tommy died, his experience of patrescence was complicated in another way.

Expressing and managing big feelings has never come easily to my husband. Finding space for his grief was not simple. His experience was different from mine, but no less real.

We now know a little more about patrescence, but still not enough. It can be thought of as something of a parallel process to matrescence, but it follows its own course.

Like matrescence, patrescence may begin long before a baby is conceived. It can begin with imagining a future family, integrating fatherhood into his identity, and creating a life in which children would be welcome. For some, it may begin during pregnancy. For others, it may become more tangible when their baby is born, or as the relationship between father and child develops (as it did for my own husband).

It is a process of change – in identity, relationships, roles and, potentially, biology.

There is emerging evidence that men experience hormonal and neurobiological changes during the transition to fatherhood. Some of these changes appear to be associated with caregiving and the developing relationship between father and child.

But the science is still limited, and we know far less about patrescence than we do about matrescence. Unlike mothers, fathers don't experience the profound hormonal changes of pregnancy themselves, so the pathways into these biological changes are likely to be different. But the broad transition into fatherhood is no less real.

So, what happens when patrescence meets grief?

What happens when the transition into fatherhood does not end with a living baby to nurture?

Perhaps something similar to what happens with matrescence. The transition does not simply disappear. The identity does not necessarily disappear with it.

They grieve.

They nurture their baby's memory. They carry their child into the future. They find their own ways to honour the life that was, and their fatherhood.

They hold their babies in their hearts.

In their own way. On their own terms. In their own time.

They are fathers still, too.

Tommy's Mum x