Book Review by Mitch Hall

Why Dads Leave: Insights & Resources for When Partners Become Parents

by Meryn G. Callander

Contributions by John W. Travis, MD

Foreword by Gabor Maté, MD

Asheville, NC: Akasha Publications, 2012

Beyond brilliant, this book is a multilayered, compelling, path-finding exploration in depth of two interrelated, public health problems of epidemic proportions: Male Postpartum Abandonment Syndrome (MPAS) and the Dynamic of Disappearing Dads (DDD).These evocative terms merit becoming widely understood and discussed. They were coined by both Meryn Callander and the creative, iconoclastic, pioneering author, John W. (Jack) Travis, MD, MPH, credited for founding the world’s first wellness center in 1975 and for being one of the fathers of the modern wellness movement. Not only does Why Dads Leave define and diagnose the heart-wrenching etiology, manifestations, and consequences of MPAS and DDD, it also prescribes the remedies on all levels--personal, interpersonal, communal, societal, and cultural--for healthier partnering, parenting, child development, and collective wellbeing.


The seminal ideas that inspired Meryn to research and write this book appeared for the first time in print in 2004 with Jack’s magazine article, Why Men Leave, published in both the US and Australia. The article elicited a remarkable volume and intensity of responses from readers with whom it had resonated strongly, at times painfully. Both the article and this book under review include a candid, introspective narration of Jack’s own struggles with depression, including MPAS, despite worldly renown in his profession. Jack wrote about what he had regarded as his greatest failure, not having been a good-enough dad the first time he had the privilege, his attempts to rectify that 20 years later in a parenting venture with his new partner, Meryn, and then as he again started to de-compensate, his insightful understanding of the intergenerational, developmental, culturally conditioned roots of his personal travails.


Building on Jack’s original thoughts and with further contributions from him, Meryn dove deeply into the “neurobiological, interpersonal, social, and cultural dynamics underlying their experience” (p. 325), and crafted a remarkably well-researched, intelligently structured, artfully designed, highly nuanced, engaging book that weaves together many people’s personal stories with references to the relevant research and popular literature within a powerful, cohesive conceptual framework. Meryn also courageously tells the story of her and Jack’s “confident plunge into parenthood and the subsequent unraveling of that confidence, as they discovered themselves floundering, exhausted, and struggling to deal with the challenges confronting them” (from the back cover).

The 30 chapters of Why Dads Leave are organized into four parts: (1) an overview of “why dads leave,” (2) a probing discussion of parenting, revealing “what the books, apps, and websites don’t tell us,” (3) a prescription for how to heal emotional wounds that cause relational breakdowns and how to build deeper interpersonal connections, and (4) recommendations for cultural transformations that will serve as primary prevention of the problem. The book itself is supported by a resource-rich Website, http://whydadsleave.com, in which the four Appendices can be read in full. One of these Appendices leads to the important, visionary Proclamation and Blueprint for Transforming the Lives of Children that Jack and Meryn, along with 11 other founding, volunteer members of the Alliance for Transforming the Lives of Children (aTLC), spent over 10,000 hours creating. Throughout the book, people’s stories and quotes from other sources are italicized to distinguish Meryn’s primary voice from those of others. At the end of each chapter, Key Points are summarized as bulleted items. These are just a few of the features that make the book so reader-friendly.

Why Dads Leave has been enthusiastically endorsed by a virtual who’s who of distinguished authorities in the fields of holistic and preventive medicine, psychology, childbirth, relationships, parenting, human development, and more. It is deeply informed by attachment theory and research. As Dr. Gabor Maté observes in his foreword, “Callander grounds her analysis in the bio-psycho-social view, according to which the biology--and most especially the neurobiology--of human beings is inseparable from the social and emotional environment in which they are conceived, develop, and live.” 

Why Dads Leave can enrich the lives and understanding of many categories of readers, including, but not limited to, the following:

•those whose lives have been affected by dads who were missing, whether physically, emotionally, or both, in their formative years;

•those dads who became depressed, fell ill, withdrew, or fully abandoned their partner and child around the time their child’s birth;

•prospective parents who understand the importance of thinking proactively about the impact on their relationship of the birth of a child;

•parents who wish to gain greater insight into how having children has already affected their relationship;

•those who want to understand better how their own primal and childhood experiences have affected their capacity for fulfilling romantic relationships and parenting;

•primary care physicians, obstetricians, pediatricians, and nurses  serving parents and their children;

•psychologists, psychotherapists, social workers, and counselors who support couples and families;

•teachers and students of counseling psychology, parenting, attachment theory and research, and more;

•and anyone whose life has been touched by MPAS and DDD.

Why Dads Leave is a compassionate book that has the potential of significantly affecting how readers think about gender roles, romantic relationship, parenting, their own life stories, their parents, their children, and much more. It is a treasure-trove of moving personal stories and a vast amount of humanely important information. I give this book my wholehearted endorsement.