Change Your Mind Padraig O'Morain's guide to managing life'My father was wonderful. He ran a successful business and made pots of money."
Oddly enough, that's something I've never heard. I say "oddly enough" because I suspect that many fathers judge their worth to the family by the amount of money they make.
On one level, that's fair enough. Better to be a good provider than a bad provider.
By the term "bad provider" I mean someone who chooses not to work to support his family as opposed to someone who cannot work to support his family.
But there are pitfalls to being a good provider. It's a very easy thing to get caught into a mindset in which the business or the work drives out the softer aspects of the relationship with your family.
The softer aspects include communication, time for fun, time to listen. These are the things family members recall later on.
I've heard people praise their father for taking a job at a lower income so that he could rear them, for example where the mother had died. Sometimes the father had to stop working altogether because that was the only way he could be there for his family.
These are cases in which the father's sacrifice of financial success was seen by the children in later years as something extraordinary, loving and decent to do.
Children, of course, do not realise when they are still children that there is a struggle to pay the bills and that provision has to be made for the future. I am not denying that.
The fact remains, though, that being a success and making money isn't everything when it comes to your relationship with your children.
Neither am I forgetting that there are fathers all over the world who have had to leave their families in order to support them and to build a better future for them.
However, most fathers in this country no longer have to do that. Some may work for companies which demand a corporate commitment which is incompatible with family involvement.
Often, however, they could choose to work for someone else without suffering any great financial loss.
The fact is that the value of the father to his family does not begin and end with his ability to bring in money.
That's a hard lesson for many of us to learn.
Perhaps there's a little voice in there suggesting that if your value comes mainly from your ability to provide.
Perhaps someone even told you that when you were growing up.
But where would that leave you if you lost your ability to provide through redundancy or disability?
If you believe that your only value comes from the money you earn, isn't there a danger that you will run yourself into a heart attack?
And then won't you have to stop running and won't you have to reassess your most basic assumptions?
There was a piece of research published the other day which suggested that the level of a person's IQ does not determine their satisfaction with life.
The research was done on 550 Scottish people born in 1921 who happened to have had IQ tests done when they were aged 11.
No link could be found between having a high IQ and being satisfied with their lives or having a low IQ and being dissatisfied with their lives.
Now, people with higher IQs tend to earn more money than people with lower IQs.
So one of the lessons of this piece of research is that high earnings do not equal happiness or satisfaction.
Within a family context what it means is that a big income doesn't necessarily equal family happiness or satisfaction.
So fathers who work so hard and so long that they haven't time for working on their relationship with their children might need to take a step back.
Being prepared to work hard for your family is important and praiseworthy.
But you are losing out in a big, big way if bringing home the bacon means you get to spend no time at home.
Your children want you, not your money.
Padraig O'Morain is a journalist and counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.