Background

Father's health is important for mothers and unborn/newborn children and knowledge about expectant fathers’ health in relation to lifestyle and psychosocial aspects is essential.

Aims

To determine sociodemographic and lifestyle factors, self‐reported health and sense of coherence among fathers and partners in relation to their risk for depression and anxiety in early pregnancy.

Methods

A cross‐sectional design, descriptive statistics, chi‐squared analysis, T‐test, binary logistic regression, multiple logistic regression with OR and 95% CI were used.

Results

A total of 532 prospective fathers/partners constituted the cohort (mean age 31.55, SD 5.47 years). Nearly, one in ten (9.8%) had a statistically high risk for depression; mainly those who were unemployed (p = 0.043), had financial distress (0.001), reported ‘very or fairly bad’ health (p = 0.002), had a ‘very or fairly bad’ sexual satisfaction (p = 0.006) and scored low on the SOC scale (p < 0.001). They smoked more often (p = 0.003) were hazardous users of alcohol (p = 0.001) and slept with difficulties (p = 0.001). Those with sleeping difficulties were 5.7 times more likely to have several symptoms of depression (p = 0.001). Hazardous users of alcohol and smokers had 3.1 respectively 3.0 times higher risk for depression (p = 0.001 respectively 0.003). The single strongest risk factor was a low score on the SOC‐scale which gave 10.6 (AOR 10.6; 95% CI 5.4–20.6) higher risk for depression. High‐anxiety ‘just now’ was reported by 8.9% and ‘in general’ by 7.9%, and those who had sleeping difficulties reported ‘very or fairly bad’ health (p < 0.001).

Conclusions

Allocating more resources and introducing more family‐focused care with depression and anxiety screening in early pregnancy for both expecting parents at antenatal care should be strongly considered by actors and policymakers, as this is a step in maintaining a family's well‐being.