The Pandemics Impact on the Mental Health of Black Fathers

For the last year, Covid-19 has been on a dystopic world tour, wreaking havoc and destruction, leaving dead bodies, broken dreams, and crumbling days in its wake. As we all have been attempting to hold our sanity together and sweep up all the brokenness while the world collapses around us, our Black fathers have been quietly imploding. In a recent HealthLine study of men during the pandemic, 77% of men reported increased stress, 59% felt more isolation, and most participants reported a general worsening of mental health.

For Black fathers, this pandemic has turned their worlds upside down and held their self-worth at gunpoint.

Unemployment has been on the rise, and if Black fathers haven’t been affected by job loss because their industry or company wasn’t able to adjust, they may be one of the millions who work a job deemed “essential,” forcing them to endure the daily gauntlet of the angry and indifferent public who don’t take the pandemic seriously, leaving them at constant risk of infection. A father is a protector, so the anxiety-inducing activity of keeping the ominous outside away from the family is emotionally exhausting. Black men grow up learning that in order to be a man, they have to be two things - a provider and a protector - and this pandemic has attacked and made them question their ability to do both.

The image of being a ‘good father’ is very specific. It looks a certain way, involves certain things, and it equally feels different when successful. Many fathers’ feelings of worthiness and value have been shattered, leading some into their first feelings of depression, and others, who already suffer from mental illness, into further despair. Black men in this country have never had much, but what they’ve always had, to attempted to have, is a sense of pride in themselves, a certainty and esteem, and the daily assault of financial insecurity leaves many men, who want nothing more than to be valuable, feeling isolated and bleeding out in a quiet hopelessness.

There is an unsettling submission, or surrendering, that occurs with a pandemic. Everyone’s hands are tied. Everyone is waiting to see what happens next. Everyone is on the edge. In a time where no one seems to have any definitive answers, fathers have the desire and expectation of having a plan; a father is supposed to have an answer.

Kevin Hart joked in one of his specials, “Your girl expects you to have a plan. If this theater caught on fire, she’s going to look at you like ‘ugh, hello?’ and she wants you to say something goofy like, ‘alright, jump on my back we’re going to bust outta here.”

Well, the theatre is on fire, and the family is panicked, worried to tears about what to do next, and the father is standing there with his world looking back at him, tears in his own eyes, and he doesn’t know what to do.

Covid-19 changed everything - forever. The home, how we interact, and how we evaluate ourselves. If the father was fortunate enough with the privilege (because - yes, it is) of working from home, he, like many others, has been tasked with new duties and roles. For families balancing daily work, overbearing management, and Zoom meetings, they also have children who have to figure out life, school, and human interaction through boxes and clicks on a Chromebook. More time is spent at the dinner table than anywhere in the house, and fathers have to figure out how to be the “good daddy” to their children 15 minutes at a time. When daddy isn’t present or he’s angry, everyone notices. It’s just - different. Patience isn’t just thin - it’s mesh - and the days are pieced together as best as possible. I like to call this knock to the equilibrium - “Every day is Thursday.”

This has challenged us all in ways we’ve never imagined, and the only way we’ll be able to make it out is together. Our Black fathers have been breaking and collapsing during this new norm of chaos, but it’s non-existent in the public discourse. People have died, marriages have expired, hearts have been broken, and many of our Black fathers have been left alone with their anger, anxiety, and depression with nothing more than a bottle of something strong that will alleviate it all - even if only for the moment. But we don’t want our Black fathers to destroy themselves; we want them to heal, gain their footing, and rebuild themselves.