| 1 | 1 | | Laura Cox, nearly seven, loves her Dad, Nick, a financial consultant from Banbury in |
| 2 | | Oxfordshire, because 'he makes pizza and he makes muesli, and he isn't usually cross with |
| 3 | | me, and he only tells me off when I pull Alice's hair'. Alice is three. |
| 2 | 4 | | 'Mummy usually does the telling off,' Laura says. 'Daddy does the playing part. And |
| 5 | | I love beaches. I've been to Weymouth and Wales. I like castles and I like making my |
| 6 | | Daddy a king.' |
| 3 | 7 | | This is the combination that has made Laura famous. Her painting of Mr Cox |
| 8 | | wearing a purple cloak and a yellow crown standing on top of a yellow sandcastle, with the |
| 9 | | headline 'Dad, you are the king of my castle', is this year's winner of the Post Office |
| 10 | | competition to design a Father's Day Card. |
| 4 | 11 | | It seems th at we are living in a sort of father boom. This year 22 million Father's Day |
| 12 | | cards have been bought, at an average of 98p a card. |
| 5 | 13 | | What can explain this boom? Is it simply that the card business, having already used |
| 14 | | up the other card days, is now promoting Father's Day to the same level? Or does it reflect |
| 15 | | something more substantial? In any case, the card manufacturers have run an effective |
| 16 | | campaign. |
| 6 | 17 | | I went to my local primary school to ask the children about it all. Did they know it |
| 18 | | was Father's Day soon? Ooh, yes. When was it? June 19, they chorused. And when was |
| 19 | | that? Blank faces. Almost none of them knew it was this Sunday. And then I found out |
| 20 | | why: card manufacturers have been running advertisements during children's television, all |
| 21 | | of which mentioned June 19 but none that it was this coming Sunday. Here was some |
| 22 | | rather frightening evidence of the effectiveness of television advertising. A calendar date |
| 23 | | such as June 19 doesn't mean very much to seven or eight-year-olds, but the advertised and |
| 24 | | puzzling fact slips straight into their rninds from where it is re-transmitted to the mother |
| 25 | | who will actually buy the things. |
| 7 | 26 | | The business cool-headedly uses the children as its sales force, equipped with the |
| 27 | | precise information the mothers need to make the purchase, but which the kids themselves |
| 28 | | don't actually understand. |
| 8 | 29 | | The card manufacturers are also quite cleverly diversifying their product. Nikki |
| 30 | | Mitchel, marketing planner at Hallmark Cards, described to me what she called 'the sociofactors'. |
| 31 | | Perhaps in a way that reflects the social reality, Father's Day cards, she says, are |
| 32 | | moving in three distinct directions. 'Some of our cards show Dad as more actively involved |
| 33 | | in the personal care and emotional development of their children.' This is the New Dad. |
| 9 | 34 | | 'On the other hand some fathers are becoming more detached from their children |
| 35 | | due to the increase in divorces and second marriages. In this situation Father's Day |
| 36 | | represents an opportunity to keep in touch.' This is the Distant Dad. |
| 10 | 37 | | The third type is a long way from the original intentions of Father's Day, which |
| 38 | | stressed Father as the Patriarch. Dad has given up any claim to authority and become a fun |
| 39 | | figure. 'Our research has found,' Nikki Mitchell says, 'that humorous design sales are on |
| 40 | | the increase, with the humour generally becorning more hard-hitting, that is with jokes |
| 41 | | making fun of the receiver.' That is the third category: Dad as idiot, or as the children |
| 42 | | would see it, Dad the Lad. |
| 11 | 43 | | A recent study into fatherhood showed that of all household and child-care tasks, |
| 44 | | only in car-rnaintenance, household repairs and playing with the children does the father |
| 45 | | do more than the mother. Perhaps this explains the growth in humorous Father's Day |
| 46 | | cards: he has become a child, playing with his own toys, playing with the other children |
| 47 | | and, like those children, in need of his own special day. |
