Fathers, do you ever feel “dad guilt”? If so, from what?

17 comments

  1. Sometimes I feel like a hypocrite. I was a very troubled young man, my kids and being a father helped me through that, but mostly I’ve just grown and slowed down. Sometimes when I am trying to communicate a principle value to my oldest child it can ring a little hollow. Honestly whenever that happens I usually just tell her whatever story it was that happened to me that’s related to it, how I made the wrong choice, and what I learned from it. I don’t think it’s as much guilt as it is the internal recognition of a conflict.

  3. We had our kids in our 20’s and I was absolutely not ready for it. I learned as I went along and did the best I could, but I think my kids turned out well because of my wife.

    The problem is that I don’t know that you are ever ready to raise kids. You can read all the books and get all the advice, but until you stare down the barrel of a full diaper at 2am you don’t know what it’s really like.

  4. I love my children, but I struggle to stay engaged with them as dutifully as my wife. I’m pragmatic and have had to be the breadwinner most of my marriage. They feel like something I am managing rather than whatever I thought fatherhood would be. I feel the burden of trying to hold everything together and work a-lot.

    I get that this pattern comes from my relationship with my dad who was very disconnected and we were like pieces of furniture to him. He felt like some asshole room mate growing up.

    I’m trying to change but feel like I am missing some important empathy component that was scrubbed away when I was younger.

  5. The biggest one is that I would like to be able to sit back and watch my kid play a sport, without having to be involved or get involved at some point. For my oldest, I coached basketball, baseball, and football up to a pretty high level. There was a lot of success, I enjoyed it, the kids were great, but it was a lot of work, I had to spend a fair bit of money, get certifications on multiple things each year, some of the parents were insane, and I never felt like I got to sit back and enjoy watching my kid because I was responsible for what all of the kids out there were doing. I feel guilty about not wanting to step up to do it anymore, or at least as often. I tried to take this last football season off to watch my youngest, and ended up getting roped into it again part way through the season because of dissatisfied parents.

  7. The only time I really feel any guilt is any time I might have lost my patience or temper and overly harsh with my words. It sets a terrible example and only teaches the kids to avoid owning up to their own mistakes in fear Dad is going to blow his top.

    Patience is the #1 lesson parenthood has taught me. Now fathering my 3rd child I am much more patient than ever before…but that patience might still be tested from time to time. My daughter greatly benefits from her mellower father so I look back at my son’s childhoods and feel guilty about the times I dropped the hammer on them when I may not have had I had better skills back then.

  8. I feel like i should be doing better for my kids.

    I’m a single dad with %100 custody of two teens,

    I’m also over 60 and have been unemployed for 4 years.

    We don’t own a home we are renting (lost the home in the divorce)

    The kids are great and sometimes I feel they deserve better than me.

  9. Literally everything. But it’s important to try to use that and improve yourself and your gathering moving forward. You can’t control everything, sometimes that’s the hardest part.

  10. When I get mad and yell at my son, expecting better out of him for just doing some dumb kid shit that I totally would have done. Kid’s just a kid.

    I hold my own Dad in extremely high regards. I grew up in a household where my Mom certainly loved us and took care of us but was also struggling with severe bipolar disorder. I remember thinking my whole childhood “Why is he with her? He’s such a nice, smart, good guy and she’s a mess.” Dude intentionally was putting his whole family’s wellness first instead of pursuing his own desires. He’s not an outwardly emotional guy but I sure as hell am and so
    I tell him often how great of a Dad he was and is. The first time I told him about the tremendous amount of respect I have for him, father to father, he expressed a lot of relief, exclaiming that he often thought he was too strict or harsh with me during my upbringing. I didn’t feel that one bit. I feel he was the perfect amount of strict and lenient. He pushed me to achieve great grades while practicing good health via sports and maintaining healthy friendships.

    And so, my biggest feelings of dad guilt are when I think I’m letting my own dad down.

  11. Occasionally I feel bad that my oldest never beats me at anything, but I want him to earn the win.

  12. I feel guilt when I say no to my kids asking for my time. My son wants me to read with him every night but he also constantly pushes his bed time. He knows the rule is dad and mom don’t read after 9pm but he’ll ask at 9:30 or later, very often. I can tell he really wants it too. So I hold to the rule, and we remind him in the evening about it too, but he’ll still try to have it both ways. I’m torn between the time it will take him to accept this rule and learn how to live with it and just spending time making him happy right now, because it might be that the day he figures out how to self-regulate his time is the same day he stops asking me to spend any with him.

  13. I feel guilty whenever I do something for myself rather than for kids. It’s not healthy. My dad always put his interests firsts and it would frustrate me as a child, so I feel guilt when I spend time working on myself rather than spending time with my boys.

  15. I suck as a dad. my dad beat the shit out of me. i don’t hit my kids but cant be a good father.

  17. There’s quite a bit of times I look back and think to myself I shouldn’t have said that or should have reacted differently

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