How would you describe the feeling when you first became a parent? California businessman Mark Eckhardt never seriously thought of starting a family before the birth of his first daughter. And when she finally arrived he was overcome with joy, but also with the feeling that his entire life had been forever disrupted.

In a conversation that echoes many of the candid complaints from both mothers and fathers, Eckhardt outlines his experience as a somewhat reluctant dad - a lack of natural emotional connection, a loss of identity, the loneliness - and connects the dots back to his own upbringing, his father’s coming out and his parents’ divorce.

“All of a sudden you’re home 24/7, taking care of a kid,” Eckhardt says of the early days of fatherhood. “And you’re doing the same thing over, and over, and over again? And you’re doing the same thing over, and over, and over again, while you’re sleep deprived?

“And you’re trying to take care of your wife, the mother of your children, and you don’t know how to do that because her whole life has changed too? Excuse the language, but it fucked me up.”

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