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She Won't Break!

New Dads With Newborn Fears

By Jenn Director Knudsen

Jeffrey Goldberg picked up his infant son, Isaac, caught his little arm in his sleeve and proceeded to bend it backward slightly. Oops. Isaac screamed, of course, but also bounced back in a hurry. "I still feel bad about that, but he was fine," says Goldberg, 30, of Framingham, Mass. "Babies are pretty tough little things – they're amazingly resilient."

At least Goldberg didn't drop Isaac, which is something he's feared doing since his baby boy was born in March. Yet it's a fear he shares with many other new dads, not to mention concerns about how to dress, soothe, support financially, feed and care for a new baby.

New moms haven't entirely cornered the market on newborn fears. Dads are worrywarts, too. And though many fears – such as, "Is the baby still breathing?" – are shared by Mom and Dad, new fathers have a set of concerns about their new babies all their own.

"Society has changed in a way that encourages fathers to take an active role [in] all aspects of parenting," says Dennis DeWitt, a father of two and a health educator who teaches "Toolkits for Dads-to-be," a class offered at Kaiser Permanente in Portland, Ore.

"How do new fathers fill these roles with no experience and no model?" says DeWitt. "The result is insecurity, which leads to fear. New dads want to participate and get involved; they just do not know how."

"It is common men are afraid babies will break," says Greg Bishop of Irvine, Calif., founder and head coach of Boot Camp for New Dads, a one-shot, three-hour program held at roughly 200 sites nationwide to help new and expectant fathers face and get over their newborn fears. But it takes holding an actual tiny, helpless, utterly dependent, squirmy newborn before a father can surmount his fears, he says.

Want to see more?

• Dads New Role: Should a Worried Father-to-be Share His Concerns?
• Postpartum Dad: Helping with Labor, Delivery and Baby's Homecoming
• Postpartum Dad: Supporting Your Partner
• Postpartum Dad: Playing Problem Police
• Talk about it!

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