What wasn't mentioned were the resource management aspects of the job.

Children, through little fault of their own, accumulate stuff at a phenomenal rate. Wardrobes clog up with clothes you swear were worn once before the sleeves end up nearer the elbows than the wrists.

But the bigger fight seems always to be with toys, and how to keep them under some kind of control. It always feels a losing battle, ground only temporarily gained by Mum holding a biannual sort-and-donate afternoon.

Mum: "Are we keeping this or chucking?" Kids: "Keeping!!"

I'm sure I'm not alone in wishing you could put a 'Strictly, no gifts please' on an eight-year-old's party invitation. For some reason that doesn't fly with the party girl.

But for all this complaining, completely undermining my efforts on this front is a weakness for nostalgia, that emotion that can find you at odd times.

It struck me in the movies at the weekend watching the preview to Toy Story 4. Introduced to us was Forky, a toy that wasn't meant to be a toy; a plastic fork fashioned into a doll with pipecleaners for arms and glued-on googly eyes.

Forky's adamant he doesn't belong among the rest of the gang. He went so far as to leap out of a moving campervan to get away from them. As far as he's concerned, he's just a disposable utensil that should be used and thrown in the bin as per his destiny. Hey kids, let's talk about nihilism!

Of course Woody leaps out after him, and having been rescued Forky asks with alarm: "Why am I alive?"

Buzz replies: "Because you're Bonnie's toy. You are going to create happy memories that will last for the rest of her life".

With that one line, those clever buggers at Disney/Pixar got my measure.

I turned my thoughts to my dad and his toy that was never meant to be a toy. As its owner approaches his 80^th birthday, my dad's own version of Forky remains a treasure, perhaps as much to the wider family as it is to him.

Dad's treasured toy is 'Duck', a rusted old hinge from a gate from a farm in south-east Queensland.

Growing up during World War II, a busted bit of fence was all a farm kid could reasonably hope for. My dad, to the best of his memory, never really wished for more.

He adored this bit of steel. It was his pet and friend, dragged around the dirt with a piece of string through its eye.

Imagination took the pair on adventures around farm, past crops and watchful cows, the pair checking their footsteps for brown snakes.

Unlike my dad, I never had to make do with bits of farm junk. I did just fine with toys. And when I grew out of my favourites, I couldn't throw them all out. They were packed away to take up space under Mum and Dad's house in a vague expectation they'd enjoy a second coming some day.

There they sat boxed up until my own kids came along. So out they came. For the past few years 'Dad's toys' have been gradually absorbed into my children's sprawling collections. The kids love what is a decent stash of 80s and early 90s toys.

There's Matchbox cars, of course. A few dozen Micro Machines. A similar number of brightly coloured plastic Monsters in My Pocket. There's a Transformer that experienced one transformation too many. There's a box of The Simpsons figurines.

A little unusually, perhaps, is a large stash of McDonalds Happy Meal toys. I figure most people chuck these things out, but not me.

But of all the toys I held onto, the big treasure was a Lego castle. Thanks to online Lego fandom, I now know it by its proper name Black Falcon's Fortress 6074-1.

When I showed my son the dusty but intact castle two or three years ago, his eyes nearly fell out of his head.

He has much more Lego than I ever did (I could write a separate column on the conflict between huge Lego collections and parental sanity), but he was almost speechless at seeing his dad's pride and joy.

We agreed it would sit on a bookshelf, coming out for a careful play every now and then. It was a bit of a treat. But a couple of weekends ago, in a bid to reclaim some of that bookshelf for, you know, books, we brought the castle down for good.

"Play with it mate, it's yours to do with it what you like," I said to the now 10-year-old. He seemed hesitant, worried about doing something wrong with it. I left him to it.

Last weekend, as he was surrounded as usual by a sea of bricks, I was happy to see he'd got over his hesitance and had started breaking it down and building it up with his own bricks and his own imagination.

Smoke plumes were added, a Viking boat appeared at the moat, and, of course, a random space ship flew overhead.

For me, seeing that happen was perfect. I suppose it's what I must have had in mind as a teenager when I packed it away feeling I'd grown out of it but hoping it would have another life.

As Woody said to Forky, a toy's job is to create happy memories. Watching fondly as kids play with things, as my granddad no doubt did as his boy dragged around a rusted hinge all those years ago, you can imagine the memories being imprinted in a happy mind.

It's one of those sweet little moments of parenthood. And it makes you feel a little more merciful the next time you feel a toy cupboard purge coming on.