EXPLAINER | Reading between the man-ual's lines

June sits awkwardly at the intersection of two commemorations: Men’s Mental Health Awareness Month, and, midmonth, Father’s Day—a convergence that appears poetic on the surface, yet tragic upon closer reading. One asks us to confront the private implosions of male identity; the other rewards silence with celebration.

This overlap is more than a calendrical coincidence. It is a social mirror: in the very month we are urged to ask how men feel, we crown as ideal the man who never speaks.

The Filipino father is far beyond a role; he is a symbol—a national archetype. Breadwinner. Stoic. Provider. A figure carved out of duty, not desire. From textbooks to teleseryes, he is the “haligi ng tahanan,” the literal pillar of the home. But pillars, by design, do not bend; they crack.

The silence surrounding men’s psychological distress is no accident. It is the legacy of institutionalized emotional austerity, calcified over generations. In the Philippine context, this silence is enforced by cultural scripts: “Lalaki ka, huwag kang iiyak.” “Ang tatay, hindi dapat nanghihina.” Emotional repression is not a flaw in the system—it is the system. Woven into the rites of male passage, it becomes a generational inheritance—one that curdles into quiet collapse by the time fatherhood begins.

A 2024 study by Quiambao et al. found that Filipino men who strongly identify with masculine ideals—self-reliance, stoicism, emotional restraint—are significantly less likely to seek professional mental health support. This aversion is not merely behavioral but cultural, reinforced by hiya, spiritual fatalism, and an enduring expectation to endure in silence. As Tuliao observed, vulnerability in men is often read as moral failure. And for fathers, especially, the script is clear: pain may be endured, but never named—for to speak it is to betray the myth of strength they've been told to embody.

Yet the data are loud.

In the Philippines, men die by suicide at nearly twice the rate of women—13.7 vs. 7.5 per 100,000, per PSA data. Globally, World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that the male suicide rate 2 to 4 times higher than that of females. But this isn’t merely behavioral—it reveals a structural void. Men are unraveling in silence, with few systems equipped to hear, much less hold, their pain. We have no language for their sorrow, only the aftermath.

The archetypal father is expected to contain multitudes: provider, protector, disciplinarian, and increasingly, emotional anchor. But there is no institutional support for the emotional labor demanded of modern fatherhood. No check-ins. No leave for paternal depression. No narrative space for grief.

Though global data place the incidence of paternal postnatal depression at 8 to 10 percent, Philippine clinical practice remains conspicuously mute on the matter. A 2021 pilot study in Nueva Ecija surfaced depressive symptoms among first-time fathers, yet revealed the absence of any structured response. Even maternal screening remains inconsistent; most Filipino ob-gyns report limited training in mental health care, leaving fathers—by design or by neglect—entirely outside the clinical frame. In the Philippines, this translates to thousands of men suffering silently while being expected to "man up" for the family.

And still, the national discourse remains haunted by outdated binaries: strong/weak, man/woman, capable/broken. There is no middle ground where vulnerability exists without punishment.

Let us be clear: what afflicts Filipino men is not only psychological—it is structural.

For generations, the refusal to express distress has been reframed as strength. But this narrative, though seductive, is corrosive. Toxic masculinity is not just an attitude—it is a policy failure, built on the neglect of emotional education in boys and the total erasure of men’s inner lives in adult care structures.

Even our most revered rituals rehearse this erasure. Father’s Day, as framed by commercials, public greetings, and media tributes, does not honor the man so much as the myth: the father who endures without rest, speaks without feeling, and works without end. In this portrait, love is measured not by presence, but by quiet, punishing sacrifice.

But how many of these men have died long before their bodies did?

To move forward, we must unlearn the constraints of the provider paradigm. When fatherhood is flattened into economic utility, it becomes a quiet captivity, for the father, and for those who love him. The way out begins with different questions, ones that ask not what he gives, but who he is allowed to be:

Here, a generational wound comes into view. So many children grow up knowing what their fathers did, but never who they were. And so many fathers die as strangers to themselves—men who spent lifetimes providing for others, but were never once permitted to be cared for.

It is not enough to offer therapy as a private remedy for a public silence. What’s needed is nothing less than a reconstruction of emotional citizenship for Filipino men—a new social contract that entitles them not only to provide, but to feel; not only to endure, but to heal.