You are allowed to not enjoy every stage

Everything below about not enjoying a stage comes from what actually happens rather than from what is supposed to.

Ambivalence is normal and underreported

Most parents find some stages far harder and less enjoyable than others, and almost nobody says so publicly. The silence makes each person think their experience is unusual, which adds guilt on top of difficulty.

Saying it out loud to one honest friend is consistently reported as an enormous relief. It is also useful information: knowing a phase is hard for you helps you plan support around it.

Loving a child and enjoying a stage are separate

The two get conflated, which turns a normal preference into evidence of inadequacy. People who find babies difficult often find eight-year-olds wonderful, and the reverse is equally common. Neither says anything about the relationship.

It is also uneven within a household, so two adults can experience the same phase completely differently, and the one struggling frequently reads the other's ease as a judgement that was never made.

The comparison problem

Social media presents edited versions of other families, and the comparison is with their best moments and your ordinary ones. The effect is well documented and it is worth managing deliberately rather than by willpower.

For most families, reducing exposure during a hard phase is a reasonable intervention rather than an avoidance. Comparison with your own expectations does the same work more quietly, particularly where a pregnancy, a birth, an adoption or an early period went differently from anything you had pictured.

Support is specific, not general

Being asked whether you need anything is hard to answer; being offered something specific is easy to accept. Asking for specific help — two hours on Saturday, a lift on Thursdays — works far better than asking for help in general. Most people want to help and do not know what to offer, which makes specificity a kindness in both directions.

Taking an offer that is not quite the one you needed is usually better than declining it, because refusals are read as not wanting help and the offers quietly stop arriving.

Do not defer everything

Postponing every personal interest until a stage passes tends to mean postponing it indefinitely, because another stage follows. One small protected thing, kept through a hard phase, does disproportionate work for identity and mood.

For most families, it needs to be small enough to survive, which is the part people get wrong by choosing something ambitious. Protecting it means letting something else go, and what usually goes is housework, which is a defensible trade that almost nobody says out loud.

Where this stops being ordinary

Persistent low mood, anxiety, intrusive thoughts, or losing interest in things you normally enjoy are clinical matters and treatable ones. Postnatal depression and anxiety affect fathers and partners as well as mothers, and are substantially under-diagnosed in them.

Contacting a doctor, health visitor or a parental mental health line is the appropriate step, and doing it early shortens it. A workplace employee assistance line, occupational health, or booking an appointment for yourself while you are already at the surgery with a child are all routes people use when finding a separate hour feels impossible.

The takeaway

Say it to one honest person, keep one small thing for yourself, and ask for help specifically.

You are allowed to do the easier version tonight.