I know a single father, with a few children by different mothers, who has devoted himself for the past few years to exploring the roots of his own violence. He himself was abused. He lacked a positive role model in his own father, who was emotionally unavailable to him. In the past, he behaved irresponsibly. But this brought him anguish when he realised what he was missing by being a distant Dad to his children.
So he has constantly questioned himself. His lone, brave road has taken him into a painful past, but also into a hopeful future where his relationships with his children are getting better all the time. He has learned to control his anger. He takes responsibility for himself. He doesn't blame anybody else - not his own father, and certainly not the women in his life. In other words, without a positive role model, it has taken him a lifetime to learn to be a good father.
Sons need non-violent, caring, committed, nurturing fathers to help them learn how to behave in the world. Daughters, research shows, are more successful when they have fathers who believe in them. Society needs responsible fathers more than ever so that men can be role models for other men. The many fine, working fathers who are out there, quietly forming the next generation, should be a protected species.
Because in an ideal world, all children would have good fathers as role models. In the real world, fathers are becoming redundant.
Increasing numbers of women, after lifetimes of disappointment in the men in their lives, want babies, not fathers. They don't expect their lovers to function as anything more than rudimentary reproductive technology.
Men, equally, may have so little regard for their own potential as fathers that they behave as if conception had nothing to do with them. Most young, unmarried single mothers receive no financial support from the fathers of their children, according to Cherish, a support organisation.
Men may even claim to have been tricked into fathering children. Steve Bing dismisses Liz Hurley, who says she is having his baby, by saying that it was her decision to become a single parent.
Hello. Wasn't it his decision to become a parent the moment he had unprotected sex? Is this what fatherhood has come to? Are we seriously arguing over whether a man should be responsible for the child he creates? It seems that we are.
How did we get to this point? Naomi Wolf, the feminist writer, has warned that women could be undermining the foundations of society by choosing to have babies independently of men.
Society needs fathers, so women need to nurture fatherhood by having children within committed relationships. I agree with her up to a point, but it's a dangerous stance to take. Women have a responsibility to keep fathers in their children's lives, but they are not responsible for men's behaviour.
Traditionally, it was women's job to civilise men. Anthony Clare, the psychiatrist, has admitted that while his family was always a priority, it was his wife who did most of the child-rearing and kept him focused on fathering. He's typical of his generation.
But there's a sinister flip-side to making women men's caretakers.
Generations of women have surrendered themselves to abusive relationships in the interest of keeping fathers around for their children.
"I beat you up because I love you too much" is a common explanation by abusive men to their female partners and children, observes Dr Gianfranco Cecchin, an Italian psychiatrist and one of the founding fathers of Milan Systemic Family Therapy.
So fatherhood is under threat because the very thing that has traditionally defined it - male dominance - is out of step with the new order of family life.
Anthony Clare wrote in Male Violence: Dispelling the Myths: "I accept, as a psychiatrist must, that there are indeed occasions when women grossly abuse men and grossly manipulate and abuse their trust.
"But this is no competition, and the toll is ghastly and the indictment is solid. Men abuse women. Men abuse children. And men abuse each other. And it is impossible not to conclude, at the end of the 20th century, that men, all of us men, are in the deepest trouble."
Perpetrators of family violence are predominantly men, as was stated on this page last week by Michael Kimmel, professor of sociology at the State University of New York, and author or editor of 10 books about men and masculinity. Our male-dominated legal system makes excuses for "domestic" violence, refusing to take it as seriously as violence among strangers.
This has undermined fatherhood and affected all fathers, whether they are personally violent or not. It has made a generation - men and women alike - lose respect for fatherhood. To get out of the deep trouble they are in, more men have to stop blaming women, reinvent fatherhood and make it relevant. Otherwise, when fatherhood becomes redundant, men will have only themselves to blame.
John Waters is on leave