Soon after the birth of their second daughter, Andy Box's partner suffered a paranoid-schizophrenic breakdown and he became a single parent. Moving to a new town, he had the very unusual experience, for a male, of joining the social world and role of mother.

'There were,' he recalls, 'three kinds of woman at the nurseries and mother-and-baby groups. There were the ones who went "Purrrr" and rolled their tongues - I felt like sexual prey with them. Then you've got the ones who want to mother you - "Aren't you wonderful blah blah blah." Then there's the others who say, "It's a man! Keep away from me."'

Andy found that his acceptance among other mothers came about only gradually. 'It took about a year for the mothers at the school gate to even say hello, but now I've become an honorary woman.'

He adds, 'Most of the people I know are female. Some of them even trust me to look after their kids at lunchtime.'

Despite his new-found maternal status, Andy does not agree with me that women are better able to tune into very small babies. In his experience, 'What matters is which person's around them all the time, not the sex.'

'Parenthood's not instinctive, you have to learn it. Obviously when they can talk they can tell you what's wrong, but when they're babies you learn to tell a hurty cry from a windy cry or a tiredy cry. It's learning a language.'

If anything, Andy suspects men are actually better equipped to look after babies than women. But he admits it isn't easy. 'It's the hardest job I've ever done, without a doubt, and I won't say it's been a doddle. But being a bloke you don't get as emotionally strung out, do you? Not in the same way that a woman would every month.'

It's not inconceivable that some women readers will disagree with Andy about this.

But what fascinates me about Andy's story is that he seems to have genuinely become a mother without the boobs and that, sadly, at present, his story and the happy outcome for his daughters (now seven and eight) are rarities.

In general, when small children are left with the father, rather than the mother, following a separation or death, a staggering one half of the boys will go on to obtain a juvenile criminal record and two-thirds of them will end up serving time in prison in adulthood. If left with their mother instead, it's only half as many. Obviously, this is because men are much less likely than women to look after the child properly or to find adequate substitutes.

But stories like Andy's lend the lie to the idea that it is a biological destiny. And in the next few years there will surely be plenty more capable men where Andy came from, as women increasingly allow men in as mothers, and as men realise it is possible to be both manly (and sexy) and a mother.

Except for one problem: when we are young and looking for sex, what attracts most of us has bog all to do with being a good co-parent, which brings us neatly on to next week's subject...