As men age, they become progressively more sensitive. The biggest spike (or dip?) in the graph occurs when a man becomes a father.

In my experience, this manifests itself most noticeably in a reduced ability to enjoy any story where children are in peril.

I’ve had similar reactions. The most recent of which was the Lie to Me episode where an anguished mother confessed that her purported missing son had actually died due to her negligence.

A friend of mine, who is an operatic bass, told me a similar story years ago: As a new father, he simply couldn’t perform a role where he sang as Death, about to harvest a young child.

In some ways, it’s akin to the displeasure you sense when you notice technical flaws in characters who do the work you do (“You could never upload a virus to an alien mothership’s computer via TCP/IP!”) or noticing anachronisms in period stories (“Fnaw! Everyone knows 3rd Battalion Bravo Company patches had a charcoal chevron on a field of chartreuse before the Battle of the Bulge! It was only after that they switched to a field of spring green!”. But in these cases, the displeasure arises from the ease with which we can identify our child with the child in danger. And I notice that I’m far more likely to feel this when the scene involves pedestrian dangers, since I’m more likely to encounter them.