If we want fathers to change their ways, we first need to change ours
Absent fathers were at the top of the list of those blamed for the moral collapse behind the riots in August. The evidence does indeed show that growing up without a father or positive father figure makes it harder to navigate the transition to adulthood. Involved fatherhood provides real protection from the dangers of educational failure and adolescent disaffection. Children who do not enjoy a supportive relationship with their fathers are much more likely to get into trouble with the law in their teenage years and to misuse drugs and alcohol (read our research summary on fathers and anti-social behaviour).
Although the research base is solid it is obscured by the mythology of absent fatherhood, which assumes that in the UK thousands of young women give birth each year to babies who will never know their father, even if their mother can remember his name. In fact, analysis of the millennium cohort study shows that 85% of live births are to fathers and mothers who live together (married or co-habiting). Most of the remaining couples who are not living together are in a relationship and many of these will move in together within 9 months of the birth. In fact, only 4% of mothers said that they were ‘not involved’ with the father of the child but even in this small group 10% of the births were attended by the fathers.
Whilst the number of babies born in circumstances where involved fatherhood seems unlikely is small it is dwarfed by the enormous caseload of children who lose contact with their fathers as a consequence of their parents’ fractured relationships. One third of UK children will see their parents separate before their 16th birthday and a third of these will come to have little or no contact with their father (read our research summary on separated families). That’s 1 million children or, in other words, an enormous problem which successive policy makers have done little to address.
The potential embarrassment for politicians comes from the way in which the public services they administer create barriers between separated fathers and their children. As soon as separation occurs we refer to the family as a single parent family, as there is only one parent available to the child. Schools and GPs pass on information to one parent only, benefits to support the cost of caring for a child go to one parent (usually the mother), whether or not the father provides significant care during the week. Housing is starkly apportioned according to which parent is regarded by the system as responsible for the child (as if only one of them is). There is little hope that a father, on leaving the family home, will be housed in accommodation suitable for his children to stay with him overnight. Not many fathers feel able to invite their children to spend a weekend amongst the transient population with whom he shares the collection of bedsits where he has been housed with no regard for the impact this will have on his ability to play a positive role in his children’s lives.
At the time of separation most men fully intend to play their part as a parent. This can be a difficult goal to achieve. I doubt there is a single MP who has not received a hefty post bag from men in all kinds of anguish at the difficulties they are facing maintaining contact with their children. And it is worth mentioning here the high levels of depression, ill health and unemployment which we find amongst separated fathers. If a number of these men fall away, exhausted and demoralised, we have to wonder why we don’t do more (or even something) to help them stay in touch.
With the notable exception of the Child Support Agency, few publicly funded services will ever suggest to separated fathers that they have something to offer their children – in the CSA’s case, of course, that something being money. Instead it seems more convenient to the system to allow these men to drift out of the picture.
This sense of convenience, of finding it easier to deal with the mother only, informs many other services used by families. From maternity services through health visitors and even parenting classes, services find it easier to engage with a mother who is present rather than a father who may only be available at certain times. The costs of talking to two parents rather than one are overestimated whilst the benefit of engaging with fathers is undervalued. The stalled progress on the moves to require both parents to be identified on a child’s birth register is a case study of this unequal approach to parenting responsibilities. These reforms were quietly shelved by the coalition government on the grounds that it would be too costly to responsibly follow up on cases where the mother was reluctant to name to father. These costs were considered to be more significant than the long term consequences for the child. As a result we still have a system where mothers are required by law to register themselves as parents whereas this remains a matter of personal choice for the father.
The child protection system has been criticised many times in serious case reviews for failing to engage with fathers of children at risk. Some fathers in these situations can of course be the people who put their children at risk – but most fathers can be a vital and positive resource. Despite this potential, services often find it simpler to manage the risks around a child through efforts focussed directly on the mother.
In the Baby P case the father of the child was living nearby and was offering to take care of him but, instead of assessing whether he was a suitable parent, the child protection team placed Baby Peter with a friend of his mother. There was very little regard for the option of strengthening the link with a father who was, months later, finally assessed and found to be a very suitable carer for Peter. Too late, as it turned out, for this to change Peter’s tragic end.
Low expectations of fathers also inform our approach to young people in the criminal justice system. The law courts seem much more keen to hold mothers to account for bringing up children than in applying this principle to fathers. Currently 80% of parenting orders are handed down to mothers – even though in half of these cases the father is living with her and may even be in the court room at the time. Why is the father’s role not recognised even when he is standing right in front of a Magistrate? By not giving parenting orders to these fathers the law courts become part of the problem. Fathers are not given the opportunity to help or, to put it another way, they are absolved of their parenting responsibilities.
Of course the courts get involved towards the end of a process, stretching backwards to the moment of conception, of placing a far greater expectation on mothers than on fathers. The magistrates can’t be blamed for continuing in the same vein. However it could be that by taking action at the end of the line, we can have a big impact on what happens further down.
By establishing a principle that fathers should always get parenting orders whenever an order is handed down to a mother we might stimulate an re-orientation of assumptions all along this continuum.
If services were aware that both parents will be held responsible for their children’s welfare up to the age of 18, whether or not they share a house together, this would challenge the easy option of helping the child by dealing only with the mother and support efforts to reorient services towards a whole family approach.. If fathers and mothers fully understoodd this principle, and were expected to uphold it this would significantly change the dynamics of their discussion at the time of separation and for years afterwards.
If we also introduce an expectation (if not a duty) on schools and GPs to communicate with both parents, rather than just the one they can most easily see, we might begin to see a system that helps to keep fathers engaged with their children throughout their childhood.
There will be objections from those who fear that dangerous and abusive fathers might be pushed back into the lives of people who are better off without them. This is a reason to be careful, but not a reason to do nothing. Of the men who lose touch with their children only one in six present significant problems as fathers. We need to invest in processes to engage the five out of six who can play a positive role for their children.
These are practical steps which will reduce the numbers of children who lose touch with their fathers. Politicians might find it convenient to blame ‘no-father’ families for social unrest If they do nothing to change the system that makes it harder for fathers to stay connected, it won’t be long before Ministers need to start pointing the finger at themselves.
