The fact my relationship with my son is so good makes me forgiving of my father and also appreciative.

My father rebelled ferociously against his conservative upbringing where his father physically abused him.

My father raised us to step toward trouble rather than to step away from it.

As a father now, I wouldn't do what my dad did, because it left me feeling emotionally unstable as a kid. But he didn't do the things he did out of selfishness or malice.

Children have the right to grow up in a family with a father and mother capable of creating a suitable environment for the child's development and emotional maturity. Today marriage and the family are in crisis. We now live in a culture of the temporary, in which more and more people are simply giving up on marriage as a public commitment.

I grew up in Denton, east Manchester, and was raised by my late father, Reg, a barber.