Dialogue: Who even noticed when Dad went away for a week?

When is Father's Day? Most people I ask are unsure about exactly on which Sunday in September this falls as they're waiting for retail advertisers to tell them.

It's not exactly a celebration that's committed to memory like, say, Valentine's Day. In fact, these days kids are more likely to know when Hallowe'en falls than Father's Day. But according to the Smith and Caughey menswear department, an authority on such matters, Father's Day is next Sunday.

This is the day we should celebrate the role of Dad with renewed enthusiasm since it's been kind of thrown on the back burner over the past few years.

Once upon a time we all knew our place, and despite sexism seething below the surface, life moved to a comforting and familiar rhythm.

We had very defined roles in the household. The nuclear family was alive, and within this Dad was the boss. Being the family focal point, his arrival home from work was a signal for kids to settle down and for dinner to begin.

As king of the household he ran the finances, made all the major decisions, including which TV programmes the family would watch and was the ultimate disciplinary figure, with Mum acting as the court of appeal. He earned all the dough, the exact amount often remaining a mystery to Mum as she was given her weekly allowance from which she fed and clothed the family.

And then about 30-odd years ago the women's revolution started changing all that. Not only were there new, exciting roles for Mum outside the home but also divorces and separations which saw Dad become a bit of an absentee figure. Dad in his traditional role started to become a little redundant.

While inequalities such as the gender pay gap still exist, women can't deny that they've come a long way. And as women have embraced increased opportunities in their external world they've encouraged, perhaps inadvertently, a power shift in the household.

These days the house revolves around the kids more than Dad, and the master puppeteer is Mum. She runs everything: her own life, the kids' life and Dad's, too. She is party to, if not making, every major decision in the household.

A friend, who is a father of two young teens, once went on a five-day overseas business trip. On the day of his return his wife told the kids, "C'mon let's go and pick up Dad from the airport." They looked at her quizzically, "Dad's been away?"

But as the matriarchal era marches on we are seeing a renewed interest in the role of Dads. While girls can do anything - sit on the board, play rugby, earn six-figure salaries, be Prime Minister, - we can never, of course, be Dads.

Fatherhood is coming back in vogue and we are hearing again that providing kids with a balance of input is a fine thing, even if he's not the biological Dad.

Typically, these days we don't do anything without tutorial and the skills of a male role model need to be relearned. And so we see the emergence of books and courses encouraging men to be men and teaching them how to play an active role in their kids' lives. Fathers Who Dare Win! screams one popular local title.

Meanwhile, many women complain that Dad doesn't contribute enough to the running of the household. They believe that women do everything and certainly I'd agree that, on paper, there seems to be a gross imbalance. Mum runs the household finances, still does most of the housework, contributes to the household income, sorts out the holidays, buys everyone's clothes including Dad's, makes dinner and so on, while Dad goes along with it all, maintaining a sort of lodger status in the proceedings. But is this all Dad's fault? Possibly not. Often the multi-tasking woman herself is simply taking on more and more without including him in the process.

However, I am in no way letting blokes off the hook regarding pitching in and helping out - household help and the role of Dad are two separate issues. Perhaps it is less about him shirking his duties and more about him being unsure of how to assert his role as Dad as women seem to be so darned capable.

As a midwife gently reminded me after I became an obsessed, control-freaking first-time mother, "Why not ask him what he thinks, dear? Remember it's his child, too."