This will be the seventh Christmas Day without my daughter

Christmas can be one of the most difficult times of year for fathers separated from their children. This year will be the seventh time I’ve spent Christmas Day without my daughter who is now 16 years old.

The campaign group Fathers 4 Justice claims there are 4 million fatherless children in the UK. They’re wrong. My daughter is one of the estimated 3.8 million children whose parents are separated and she’s a long way short of being fatherless---in fact as well as having me in her life, she’s also had a step-father around for most of her life who is also the biological father of her two half-sisters aged 11 and 13.

Nothing beats knowing your biological dad. It’s not about the quality of the parenting, though of course the unconditional love you have for your own flesh and blood can make for a unique parent-child relationship---but no matter how good a parent your biological dad is or was, nothing can replace knowing him.

It is estimated that around 1 million children in the UK don’t know currently know their biological father and could perhaps reasonably be called “fatherless”.

Through my work with separated dads, I’ve met many men who have no contact with their children---these children have fathers, but they are fatherless in the sense that they don’t have the experience of growing up around their dad and being able to learn about him through their own experience.

Yet all of these children have some kind of relationship to their dad and this is true for all of us---whether our biological father is dead or alive, close or distant, we can’t help but relate to him and the way we relate to dad not only defines our relationship with him, but also shapes our relationship with ourselves.

As one of the few separated parents with legal “shared custody” of my child, I have been fortunate enough to share every other Christmas with my daughter since her mother and I split up.  I always miss her when she’s not here, particularly at Christmas, but I am settled with this situation safe in the knowledge that she has grown up with great relationships with relatives on both sides of her family.

And this is the greatest tragedy of “fatherlessness”. When we remove a child from their biological father’s life, we often also deny that child any knowledge of their paternal grandparents, uncles and aunties, cousins and even half brothers and sisters. In doing so you dampen and confuse the child’s relationship with themselves.

I know I’m not the “world’s best dad” (even if I have a mug that says otherwise) and I still stand proud as a parent. But in some ways the best things I’ve done as a biological dad have been the easiest. I have given my daughter a better understanding of who she is and where she comes simply through knowing the paternal half of her family.

She’s grown up at the other end of the country to most of them and she’s shared (and continues to share) a great relationship with them, particularly with her slightly older cousins.

I have many great memories as a dad from her birth, to her first steps, to her first day and school, to her first day at Sixth Form college---and one of favourite memories is “typically male” and it’s so much more than that.

I’m not a huge football fan (and neither is my daughter) yet we have seen my family’s team Blackpool play at Wembley in three play-off finals. What struck me, more deeply than I imagined it would, was that this was the stadium where 60 years ago the paternal great-grandfather my daughter never knew, watched the famous Matthews’ Final of 1953 when Blackpool lifted the FA Cup for the first and only time (though one day we will triumph again!).

There was something deeply, atavistically emotional about sharing that connection with her, particularly in 2010 when together we same Blackpool promoted to play in football’s top flight for the first time since I was a just one year old.

I remembered my dad taking me to see Blackpool for the first time in the Seventies and then him telling me about his dad taking him when he was a child in the Forties and so the tradition of sharing  this family connection to our home town got passed down through the generations and provided a shared historical link between my daughter, her father, her grandfather and great-grandfather that will always belong uniquely to her experience of this half of her family.

It doesn’t take particularly great parenting skills just to be there and give your children access to half of their personal heritage, but for hundreds of thousands of dads in the UK, even this simple act of being a benign biological parent isn’t possible for a whole variety of different reasons, a fact that cuts particularly deep at this time of year.

One of the many dads I’ve met on the way who was unable to “be there”  for many years has a daughter a few months older than my own, who he’ll spending Christmas  in Australia with for the second year running in 2013.

His daughter, Aimee Nicholls (see the video above) sends a great message of hope to biological dads who currently can’t be in their children’s lives. The message is simple---please, please, hang in there because one day your children may come looking for you and the best thing you can do when they do is BE THERE.

Tomorrow I’ll share Aimee’s excellent 2012 Christmas message with you, until then please enjoy watching her 2013 Christmas message linked above. 

PS: Shortly after I published this a dad I know shared this on Facebook: "Unfortunately Isaac isn't around today after all, after waiting in a cold bus station for nearly an hour I've been informed that he's not coming... Lunch will be as planned, presents and what not will have to wait until Isaac is back in new year."

Spare a thought dads and kids and families having experiences like this over Christmas.

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