AS I open my inbox one day in May, among the usual daily news updates, banking alerts and spam for free Viagra, one phrase in particular catches my eye: Father's Day.

The reminders in my office email become almost hourly in the week up to the day itself, suggesting everything from manicures and massages to parachuting experiences and mountain climbing trips as appropriate ways to express appreciation. Walking down the high street, I notice that every window is filled with gifts, signs and cards. Even at the supermarket I'm confronted with World's Best Dad mugs and socks, at two for a tenner. Father's Day is everywhere.

As someone who grew up without their dad, you'd think I would feel some sort of emotion at all the commercial bumph and over-the-top adverts. But the opposite is true: I'm left feeling completely blank.

My dad, father, Da – whatever you want to call him – is a nonentity to me. I've never met him, never spoken to him, never heard his voice. I barely know anything about him except his name, which really is of no use.

My mum and he met briefly through relatives, she became pregnant and he had no interest in becoming a dad. That's the end of it. Despite my lack of emotion on Father's Day, it does make me contemplate what life would have been like with a mum and dad, and how I may have been different if I'd been brought up by them both.

I know I’m not alone in this, I can’t be. According to Government reports for the year I was born – 1989 – around 3,700 other babies were registered in Scotland with only their mothers' names on the birth certificates – around six per cent of the overall population.

That is not to say these were all babies born to single mothers bringing up their children alone, but further research does suggest many mums who don’t put the father’s name on the birth certificate are “lone mothers”.

Search for "children without fathers" online today and a whole host of horrifying results fill Google's first page.

According to one study by scientists at Canada's McGill University, the structure of my brain has been permanently altered, and I am more aggressive than my two-parented peers. A further article suggests I am more likely to have alcohol and drug addiction, while another says I am 32 times more likely to become a criminal and spend time in jail.

Other studies indicate I am more prone to depression, low self-esteem, and that during adolescence I was twice as at risk of suicide than my peers with both parents at home.

My educational achievements should most likely be lower and I've probably grown up, and will remain, in poverty. The more I read, the more astonished I am. Not because of the results, but because there is so much research out there about “fatherless” people. Why, I wonder, are they so interested?

Scientists have studied people like me for years, and have come up with their own varying conclusions about what a fatherless existence does to children. They don't just stop at childhood though, and they don't all agree on their findings. The more I delve into the subject, the more I find out what predictions have been made about the rest of my life based on my lack of dad.

One article says I'm probably going to have a “consistently lower wage” than my peers, and that I'm now, as an adult, five times more likely to take my own life. Being a woman without a father can lead to increased feelings of abandonment in later life, and psychological problems. One pro-marriage advocate even described fatherlessness as “the most harmful demographic trend of this generation”.

It's hard to argue with so much research, but I have to because it doesn't reflect my own experiences at all. Certainly some of those things apply to my life, but not all of them. I'm not more aggressive than my peers and I've never been in prison. I did grow up in a family without much money, but one which was full of love, and I don't think I'm less well off now than most of my friends. I did well in primary and secondary school, and went to university at the age of 17, graduating before I was 20 with better grades than more than half of my year, who were significantly older. I've always had a strong will and determination to succeed, particularity when I'm told I'll fail – and I thank my mum for that.

As a child, I had no idea we all had to have two parents. I was so used to it just being me, my mum and my three siblings that nothing else entered my tiny brain. My siblings – two sisters and a brother, all older – did have a dad, yet I didn't think anything of it.

Every summer, they would go to Ireland and stay with their father for weeks on end, and I'd be in Glasgow, being looked after by my gran, aunts, uncles and cousins while Mum was at work. At the time she had a range of jobs – call centre, pubs, whatever she could do to make ends meet – so I spent a lot of time with relatives. I have fond memories of those times, where I had some peace and quiet in a usually chaotic house and free rein to watch what I wanted on TV.

When I started primary school, I'd go to friends' houses and they all had two parents. The penny still hadn't dropped.

That all changed, however, during one Easter while holidaying on the small island of Millport, near Largs, where we went every year.

A friend from my school also went with her family so we would meet up regularly, playing all day in the rock pools and on the beach until we got hungry enough to go back home. On this particular day we were climbing into some cave or another and she asked: “What does your dad do?”

“Oh, I don't have one,” I matter-of-factly replied, and that was that. No more questions asked.

A few hours later, when we were back at her house drying our sodden shoes by the radiator, she turned round to her mother sitting by the window and told her I didn't have a dad.

“Don't be silly.” she said, abruptly. “Of course she has a dad.”

The two of them just looked at me as if I had three heads. I still remember the confusion I felt when that sentence tumbled out of her mouth, so clumsily.

“Eh, no. I actually don't. Really.” I replied.

“Well everyone has a dad.” she said. “Everyone has a mum and a dad. You can't not have a dad.”

At that point, seven-year-old me couldn't believe what I was hearing. It was as if my whole understanding of the world was wrong; as if there was this big thing that nobody had told me about and I'd just been blundering along not even realising I didn't know. What an idiot.

Immediately I started asking my mum questions. Who was he? What did he look like? Where is he now? What does he do? Why is he not here? Why have I not met him?

Mum gave me a photograph and told me his name, which I wrote on the back of the picture and put it in a frame in my room. Within about three days I'd lost interest.

No sooner had my lust for information about my father appeared than it was gone. The photograph was stuffed in a drawer, and I wouldn't contemplate him, or ask about him, for another decade.

It wasn't until a particularly turbulent period around the age of 18, when I had several health problems, that I started wondering again about my father.

I remember being in a bright yellow doctor's office in Maryhill, looking at a smiley young woman opposite me who was asking about my family's medical history, while going through a checklist of any known familial health issues.

"Cancer? Irritable bowel? Kidney failure? Heart problems? Arthritis?' she said, to which I replied "no" automatically.

I glanced over at the plastic-looking bed in the corner of the room, then at poster on the wall warning: "Germs. Wash your hands of them." Meanwhile, the doctor was typing slowly into the computer.

Then it suddenly dawned on me, the same way as it had when I was seven, that I had no idea about what she just asked me.

“I need to explain,” I said, in an embarrassed tone.

“Uhhmm, well I only know my mum's side of the family, and they certainly don't have anything like that, not that I know of,” I said, desperately hoping I wouldn't be asked about the other 50 per cent of my DNA. I wasn’t, thankfully, but from that day my curiosity about who my dad is has lingered.

That’s not to say I’m dying to meet him. I would like to know if there are any crazy health problems on his side of the family, and perhaps what he's been doing for the past three decades ... Maybe even, if I was feeling brave, why he thought it was OK to leave a pregnant woman without so much as a telephone number when she was carrying a child, put there by him.

Apart from that, I still don't care. I don't crave an emotional connection with my dad, the way some people might, and I certainly have never felt as though I've missed out on anything. My mum made sure of that.

Talking with her last week, she said she was very conscious that I would grow up without a father figure, even before I was born, but wanted to make sure I still had male role models.

She actively encouraged that, she said, which is why my three uncles were so involved in my life from a young age.

Memories of them taking me for milkshakes after school, or organising sleepovers with my cousins at weekends, came flooding back as we talked.

My mum grew up without a father – he died when she was just a baby – so she knows what it feels like to not have one in your life. If it was up to her, she explained, she would have liked me to have had that influence but it wasn't her decision. She also didn't want me to have a dad "for the sake of it" and so accepted the fact I would just have to do without.

Having already had three children by the time I came along, she was an expert at changing nappies, cooking from scratch and doing the school run, all while juggling several different jobs and making sure we were all OK.

My incredible gran, with her curly white hair, flash of lipstick and well-pressed outfits, was always helping out too and we all turned out alright. So to you Dad, Father, Da … whatever you are called, on Father’s Day … Thanks for, literally, nothing. I wouldn't want it any other way.