Parenting is rewarding, but it is also challenging. It is a full-time, rest-of-your life job.

You always think — hope — that whatever difficulty you are facing with one period of a child’s life and development will simply be solved when he or she grows out of that phase. Soon, they’ll be potty trained, or be able to retrieve their own snacks, or walk home from school alone, or whatever.

But, what one soon discovers is that one phase of difficulties is only replaced by the difficulties of the next. Parenting doesn’t necessarily get easier, it is simply transformed. There are new joys, but also new headaches.

And, I find that the headache part is the part parents feel tremendous shame disclosing. Our modern, parenting-book, social-media-sharing culture seems to dictate that the only thing that one can say about parenting is that “it is the most important and fulfilling thing I’ve ever done.” That is the only way that one is allowed to signify that one loves his or her children and has made the sufficient level of sacrifice.

I find those constraints ridiculous and impossible. It is possible to love your children complete and simultaneously be exhausted by them. For many parents, that is the truth, and there is nothing shameful about acknowledging that.