Am I a good enough dad?

"God that is SO true!" I exclaimed from behind my morning newspaper. I had just read the results of this amazingly accurate new survey, which says that far from hero-worshipping their fathers, young boys see them as "lazy, remote and volatile", and take only their mothers seriously. But, as is usual in my family when Daddy says something, no one took the blindest bit of notice. Least of all my three-year-old, Ivo.

The moment Ivo was born, he instantly leapt above getting into Oxford on my list of Best Things That Have Ever Happened To Me, ahead of getting my first novel published and being seduced by an older woman on a beach in Greece. I adore him, I would swim through shark-infested seas for him, just watching him asleep in bed makes me go all gooey with joy and gratitude that he is my son. And what sort of return do I get for this paternal worship? Why, a pretty miserable one.

Early this morning, for example, as he burst into our bedroom, I tried coaxing him into bed for a quick snuggle. This he was happy to do. But with Mummy only. Daddies, you see, are not there to be loved. Their job is to be bitten and punched and scratched and told: "I hate you. I want you to die, Daddy." Maybe he blames me for the fact that I stay at home while his beloved mother goes out to an office. Quite often he says: "Daddy, go to work today; Mummy stay at home." I'm sure he thinks I'm a lazy skiver.

About the only way of getting Ivo to like me is when I pretend to be a monster. I didn't realise how important this was until I got the flu and was too ill to play. He almost completely blanked me. Only when I started going "Raaargh" again and pretended to gobble him up was I rewarded with the occasional gobbet of grudging tenderness. I was reminded, not for the first time, how strongly predetermined parental roles are. No matter how you might feel as a father, your boy instinctively knows that your job is to be the exciting, dangerous parent, not the gentle, loving one.

This, I think, is one of the most frustrating things about being a modern father. You're assured that the age of the distant Victorian paterfamilias is long gone and you try to do all the right things - 3am bottle feeds, staying at home with the kids instead of going out with your mates - but still you end up running smack into the brick wall of biology. No matter how hard you try to be as warm and nurturing as a mummy, your boy still insists on treating you like a dad.

I can't help feeling that previous generations got a much better deal here. My father, for example, loved and continues to love me and my brothers and sisters far more than he loved himself. It's the reason, I'm sure, why I'm so tactile with my own children. But not for a second would he have dreamed of giving up his weekend hobbies (most Sundays he'd head off to exhibit his prize-winning tropical fish) nor of dealing with smelly nappies. It just wasn't expected of men back then.

With my 15-year-old stepson Jim I find the traditional dad role much easier to play. Partly because we don't have that intense genetic bond that you do with a child of your own, partly because he's now a hulking, muscular, spotty teenager, strong and big enough to beat me to a pulp.

I don't spend much time yearning to join him for a snuggle. We're more like big brother, little brother, never happier than when doing boysy things.

This certainly fits in with the part of the survey that says: "Boys see fathers as youthful, whereas mothers are seen as more serious." I remember from my own childhood that the times I really bonded with my father were when he did irresponsible things, like taking me on the back of a motorbike, or swimming naked with me on a beach with treacherous waves. And this is what I do with Jim, too. It's not so much a conscious policy decision - it's more that being with boys brings out your own inner boy. It's one of the best reasons for having a son.

Where I disagree with the survey - commissioned for an International Conference on Adolescence, and based on interviews with boys aged 11 to 14, though I think its findings apply to most ages - is in its suggestion that boys find mothers easier to talk to. This may be the case with Ivo but it's certainly not with Jim, who tells me things about his life that he would never dream of telling his mother. He knows, I suppose, that when it comes to stuff like drink and girls, a fellow bloke is more likely to be impressed than shocked. Mummies, on the other hand, tend to panic and think it's all abnormal, because not being men they

don't realise quite how terrible men are.

Whenever my wife grumbles about how horrible it was being pregnant with Ivo, I say: "Yeah, but you got a much better deal. He's 50 per cent my child, but no way do I get 50 per cent of his love." But things have been that way since at least as long ago as the Oedipus myth: boys are born wanting to marry their mothers and kill their fathers. It's instinctive. It's genetic. And no PC attempts to avoid stereotyping are going to change it. Boys will be boys will be boys.