As a father, I've come to dread the appearance of Father's Day. Not because of lame presents or family members forgetting the day altogether. My son usually tries to get up early enough to make me breakfast in bed, though as he gets deeper into his teens the idea of early gets later and "breakfast in bed" means that I'm breakfasting while he's in bed. But he always rises to the occasion and provides a heartfelt, homemade card by the end of the day and a poetry anthology or a CD of what he thinks my favorite music is.

What really troubles me about Father's Day is the bad rap fathers get. Three years ago, Time magazine marked the approach of Father's Day with an article wondering "whether dads have done a good enough job to deserve the honor." Two years ago, presidential candidate Barack Obama used a Father's Day sermon to proclaim, "Too many fathers are MIA, too many fathers are AWOL." Last year, National Geographic News focused on a tribe in the Himalayas for its Father's Day coverage. The title: "No-Fathers Day: Remote Group Has No Dads, and Never Did." The concluding thought: "Are fathers really necessary?"

As another Father's Day approaches - the 100th anniversary of the first Father's Day, by the way - I ask America to celebrate, not castigate, its fathers. After all, studies and census abstracts show that more American dads are spending more time doing more things with their kids than at any time in our post-agrarian society. Almost 2 1/2 million single parents today are single fathers - an increase of more than 30 percent over the past 15 years. The number of stay-at-home dads rose nearly 60 percent between 2003 and 2008 and is expected to keep rising as the economy and family roles continue to change. Newsweek's Julia Baird reported in a recent column that "Millennial fathers - those under 29 - spend an average of 4.3 hours per workday with their kids, which is almost double that of their counterparts in 1977." Finally, a Lever study that found that four of out five dads who responded "show more physical affection to their children than their parents did with them." A startling statistic from that study was that these fathers "hug and kiss their children an average of five times a day." Startling to me, as my father never hugged me once in his lifetime. Not once.

Clearly this is not our father's Father's Day. Millions of fathers still have to step up to the plate, however. Nearly 25 million children are growing up in America without fathers - making our country the world's leader in fatherless families. A distressing 28 percent of white kids, 39 percent of Latino kids and almost 70 percent of black kids will wake up on Father's Day without a their biological fathers at home. The impact of this is devastating. Children without fathers are more prone to nearly every negative development imaginable: more drug use, more depression, more crime, higher rates of teen pregnancy, dropping out of school, gang activity - and a lifetime of poverty.

Kids need their fathers. Most won't say it in words, but they're certainly acting it out. Father advocate groups around the country are showing men how to do better. They are pushing to reform divorce laws and welfare regulations that end up separating dads from their children. President Obama has gotten involved in a positive way, providing generous funding for several fatherhood-strengthening initiatives. And a new trend is becoming clear: More dads are doing more for their kids since the days when families lived together on farms. They're demonstrating awareness that the word father isn't just a noun - it's a verb. "To father" means to be involved from the moment your child enters this world, until the very day that one or both of you leave it. Hopefully, the more fathers who do this, the fewer stories will appear about the ones who don't - which would be better for everyone.

After all, you always get better results with praise than criticism. Every good parent knows that. Happy Father's Day.