Forget advice: the most you can hope for from a father is love

Dads have a tendency to pass down unhelpful attitudes to their sons, particularly when it comes to their health

Shocking news this week emanating from a Health Select Committee. Amy O’Connor, who leads a campaign that focuses on men’s health (it’s called Movember and encourages men to engage in that revolting ritual of growing a moustache), offered a reason as to why men’s life expectancy had fallen farther than that of women since the pandemic.

It’s the fathers, you see, she explained. Dads have a tendency to pass down unhelpful attitudes to their sons, particularly when it comes to seeking help for health problems, or rather not seeking help.

The message being: dads need to wise up and start offering good advice to their boys. Which, in my experience, seems to fly in the face of logic. Is that really what fathers are for, to offer good advice? My brother and I often muse that our late father’s advice was indeed spot on, but only if you did the exact opposite of what he suggested. Most fathers who love their sons offer advice to their offspring framed by the perception that the children are reproductions of themselves. Thus, with their own experience of life they look at their boys and hope they can become superior versions. As a son, one should listen carefully and respectfully to one’s father’s advice and then completely ignore it.

Regarding my own father, while we avoided his advice, what remained, and remains with us 20 years after his death, is his example.

He was terrible at business and at making money, his favourite clients in financial PR were poorly-funded charities or musical outfits. But he believed firmly in the concept of a long lunch. He had huge numbers of friends who adored him; he had few enemies – if any; he was gentle, sensitive, kind, funny, constantly interested in others and showed endless love and interest towards myself, my brother and my sister. I can do the lunch bit, and if I can ape some of his other characteristics, I think I might be onto something.

And as to my own advice to my three sons (aged 19, five and three): “Just listen to your mother.”