The trouble fathers have with talking about love

I am head over heels in love. She makes me so happy that often I want to cry. I go weak at the knees when I see her and am in heaven when she throws her arms around me. Her name is Ellen, my daughter, and she is exactly one year old. For every one of those 365 days I have cherished every moment spent with her.

I had been a step-father to my partner Claire's three wonderful teenage children for two years before Ellen's birth and so had tasted some of the joys and challenges of a parenting role. So when anticipating new fatherhood at the age of 44 I knew it would be pleasurable, but I never expected the love of and for a child to be quite so relentlessly and intensely wonderful. I get the same pleasure out of simply looking at her for the thousandth time at the end of the day as I do in the morning when she is peeping over her cot.

She, and her brother and sisters, are teaching me the rewards of being in relationships. Sometimes it isn't easy and I struggle to measure up. One of the great tragedies for men is that we have been sold the lie that what defines us and counts most is the "work" we do outside the home, and that the private realm is where we renew ourselves in preparation for more "real" work. Relationships are then supposed to just "happen", but of course they don't. Loving and caring need just as much - and deserve more - effort.

I know that, in the intense love I feel for my child as a father, I am quite normal. We all have these feelings. It's just that they get left out of public debate. In Britain, David Beckham could rightly be recently voted by men as the most important role model there for new fathers. But where, we need to ask, are the positive images of men with children in Irish public life?

Fathers' Day remains the only time we pause to give any real acknowledgement to men and children. Even in the endless debate on the "childcare crisis", men have been almost completely ignored - a neglect which has contributed to the crisis because we have singularly failed to consider men as a resource for caring for children. So it is time we tried to deepen public understanding of men, love and nurturing so that public policy can make it possible for men to be the kinds of fathers and carers we need to be.

At a time when the absent "deadbeat" dad is less culturally acceptable and fathers are generally expected to be more involved with their children, the provider role still remains central to how fatherhood is practised. Men in Ireland work an overall average of around 46 hours a week. Employed mothers work an average of 32 hours a week outside the home, much of it part-time. While the father is the sole earner in half of all households, fathers with dependent children are more likely to be in full-time employment than any other category of men: 81 per cent compared to 55 per cent of non-fathers. One-third of fathers with young children work more than 50 hours per week. So fathers spend most time at work when their children are young.

While this appears to be related to financial responsibilities, research remains to be done which can show us the degree to which Irish fathers choose to work long hours, or whether they do so reluctantly in the interests of the family.

There is evidence, however, that the workplace is losing its power to define manhood. A recent study of 1,700 men and women in the UK found that more than a quarter of fathers with children under five said they would like to work fewer hours, even if it meant a pay cut and affected their career prospects. Just one in four men interviewed said that work was an important source of companionship for them.

YET, despite the rhetoric from government and employers organisations about enabling better work-family balance, we haven't even begun to give men the choice to be true co-parents. Even the recent Family Friendly Work Day was in reality about trying to attract mothers back into the workplace, rather than attracting men back into the home.

True family friendly policies require establishing what men, as well as women, want and then enabling them to achieve it. Although in general men don't talk about their emotional needs and relationships when in the workplace (and some organisations actively dissuade it), evidence from places such as Sweden and Australia suggests that men will come together and articulate their needs when this is respectfully facilitated, and that it is possible to get managers to listen.

The introduction of statutory paid parental leave for both fathers and mothers is an essential starting point for true family friendly policies. Ideally this should approximate to the Nordic model, in which both parents share a year's leave on 80 per cent pay, but only get their full entitlement if the man takes at least four weeks off, and which has resulted in a take-up rate by men of over 80 per cent.

"I still think we don't have a notion of how important caring is in people's lives," argues Prof Fiona Williams of Leeds University, who is researching these issues in Britain. Rather than starting with what people need to do to be able to fit their caring relationships around work, she argues what is needed is a "political ethic of care" based around the question: "how can we organise work so that it fits in with what matters in people's lives, in their personal lives and their caring responsibilities?".

To help men achieve this, we need to learn from the important men's personal development work being pioneered in Ireland by men like Alan O'Neill. He began as a father in the early 1980s, believing that "children went to bed at eight and woke up 12 hours later. I hadn't clue really". He began a fathers' group which "gave each of us support and direction towards trying to get things right as Dads and for Dads, and for men in general", and now works full time with men as co-ordinator of the South-East Men's Network based in Waterford.

Helping men to feel and express love is central to his work and something which, with the help of his wife, he was able to struggle to learn. "Whatever way I was conditioned growing up, my ability to express love was deeply suppressed. Lots' of embarrassment, shyness and anger had built up around it, and I had to feel all these again. Even now I can feel old fears that other men will think I'm going all soft and sentimental, and will dismiss me for talking about love. I think we have moved on from there. It is much easier to keep close loving relationships going with our children if we are able to tell them how much we love them and how much they mean to us."

When we look beyond the family to who cares for children, the concerns run even deeper. Men are completely absent from childcare provision in creches and nurseries, and fewer and fewer are entering caring professions such as social work and residential childcare work. As increasing numbers of young children from dual-earner households are placed in day care, it is women who are caring for them, at very low pay.

The result is a shift from the private patriarchy of traditional Ireland, which depended upon women's unpaid labour in the home, to a public patriarchy which exploits women's caring labour in the workplace. This is not only bad for children and women, but for men too, as routine caring helps us learn to care better for ourselves and the environment.

This is the outcome of a culture which focuses on abuse and the dangers of men but, more importantly, which does absolutely nothing to recognise boys' and men's capacities to nurture or to support or develop them as carers. The problem is that the construction of masculinity which underpins public policy sees men first and foremost as workers, soldiers and sportsmen.

Despite this, many men in Ireland are managing to carve out meaningful caring fatherhood roles. Yet, as men, we collude in maintaining the conspicuous public silence about our needs and desires with regard to the most important things in our lives. Little will change until men find a way to challenge and support one another in having our needs responded to.

I can take no credit for being different and am struggling as much as the next man. But like many men today, I am having to reassess my values and change my priorities so that, first and foremost, I can be with my child. This is the future. Of the many lessons my beautiful daughter has taught me over the past year, the biggest is that love translated into action has the capacity to change lives, and perhaps even society.

Harry Ferguson is Professor of Social Policy and Social Work at University College Dublin. His latest book, Keeping Children Safe: Child Abuse, Child Protection and the Promotion of Welfare has just been published by A&A Farmarat £12.60