She had a miscarriage during her book tour. The publicity kept going. She kept going. She’d never spoken about it publicly, until now.
Jaspreet Kaur is a poet, author of Brown Girl Like Me, and one of the clearest voices writing about identity, gender, and what it means to grow up South Asian in Britain.
In this conversation, she talks about the father who shaped everything, the research that took her to an orphanage in Punjab where baby girls were left through a window at night, the miscarriage she held in for months while on tour, and why she’s now terrified about raising her baby son in a world she didn’t write the guidebook for.
This is one of the most honest conversations we’ve had on The Dad Project. It’s about feminism. It’s about masculinity. And it’s about the pressure that nobody names but everyone carries.
Chapters
- 00:00:00 Introduction: Breaking the Silence on Men's Mental Health
- 00:03:17 My Dad Is the Greatest Feminist I Know, and the Most Masculine Man I Know
- 00:06:13 Like Father, Like Son: A Poem About Unconditional Support
- 00:09:08 What Women Look For in Men: Beyond the Mask
- 00:12:51 The Five-Hour Conversation That Changed Everything
- 00:14:40 Being Vulnerable Opens Doors: Why Men Should Share Their Darkness
- 00:17:20 Studying Gender Equality: A Master's Journey to Punjab
- 00:20:09 The Window Where Baby Girls Are Left: 60 Million Missing Girls
- 00:25:02 Queens and Corpses: The Poem That Went Viral
- 00:28:13 What Feminism Really Means: Access to Choice, Not Becoming a Man
- 00:30:42 The Pressure Men Carry: Financial, Emotional, and Cultural Weight
- 00:31:57 Men Have Been Living Behind a Wall of Silence
- 00:33:25 Masculinity and Femininity Can Coexist: A Traditional Yet Equal Relationship
- 00:44:27 Brown Girl Like Me: Writing the Guidebook That Didn't Exist
- 00:47:33 The Miscarriage During the Book Tour: When Everything Kept Moving
- 00:48:47 The Ectopic Pregnancy and Being Told She Might Not Have Another Child
- 00:50:01 The Night She Realized She Had No Idea How to Raise a Son
- 00:52:02 Miscarriages Are Hard for Partners Too: How Men Process Loss
- 00:53:50 The Gym Is His Meditation: Understanding Different Forms of Mental Health Support
- 00:56:52 Insecurity, Codependency, and Letting Go: Admitting I Was Wrong
- 00:57:53 Motherhood Changed Everything: Becoming a People Pleaser No More
- 00:59:34 Brown Boy Like Me: Why We Need a Book for South Asian Men
- 01:01:19 Walking Into a Room With a Beard and Turban: The Reality of Profiling
- 01:03:09 What Do I Think of Them? Reframing Confidence and Owning the Room
- 00:41:55 He's Two Inches Shorter Than Me: Why Height Doesn't Define Masculinity
- 00:36:07 Judged by Feminists for Choosing Motherhood: The Miscued Movement
- 01:15:08 The Rape Alarm in the Pink Bag: A Father's Heartbreak
- 01:18:50 Intergenerational Conversations: Teaching Parents With Kindness
- 01:22:38 Quiet Feminism: The Radical Change Happening in Our Homes
- 01:29:01 Pen to Paper: How Poetry Became Therapy at 13 Years Old
- 01:32:07 Closing Reflections: Continuing to Change the World
You don’t need to be a dad to be here.
Questions This Video AnswersWhy do South Asian men struggle to talk about their feelings?
They’ve been taught to suppress emotion from childhood, given no tools to process it, and placed under enormous family pressure with no language for what they’re carrying.
What is son preference and why does it still happen?
Son preference is the cultural and economic bias towards having male children over female. In some South Asian communities, it has led to sex-selective abortion and female infanticide. Jaspreet’s Masters thesis found it rooted in inheritance, family name, and financial dependency.
How does miscarriage affect the partner who isn’t carrying the baby?
Partners often suppress their own grief to support the person who miscarried. In this episode, Jaspreet describes how her husband never fully processed the loss, his outlet was the gym, and she resented it for years before understanding that.
What does feminism actually mean and does it affect men?
Feminism, at its origin, is about equal access to choice. Jaspreet argues the same patriarchal pressures harming women are also crushing men, particularly South Asian men expected to carry the family’s entire financial and emotional weight.
How do you raise a confident South Asian boy today?
Jaspreet admits she doesn’t have the answer, which is why she’s writing Brown Boy Like Me. The conversation covers what brown boys are seeing online and why equipping them with confidence matters most.
