Kyle MacDonald: I’m feeling anxious about becoming a father

Becoming a parent is often the biggest thing that happens in someone’s life. Photo / Getty Images

Q My partner is six months pregnant, so obviously I’m about to become a dad. Just recently I’ve started feeling really anxious about it, my father wasn’t around much and we don’t have much of a relationship. I’ve never really been around kids and none of my friends have kids yet. My partner is really excited, but I’m just worried and can’t stop thinking I shouldn’t be a parent.

A Congratulations, you’re about to go on one of the most wonderful rides of your life. That’s not to say you “should” be excited - you get to feel, however you feel about it. The important thing is to make sense of how you are feeling and learn from it - which I can hear you are wanting to do, and I commend you for it.

Becoming a parent is a weird mix. It’s often the biggest thing that happens in someone’s life, and it’s psychologically and emotionally a really big deal. At the same time, it’s happening all the time, all around the world every minute of every day - and has done since time immemorial. That can mean, everyone’s an expert - as I’m sure your partner, if not you, has already experienced.

Psychologically, it shifts our experience of who we are, our place in the world, our relationships and our fundamental identity. Or at least it should if you’re doing it right!

It can also throw us in touch with feelings about our own childhood, and the parenting we experienced which can be upsetting, surprising and disorientating.

Our first map for what being a parent is comes from our own experience of being parented, and it sounds like when it comes to fathering, that wasn’t great for you. At the very least you don’t have much of a map, and it can be understandable if you’re now facing feelings about that. You may need to grieve for what you didn’t have.

But the wonderful thing about parenting is you get the opportunity to make amends with your childhood. You get to use your own painful experiences to guide you towards a deeply satisfying connection with your little person.

You get to be the dad you never had.

Sometimes absences in our childhood can make being present hard. It can feel wrong, difficult or upsetting to do what we didn’t get. However, being present is what your focus needs to be. Not just because it’s a good thing generally, but specifically for you it undoes what wasn’t done.

And by present, I mean emotionally present. Build a connection with your baby from when you meet them. Be open, cry, laugh be worried about them. Feel openly and without fear.

Because people will tell you it’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do, and occasionally you’ll see stories in the media declaring that people without children are happier than parents. I’m sure some are, and people need to do what’s right for them.

However, in my experience, having children opened up a new part of my heart that I didn’t even know existed. That comes with all the feelings, including feeling like there are a million more things to be worried about all of a sudden. That’s natural.

In fact, even though it’s hard, it makes you feel life more. It’s a shame your father, for whatever reason, hasn’t been able to map that terrain. It’s wonderful you now get to. And he gets to be a grandparent, in whatever form that takes.

The only standards you have to hold yourself to though, despite what anyone - including me - says, is the one I hold all parents to: do a better job than your parents did. Improve on their efforts.

And enjoy the ride.