Without these technologies, things like personalized recommendations, your account preferences, or localisation may not work correctly. The first step is for us to be able to sit in the bad feeling that really lives in our body of not being good at it. But what I was totally unprepared for when my daughter was born, was that on top of the workload of ensuring my little adorable, screaming, poop machine stays alive another day, was that all the regular, everyday stuff I used to do didn’t disappear.

She had a blast just cruising along at her own choice of speed and riding through every muddy spot we could find. And hope they always want to share with you everything in their life – the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Perhaps this is my life’s true purpose: maybe I’m here to teach my sons that self-esteem comes and goes – it can get rolled right out of you at short notice – but that you still can get by in life without any, as long as you don’t want to be a contestant on The Apprentice.

We couldn’t come up with a reason not to, so this began the tradition of the Annual Backwards Dinner! I do have her mouth, as you can fucking tell from my writings, but otherwise she taught me who not to be and it probably worked out for the best honestly. As a child and family therapist it is awesome to read about someone getting it right with their children and understanding what’s truly important. For some, it still seems unusual to see a man caring for a child, and Sean’s often mistaken for his twins’ nanny.Sticking to simple rules as a DAD means that you are sucking less and maybe you just might build a great human or two. Like many, many children he’ll sometimes lapse from lovable chatter into moments of breathtaking sadness. A few years ago my dad moved in with my mom to help her pay for her house (yes they are divorced and yes they did move back in for financial reasons and no it did not work well at all) mostly because she’s bad with money.

For the last five and a half years his popular weekly Guardian column has charted the ups and downs of family life, and his largely unsuccessful attempts to be recognised as a competent father and husband, combining self-deprecating humour with a perverse optimism. We need to step up, step in to that insecurity, and realize that we really can be just as good a care provider as our partners. Like damn, I didn’t ask to be born and if I wasn’t born I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t be aware of that fact that I didn’t exist. but when we go home they say how ungrateful I am, and that I’m addicted to the screen even though music is just my way of coping. Sean notes that when he takes his toddlers to the park, he almost always gets ignored by the women who are playing with their own children.

Written with self-excoriating candour and the driest humour, comes a book about being a dad from one of our best loved journalists. But in Sean’s experience, the proliferation of mother’s groups – and lack of more inclusive parenting groups – leaves men feeling unsupported. Don't really feel like going into too much detail right now, but this Thanksgiving was easily the worst I've had.

I know I’ve just rattled off a rather long post and maybe you just skimmed over as a result, so let me summarize. A good god who cast us out of the garden he made us in and forced us to commit incest, and let all the rest of the terrible things happen forever without intervening because we ate an apple we shouldn’t have. I think I have the same “opposite action” thing going on from him, especially lately now that I’ve realized the ways he is flawed.

As I’m talking about myself being fucked up by my childhood situation, you also have to realize my dad is also fucked up from his childhood situation.