Am I a good father? Last week online readers of the Financial Times, Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal were accosted by this question in a big white banner advertisement paid for by UBS. As I glanced at it two further questions occurred to me: a) what business is that of a bank? and b) what about mothers?

“For some of life’s questions you are not alone. Together we can find an answer” the advertisement went on. So I clicked through, and it turns out that the bank has found an answer already. The trick to being a good father is to hand over your money to UBS. “We can . . . help you plan for the future, and provide the life you want for your loved ones.”

This raises a further question: whether chutzpah and disingenuity work as a marketing strategy. I pondered this for a bit, but then lost interest and returned to the FT website. There the question was again. Am I a good father? And am I a good mother?

It might seem odd given that I’ve had 24 years in which to consider the matter, but until now I have avoided asking myself this question. That is partly because of the pointless guilt that comes with it, but it’s also because I have four children, who have needed very different things from me at different times. Some of those things, like fish fingers and early bedtimes, have been easy to provide. Others have been much harder. Sometimes things go to plan. More often they don’t.

Yet my shrinking from the question is mainly because I don’t know what it means to be a good parent. What is the standard? Am I a better mother than my friend who indulges her children’s every whim? Am I a worse one than the friend who made sure her children could speak three languages, knew all the Greek legends and had won gymnastics medals by the time they were eight? Which of us is best? And who is the arbiter?

Working out if you are good at something is usually fairly straightforward. Am I a good columnist? I can count readers and gauge their responses. Am I a good cook? The answer lies in my signature dish, a soggy pasta with sausages. But am I a good mother? To this important question, the answer eludes me.

So I have done what I always do when in doubt. I turned to my colleagues, and sent them a mass email asking if they considered themselves good parents, and if so, why.

Silence

The first response was silence. Either

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journalists have wearied of such questions from me, or were equally at a loss. Of the 40 that answered, almost all were men (working women evidently preferring not to approach this minefield) and almost all gave the same answer: yes.

Their reasons fell into three groups. The first measured success in terms of the process – what they put in. They were good parents because they made origami dinosaurs for three-year-olds. Or because they had steadfastly forgone excessive golf and alcohol.

The trouble with this is that there is no agreement on what the process should be. Can you be a good father and have a golf handicap in single figures? Can you be a good one and have no idea how to fold a piece of coloured paper? I don’t see why not.

The next set of answers looked at the end result, treating child as product. Many colleagues said they were good fathers because their kids had turned out well. But this is less compelling. Some children were born with a predisposition for being fine. Others less so.

The third group saw the child not as product but as customer. One colleague asked his son if he was satisfied with his parenting, and the son said yes. The fact he had just been promised Fifa 2016 for Christmas, my colleague assured me, had nothing to do with it.

Better judges

Possibly children become better judges of their parents as they get older and have children of their own. One colleague said he knew he was a good father because his grown-up children liked his company enough to go on holiday with him.

Yet I still do not think this will do. Were my parents good? I want to say: yes, they were wonderful. But they never made me do my homework and allowed me to wander around London alone from a very young age – something that would now necessitate a visit from social services.

In any case I ought not to trust my answer because they were different times; memory is unreliable; love clouds judgment and because I do not have any point of comparison.

In the end, parenting is not like cooking. There is no accepted process, and neither is there any product or customer. The question asked by UBS makes no sense.

As one colleague put it, writing in just 12 words what I’ve struggled to say in 850: “It’s a labour of love – good and bad don’t come into it.” Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2015