Mothers and fathers need to work together for change, writes Tony Humphreys

Fathers are often perceived by their children as remote, absent or neglectful. It is not too long ago when their limited role was to bring in the money, carve the Sunday joint and be the final arbiter or authority a mother called upon to discipline their children.

Direct emotional expression between fathers and children was not encouraged. Indeed, the opposite was the case, and still is to a large degree.

It is not just boys who lose out due to the lack of a "heart-to-heart" relationship with their fathers; girls have an equal longing for a father to show love and to put them first - before work, sports and the pub.

When children feel they have not managed to capture their father's attention and love, they protectively conclude they are not good enough. As a consequence, girls, when adult, will lack confidence in their ability to attract men and boys will feel emotionally unsure of themselves when with their own gender and be emotionally illiterate when pursuing intimacy with the opposite sex.

Another way in which boys manifest their anguish over the continually "absent" father is through their identification of their sense of worth with work. Work is often one of the few ways they have to get their father's approval and it comes as no surprise that among men there is a high level of addiction to work. On the other hand, girls learn to attract their fathers by repeating their mother's behaviour of "taking care" of their fathers, but not asking anything from their father.

Ironically, there is considerable evidence to show that when parents separate, fathers have a more enriching experience of what it means to be a father. Instead of relying on maintaining the relationship via the conduit of the children's mother, they now share time and create the relationship with their children directly. They have opportunities to get to know their children and for their children to get to know them in ways that challenge them.

It is not my intention to suggest that marriages need to break down before men enter more fully into fathering their children. On the contrary, there is nothing compared to the two-parent, stable family, where each parent directly creates a relationship with each child. It is not that fathers do not have the capacity to be emotionally expressive and, indeed, that mothers have not got the capacity to be emotionally receptive but that both fathers and mothers need to create opportunities for the two-way street that loving children is all about.

It is important that mothers support and encourage fathers to be emotionally expressive and that fathers support mothers to be emotionally receptive. If it is a truism that men have difficulty with direct emotional expression, it is also a truism that many women have difficulties in emotional receptivity. In other words, men may be poor in expressing love and women may be poor at receiving love. Both inhibitions affect children's perception of themselves.

It would be easy to say that women have kept men out of the "emotional relating" that is the cornerstone of effective parenting, but men need strongly to assert their right to greater emotional intimacy with their children. Equally, women need to assert their need to share the task of parenting and to learn to express their own needs to receive warmth, nurturance and affection. Again, not surprisingly, the addiction to caring is still common among women.

However, there are signs of change. For example, in Australia in the next five years, 45 per cent of women will choose not to marry and have children. Furthermore, in Britain one in two marriages are breaking down and 70 per cent of these split-ups are initiated by the female partner.

It is also the case that by age 30, 40 per cent of women are divorced or separated and few have any inclination to re-marry.

Here, similar social trends are evolving. I believe these startling social changes are a "cry-out" to men for equality in family and domestic responsibilities.

If both men and women take up the challenge to create equality in both marital and family settings, then everybody will gain - men, women, children and society.

However, if we ignore the symptoms of inequality, then the family as the bedrock of a progressive society is seriously at risk.

Dr Tony Humphreys is a consultant clinical psychologist and author of Myself, My Partner