Although the terms mother and father come to mind, such terms are limited to biological activities. A female can sustain a new being in the womb for some 267days, whereas a male need only provide the sperm yet not even deliver it in the most basic animal fashion.

With my girl friend pregnant I found myself distant from the heart of the party that I felt I had all but instigated.

I am all too aware of the distance I have felt, which though consciously obscure for a long time has come to my recent attention. Over the follows years, nay! decades, I struggled to make myself important as a a parent. It has become clear that I had two ways of measuring my performance, a) against some ideal, which I never thought would be a walk on the shore and b) comparing my efforts to those of the other parent, the one that was the mother and won't let go of the creatures, pets. Let's not call them children as though they are somewhat bound and weakened by having parents.

So to cut a very long story down to a few more words there are auras of parenting, so a list would help me here.

• The womb
• Breastfeeding
• General parenting where both parents are availble 24/7
• As above but only one parent is available 24/7, almost impossible for single parents
• Estranged parents, those that spend little time with their offspring. As this category contains the largest group it will be useful to sub-dived it : later
• Token parents. A parent that has become so estrange, maybe after divorce that they see the child/ren every other weekend. They have little if no parenting skills but act as a part time carer.
• And so into the darkness from whence we all come and go, and spend the in-between time playing with the bumps in the night