Even biological fathers find it easy to put themselves first, let alone social fathers.

My views do not show I am ‘Maltese’. They show I have insight into human nature and the capacity for empathy.

They also show I am not self-deluding.

When men and women work to convince themselves that their children (or their boyfriend’s/girlfriend’s children) are OK with the situation, that is exactly what they are doing: working to convince THEMSELVES so as to give themselves permission to carry on.

The stark, harsh reality is that no child wants to live with somebody who is not their parent. They may learn to live with it, but they will always resent it.

Grow up, and don’t kid yourself.

Did you grow up with both your parents? Well, then, here’s lesson 1 in empathy. Imagine yourself, aged 10, watching daddy go off to the bedroom with a woman who isn’t mummy.

Or mummy throwing daddy out and bringing in another man.

You’d have loved that, I’m sure. Oh, wouldn’t you?

I call them ‘real’ children not in the biological sense, of course, but in the sense that this was the family raised at the appropriate time of life, when the father was in his 20s or 30s, and in the appropriate context.

The children that come in the second round are rarely given a standard upbringing because by then the father at least is way too old.