For the dads: the adoptive father's experience nobody talks about

You sat through the same preparation groups. You read the books, or at least the ones your partner left on the kitchen table. You went to the panel, answered the questions, signed the papers. When the call came, you felt something shift inside you that you hadn't expected. And then, somewhere in the weeks and months that followed, you started to notice something: the support, the conversation, the questions asked at review meetings - almost none of it was aimed at you.

This post is for the dads. For the men who are parenting through adoption and finding that the whole system - well-meaning, often brilliant, but designed around a particular set of assumptions - doesn't quite have language for what they are experiencing. It is for the dads who are bonding differently, struggling quietly, feeling proud in ways they didn't anticipate, and lonely in ways they cannot explain. It is for the dads who aren't sure whether what they're feeling is normal, because nobody ever thinks to ask.

The one who stands slightly to the side

There is a particular experience that many adoptive fathers describe, even if they rarely describe it out loud: the sense of being adjacent to the main event. Post-approval, the focus of social workers, family finders, and adoption agencies tends to orient - often unconsciously - towards the mother. Paperwork addresses her first. Questions in home visits find their way back to her. The language of attachment in early placement typically invokes a mother-figure. There is a reason for this, rooted in the history of adoption practice and, deeper still, in cultural assumptions about who does the emotional work of parenting. But it means that many adoptive fathers arrive at placement feeling that their role is understood as secondary, even when their contribution is anything but.

Research has begun to document this experience more clearly. Adoption UK's surveys have consistently found that adoptive fathers report lower levels of formal support and fewer opportunities to discuss their experiences than adoptive mothers (Adoption UK, 2020). A study by Jennings et al. (2013) found that fathers in adoptive families frequently described feeling 'on the outside' of professional conversations about their child's wellbeing, even when they were equally involved in day-to-day care. This is not simply about hurt feelings - it has real consequences for how fathers process their own experiences of adoption, and for the wellbeing of the whole family.

What the system expects from you (and why it misses the mark)

The adoption system, in its current form, was built with a particular family shape in mind. It has evolved considerably, and continues to do so, but many of its assessment tools, preparation materials, and support frameworks still carry implicit assumptions about gender roles in parenting. Fathers are often assessed for their capacity to be supportive of their partner's parenting rather than evaluated as primary attachment figures in their own right. The HOME scale, widely used in adoption assessments, was originally validated on samples that over-represented mothers as the primary carer (Bradley & Caldwell, 1979). More recent tools have moved away from this, but the cultural legacy persists in how professionals approach conversations with fathers.

What this means in practice is that many adoptive fathers arrive at placement without having been properly prepared for their own emotional landscape. They have been told what to expect from their child. They may have been prepared for the impact on their relationship. But nobody sat with them and asked: what are you expecting from yourself? What does being a father mean to you, and how has that idea shifted now that adoption is part of your story? What will you do when the bonding doesn't feel the way you imagined it would? These are not questions that adoptive fathers often get asked. And yet they matter enormously, because the gap between what a father expects of himself and what he actually experiences is one of the least-discussed sources of strain in adoptive family life.

When bonding as a father takes longer than you expected

Attachment theory, since Bowlby's foundational work in the 1950s, has tended to focus on the infant-mother dyad as its primary unit of study (Bowlby, 1969). This has shifted significantly in the decades since - research has established clearly that children form attachment relationships with fathers, with grandparents, with key workers, and with other consistent caregivers - but the emotional residue of those early frameworks persists in popular understanding. Many adoptive fathers arrive at placement expecting to feel an immediate, overwhelming connection, and find that what they feel is more complicated than that: interest, tenderness, uncertainty, protectiveness, and sometimes a quiet sense of distance that they don't know what to do with.

This is not unusual. And it does not mean that something is wrong with you, or with your child, or with your family. Bonding in adoptive families takes time for everyone - and for fathers, who may be less likely to have accessed therapeutic support or to have processed their own history of attachment through the lens of parenthood, the process can feel particularly disorientating. The work of building connection with a child who has experienced early adversity requires consistent, repeated acts of presence - showing up, being warm, tolerating the moments when your child tests whether you will stay. Over time, these accumulated moments build something real. But in the early stages, the gap between what you hoped to feel and what you actually feel can be a lonely place to stand.

If this resonates with you, it matters that you find somewhere to say it. Not because you need to be fixed, but because the silence of fathers about these experiences is one of the things that makes them harder to bear. Peer support groups, adoptive father networks, and therapeutic conversations all offer a space where this can be named. The Adoption Support Fund can be accessed to support the wellbeing of all members of the adoptive family - including you.

The weight of holding the family together

Many adoptive fathers describe a particular version of the load they carry: the sense that their job, unspoken and unasked for, is to hold everything steady while others fall apart. When their child is in crisis, they manage the logistics. When their partner is exhausted and overwhelmed, they absorb it. When the family needs to present itself as functional to a review meeting or a school SENCO, they straighten their back and represent. This is not always a role that fathers consciously choose - it is often one that forms around them, because someone has to do it and they are good at it, and because the alternative - showing their own distress - feels like a luxury the family cannot afford.

The cost of this role is significant. Research on secondary trauma and compassion fatigue in adoptive parents - while still more developed for mothers than for fathers - suggests that the suppression of one's own emotional responses in order to manage those of others has cumulative effects on mental health and on the capacity to remain emotionally available to a child (Ottaway & Selwyn, 2016). Fathers who carry this particular load without ever setting it down are at risk of burnout, of withdrawal from emotional connection, and of a kind of quiet resentment that they are often too proud or too loving to name. The antidote to this is not straightforward, because the load is often real and necessary. But it begins with the recognition that you are not a supporting cast member in your own family. Your emotional experience is valid data. Your wellbeing matters - not only instrumentally, as something that serves your child's needs, but for its own sake.

Your role is not secondary - it is irreplaceable

There is a substantial body of research on the specific contributions of fathers to children's development, and it makes a compelling case for the irreplaceability of the father-child relationship. Paquette's activation relationship theory (Paquette, 2004) proposes that fathers play a distinct role in supporting children's willingness to explore, to take risks, and to manage uncertainty - a role that is different from, but complementary to, the security-providing role described in classic attachment theory. For children who have experienced early adversity and whose capacity for felt safety and exploration has been compromised, a secure relationship with a father who provides this kind of activating presence can be genuinely transformative.

In practice, this often looks like play. The rough-and-tumble that many dads gravitate towards naturally - the pillow fights, the piggybacks, the physical games that seem chaotic on the surface - are not just entertainment. They are neurologically important. Through active play, children learn to regulate their arousal systems, to recover from moments of over-stimulation, to experience surprise and unpredictability within a context of safety. For a child who has learned to expect that unpredictability is dangerous, the experience of learning that it can be fun - within the safety of a relationship with a father who stays warm and reliable throughout - is a meaningful part of healing. You do not need to be a therapist to offer this. You need to show up, stay curious, and keep coming back.

What actually helps: practical steps for adoptive dads

The research is clear that fathers benefit most from support that meets them where they are - not in a therapist's office they were never pointed towards, but in formats that fit the way many men approach help-seeking: peer-led, practical, and not framed around emotional disclosure as a prerequisite for entry. A few things that have been shown to help, or that adoptive fathers consistently report as useful:

Find other dads who get it. Peer support is, for many adoptive fathers, the single most effective form of support available - partly because it normalises the experience, and partly because it happens between people who have no professional stake in how you present. Adoption UK runs a national network with dad-specific spaces. Walking groups, online forums, and local in-person meetups all exist; they do not require you to arrive having already processed your feelings.

Use the Adoption Support Fund - for yourself. The ASF exists to fund therapeutic support for adoptive families, and this explicitly includes parents, not only children. If you have never accessed it because the conversation has always centred on your child's needs, ask your adoption support worker to help you make a direct application. Therapy does not have to look like sitting in a room talking about your childhood. Many therapists working with adoptive parents offer practical, present-focused support that is closer to coaching than to clinical work.

Name what you are carrying - at least once, to someone. This does not have to be your partner, who may be carrying their own version of the same load. It can be a GP, a friend who has some context, a helpline, or a peer group. The point is not catharsis. It is that named difficulties are easier to manage than unacknowledged ones, and the habit of acknowledgement - even occasional, even brief - has a protective effect over time.

Lean into what you do naturally. If the therapeutic parenting literature feels written for someone else, start with what already comes naturally to you. The physical play, the outdoor time, the side-by-side activities that do not require face-to-face emotional intensity - these are not lesser forms of connection. For many children who find direct emotional engagement overwhelming, they are the preferred route in. You do not have to become a different kind of parent to be a therapeutic parent. You have to become a more intentional version of the parent you already are.

Talk to your child's school and CAMHS team directly. If you find that professional conversations consistently default to your partner, ask to be included explicitly - in review meetings, in EHCP discussions, in any therapeutic work your child is receiving. Your observations of your child matter. Your relationship with your child matters. And professionals who are worth working with will welcome the fuller picture that your involvement provides.

Taking up space for your own wellbeing

If there is one thing this post asks of the dads reading it, it is this: take your experience seriously. Not at the expense of your child or your family, but alongside them. You are not exempt from the emotional weight of adoption because you are the dad. You are not failing if the bonding has been slow. You are not less important because fewer questions are directed at you. And you are not helping anyone by bearing this alone.

There are spaces being created, slowly, for adoptive fathers specifically. Online communities, peer-to-peer support networks, and therapeutic services are increasingly recognising the need to reach fathers where they are - not just as an adjunct to the mother's support, but as people with their own complex and valid experience of this journey. Walk Together's events and community spaces are open to all adoptive parents, and we actively want to hear from the dads. Your story is part of the adoption story. And it deserves to be told.

Speak soon,

The Walk Together Team

References

Adoption UK (2020). The Adoption Barometer. Adoption UK.

Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss, Vol. 1: Attachment. Basic Books.

Bradley, R.H. & Caldwell, B.M. (1979). Home observation for measurement of the environment: a revision of the preschool scale. American Journal of Mental Deficiency, 84(3), pp.235–244.

Jennings, S., Mellish, L., Tasker, F., Lamb, M. & Golombok, S. (2013). Why adoption? Gay, lesbian, and heterosexual adoptive parents' reproductive experiences and reasons for adoption. Adoption Quarterly, 16(3–4), pp.314–340.

Ottaway, H. & Selwyn, J. (2016). 'No-one told us it was going to be like this': Compassion fatigue and foster carers. Rees Centre for Research in Fostering and Education, University of Oxford.

Paquette, D. (2004). Theorizing the father-child relationship: mechanisms and developmental outcomes. Human Development, 47(4), pp.193–219.