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Did the transformations experienced by socialist societies in Central and Eastern Europe after 1945 have no impact on masculinities? This article aims to challenge this widespread assumption by analyzing the debates on fatherhood in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Immediately after the war, new images of “socialist” caring fathers appeared in the GDR media. Debates focusing on a new conception of socialist and egalitarian fatherhood gained prominence especially from the 1960s on. They were initially marked by criticism of East German society and the regime for neglecting to pay attention to men’s social role during the first two decades of socialist rule, and thus having had little influence on masculinities. These debates led in the 1970s and 1980s to an increase in concrete proposals on how to transform fatherhood, providing a new conception of what it meant to be a father in a socialist society. Although most of these proposals came to nothing, they testify to a desire to modify the gender relations of a society in the making, and in opposition to the West.