Greg Bruce: My hopes for my kids - and for myself - on Father's Day

The author has never, and will never, read Meghan Markle's book to his children. Photo / Getty Images

For Father's Day, Greg Bruce gives himself the gift of reflecting on fatherhood.

My children are 4, 6 and 8.

I love that sentence. I could stare at it all day. I wish I could leave it there, untarnished by the 800 or so words that follow. The simplicity of it, the three even numbers, the perfectly regular spacing, all implying a well-planned, ordered and stable family life, with a steady developmental arc.

Here's a less fact-heavy but more accurate version of the same sentence: My children are oh no, oh God, please don't, oh dear.

When I first became a father, I had high hopes for myself and, in some ways, I still do but the more time passes and the more children we accumulate, the further downwards I have ratcheted the scale of hope. The first Father's Day after Tallulah was born, Zanna gave me a card reading, "You might be a new dad, but I'm pretty sure you're the best dad." At the time, I believed those words but now I laugh at the naivety of that narcissistic idiot, as I will no doubt laugh, in eight years' time, at the idiot writing this, and then, eight years thence, at the subsequent idiot, and so on unto death. The only thing I suspect will never change is my tendency to idiocy. It's a quality I hope my children don't share, but what chance do they have? Despite their youth, I already see in them many of my foibles and weaknesses and I can only hope the work done by their mother and other family, friends, societal structures and institutions, is counteracting me and shaping them into something other than me: something without my idiocy and, preferably, also my self-loathing.

After lunch last Saturday, the three of them began playing together as a happy and self-sustaining unit, which is rare and wonderful and never lasts long, so I snuck into my room, shut the door and picked up Patricia Lockwood's memoir, Priestdaddy, which I had been very much enjoying. After a couple of minutes, I heard through the wall Casper (4) say to his sisters: "Don't worry! I've got something you can kill!" Not only did I not investigate but I don't feel bad that I didn't. I made a moral decision to maximise my time with Priestdaddy and as a result I got 10 more minutes before they found me and made me pretend to be their horsey, despite the fact I've recently had a lot of pain in my right knee.

Although family life continues to be of notably high intensity and emotional pitch, it is dramatically easier now than it was when they were all under 4, when knee-grinding horsey games would sometimes last all week. It is possible now to have brief social interactions with them not involving whinnying and getting whipped with a plastic golf club. For instance, last weekend, over lunch, we had quite a serious family conversation during which Zanna asked them what they want to be when they grow up. Tallulah (8) said she wanted to own a horse riding academy, Clara (6) said she wanted to be an artist and Casper said he wanted to be an Olympic shot-putter.

It was interesting to me because I almost never think of my children in terms of what they might become, which is strange, because, before they were born, and when they were babies, I thought about it all the time. I think this is to do with my increasing understanding of parental control and influence. I understand now, in a way I didn't then, that I'm not riding the horse but being dragged along behind it while my children yell at me that I'm not dragging properly.

I have practical concerns for my children, particularly around the impossibility of them ever being able to afford to buy their own house in this city, or even to rent. How will Casper survive as a shot-putter, or Clara as an artist, in what is less a society than a failed real estate experiment? My greatest hope for their financial security is that their older sister will funnel them some of the profits from the riding academy at which they will be forced to work as volunteer labour, but we all know she won't.

I don't doubt it's possible for my children to become the things they dream of, but dreams change constantly and are usually an inaccurate estimate of what we need for happiness anyway. When I worry about their lives, which I do constantly, it's not usually about practicalities, but about their mental health. The last thing I want is them growing up with a tendency to worry constantly.

As a new dad, eight years ago, I thought parenting would get easier once my children stopped pooing on the kitchen table and screaming all night and much of the day. In terms of much of the physical burden and drudgery, I have been proven correct, but in terms of the emotional burden, I was way off. What I really hope for my kids, as they grow and find their way in the world, is that they also find a way to relieve me of that.