"In praise of fathers, mostly"

Article here. Excerpt:

'Father’s Day is on Sunday. “So what?” I hear some overstretched mothers out there muttering. For fathers can feel like something of an optional extra nowadays. Once, the place of fathers was at the apex of the familial pyramid. The justification was that they earned the money, often in dangerous, miserable or physically demanding jobs. If there was a war, they fought it. They made some sort of compensation for the fact that they did not give birth or look after children, by sometimes putting their life on the line – just as women did when they went into childbirth.
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One or two things still spring to mind. They are most uncontroversially and empirically valuable when it comes to parenting boys. Survey after survey has shown that families with boys who lose the male role model after separation tend to have behavioural and educational difficulties. Fathers are crucial role models in teaching boys how to be good men.

Fathers have also had to adapt to one of the most rapid and singular shifts in social organisation ever – the just and overdue rise of feminism. There are a few men who complain that this has gone too far – that despite all the real and thankless privations of childrearing, the commonality and companionship some modern stay-at-home mothers enjoy at the playground, school gates or coffee shop is denied to most working fathers (who may be sweating it out a windowless office somewhere). Yet most haven’t chosen to sulk – they have got on with it without much fuss.
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So let’s hear it for fathers. They have been asked to learn a new way of being in the world and by and large most of them have risen to the challenge with some aplomb. For one day a year at least, a celebration is surely not too much to ask. In return, for the other 364 days of the year, we’ll shut up and carry on apologising. But every dog has its day – and Father’s Day is ours. I, for one, am damn sure I’m going make the most of it.

If it’s OK with my wife and kids, that is.'