Duncan Fisher

In the last two weeks, two major reports have called for better engagement with fathers in maternity care - the Government’s new Child Health Strategy and the Children’s Society’s Good Childhood Report.  Both call for the re-instatement of good ante-natal preparation that embraces both mother and father.  96% of mothers and fathers are together during this period.

Why is this worth it?

The health of mother and baby are influenced more than anything else by their family and the vast majority of families at this point include a father.  So, whilst maternity services must have procedures to deal with single mothers, same sex partnerships and families where other members of the family play a key role, the ability to engage with mothers and fathers together must be universal.

Research has shown that engagement with fathers makes a remarkable difference to the health of mother and baby.  Programmes to promote breastfeeding, stop smoking, protect mental health, tackle poor relationships and violence and improve babycare all work very much better when both parents are involved: to such an extent that not to make inclusion of both parents part of standard practice is a deliberate decision to reduce the effectiveness of the service.

This is not how things are at the moment.  Whilst some maternity units do an amazingly good job - particularly the smaller units and ones that have midwives specialising in “parentcraft” - the reality is that what they do is discretionary and those maternity units who do not engage well with fathers remain well within the formal requirements.  In these cases, isolation of the mother from her main sources of support is common.  There is no engagement with things that influence her significantly, in particular negative influences like violence and conflict.

The Child Health Strategy is a great start, focusing on in antenatal classes for parents.  It also specifies that overnight stays for fathers should the mother wish this be part of the definition of good practice - a small triumph for the Fatherhood Institute’s campaign last year which led with this proposal.  We then need to start creating formal processes - “care pathways” - that include both parents in breastfeeding, smoking, mental health and family violence.  This is the real challenge.

Fatherhood birth, domestic violence, family, maternity