209: Parental Mental Health - Factoring in Fathers with Jane Honikman

Today’s episode is an important one in the field of parental mental health. Unfortunately, fathers are often overlooked in many aspects of parenthood and family dynamics. To build strong families, we need to involve all parents in the path to parenthood and in providing family-supporting resources. Join us to learn more!

Jane Honikman, M.S. co-founded Postpartum Education for Parents (PEP), co-founded the Postpartum Action Institute, and founded Postpartum Support International (PSI). Jane is the author of several parenting support books: Community Support for New Families; I’m Listening: A Guide to Supporting Postpartum Families; My Diary: A Postpartum Journey from Pain to Purpose; Postpartum Action Manual: How to Provide Comfort, Encouragement, and Guidance to New Families; and Parental Mental Health: Factoring in Fathers. She was born and raised in Palo Alto, California, and has lived in Santa Barbara since 1970. She and her husband have three adult married children, eight grandchildren, and a cat.

Show Highlights:

How Jane looked to her mother as a role model but didn’t follow conventional social rules as she became an adult

How fantasies about life can set you up for failure and disaster

Why Jane was involved in the movement to make mothers and fathers equal partners in parenthood in the 70s

How family mental illness and her personal trauma pushed Jane into her work with parental mental health

The flip in inequity with what we’ve done to men and their feelings

What we should change regarding fathers

How Jane partnered with Dan Singley to write Factoring in Fathers

Why men today struggle to identify role models in manhood and parenthood

How postpartum mental illness affects men in different forms than women

How pediatricians can do more in parental mental health with the whole family

Available resources for fathers

How mental health clinicians can do better in their work with families

Why the postpartum period never really comes to an end

 Resources:

Instagram: (@parental_health) 

Twitter: Parental_Health

Factoring In Fathers

Jane’s books:

Community Support for New Families

I’m Listening: A Guide to Supporting Postpartum Families

My Diary: A Postpartum Journey from Pain to Purpose

Postpartum Action Manual: How to Provide Comfort, Encouragement, and Guidance to New Families

Parental Mental Health: Factoring in Fathers by Jane Honikman and Daniel Singley

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