When Everyone Says "You Should Be Grateful" But You're Barely Surviving New Fatherhood

The pressure to feel grateful when you're drowning in the reality of new fatherhood. Why survival mode isn't ingratitude and permission to struggle without shame.

By Tony Ludwig • 8 min read • January 2025

You're three weeks into fatherhood, running on four hours of broken sleep, and someone—your mother-in-law, a coworker, that friend without kids—looks at you and says, "You must be so grateful. What a blessing."

And you nod and smile because that's what you're supposed to do. But inside you're thinking, "Grateful? I can barely remember if I brushed my teeth this morning. I haven't had a conversation with my wife that wasn't about feeding schedules or diaper inventory in two weeks. I love my kid, but grateful isn't the word I'd use right now."

Then you feel like garbage for even thinking that.

"Society expects fathers to feel grateful and blessed every moment, but sometimes you're just trying to survive the transition without losing your mind."

I became a biological father for the first time at 46, after being a step-father twice. Everyone told me "having a baby will change your life," but nobody told me that feeling grateful for that change wasn't automatic—and that not feeling grateful doesn't make you a bad father.

The Gratitude Pressure

From the moment your child is born, society bombards you with messages about how blessed, grateful, and overwhelmed with joy you should be. Social media is full of fathers posting about "the best day of my life" and "feeling so grateful for this miracle."

Maybe some fathers genuinely feel that way immediately. But many of us feel something more complicated: love mixed with terror, commitment mixed with grief for our old lives, joy mixed with complete overwhelm.

The pressure to feel grateful becomes another burden to carry when you're already carrying more than you've ever carried before.

My Gratitude Reality Check:

When people asked if I was feeling "so blessed" in those early weeks, I wanted to say, "I'm feeling like I have no idea what I'm doing and I'm terrified I'm going to screw this up." But that's not what people want to hear. They want the gratitude narrative, the blessing story, the joy overwhelming everything else. The gap between what I was supposed to feel and what I actually felt made me question whether something was wrong with me.

Survival Mode vs. Ingratitude

There's a difference between being ungrateful and being in survival mode. When you're barely keeping your head above water—managing sleep deprivation, relationship changes, financial pressure, and learning how to care for a completely dependent human being—gratitude isn't always accessible.

That doesn't mean you don't love your child or that you regret becoming a father. It means you're human, and humans can't sustain high-intensity positive emotions when they're overwhelmed and exhausted.

Toxic Positivity Phrases That Make It Worse:

"You should be grateful—some people can't have kids" (Your struggle doesn't diminish other people's pain)
"This is the best time of your life" (Says who? And what if it doesn't feel that way?)
"You'll miss this when they're older" (Maybe, but that doesn't make right now easier)
"At least you have a healthy baby" (Gratitude for health doesn't erase other struggles)
"You wanted this" (Choosing something doesn't mean it can't be difficult)
"Think positive" (Toxic positivity that dismisses real challenges)

These phrases, however well-intentioned, dismiss your actual experience in favor of the experience society thinks you should be having.

The Emotional Numbness Effect

When you're overwhelmed by a major life transition, your emotional system can shut down to protect you. I learned this through my own experience with what I call emotional numbness—where everything starts to feel like the same level of intensity.

Max joy: feels like a 5. Deep crisis: feels like a 5. Everything gets compressed to a manageable emotional range so you can function. But that means gratitude—which requires emotional capacity—gets compressed too.

"When everything becomes a crisis, nothing feels like a crisis. And when you're emotionally numb to protect yourself, gratitude becomes another feeling you can't quite access."

This isn't permanent, and it doesn't mean you're broken. It means your brain is doing what it needs to do to help you survive an overwhelming transition.

The Identity Crisis Behind the Gratitude Struggle

Part of the gratitude pressure comes from the expectation that becoming a father should feel like the ultimate fulfillment of your masculine identity. You're supposed to feel proud, accomplished, and grateful for achieving this milestone.

But what if fatherhood feels more like an identity crisis than an identity completion? What if you feel like you lost yourself in the process of gaining a child?

When Gratitude Felt Impossible:

In my hardest moments as a new father, I felt guilty that I couldn't access gratitude when I "should" have been feeling it. I was committed to my son's wellbeing, I loved him, I was working hard to be present—but grateful? That felt like another expectation I was failing to meet. It wasn't until I stopped trying to force gratitude and started accepting my actual feelings that I could be present for the experience I was actually having.

You can be committed to fatherhood without feeling grateful for it every moment. You can love your child without feeling blessed by the sleep deprivation. You can want to be a good father without feeling joy about how much your life has changed.

When Gratitude Becomes Performance

The pressure to feel grateful can turn gratitude into performance. You start saying the right things, posting the right photos, and giving the right responses to people's questions about how amazing fatherhood is.

But performed gratitude isn't the same as felt gratitude, and the gap between what you're performing and what you're feeling can make you feel like a fraud.

Permission to Feel What You Actually Feel:

You can love your child and still miss your old life
You can be committed to fatherhood and still feel overwhelmed by it
You can appreciate having a family and still grieve your independence
You can be grateful for your child's health and still struggle with the daily reality
You can want to be a good father and still feel like you're failing at it
You can acknowledge blessings and still admit when things are hard

The Difference Between Gratitude and Acceptance

Maybe the goal isn't to feel grateful for every aspect of new fatherhood. Maybe the goal is acceptance—accepting that this transition is hard, that your feelings are complex, and that love doesn't always feel like gratitude.

You can accept that you're a father now without feeling grateful for every sleepless night. You can accept the responsibility without feeling blessed by the overwhelm. You can accept that this is your life now without pretending it's the best thing that ever happened to you.

Acceptance allows for the full range of human experience. Gratitude pressure tries to narrow that range to only positive emotions.

"Maybe the goal isn't grateful fatherhood—maybe it's honest fatherhood that includes gratitude when it's authentic and space for other feelings when it's not."

How Gratitude Actually Develops

Real gratitude isn't something you force yourself to feel—it emerges naturally when you have the emotional capacity and perspective to recognize what you value about your experience.

For many fathers, gratitude develops:

After the survival phase passes: When you're not in crisis mode, you can appreciate what you have
Through specific moments: A smile, a laugh, a quiet moment that reminds you why this matters
In comparison to alternatives: Imagining life without your child and realizing you wouldn't choose that
Through connection: When you start feeling bonded and connected rather than just responsible
With distance and perspective: Looking back at the hard times and appreciating how you grew

Building Authentic Gratitude (Without Pressure):

Notice small moments: Look for tiny things that feel good rather than forcing big emotions
Acknowledge what's working: Even in chaos, some things are going right
Compare to your past self: Not to other fathers, but to who you were before this growth
Focus on choice: You chose this life, even when it's hard
Accept mixed feelings: Gratitude and struggle can coexist
Give yourself time: Gratitude develops on its own timeline

When Others Don't Understand Your Struggle

The hardest part of not feeling grateful when you're "supposed to" is dealing with other people's reactions. Your partner might wonder why you seem unhappy despite having a healthy baby. Family members might judge you for not appearing more joyful. Friends might think you're being dramatic or ungrateful.

Their inability to understand your experience doesn't mean your experience is wrong. It means they haven't been where you are, or they've forgotten what it felt like, or they're more comfortable with the gratitude narrative than the complex reality.

The Comparison Trap:

I used to think other fathers were naturally more grateful, more joyful, more blessed-feeling than I was. But when I started having honest conversations with other dads, I realized many of them were struggling with the same gap between expectation and reality. The difference was that some were better at performing gratitude, not necessarily feeling it.

Redefining What "Grateful" Means

Maybe gratitude as a new father doesn't look like overwhelming joy and constant appreciation. Maybe it looks like:

Showing up consistently even when you don't feel grateful
Choosing to stay committed when things get hard
Appreciating small moments without needing them to be life-changing
Acknowledging the love you feel even when it's mixed with other emotions
Recognizing growth in yourself even when it comes through struggle

This kind of gratitude is less Instagram-worthy but more sustainable. It's based on choice and commitment rather than feeling states you can't control.

The Long Game of Grateful Fatherhood

The fathers I know who seem most genuinely grateful for their families aren't the ones who felt blessed from day one. They're the ones who went through the hard times honestly, accepted their complex feelings, and found appreciation that grew over time through real experience rather than social pressure.

Your relationship with gratitude as a father will evolve. The overwhelm phase is temporary. The survival mode passes. The emotional numbness lifts. And when it does, you might find that the gratitude you feel is deeper and more authentic because it wasn't forced.

"The most grateful fathers aren't the ones who never struggled—they're the ones who struggled honestly and found their way to appreciation through experience, not expectation."

Permission to Be Human

You don't have to feel grateful every moment of fatherhood to be a good father. You don't have to perform appreciation to prove your love. You don't have to pretend the hard parts aren't hard to honor the good parts.

You're allowed to be human—to feel overwhelmed, exhausted, confused, and still love your child. You're allowed to struggle with the transition and still be committed to the role. You're allowed to take time to find your authentic relationship with gratitude rather than forcing one that doesn't fit your actual experience.

The goal isn't to be grateful for everything about fatherhood. The goal is to be honest about your experience and let authentic appreciation develop naturally over time.

Your Experience Is Valid, Even If It's Not Grateful

The complex, ungrateful, overwhelming parts of new fatherhood are just as real and valid as the blessed, joyful parts. Sometimes what you need isn't more pressure to feel grateful—it's permission to feel human.

Find Understanding

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Tony Ludwig writes about the honest realities of fatherhood transitions without the pressure of toxic positivity. He believes that authentic gratitude develops naturally when fathers have permission to struggle and space to process their real experiences.