Dads are way more open than their own fathers — but most still won’t say they went to therapy

A new Grow Therapy survey of 1,534 U.S. dads found 78% say they parent and talk about feelings more openly than the home they grew up in — but only 20% would tell their kids they’d gone to therapy. The willingness around men’s mental health is real; saying it out loud is still the lagging part.

The Grow Therapy survey, fielded May 11–15 and released for Father’s Day, lands on a gap worth sitting with. Dads want the help: 35% said professional support for themselves would be most useful right now, and 37% said books, podcasts, or content made specifically for fathers would help. Yet only 31% talk to their kids about therapy as a normal part of life. The appetite for dads’ mental health support is there. The vocabulary and the role-modeling aren’t quite.

Why men’s mental health still stays quiet

Men’s mental health stays quiet because openness and disclosure are two different things: dads have cleared the low bar of being warmer than their own fathers, but naming a real struggle out loud — to a partner or a kid — still carries the old “be strong, don’t complain” weight.

The honest read: “more open than my dad was” is a low bar, and clearing it isn’t the same as actually saying the hard thing out loud — to your partner, or to your kid. The dads in this survey are basically asking for tools built for them, in their language, that make the first move feel normal instead of heavy. It’s the same dynamic behind new-dad anxiety after a baby: the feeling is common, but the saying-it-out-loud is where men get stuck.

Source: Grow Therapy, Father’s Day mental-health survey, 2026

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Elizaveta Shvets

Co-founder & Editor-in-Chief, Regular · LinkedIn

Co-founder of Regular. Writes about relationships, parenthood, and the science of how couples stay close after a baby.

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