Fathers of America, are you a Cliff Huxtable dad — or more like Homer Simpson?

Do you work from home at a high-paying job and preside over a well-rounded family that always seems to be smiling? Or are you a couch-potato slob with a juvenile delinquent apprentice for a son, lurching from pratfall to catastrophe?

Most likely you're in between, doing the best you can as provider, mentor, partner, protector. You are neither happy beyond reproach nor clueless beyond belief. Mostly, you are wondering whether you're doing enough.

Here's to the millions of American fathers who, on this day and the other 364, are trying to get it right.

For fathers without jobs or worried about losing them, the Cliff Huxtable fantasy is no help. Fathering in good times is hard enough.

There are few institutions in American society that have endured such examination, and criticism, as fatherhood has over the past 40 years. Much of both is warranted. Too many men still believe that fathering ends after a moment of physical gratification, and walk away.

With alarmingly high rates of American children growing up without a male figure in their lives, the pathology's effects are all too familiar: higher dropout rates, higher crime, higher poverty, and more pressure on the women left to hold things together.

The response has been mostly episodic, not systemic. Movements ebb and flow, like the responsible fatherhood crusade Promise Keepers, and they are not for every man. Some initiatives have shown promise. The conversation goes on, and so does the problem.

Popular culture rarely gives us a fair, centered, realistic picture of fatherhood.

Harris Interactive's recent online poll found that Bill Cosby's 1980s Huxtable character is viewed by people of all ages as the top TV dad, followed by the '50s icons Ward Cleaver ("Leave it to Beaver") and Jim Anderson ("Father Knows Best"). Highly idealized, their problems rarely went beyond the occasional baseball through a neighbor's window. The latter two's unchallenged patriarchal roles gave no hint of the post-World War II frictions that would lead to the women's movement of the 1960s.

The model of dysfunctional fatherhood also makes Harris Interactive's list.

Tied for 14th: The misogynistic Al Bundy of "Married with Children," and Simpson, the cartoon buffoon whose creators single-handedly have made "D'oh!" the most recognizable fatherhood expression of the 21st century.

Other fathers who made the list were mostly idealized patriarchs like Mike Brady ("The Brady Bunch") or heroic men of action like Ben Cartwright ("Bonanza").

The most controversial came in at No. 12.

Archie Bunker's "All in the Family" was revolutionary for what the show confronted, however untidily, in the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate.

Carroll O'Connor's Archie was bigoted, sexist, loud and often wrong. He made you cringe. But he touched more real feelings than Ward Cleaver ever did and showed how families could be torn apart, and could hold together, during huge cultural changes all around them.

In the end, that was Archie's biggest contribution to fatherhood.