Amen. And to kick it up a notch, we gay male dads can feel marginalized by the assumption we can’t ever feel the sort of magical love only mothers are supposed to experience.

Of course I can’t actually know how other people feel inside their own heads and hearts, but I know for sure how I felt during all the time I spent at my son’s school, all the time I spent worrying about him when I gave him the necessary freedom to roam away from home, all the hours of all the days I spent nurturing him with with love.

You don’t rush home from work to make dinner that probably won’t include many of the foods you’d like to eat, and then help with homework and plan for your child’s next day at school unless you’re working from a center of something more than just casual affection.

I can’t know what it is to feel a mother’s love for her child. But I can share that a father’s love for me felt magical and consuming.