I had very little tolerance for children when I was a teenager and young adult. They would stress me out to no end anytime they were acting out or just hurt or hungry and crying. I can't take it. It's too much. I would say, "I'm never having kids!"

My mother told me that it's different when it's your own, it's not as bad.

That advice, along with people's joyous, shining accounts of parenthood and fatherhood convinced me that it was something I don't want to live without. I fell in love with a woman who wanted children. We married, I became a father.

It has been about twelve years now. Twelve years of being something I'm not. Of trying to fill this role and feeling completely inadequate and subhuman, of trying not to let those feelings reveal themselves to my family or anyone I knew. Twelve years of nobody knowing my struggle. Only this year was I finally able to communicate this to my wife.

It is indeed very different when those kids are your own. You love them so deeply and feel completely responsible for their pain and for getting them through it. Empathy plays a much bigger part and their hurt becomes yours. It is so much more gut-wrenching when they are hurt or when something is just wrong and you don't know what. Most times, you​ feel utterly helpless. These challenges arise in addition to everything else that is already difficult about children in general.