Do Men Belong in the Delivery Room?
Monday, March 2, 2026
Last month the internet was abuzz with heated reactions when a 61-year-old privileged white man with a microphone declared that childbirth was “disgusting and unnatural” and that men shouldn’t be in the delivery room.
I don’t know much about Scott Galloway and I’m not particularly interested in the specifics of his podcast. But I do love an invitation to talk about men (and all birth partners), what’s actually happening in birth rooms, and the role of childbirth education.
Let’s start with what’s true:
Birth is not for the faint of heart.
There are body parts and positions you don’t normally see. Sounds you don’t normally hear. Fluids you never associate with day-to-day life. And that’s just physiological birth. Add IV poles, catheters, needles, surgical masks, latex gloves, bright lights, and beeping monitors, and you’ve got a full sensory experience that is far outside of our normal rhythms.
Some births are empowering and ecstatic.
Some are stressful, terrifying, and traumatic.
Many are all of that at once.
Whether the experience feels “beautiful” or “disgusting” often has less to do with birth itself and more to do with expectations, preparation, and the team in the room.
When I hear someone say, “It was disgusting and unnatural,” what I actually hear is:
I had no idea what to expect, and I didn’t like what I felt while it was happening.
That’s common, for birthing parents and partners alike. And the deeper issue is this: almost no one actually understands childbirth.
Men don’t understand it. Women don’t understand it. People who have given birth often don’t fully understand it. And far too many medical professionals don’t understand it.
I’m not talking about the latest study or trend. I’m talking about the fundamental biological building blocks of how one human being gets out of another human being: the hormonal feedback loop of physiological labor, what the body needs to open, how fear impacts progress, how interventions work.
We treat birth like a dramatic medical emergency or a reality show spectacle, but we do not teach anatomy and physiology without shame, fear, or moral overlay. (And it’s not just birth — we don’t teach puberty, sex, or menopause well either.)
So when someone walks into a delivery room and feels overwhelmed, grossed out, or terrified? That reaction is often the product of collective ignorance — the downstream effect of generational silence and mismanagement.
The Complicated Truth
Unprepared partners can destabilize a birth room. If they don’t understand the process, if they’re dysregulated, if they’re operating from fear, their presence can hurt as much as it helps.
I vividly remember a birth I attended where the husband repeatedly told me and the OB that he wished his wife had planned a C-section. He was convinced vaginal birth was a mistake and undermined her desire to labor in subtle and not-so-subtle ways throughout the experience. He wasn’t a bad guy. He was terrified.
And honestly, in our current society, how could he not be? Fear around childbirth is what most of us are fed — through media, through dramatic storytelling, through a medical system that often treats birth as an emergency waiting to happen.
The longer I do this work, though, the more I see how physiologically normal childbirth can be. Of course, pathological conditions can arise that threaten the experience or the lives of parents and babies. Interventions can be lifesaving and necessary. But in the absence of complication, birth can also be… totally uneventful.
We just need a system that educates, encourages, and upholds that truth. Partners can approach birth differently when they understand it as physiological instead of potentially catastrophic.
Historical Perspective: A Father’s Place in the Room
In doing research for this post, I came across “A Husband’s Place Is Not in the Waiting Room”, an article written in 1949 by Dale Clark, a new father, and published in Esquire magazine. At the time, it was typical for men to sit in the so-called “stork club,” smoking cigarettes and flipping through magazines while their wives labored upstairs.
Clark argued something radical for his era: that fathers belonged in the room.
It’s worth reading the entire piece, but for those who won’t, I’m sharing a long passage here because his writing is so on point:
“Every man in that room might have been upstairs with his wife—where, it seems to me, a man should not only be allowed to be, but where, for sound physiological and psychological reasons, he is imperatively needed.”
“Of course, I’m no doctor. But I can read. And an obstetrical specialist’s plainly worded booklet tells me how, in the first but often longest stage of childbirth, the infant’s head must leave the uterus by coming down through the elastic ring of the cervix. At other times a tiny opening, the cervix has to dilate to three or four inches. No effort of the mother’s can hasten this process. The more frightened and tense she becomes, the more excruciating is the pressure on the tensed cervix. But if she can manage to relax her whole body, the cervix will relax with the rest, and thus the ordeal of birth can be eased…”
“Unluckily, a lot of things make it pretty hard for a woman to just take it easy and let labor run its course…There is the hospital atmosphere, the hospital odor, the glimpses of sheeted figures being wheeled along the corridors. There are the grimly cheerless labor rooms, and the faces of strangers peering over the guardrail—kindly faces, maybe, but nevertheless strange ones. There is the lurking thought that something, after all, may go seriously wrong. There are the pains that are certainly going to get a lot worse before they grow better. There are the labors that go on for ten, twenty, thirty hours…
That’s where the expectant father comes in—or should come in. His wife, no matter how “medicated,” will see and recognize him as a familiar, reassuring face in an otherwise alarmingly alien place. She’ll see him as a guy who’s going to be right there all the time, and not just as a genie of the press-button device. A man doesn’t need to be a miracle worker to play his role to perfection. He merely needs to be there. Period. Instead of wearing out the carpet of the lounge on the floor below, he is simply required to pull up a chair to his wife’s bedside.”
Dale Clark would have made the best Birthsmarter Dad!
Fathers Are Not Supporting Characters
But there’s another level of importance here, and this is what I believe is fairly unique to Birthsmarter. I don’t believe men should be educated about childbirth solely so they can better support their partner.
If that’s the entire frame, they are technically replaceable. A sister, friend, mother, or doula can often provide exceptional support.
Birth is not just something happening to her (where she needs his help). Childbirth is something happening to him.
A father’s nervous system is activated too. His fear. His exhaustion. His hunger. His back pain. His internal dialogue: Am I ready? What if something goes wrong? Can I handle this?
Coping with labor contractions is a lot. Watching someone you love labor is also a lot. If we dismiss men’s experience during labor as frivolous, they will continue to treat their role during labor as frivolous.
We have strong research showing that when men describe their partner’s birth as highly stressful, they are more likely to experience symptoms of postpartum depression months later. For example, one recent study found fathers' subjective childbirth stress predicts depressive symptoms at six months postpartum (Journal of Affective Disorders, 2023). The same pattern is well‑established for women, because scary experiences are scary — and, as a society, we are terrible at processing medical trauma.
We are getting slightly better when it comes to maternal mental health (as we should). There are startups, apps, support groups. And yet support for fathers still lags far behind. (Postpartum Support International’s weekly dads group — and it’s needed.)
I believe we need to educate all birthing parents about childbirth. And, I believe that we need to educate all partners about their supportive role. I also believe that for birthing practices and postpartum experiences to shift toward gender equity, and toward a healthier experience of masculinity–rooted in responsibility, emotional literacy, and reverence– fathers need to be treated and educated as the main characters in their own journey of growing a family.
Main character energy does not necessarily mean staying awake for every contraction or being the only person providing hands-on support. It does not mean performing whatever social media says a “good partner” looks like that particular week.
Main character energy means understanding what is about to happen. Understanding your importance. Taking responsibility for what is yours to carry — not just the logistics of getting to the hospital, but your emotional regulation before, during, and after the birth.
That’s why at Birthsmarter, we teach men directly, with empathy and compassion.
And while I applaud the voices of outrage that have hit the internet over the last two weeks insisting that men must be in the delivery room, the real goal isn’t compulsory attendance. The real goal for expectant fathers — and for all expectant families — is critical thinking.
What are your values?
How do you want to communicate?
What kind of family culture are you building?
Is everyone taking responsibility for the emotional, physical, and logistical demands of pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum life?
Those questions matter far longer than what happened between 7 and 10 centimeters.
The Bottom Line
If you walk into a delivery room uninformed, overstimulated, and terrified, you might call it disgusting.
If you walk in educated, emotionally prepared, and clear about your role, you might call it transformative.
If men are willing to let it change them, the delivery room isn’t a test of toughness for one intense moment. It’s an initiation into the lifelong work of fatherhood.
Find live, virtual & on-demand classes and support groups near you: