You were warned it would be like this. You can’t say you weren’t warned. I mean, no-one told you it was going to be exactly like this because surely no one could be experiencing this exact set of emotions right now, but you were warned that you should at least expect to feel something along these lines.

This could apply to that first moment you hold your firstborn child. Or the time when you are stood helplessly in the supermarket whilst your darling offspring is laying prone on the floor, screaming their lungs out whilst simultaneously trying their hardest to communicate and failing hard to achieve just that.

Welcome to fatherhood.

We set up this corner of Copse Magazine because we wanted to read positive stories about positive fathers and positive parenting. We weren’t looking for rose-tinted optimistic bull-shit; we just wanted to know that there are others out there just like us, that we are not alone in the joys and suffering of fatherhood. We wanted to know that the brotherhood-of-man is a real complimentary community to the sisterhood-of-women and not just Britain’s lucky 1976 Eurovision entry.

We believe in an integrated, holistic approach to parenting. We believe that no one is perfect, least of all us. And we believe that, as Samuel Butler said, Parents are the last people on earth who ought to have children.

Join us for the journey. Support us by subscribing to our mailing list, reading articles on our website, liking and sharing posts on our Facebook page. Spread the word, spread the work.

It turns out that despite popular belief. We can actually do this parenting lark, and we can damn well nail it too.

We’re pro dads in both senses of the word.