Let’s look at the data, because that’s usually where I feel safe.
My oldest is three years old.
My twins turned one just three months ago.
For the last 15 months, I have been attempting to function as a human being while outnumbered by toddlers. I work from home as an engineering manager, a role I am incredibly grateful for, but one that requires a brain that isn’t constantly running on fumes.
If you looked at my calendar this year, you saw neat blocks of meetings and deep work.
If you looked inside my room, you saw a father muting his mic to gently negotiate with a crying toddler, wiping oatmeal off his shirt five minutes before a call, and functioning on a sleep schedule that simply doesn’t add up.
It has been the toughest year of my life.
I love my children more than I thought possible. They are my world. But love doesn’t replace sleep, and deep affection doesn’t pause the backlog.
It is possible to be incredibly grateful for your family and completely broken by the logistics of raising it at the same time.
The Weight We Carry
We need to talk about the guilt. The specific, heavy kind that sits on your chest at 2 AM.
I am lucky. I work for a company that is incredibly empathetic. They support families. They understand flexibility. I am not fighting a toxic employer. I am fighting an internal narrative that tells me I should be able to do it all perfectly.
But let’s be clear: that narrative didn’t appear out of thin air. It was installed by a culture that equates human value with constant output. Even in a supportive environment, the societal pressure remains.
There are days when I close my laptop and feel I didn’t give enough to my team. Then I step away from my desk and feel I didn’t give enough to my kids.
We are constantly told, implicitly or explicitly, that if we just organized our time better, woke up earlier, or had more discipline, we could balance it all.
That is a lie.
We are living through a time where we are expected to work like we don’t have children, and parent like we don’t have jobs. That isn’t a puzzle you can solve if you just try harder. It is simply impossible.
Permission to Be Human
If you are reading this and feeling that same shame, I want to tell you something I wish someone had told me six months ago: You are not wrong.
You are not broken. You are not “bad at this.”
We have been taught that vulnerability is a weakness, that as professionals, and especially as men, we need to present a facade of calm competence. We hide the chaos. We apologize when “life” interrupts the background blur. We treat our exhaustion like a shameful secret.
But the exhaustion isn’t a sign of failure. It is the only logical response to the situation.
The shame you feel? That doesn’t belong to you. That belongs to a culture that demands the impossible and then blames you when you can’t deliver.
We need to stop hiding the cracks in the armor. We need to stop pretending that we are untouched by the chaos. Real strength isn’t about carrying the weight without stumbling; it’s about admitting that the weight is too heavy to carry alone. It is about saying, “I am struggling,” and realizing that this admission doesn’t make you less of a leader,
It makes you human.
The Privilege of Vulnerability
I just argued that we should stop hiding the cracks in our armor. But I need to be honest about why it is safe for me to drop my shield.
I am a white man with a supportive partner, a stable salary, and a company that treats me like a human being. I have every safety net money and social status can buy.
This mountain of privilege doesn’t just buy me safety; it buys me the permission to be human.
When I write about my chaos, I get applauded for my “authenticity.” When I admit to being overwhelmed, I am seen as a “relatable leader.” I can wear my vulnerability like a badge of honor because my competence is rarely questioned.
But I know that for many, especially women and mothers, showing those same cracks isn’t a badge of honor. It’s a professional liability.
Women have been carrying this load (and often a much heavier one) for generations. Yet, when they show the strain, society doesn’t offer them the same “permission slip” it hands to me. It offers judgment. It perceives their exhaustion not as a systemic failure, but as a lack of commitment.
So while I am proud to share my struggle, I am acutely aware that the ability to do so without fear of professional penalty is, in itself, the ultimate privilege.
To the men reading this: We possess the “political capital” to change this narrative, and we have a duty to spend it. We need to be the ones to break the facade. When we say, “I can’t make that 5 PM meeting, I have childcare duties,” we create a blast radius of safety for everyone else who is terrified to ask for what they need.
We have to stop pretending everything is fine just because we are scraping by.
You Are Doing Enough
If you are just surviving right now, you are doing enough. The work will always be there. The deadlines can move. But you, and your family, are the only version that exists.
This season of life is relentless, but it is also finite. Don’t measure your worth by your productivity during a crisis. Measure it by your ability to be kind to yourself when the world demands you be a machine.
We need to stop hiding the scars and start supporting the people. We need to build a culture where “I am tired” is a valid status update, and where asking for help is recognized as an act of courage, not a confession of weakness.
Resilience isn’t about never breaking; it’s about knowing that you shouldn’t have to carry the weight alone.
I am still navigating this myself. I don’t have a roadmap for how to be the perfect parent in this chaos. I am also actively trying to be a better ally to listen to the experiences I don’t share and to speak up when silence would be easier. I’m just trying to draw the map as I go. But I know that navigating it alone is the hardest way to travel.
If this resonated with you, I’d love to hear your story. Whether you want to vent about the impossible schedule, share a small win, or just tell me how you’re keeping the lights on, my inbox is open. We can’t fix the whole system today, but we can start by making sure no one has to debug this mess alone.