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When miscarriage occurs, parents go through an intense stage of grief. While women can open up about their emotions, society’s patriarchal gender roles mean men often have to bottle up emotions. Writer Amina Ali speaks to 43-year-old Steven Dunne about how miscarriage has affected his life.
It was a day that felt like any other to Steven (Steve) Dunne in 2006. Get up, work, come home, repeat. Yet, he was more happy than usual, one of his colleagues had noticed. He was carrying a big secret.
It wasn’t until that fateful phone call that his happiness disappeared.
“It’s happening again.”
He didn’t need to ask. Steve knew straight away. He dropped everything to rush home to his partner, Claire. What he found was a sight that made his stomach drop.
“Claire was bent over a bit of furniture, screaming out in pain and crying,” he explains.
“She was passing what would’ve been our second baby.”
This wasn’t the first time Steve and Claire had gone through this turmoil, having had an early miscarriage the year before.
Unfortunately, miscarriages like Claire’s are common for many women up and down the country. Pregnancy and baby charity, Tommy’s, estimate that early miscarriages happen in 10 to 20% of all pregnancies.
While women are often able to grieve openly about their loss, and rightly so, men across all cultures often shy away from letting their emotions out. This can be attributed to the age-old patriarchal idea that ‘men don’t cry.’
“I’m the sole breadwinner,” Steve says.
“I literally went back to work after a day I think. I couldn’t really afford to take time off.”
Despite more workplaces recognising that people need support after miscarriages, with some employers offering bereavement leave, it’s still difficult to get time off. By law, there’s no entitlement to any leave if a miscarriage occurs in the first 24 weeks.
“I felt guilty that I had to leave Claire here at home and I felt bad leaving her to deal with her feelings,” he says.
“But I also felt a bit lucky because I kept busy. When it would come to home time and I’d be getting the bus home, that’s when things would start hitting me and coming back to me,” Steve says.
He added, “I’d start feeling low, because I wasn’t busy anymore.”
With Steve busy working and him and Claire having two young daughters to care for, he felt that this led to a further lack of communication and understanding between them.
“Coming home sometimes was like stepping on glass, there was a lot of bickering and misunderstanding,” he explains.
“We kind of just did everything wrong, said everything wrong, we acted in the wrong way.
“She would say ‘this has happened to me, it’s my body.’ And I’d take that as if she was belittling my feelings or not understanding my feelings. So, we’d argue over things like that.”
It was after the traumatic second miscarriage that Steven and Claire both made a life-changing decision. There would be no more pregnancies. No more babies. Their two daughters wouldn’t have another sibling.
“I always wanted three children,” he explains.
“You look for any kind of reason to explain why it’s happened. Really, it’s down to science and biology, but you still look for that reason. Fate. Was it fate? Did it happen because of something you’ve done wrong?”
Steve needed a friend who could listen, but some of the friends he thought would be there for him weren’t there for him in the way he needed.
“Sometimes people would say ‘just come out, have a drink and forget about it’” Steve says.
“I didn’t need that. I didn’t want to forget. I didn’t want to drown my sorrows. It would have made me feel more guilty.”
Thankfully, Steve didn’t turn to alcohol, but many do. Research from the Health and Social Care Information Centre shows men are three times more likely than women to become alcohol dependent during stressful situations.
“Now I only have friends who I know are there for me if I just need to turn up and have a cup of tea and a chat. That means more to me than going out for the night drinking.”
The patriarchal belief of men having to be unemotional is a tough thing to undo. Steve admits that talking about his own feelings makes him feel guilty, as if he’s disregarding his partner’s feelings by talking about his own. But Steve believes that in 2025, men should be able to talk openly and honestly about how they feel.
“I don’t think 18 years ago someone would have even thought to have asked the man. It just shows how far times have gone. It’s still a difficult subject, and I dare say there’s still a lot of men that won’t talk about this,” he says.
“At the point of life I’m in, I’m happy to share my experiences because I understand that there are younger fathers who are going through something like this and probably feel the same way. They probably feel that they can’t talk to anyone, and that’s wrong.”
If you are struggling to cope with your feelings after losing a child, please reach out to these charities.
Tommy’s has a web page dedicated to support for dads and partners who are grieving. You can access that page here.
Sands, a baby loss charity, also has a plethora of support for dads and partners. This includes 24 hour online support, Facebook pages and a football team for grieving fathers.
