Dads are dying after their kids are born, and almost no one is tracking it

Most deaths among fathers in the first years after a child’s birth may be preventable, even as fatherhood itself appears linked to a lower overall risk of dying.

Maternal mortality has become widely recognized as an urgent public health problem in the United States, although it took decades for the issue to receive sustained attention. The deaths of fathers, however, have attracted far less scrutiny.

Research has shown that fathers, especially men in their 20s through early 40s, are disproportionately affected by preventable causes of death including suicide, overdose, homicide and accidental injury. Yet researchers have rarely studied these deaths specifically in the context of becoming a parent.

Scientists at Northwestern University are working to bring more attention to that gap.

In a new study, Northwestern researchers examined all 130,267 babies born in Georgia in 2017 and followed their fathers for the next five years, through 2022. During that period, 796 fathers died.

Of those fathers who died within five years (796), 60% died from causes considered preventable, a finding the researchers described as a "huge, missed opportunity."

The deaths included homicide (143), accidental injury (142), suicide (102) and overdose (93). Another 296 fathers died from natural causes.

While maternal mortality review committees closely examine the deaths of mothers during the first year of a child's life, the researchers say paternal mortality has received little comparable attention. To their knowledge, this is the first study published in a major medical journal to examine the deaths of fathers during the years following the birth of a child.

"Our data show that fathers die frequently in the first years of their child's life, and we have no systems in place to understand how we might prevent it," said corresponding author Dr. Craig Garfield, professor of pediatrics and medical social sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "That's a huge blind spot."

The results resemble a pattern already documented in maternal mortality research. Deaths surrounding the transition to parenthood often have more to do with social vulnerability than biology, and many of them can be prevented. Yet deaths among fathers remain largely uncounted and unaddressed.

Previous research has also connected a father's involvement with better health outcomes for children and families. The absence of a father, meanwhile, has been associated with a variety of negative outcomes for children.

Although many fathers in the study died from preventable causes, researchers also uncovered a seemingly contradictory finding. Being a father was associated with lower overall death rates among men in Georgia between 2017 and 2022.