Father’s Day is hard for many people, although you would not always know it from the advertising. The public message is usually simple: celebrate Dad, buy something, say something warm, be grateful. For some families that is easy enough. For others, it is anything but.
Days like this have a way of making private pain feel strangely public. A supermarket aisle, a school activity, a social media post, or an email reminder can suddenly bring a person face to face with grief, absence, disappointment or fear. The problem is not Father’s Day itself, exactly. It is the assumption that everyone has something uncomplicated to celebrate.
On the Father’s Day edition of The Nutters Club, Hamish Williams and I talked about the many different meanings the day can hold: bereavement, separation, infertility, step-parenting, absent fathers, abusive fathers, and loving relationships that deserve to be celebrated.
Father’s Day is hard when grief is still present
For those whose father has died, Father’s Day can sharpen the edges of loss. Even many years later, the day may carry a particular sting. Grief is not simply sadness about the past; it is also the repeated discovery that the person is not here now. Not here to receive a card. Not here to answer the phone. Not here to meet grandchildren, give advice, annoy you, reassure you, or occupy the familiar place they once had.
Some people find comfort in remembering. Visiting a grave, cooking a meal their father liked, telling stories, looking through photographs, or simply allowing a quiet moment can be meaningful. Others do not want to do any of that. Both responses can be entirely understandable.
There is sometimes pressure around grief to make it tidy, noble or useful. But grief is often much less cooperative than that. It may arrive as tears, irritation, tiredness, distraction, or a wish to avoid the whole thing. There is no correct emotional posture for the day.
When the relationship was complicated, or harmful
Of course, not all fathers were loving, safe or available. Some were absent. Some were emotionally unpredictable. Some caused real harm. Some families have histories of abuse, control, addiction, violence or neglect. In those situations, Father’s Day can feel less like a celebration and more like a cultural instruction to deny reality.
This can be particularly painful because the wider world often prefers a sentimental version of family. It is more comfortable to say that all parents did their best, or that family is family, than to sit with the fact that some relationships are damaging and some wounds do not disappear because a calendar says they should.
If your relationship with your father is troubled, estranged or unsafe, you do not owe the day a performance. You do not have to send a message that feels false. You do not have to minimise what happened. You do not have to make yourself available to someone who has repeatedly harmed you simply because other people are posting smiling photos online.
Not being a father can hurt too
Father’s Day may also be hard for men who wanted to be fathers and are not. Infertility, relationship circumstances, loss, separation, miscarriage, social expectations or life simply not turning out as imagined can all make the day painful. It can also be difficult for fathers who are separated from their children, bereaved parents, stepfathers, foster fathers, and those who feel they have failed or been failed in the role.
These experiences are not all the same, and it would be a mistake to pretend they are. But they often share one thing: the day can expose a gap between the life a person is living and the life they hoped for, or the family story they are expected to have.
Permission to opt out
Sometimes the most psychologically healthy response is not to make the best of the day, but to step away from it. That might mean staying off social media, avoiding shops where possible, saying no to a family gathering, not explaining yourself to people who will not understand, or planning something ordinary and undramatic.
Opting out is not the same as being bitter. Nor is it a failure to heal. It may simply be an honest recognition of what you can manage.
It can help to ask, quietly and without judgement: what would make this day a little less harmful? Not perfect. Not meaningful. Just less harmful. For one person that may be company. For another it may be solitude. For someone else it may be therapy, a walk, a film, a meal with people who know not to make a fuss, or permission to treat it as a normal Sunday.
Father’s Day will mean different things to different people. Celebration may be real. So may grief. So may anger, relief, numbness, longing or confusion. We do not need to rank these responses or force them into a single story.
If the day is hard, that does not mean you are doing it wrong. It may simply mean the day is touching something real.
Listen to the episode
In the full Nutters Club discussion, Hamish Williams and I talked with listeners about the many different responses to Father’s Day, including loss, estrangement, step-parenting and what it means to be a dad. If this topic speaks to your own experience, you may find the conversation useful.
