My father. Tricky one. He is completely non-judgemental, and would always help me if I were in trouble, financially or practically. I will never forget how he helped me when, many years ago, I was getting middle of the night nuisance calls which scared me rigid. Eventually I mentioned it, and he sprang into action; this is well before BT took nuisance calls seriously. He pulled in a contact he had in the police; within minutes I had a trace set up on my phone.
Emotionally though? Prep school, public school, army, impressive career; he is quite detached. Kind, but never gives away what he is thinking. To be honest, much happier reading the paper than he is spending time with his children or grandchildren. If I drop in, he assumes I am there to chat with my mother; he carries on reading the paper. When family things go wrong he gently detaches and leaves it to my mother to try and sort things out. He adores my mother though, she can’t do anything wrong in his eyes. So I had a very secure childhood growing up in terms of family stability, and that is a huge positive.
When my sister and I were children he was not a hands on father. Occasionally he would build us a Lego house or a sandcastle on the beach; he provided for us financially (and I don’t underestimate the importance of that) and if we had been in trouble he would have attempted to help. Luckily neither of us needed help to that extent. But he was not fundamentally interested in us or what was going in our lives, probably as a result of his own upbringing, so it wasn’t really his fault. I don’t feel, however, that he is proud of me and what I have achieved. He might be, who knows, but he never would never say so.
DH, who had an equally buttoned-up father, is an amazing, involved and proud father to our DS.