Fathers Are Frightened but May Not Know It: Considering Masculinity and Attachment When Working With Fathers in Family Therapy

ABSTRACT Given the often‐unacknowledged emotional realities in theory and practice around masculinities and fatherhood, working with fathers in family therapy needs ongoing attention. Therapists' efforts can be enhanced through attending to how men and fathers may have been socialized towards restrictive masculine ideologies (e.g., devaluing emotional experience) and how relevant behavioral patterns, contextualized in gender privilege, are perpetuated through the internal experience of men being afraid but not knowing it. We offer an attachment and emotion framework for masculine socialization and clinically working with men and fathers; that is, fathers' caregiving instincts and capacity to provide development‐promoting care for their children are thwarted because they are constrained by their legitimate fear of their emotions. We review the literature on working with men and fathers in therapy (which is primarily on cisgender men), recommend ways to strengthen this aspect of therapy, drawing from the framework of attachment theory, and recognize the need for a more inclusive framework to address the heterogeneity of being a man and father.