I got some pants in the post this morning, from my Mum. This may strike you as rather odd behaviour, and it certainly came as a bit of a surprise but to be fair, there is a reason behind this rather strange delivery. For a while now my wife and daughter have been making the absurd claim that I need to invest in some new underwear. Their single, rather flimsy, justification for this, is that some of my pants do have holes in them, and there are perhaps a few which are elastically-challenged. To a woman, the appearance of even a single hole seems to be sufficient justification to discard an otherwise perfectly reliable pair of underpants for ever, whereas men tend to be more inclined (I like to use the phrase, more sensible) to keep the items in question for as long as they are of use, even if they no longer retain the pristine appearance they once had. Clearly there is a big divide between the sexes here - as Reginald Perrin put it (albeit he was talking about the staff of Perrins, his commune for the middle-class and the middle-aged rather than, erm, pants) like an old jumper, they may be a little bit torn here, and a little bit torn there, but a man feels comfortable having them around him. Mind you, my wife doesn't even accept that Y-fronts are a perfectly valid underwear option, so there is clearly very little common ground for us to start from.

Anyway, to cut a long story short (see, there is a first time for everything) last Saturday we were down at my parents' house and somehow the issue of my underwear came up. I can't now remember the context in which this arose, which suggests the kind of embarrassing trauma that any truly reliable subconscious mind would have suppressed. My wife and daughter put forward their standard party line that my pants were nothing more than a collection of rags held together by a wing and a prayer - in theory I could have rebutted this argument by, well, by showing my pants but I thought that would be going a bit far. Besides, I couldn't immediately remember which pair I had on, and it was possible that I might have been wearing a rare pair that actually were past their best - unlikely I know, but not outside the realms of possibility.

As parents tend to do, this little insight into her child's life was mentally filed away by my Mum, with the result that here we are less than a week later with the unheralded delivery of five new pairs of pants. I suspect there are two questions uppermost in your mind now, dear reader - first, "Five? What's he going to do on Saturday and Sunday?!" and "Isn't that rather odd behaviour, considering he's in his 30s?" The covering note to the parcel says that Mum "didn't like to think of [me] with ragged pants". I can't honestly believe she's actually been losing sleep over it, although my Mum did use to (maybe still does for all I know) dream about toilets, so her psyche may be up for debate; but even so it's clearly something that's been lingering at the back of her mind, troubling her.

Going back to the two questions (well the second one anyway) it's quite true to say that I could buy underwear for myself - indeed, my wife has offered on several occasions, but I have yet to be swayed by the argument that there is some kind of underwear crisis. My drawer is crammed full with pants (granted some of the bulk is made up of socks - er, in my drawer I mean, not in my pants) and there are a great many of them which don't have holes. Or at least, they don't have enough holes to stop me wearing them which is surely the same thing. But I suppose the fact is that parents never quite lose the instinct of looking after their children, even when logic and reason would suggest otherwise.

Take another example, if you don't believe me - I'm only 32, but my boss is 55. His mother is nearly 90, and he has been married for more than 20 years. And yet every Tuesday he goes round to his Mum's for his tea, basically so that she can be sure he is getting at least one proper meal a week! I don't imagine that it's meant as a malicious slight against his wife, it's more to do with the fact that deep down parents never think anybody can look after their children quite the way they do. My grandmother (Mum's Mum) never visits my parents without bringing something - when I lived at home she would always visit with her shopping basket full of things, and I'm sure she's just the same now. Ironically I think it always used to slightly irritate my Mum, and yet she now does the same thing when she visits us.

Perhaps, though, it isn't as strange, or ridiculous, as it sounds. Habits are hard things to shrug off - and if the 'habit' of the parent is to look out for and look after their children, the question isn't "Why do they do it when the children are grown up?" but rather "Why would they stop?" At what point would they suddenly wake up one morning and think, "They're grown up and can fend for themselves"? Or to put it from a different angle, has anybody suddenly woken up one morning as an adult and thought, "I'm grown up now and can do everything for myself with no need for parental assistance." There is no 'Damascus Road' moment, surely, no clear end to 'child' and start to 'adult' that clarifies this issue.

Anyway (and you can tell I wouldn't use the following sentence if I wasn't one myself) it's not all the fault of the parents. If we as children allow our parents to do it, then we're just encouraging them. And I suppose deep down it is nice to have somebody more grown-up and more responsible to be looking out for you. My maternal Grandpa was clambering around in my Aunt's attic fixing her plumbing when he was well into his seventies - and I suspect that if you asked him why, it would come down to the fact that he was taking care of his daughter because, well, because that was his job!

I had intended (having taken a sneaky look at the calendar, and also every shop window in town) to write something about Fathers' Day this week, or at least about Fathers in general. The unexpected arrival of my new pants has rather overtaken that, but I don't think it would be too much of a leap to move from that to fatherhood. Yes, it was my Mum who sent me the pants (I'm wearing them now by the way, well one of them anyway - so if anybody was wondering whether I was writing this in the manner of Germaine Greer, the answer is no) but if there's something wrong with the car, or if I don't fancy reversing it out of the appallingly narrow front drive at my parents' house, or if I have a question about the plumbing, or even if I want somebody to implode the innertube on an old television, I call for Dad!

I think that in general Fathers' Day is far more a product of commercialism than Mothers' Day. Certainly in the UK, Mothering Sunday (which is different to the American Mothers' Day) has far more history than Fathers' Day - a quick browse on the Internet indicates that the latter was started in 1910 in the USA, whereas the former dates back to the 17th Century - and the encouragement of Fathers' Day tends, I feel, to be more a mix of token equality and selling more cards, rather than a heartfelt dedication to male parents. That's fine, and I certainly don't intend to underplay the importance of Mothers, but if there's one thing that annoys me (and of course, as has already been well noted, there are in fact several) it's the 'know-it-all' attitude you see exhibited by some women as regards children, and specifically the area of pregnancy and birth.

As ever, I've enjoyed the recent series of "Coupling" on (does anybody know why?) BBC Three, and I don't object to the portrayal as Steve as completely panic-stricken father-to-be. Having said that, I did find his embracing of the C-Section as a 'Good News' solution a little unsettling - although it was made up for in part by the honesty of the final few minutes. Unusual territory for a sitcom, what with Steve's almost complete disinterest in his son until the baby looks at him, but it did highlight one thing, which is that towards the end of the birth things can be very difficult.

Back when my daughter was still waiting the cue for her entrance (or her exit, depending on your point of view) I heard on various occasions, from various women that, as regards shoving a melon through your bottom, it does hurt (not a big surprise there) but as soon as you see the melon-- sorry, the baby you forget all about that, because it's your child, and you love them, etc, etc. A little while after our daughter was born, I suggested to my wife that this is all very sweet and lovely, but more likely they forget because by that point in the birth (whether they're drugged up or not) they are like somebody with a fever - not exactly delirious, but certainly not totally lucid or 'with it'. A fair assessment in my opinion, but I do recall my wife rebutting this suggestion, almost as if she was offended by it.

Far be it from me to do the 'expert' routine (as an aside that's another annoying thing about some women, although not my wife I'm pleased to say - having given birth themselves once or twice they assume to know it all... which is why my mother-in-law and a family friend sent my wife and I to the maternity unit on Valentine's Day 1997 because, despite my wife insisting she wasn't, and despite it being two months early, they were certain she was in labour) but as far as what state women are in late on in the birthing process, I would think men are more reliable witnesses than women. On the score of giving birth, yes, it's one-nil to the female sex; but as regards being there to see someone giving birth, and even allowing for the number of men who don't stay (my ex-boss was quite a tough nut, ex-Navy, but he had three children and hadn't been in the delivery room for any of them) there are surely a lot, a lot, more men who've been there to see it than there are women.

I'm not downplaying the ordeal of giving birth, but the "oh men could never cope with it" brigade are maddening. That's not far away from claiming that giving birth is the most important part of being a mother, and by extension that's akin to saying that the process of conception is the most important part of being a father. Well that's clearly not the case - to misquote the Master from Doctor Who ("Logopolis" part 4 in case you are left wondering): "a humble turkey baster could do it."

I don't intend for this to come across as a rant against mothers (how could I, when they still buy you pants when you, allegedly, need them), but rather to make some comment on fathers. In this modern age of 'new man' the role of father is as easy to underestimate as it is difficult to quantify. It would have been really nice to pen (well, type) a column clarifying what a father is for and what a father should be, but having not the faintest idea, I have instead resorted to floundering about, trying to do the best I can, and just hoping it works out OK. Ah... now that does sum up fatherhood...

So, with due respect to Mothers, can I finish by saying, here's to Fathers, and also here's to pants. May they continue to give us the support we truly need.

P.S. It's all well and good for me to witter on about free pants and valet parking (well, reversing) - I was lucky to have two parents who were always around, and am also lucky to still have them. But I'm aware that a lot of people aren't and weren't so lucky, whether that be because their parents aren't together, or are absent, or whatever. In some cases the mother ends up playing the role of father as well (and, yes, vice versa). For that matter, my wife doesn't know who her 'real' father is. On the other hand, she does have a stepfather, who is as good a father (and grandfather) as anybody could be - he even gave her away at our wedding, just as he should.

So here's to Fathers, and to 'Fathers', everywhere.