"Ten years after he and his wife experienced a pregnancy loss, Eli Schiff still gets a bit choked up talking about his experience with miscarriage. “You’re imagining all the things that he or she could be, you know, and that imagination or that idea of what they could have been, it doesn’t really go away,” he says of the grief associated with miscarriage.
As many as one in four pregnancies result in a loss. The majority of miscarriages happen because of chromosomal abnormalities, meaning the baby is developing with extra or too few chromosomes and would not be viable outside of the womb.
Losing a pregnancy is a traumatic experience and takes an emotional toll on both partners, but a dad’s experience with miscarriage looks different than a mom’s experience with miscarriage.
Dads’ experience with miscarriage
Dads aren’t the ones carrying the pregnancy and don’t endure the physical symptoms of a miscarriage, which means the focus can center around the mom when a miscarriage happens. A dad’s experience with miscarriage is an often-overlooked one, which can make coping with and processing grief difficult.
“Miscarriage is seen through the lens of physical loss, but the emotional loss for dads is just as significant, even if less visible,” says Joseph Tito of The Dad Diaries and dad of two via surrogacy. “Dads also dream and imagine a future with their child, and when that’s taken away, it leaves an emotional scar.
I talked with Brandon Eddy, Ph.D, LMFT and professor at the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and David Kessler, leading grief expert and bestselling author of Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief Workbook: Tools for Releasing Pain and Remembering with Love to understand the difference in how men and women grieve and on tips for how dads can support their partners through a miscarriage while also grieving their own emotional loss, too.
Brandon Eddy, Ph.D., LMFT
Eddy is a licensed marriage and family therapist (LMFT). He specializes in perinatal mental health and autism spectrum disorder. An accomplished researcher, he has contributed chapters to six books, including The Psychology of Fatherhood Handbook and Systemically Treating Autism: A Clinician’s Guide for Empowering Families. His research has also been published widely in peer-reviewed journals including the International Journal of Systemic Therapy and Marriage & Family Review.
David Kessler
David Kessler is one of the world’s foremost experts on grief and loss. His experience with thousands of people on the edge of life and death has taught him the secrets to living a happy and fulfilled life, even after life’s tragedies. He is the author of six books, including the new bestselling book, Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief. He coauthored two books with Elisabeth Kubler Ross, including On Grief and Grieving updated her 5 stages for grief. His first book, The Needs of The Dying received praise from Saint (Mother) Teresa.
Wanting to fix things is a common grief response for men
“It felt like everything stopped,” recounts Tito of the emotional moment he and his husband found out their surrogate had miscarried. “You go from anticipation and excitement to devastating loss in the span of a heartbeat.”
Tito says he also felt like he wanted to fix things but was confronted by the fact that he couldn’t actually do anything. This feeling of wanting to fix is a common difference between how men and women grieve in general, says Kessler, and also applies to how men grieve miscarriages.
“Men are doers, but with grief, there’s nothing to do,” Kessler says. “It’s only about being, and men don’t tend to know how to just be with pain, which is a challenge.”
“Men are doers, but with grief, there’s nothing to do.”
He says that women are typically better about being able to sit with their feelings without trying to fix things. A miscarriage is an unfixable situation, and Kessler says that it can be confusing for men to try to process when other situations might have a possible fix.
Men are more likely to want to process grief on their own
Schiff, a high school athletic director at the time, was on a trip with the school’s baseball team when his wife called to tell him that she had been to the doctor and was likely to have a miscarriage. He wanted to fly home, but his wife persuaded him to stay, and a day later she miscarried.
For Schiff’s wife, cartoonist Chari Pere, whose cartoon “Miscarried” about their miscarriage experience went viral in 2017, grieving the miscarriage looked like talking with friends about her experience, researching miscarriages, and illustrating the experience.
But as more of an introvert, Schiff says he turned to video games to help him process. “I just didn’t want to talk to anybody,” he says. “I just kind of wanted to process and deal with my own things, and ultimately, I had to kind of do it my own way.”
Schiff’s type of response is actually common for dads grieving miscarriages, says Eddy.
“Women are more likely to have a strong emotional support group and be able to verbally express their grief,” Eddy notes. “In instances of a miscarriage, men are more likely to support their partner than they are to pay attention to their own feelings and emotions regarding the loss. They might throw themselves into work or another activity to avoid the feelings.”
Men often suffer through miscarriages in silence
Schiff’s wife Pere recently released an animated short comic called “Michael’s Miscarriage” about a dad experiencing a miscarriage. In the video, the dad opens up to a friend whose wife experienced a miscarriage and asks for advice, to which he’s told, “There’s not much you can do; you have to suck it up and move on.” The dad takes the advice, saying he tries to be strong and that everything is fine so he can be there for his partner.
Feeling like they need to be strong is common for men, says Kessler, and that men are often told to be ‘a rock’ for other people. It can prevent dads from being vulnerable about what they’re feeling going through a miscarriage. It’s something Tito struggled with, too.
“Growing up in a traditional Italian family, I was always taught that men don’t show their emotions,” says Tito. “We’re supposed to be strong, keep it all in, and just get on with life, but when something as painful as a miscarriage happens, that weight can be crushing if you carry it alone.”
“We’re supposed to be strong, keep it all in, and just get on with life, but when something as painful as a miscarriage happens, that weight can be crushing if you carry it alone.”
Eddy agrees and says that shoving down feelings isn’t a good strategy for dads experiencing a miscarriage. When men don’t work through their feelings, the feelings can come out in other ways, like anger and aggression. Other men may become emotionally distant from their partners he says or turn to alcohol or other substances to cope.
Communication with your partner after a miscarriage is important
Because men so often feel like they need to be strong for their partner who has physically gone through the miscarriage, it can mean that they don’t feel like they should talk about it with their partner.
“I figured it would be hard enough for you without my emotional baggage,” the dad says in “Michael’s Miscarriage” after his wife asks why he hasn’t talked about the miscarriage, which echoes the feeling a lot of dads have about communicating after their loss.
Eddy says that talking as a couple after a miscarriage can be healing and that many women want to know what their partners are going through. The same can be said for same-sex relationships as well.
Grief is tough, and studies have shown that couples who have experienced miscarriage or stillbirth are more likely to get divorced. One reason for this can be difficulty communicating about the miscarriage, which can lead to couples drifting apart.
“Many men don’t realize that when they open up to their partner and share their experience and grief, it can actually strengthen the relationship,” Eddy says. “A couple can really strengthen their bond when they help one another grieve.”
“Many men don’t realize that when they open up to their partner and share their experience and grief, it can actually strengthen the relationship.”
Finding support as a dad after a miscarriage
Unfortunately, the rate of miscarriage is high, which means it’s likely that if you’re a dad experiencing the emotional toll of a miscarriage, you have friends who have suffered a pregnancy loss, too. Both Kessler and Eddy say that simply talking about the experience can help.
“Everyone needs someone to listen to them and comfort them,” says Eddy. “Find someone to talk to, whether that be your partner, parent, sibling, co-worker, or friend.”
When Tito was experiencing a pregnancy loss, he found it hard to open up at first and to be vulnerable about his feelings, but ultimately thinks that leaning heavily on his support system and talking to them about the grief he was feeling helped him process the pain and heal.
“You can’t heal what you don’t feel,” Kessler says. “And that’s the biggest challenge is we have to feel this.” He also says using his grief workbook can be helpful for learning coping mechanisms and tips to work through a miscarriage or any other type of grief.
“You can’t heal what you don’t feel.”
If you don’t feel comfortable reaching out to friends to talk about your miscarriage, there are resources like the Sad Dads Club community and the Dads Still Standing podcast that focus on miscarriage support for dads.
No one wants to go through pregnancy loss, and it takes time to heal after a miscarriage. But it is possible for dads to grieve a miscarriage while supporting their partner at the same time.
Elliott Harrell, Contributing Writer
Elliott is a mom of two little girls and is based in Raleigh, NC. She spends her days running a sales team and doing laundry and her nights writing about the things that she loves. She’s passionate about all things motherhood and women’s health. When she’s not working, writing or parenting you can find her trying a new restaurant in town or working on her latest needlepoint project.