Mom guilt — it’s practically my most beloved companion at this point, that sidekick that just won’t quit, that BFF that can’t quite get the hint that I’m just not that into her anymore.

We hear a lot about “mom guilt” these days, but what about dad guilt?

Do dads ever feel that near-constant, always nagging, looming presence of guilt over their shoulders like moms do? You know, the one that tells them they are either working too much or not working enough, ignoring their kids too much or coddling them too much, feeding them too much sugar and indulging in too much screen time?

As it turns out, they totally do.

An online survey of over 1,200 dads conducted by Fatherly.com and Today.com found that “dad guilt” is actually a real thing — and it affects way more fathers than you might think. Like a lot of modern-day moms, the dads in the survey found that their idea of what they think a good dad should do often conflicts with the reality of today’s world of parenting.

For example, the survey found that many dads still feel pressured to fulfill that traditional breadwinner role, and about 1 in 4 dads reported feeling “dad guilt” because they did not provide enough money to take care of their families in the way they would like to.

Another large percentage of dads, 19 percent, reported feeling guilty about not being present enough with their kids (hello, smartphones!), while 17 percent discussed feeling dad guilt as a result of working too many hours.

“Nothing worse in the world when balancing work, grad school, and family,” says Tim LaGassee, 34, of Lapeer, Michigan, an RN who works full time while studying to be a nurse practitioner. “My 9-year-old likes to say, ‘Dad when are you going to be done working so we can go for a bike ride?’ Or when she calls me at work and says, ‘I just called to hear you. Love you bye!’ It is painful to think about what this does to my daughter although trying to better the situation in the long run.”

I have to admit that I hadn’t really thought about how much dads feel guilty. Probably because I’m guilty of assuming that most heterogeneous dads fall under the “helpmate” category, so what on earth do they have to feel guilty about? Anything that truly goes wrong is mom’s fault anyways, right? Wrong.

It’s that harmful and negative thought process that has caused the complex feelings of fathers to get largely overlooked in the first place.

More and more dads are contributing to all aspects of parenting and family life, which is probably why dads are experiencing more guilt these days. If you think about it, it kind of seems like there is a direct correlation to fathers taking on more of the juggling act of managing the domestic front while working, and a rise in their reported levels of guilt.

The survey also revealed that dads are split down the middle when it comes to childcare, with 50 percent of dads reporting that their partner does more childcare than they do, which I’m…

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