‘When you become a dad … you have to say goodbye to an old part of yourself’Shane O’Connor
Shane O’Connor, founder of the Lads2dads group, with his sons Bodhi and Sonny. Photograph: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision
Thirty-four-year-old Shane O’Connor was only four months into a new relationship with his now fiancee Hazel when he learned he was to become a father. He’d always hoped to be a dad one day, but that “didn’t make it any easier in terms of us being a brand new couple”, he says.
“Hazel and I were pretty certain we had found the person that we wanted to do life with,” he adds, but the news was still a shock. O’Connor had only recently moved back to Ireland having lived abroad for almost a decade, which compounded the sense of whiplash. “We went from a honeymoon period to ‘oh wow we still don’t know each other, but we’re about to have a child’. There was a lot of emotions in play at once,” he says.
“When Bodhi, our son, was born, I was like a deer in headlights. I was rattled. I barely remember the first few months of Bodhi’s life because I was so overwhelmed and so in shock with his arrival.”
In spite of the initial sense of being overwhelmed and the adjustment to being a parent, the dad of two feels fatherhood has changed him for the better. “It has definitely made me a better partner, without a shadow of a doubt,” he says.
Beforehand, “I was definitely a little bit selfish. I was very much on Shane’s watch, ‘what does Shane want to do’. I was young, 25-year-old Shane who used to live in Berlin and travel loads, with no responsibilities and that freedom to do what I wanted and not have to ask anyone permission.
“When you become a dad … you do have to say goodbye to an old part of yourself, and [that] took time. I grieved over my 20s… that definitely was a part I’ve struggled to shake off,” he says.
It was his own experience of transitioning to fatherhood that led O’Connor to set up a support group for fathers in Cork. “If I was feeling this way, in a state of shock and not feeling fully prepared, and not having an outlet to talk to other dads about ‘hey, this is f**king tough work’,” then, he figured, other men must feel that way too.
He says Lads2dads provides a space where “dads can come together … where they can ask questions. They can learn from one another. They can bring up whatever they want to bring up, whether that be something that’s challenging them from a relationship point of view with their partner, or something they’re struggling with their kids. Anger, emotions, you name it.”
Shane O’Connor at a Lads2dads meeting in Cork city. Photograph: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision
The group meets every month at the Cork Lotus Yoga studio in the city.
“We have new dads come in every month,” O’Connor says. “We have old dads who have a couple of kids.” It’s an opportunity to speak about things they don’t speak to their partner or friends about. There is no judgment, he adds. “We’ve had sessions where we’ve had 10 strangers in a room, some of them being your stereotypical strong Irish man who wouldn’t be emotional, where one or two men have shared some really vulnerable and heartbreaking stories, and there hasn’t been a dry eye in the house.”
O’Connor says he’d love to see similar groups established across the country to support dads with the changes that fatherhood brings. He’s also set up a petition to increase paid paternity leave for fathers.
‘Mums have a head start … they’re a lot more involved. You’re a bit detached’Anton Jarvis
Anton Jarvis with his sons Hugo and Theo. Photograph: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision
Anton Jarvis has two sons, Hugo (5) and Theo (7). The 45-year-old was born in Tanzania and grew up in the UK, before moving to Cork after meeting his Slovakian wife in Ireland.
“Relief” rather than instant connection was his first response when his eldest child was born. “With the first boy, my partner had quite a protracted labour,” he explains. “I almost confused that initial euphoria of just having gone through the birth, and just happy that a child was born, with connecting with a child,” he says.
He says he struggled with knowing what his role as a dad was in the early days. “When the child doesn’t walk, doesn’t talk. You felt like you were babysitting the child until mum takes over.”
Fatherhood: The biological and psychological impact on men
‘I think when people think of fatherhood they think of an emotional, a psychological and a social role. But it’s a neurobiological transition,’ neuroscientist Brian Pennie says. Photograph: Andres Poveda (Andres Poveda/Andres Poveda)
The real bonding for him began around two to four months, when his son began to smile and interact.
There can be huge guilt for fathers around this, he believes. “The mums have a head start, I think. Because they’ve carried the child and they’re breastfeeding, they’re a lot more involved. And you’re a bit detached.”
Having a baby also had a big impact on his relationship with his wife, he says.
“The relationship became very transactional in the sense of ‘what are you doing? What am I doing?’. Your partner needs rest. You need to take the child out. [There’s] very little time for yourself. Or as a couple. And especially for us, I think, because we have no immediate family around, so there’s no help. Then the second child comes along and it’s even more time pressure.”
There was a community and village approach to raising children in Tanzania, he says, versus the more nuclear approach in Ireland today. His own father was “a very hands-off dad”, Jarvis says. “If he shut a cupboard door in the kitchen he felt like he was helping.” Expectations of fathers have changed, he says, and he’s completely on board with this, but “you’re doing it with no guidance”.
On reflection, Jarvis can see he experienced loneliness in fatherhood. Not having the free time “just to have an hour or two’s break” is the aspect he found the most difficult.
“Before I had children, my life was a honeymoon,” he says. “The time factor. You don’t realise how much time you have on your hands.”
‘A lot of the focus is on the mother and how they’re doing. You’re almost an afterthought’
— Anton Jarvis
His social life has changed, too. “When you have a child you end up socialising with other people that have children … The drinking reduces massively because you just can’t deal with the hangover.”
Jarvis attends the Lads2Dads group in Cork and says he found it was the “first time where your own feelings are validated. Someone asking, ‘Actually, how are you doing?’ Earlier on, when you become a parent, a lot of the focus is on the mother and how they’re doing. You’re almost an afterthought.” There’s “guilt” admitting that, he says.
The group allowed him to openly discuss things dads don’t ordinarily talk about, like how overwhelming parenthood can feel sometimes. “You can love a child and still feel like, ‘Jesus, things are really on top of me and I don’t know how to deal with this situation’.
“Being more open and frank and vulnerable with other men, that’s led to me being more frank and vulnerable with my own partner … It’s changed me for the better.”
Fatherhood has also made him “more patient, more considerate”, he says.
‘Public perception of a queer family is very important, seeing that we are just a normal family’Mark O’Looney Cannon
Mark and Eoin O’Looney Cannon with their daughters in New York
Mark O’Looney Cannon and his husband Eoin knew from early on in their relationship that they wanted to be fathers.
“I always knew I wanted kids,” he says. “When I first came out to my mother she said to me, ‘But you want kids’, and I said, ‘But I’ll have kids, why wouldn’t I?”
The pair moved to New York together in 2018 when Mark was offered a scholarship with MasterCard that became a permanent job. One of the key factors in the couple’s decision to stay in the US was that they thought it might be an easier place to have a child via adoption or surrogacy.
In 2022, their first daughter, Aria, was born with the help of a surrogate living in Texas whom they had met via Facebook. In 2024, the same surrogate gave birth to the couple’s second daughter, Nala.
Both children were conceived through donor eggs and sperm belonging to either O’Looney Cannon or his husband. The couple don’t know which one of them is the biological father, but their doctor does, he explains. They decided not to find out following a devastating miscarriage.
“On our first journey, we implanted two embryos, one of mine and one of his,” O’Looney Cannon explains. The surrogate became pregnant with twins, “and then we unfortunately lost our son at 17 weeks. So we chose never to find out who the biological parent was. If the girls want to know they can find out when they’re older.”
There have been legal complications, however. In order for their children to gain Irish citizenship and Irish passports, just one father can be named on the birth cert. The children would have to take a genetic test to prove who their father is, and the other father would lose his rights.
“Once we started trying to move home, we realised that the law wasn’t really on our side,” he says. “We have all the legal rights we need over here – we’re on the birth cert … we’re totally protected over here. But when we move home we don’t have that same protection.”
If the law changed in Ireland to allow both men appear on the children’s birth cert, they would move home in a “heartbeat”, he says.
O’Looney Cannon recalls being asked when he first felt like a dad. “It’s very sad that this is the moment that I remember, but it was when we found out Shane [their son] passed. The grief I went through then … was something completely different, In terms of ‘I have lost a child. I am a parent’.”
‘I actively put ourselves out there because the public perception of a queer family is very important’
— Mark O’Looney Cannon
Has fatherhood changed him? “Definitely,” he says. For one, he has become far more organised.
“One of the big things was recognising that you’re not just taking care of yourself, you’re taking care of other people,” he says.
“I was always the type of person that would pack my bag last minute, that just wouldn’t think through things as much. Now I have the girls’ outfits prepared. I know what hairstyles I’m doing.”
He appreciates his nights out more now. “One of the most important things you can do is take a night away where your kids are safe with someone else and you have a recharge and remember who you are and who you are in your relationship.”
O’Looney Cannon’s husband is a stay-at-home dad and takes on “all the cooking and cleaning”. “I’m the one who does their hair. I’m the one who picks their outfits”, O’Looney Cannon says, describing how stereotypical gender norms aren’t so clearly defined for parents in same-sex relationships.
He finds it amusing to hear some heterosexual couples make comments about what fathers can and can’t do, like when a woman might say of her partner, “I couldn’t leave him at home with the kids for two days”.
Fatherhood has also driven O’Looney Cannon into activism. “When I had the girls and I recognised they weren’t getting the same rights as everyone else … I got involved with Irish Gay Dads,” he says, referring to the community and activist group supporting, representing and connecting Irish gay, bi, queer and trans fathers. He is now their vice-president. “I started meeting Government,” he says.
It also encouraged him to become active on social media – the couple have more than 8,000 followers on their @twomenandasurrogacy Instagram account. “I actively put ourselves out there because the public perception of a queer family is very important, seeing that we are just a normal family like everyone else.”
‘I’m still learning about head space and how to find it’David Monaghan
Amy and David Monaghan with their eight children (Maria, Zélie, Chloé-Anne, Joshua,
Mary-Kate, Lucy, Matthew and Sophia). Photograph: Alan Betson
David Monaghan knows that in 2026 his family’s size is uncommon. The 47-year-
old and his wife Amy have eight children, ranging in age from 13 down to just one year old.
He and Amy, who is a primary schoolteacher, were “definitely open to having a big family”, he says, but eight wasn’t necessarily “a number in the back of our heads”.
He left his job in finance to become a stay-at-home father about 10 years ago. “Financially it worked out better,” he says. “I haven’t looked back since, and I wouldn’t change it. To be honest, I’d be very reluctant to get back into the workplace,” he says. “I love it. I’m just daddy day care. I’m my own boss.”
The family live in a three bedroom semi-detatched house in Co Kildare. Bunkbeds have been their saviour when it comes to bedroom space. The girls share one room, the boys another, leaving the final bedroom for Monaghan and his wife. It’s the downstairs living space that he finds tight, and he expects this will become more of an issue when his children are teenagers.
Before becoming a father, Monaghan “enjoyed his space”. “Even to this day my head gets absolutely melted at times with eight children, when we’re all here at the same time,” he says. “Space is my big thing. In terms of head space, I’m still learning about that and how to find it.”
In a new effort to reclaim some time for himself in fatherhood, he’s started making use of his early waking hours. If “I happen to be awake at five or six I get up and I’ll just catch up with a few emails or a bit of social media, or later in the evening when they’re all in bed by 9 o’clock”.
Becoming a father meant Monaghan had “to be more patient on some level” but he concedes “on another level, I can get tetchy quite easily with the children, and that makes me feel I’m more impatient.”
‘I can’t just head off in the car, head off for 24 hours and then just come back’
— David Monaghan
One of the most notable changes he’s seen in himself since becoming a father is how difficult he finds winter. “I get that kind of sad feeling in winter with the weather,” he says, “the clouds and all that. So when the children are in the house and they can’t get out, it’s raining … that can be a rough time.
“I … suffer through it, and I know there’s something coming in the summer, we can all get together and get away. Or I can do a trip away or a retreat.”
Parenthood, by virtue of its demands, can bring change to relationships. Has that been the case for Monaghan and his wife? “It’s evolving,” he says.
Parts of fatherhood have been as he expected, while others have been very different. “The demands and expectations” of extracurricular activities have been far more than he had anticipated.
“Not being able to reach out to other dads” has been a challenge he didn’t expect. He’s not lonely, he says, but has found fatherhood restrictive at times when compared with the freedom of his pre-parenthood days. “I can’t just head off in the car, head off for 24 hours and then just come back.”
‘For many adopted people, having children of your own is a big event’Paul Cullen
Paul Cullen with his four children, from left, Rosa, Tana, Luca and Ella Photo: Deirdre Veldon
Paul Cullen was quite late to fatherhood. His four children were born when he was aged between 40 and 50. Since he was an adopted child himself, they were his first blood relatives.
“[For] many adopted people, having children of your own is a big event,” Cullen says. As an adopted person, not seeing physical resemblances in those around him as he was growing up meant there was a “certain foreignness about other people, which is totally upended by the experience of having your own child”.
Cullen describes an occasion where his son, who was aged 2½ at the time, was playing. “Something clicked in me and I realised, when I was that boy’s age, at the age of two years and four months, I don’t know where I was. Because I was not only adopted, I was adopted at the age of three.” Seeing his young son play inspired him “to go on and research where I came from”. The research became a book, Outsider, published earlier this year.
Cullen, a former reporter at The Irish Times, has loved fatherhood from the beginning. “I didn’t think I would. I was slow to go down that road,” he says. “I can genuinely say I’ve never regretted a moment. It’s been a wonderful experience.
“Fatherhood unlocked a door to part of my own past and connected me to the human race in a way that I hadn’t felt connected before then.”
One of the reasons Cullen went into journalism was because “I was unhappy with the way I saw the world”, he says. But becoming a dad helped him to make his “peace with the world, I fought less with it”.
‘I sometimes think the travails of parenthood are overplayed’
— Paul Cullen
Fatherhood also rearranged his priorities. The summer before his first child was born, he planned to climb the Matterhorn mountain, in the Alps between Switzerland and Italy. The weather delayed the climb. While waiting, Cullen found himself thinking: “I don’t belong here any more, in this risky area.” Cullen had spent many years of his career reporting on wars, conflicts and famine. “And I made a decision that had to change,” he says. “You turn down the dial on the kind of adventure that you had in your life.”
Cullen expected to struggle with babies, having had no siblings himself, but was amazed at how quickly he adapted. “I believe strongly in equality of the sexes and equality of the jobs that have to be done around the family. I’ve been an active and involved father … and I think I’ve worn it lightly,” he says. “I found it surprisingly easy.”
He says this with the caveat that his children have all been healthy and the family have avoided great adversity. “in general, I sometimes think the travails of parenthood are overplayed,” he says.
There have been sacrifices, of course.
“You give something of yourself, to build a stronger collective family fold. But you do lose something of yourself. And I do have that sense of slight regret,” he says – the regret being “you were living your life for yourself and maximising your talents and gifts … there’s some sense of compromise there”, he says.
“In the old days when women stayed at home, and the men went out, they didn’t have to compromise. I accept that you do have to do that now.
“But overall, it is worth it.”