This is a story about reality. It's a little long but I wanted to say it to you.

When my daughter was only a few months old, I stumbled to bed to grab a few hours' sleep before the next feed and found my wife sitting on the edge of the bed, weeping silently and inconsolably in utter despair. I was distressed, what could be wrong?

Between sobs, she told me how awful she was finding life with the baby and cried, "I just didn't expect to feel so trapped".

I was taken aback. She had taken a year's leave from her work for a major bank, a stressful job I knew she didn't miss in the slightest. I was providing everything; in fact I'd quit my job as the head of a design agency to work freelance so that I could be at home to care for both of them. I was already successful; we lacked nothing.

So how could she possibly feel trapped? What had gone wrong?

As we talked and her tears subsided, it became clear. Those of you who have kids will know that the first little while is tough, unglamorous and grinding. But what my wife had expected was this. She'd been trained by years of rhetoric to believe that motherhood would be a beautiful, tranquil paradise entirely composed of moments like this. The screaming, shitting monster who allowed us three hours' sleep a night was something she was totally unequipped to deal with.

And that's a pattern which has continued ever since. Two years later, she's back at work and still miserable. She's successful, but at the cost of not seeing much of our daughter. She's put on weight and she's bone tired at the end of the day. Every part of her life is a protracted battle against what she was led to expect in the face of reality. And on Saturday she meets with her friends, and they have coffee, and they all lie through their teeth about how successful and happy and content they all are, before going back to guys like me and living the exact opposite.

But where did she get these expectations?

It's simple. She got them from magazines, TV programmes, movies and books. She got them from media which are perpetually under the cosh of feminism and don't dare mention anything derogatory about women, least of all the often grim reality of early parenthood. And God help anyone who says that women might find it horribly hard or (whisper it quietly) not be up to the task and fail.

She was brought up on a steady diet of garbage. She was told that she could be a mother who was not just slim, fit, healthy and beautiful, but she could have a stellar career with all the money and prestige attending it. A job lot, sold by a society which isn't allowed to sell the truth any more.

And what about me? And what does this have to do with men's rights?

Well, I was not brought up on this stream of uncontested nonsense. I was brought up by the men in my circle of friends and family. When I told my dad I was to be a father his sole comment, and this from a man who rarely swears, was, "That's hard fucking graft that. Best get your arse screwed on boy". The men in my life and the men's rights web sites I read have never been short of brutally honest about the reality of how my life, work and especially my relationship with my wife would be. They don't lie to me and so I don't lie to myself.

I rise in the morning, I get my daughter up, fed and dressed, I walk the dog, I put in a solid ten hours at my work to make hundred grand or so a year, then I meet my wife and daughter at the door every evening, cook dinner for us all, bathe my daughter and put her to bed, walk the dog some more and do the dishes. I do the garden, fix anything that needs fixed and take my daughter swimming once a week. In short I do just about everything.

At the end of the day, I am tired too. But I don't whine about it, I don't feel trapped, and I don't ask for or get a single shred of recognition for what I do - and I sure as hell don't get any affection or thanks from my wife, struggling as she is under the weight of her own terrible burden.

I can do this because you told me to expect it.

Yes, you.

You and men like you. The importance of men's rights is not just to oppose the frankly horrible reality we often find ourselves in. It's not just to work to change that reality. It's also to continually and tirelessly present reality exactly as it is instead of bullying the media into presenting a fantasy which leaves us unprepared to face our lives.

And for that - for that, I thank you.