Padraig O'Morain's guide to men's health: There is a rather horrible quote from Germaine Greer which goes: "Mother is the dead heart of the family, spending father's earnings on consumer goods to enhance the environment in which he eats, sleeps, and watches television."
As this column is for men, any women who are angered by the above will have to take up the cudgels on their own behalf.
But the quote is interesting for the toxic view it puts forward of fathers. In this view the father is seen as contributing absolutely nothing to the family, instead expecting the whole family to pander to his monstrous ego.
The image of fathers has suffered in recent times. Last year, a report written for the Family Support Agency, called Strengthening Families Through Fathers found that fathers were generally written off by social workers, excluded by the family law system and more or less ignored in the debate on teenage pregnancy.
But children take a very different view. Fergus Hogan, one of the authors of the report, told Marian Finucane on her RTÉ Radio One show that children saw working fathers as heroes.
Heroes. That's a thought worth holding onto. It provides an antidote to the view in that Germaine Greer quote.
Perhaps it can also provide an antidote to the guilt which fathers can feel because they are simply not there with their children during most of those children's waking hours. They are not there because they are out working to support their children.
The children, when they are old enough to think about it, understand this.
But heroes? Yes. The people who spend hours in traffic so they can go to work to put bread - and hopefully jam - on the table are heroic.
They are heroic whether they are going to work in a bank for good money or sweeping the floor in a restaurant for the minimum wage.
My father was a farmer who worked 12 to 14 hours a day to bring in the money to keep the show on the road.
He was a hero to us and to this day I cannot see anything I do as "work" when compared to his struggle to combat the unpredictable challenges of weather, market prices and crop or animal diseases. The father who cannot work due to a disability, illness or ageism can also be a hero to his kids. If he is there for them, listens to them and encourages them they will look on the relationship with gratitude in later life - by later life I mean that period of comparative calm after the storms of adolescence have passed.
And fathers who are absent because they are single or separated can be heroes too, by keeping in touch and seeing their children to whatever extent they can. If you're a father you start off with a great plus: your kids are predisposed to thinking you're a great guy.
By being there for them in whatever way you can, you can go on being a great guy in their eyes - and don't tell me you don't want that because if you do I won't believe you.
Some fathers are prevented from seeing their children as often as they would like. But stay in touch to the extent you can and remember that a day will come when the children will be able to come and see you without anybody's permission. Be there for them when that day comes.
From my counselling work I get the impression that absent fathers who fail to take up the opportunity to be with their children are more numerous than those who are denied that opportunity in the first place.
To them I would say that they are missing out on one of life's great experiences and that whatever they are doing instead of seeing their children is not as important as seeing their children.
However, the vast majority of fathers are men have one thing in common: they want to do the best they can for their kids. In other words, they're heroes. Don't ever forget it.
Padraig O'Morain is a journalist and counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.