After a period off-line, I’m back, with a whole new set of ideas about how to improve support for families. I have rejuvenated my blog (lots of pictures of leaping children!) and I have found a fantastic new foundation for my work at Connect Assist, led by Patrick Nash, the real thing when it comes to social entrepreneurship.
Why am I going to bother to blog? The answer to that question came to me in 2010 when I received a gracious email from a researcher at Nick Clegg’s office, thanking me for the ideas that she had found in my blog and had passed onto him for a speech on the family.
I have set myself four challenges:
I want to spearhead a revolution in how maternity and early years services engage with families, by making use of state-of-the-art communications – the kind of stuff that most families are far more familiar with than family services! I am working on this with Connect Assist.
I will continue to campaign for better support directly for children during family separation. I am frustrated that the Kids in the Middle campaign did not achieve this central objective.
Having sold Dad.Info to Family Matters Institute, I’m helping them to build it up as an on-line resource for fathers – it already gets 10,000 visitors a month, but it could do so much better! We are also working on a new project, Fathers’ Breakfasts, a fantastic corporate programme originating in New Zealand – we want to get the Prime Minister to speak at the first event.
Following my study in 2011 for Action for Children on children and social capital, I want to see the work of Dr Gary Melton in USA given proper consideration in UK. He demonstrated fantastic reductions in abuse and neglect through a programme that focused on getting families to help each other, rather than it being all about services (us) helping families (them).
Needless to say, I’ve got some other ideas up my sleeve, but I need to test them out on people first!
I have written to Frank Field in response to his speech about fathers and child poverty. I have copied it to Iain Duncan-Smith and Nick Clegg.
In summary:
Child poverty is a family function, not just an issue between a child and a “primary carer”. The ability of adults in the family to earn and to care and to cooperate with each other all have a critical influence on the child.
In the UK, all supports to family assume that a child in poverty has only one parent even in the case where two parents are sharing things 50/50. In Australia a child can have two single parents, both supported in their contribution to the child’s life.
There are strong aspirations in families to build on – for fathers to be close to their children, for mothers to continue a role outside the home, for parents to live cooperatively.
Motherhood still remains the barrier to gender equality…..The only thing that can level the playing field at work is a level playing field at home. And that requires a major shift in public policy and corporate culture.
Jon Davies is leaving Families Need Fathers. He writes:
After almost four years taking FNF from a little known and often misunderstood charity to something approaching respectability it is time to move! I have been planning this for some time but my Damascene moment came when I saw three and a half out of four of our policy demands in the coalition programme. ‘Leave while they’re still applauding’ as some now long forgotten music hall comedian once said.
“It is time for a new conversation around fatherhood in this country.”
I feel I am watching history in the making – the most powerful man in the world talking about his own struggles as a father, speaking for all fathers. And he recognises our “days of worry and struggle” and our “scrimping and saving and working the extra shift” for our children.
Thank you, Mr. President. It really does inspire and help.
So Nick Clegg has confirmed that the Government intends to “encourage shared parenting from the earliest stage of pregnancy”.
A great policy – two thirds of mothers and fathers think parents should share the responsibilities of caring, but only one third of parents report that this actually happens. In other countries where real choice has been delivered, the amount of sharing has changed hugely and immediately.
So what might Government actually do to remove the constraints that currently engineer families into the patterns of the 1950s?
1. Create a level playing field for leave entitlements between mothers and fathers
The previous Government gave fathers 2 weeks and mothers 39 weeks – one of the biggest differences between mothers and fathers in the world. Both the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have said they want something more equal.
It won’t make much actual difference to start with because the price of taking the leave is far too high especially for main earners – the pay for taking leave is far too low. But a balanced system can be invested in as we get through the recession.
2. Challenge employers who penalise anyone who has temporarily to compromise work for family
Mothers have to disrupt work for pregnancy and childbirth and many are automatically penalised. This means that for many families, when the mother has taken a hit on her career for pregnancy and childbirth, it is not possible for the father to take a second risk for the family.
Fortuitously, blue chip employers led by BT are right now setting up a new association, Employers for Fathers, which can work with Government to tackle workplace cultures that force parents to divide roles – and they are, for the first time, tackling how men work, the nub of the problem.
3. Challenge social attitudes that limit choices for families
It is not the purpose of Government to engineer social attitudes, but it must make sure that the information channels it owns don’t continue to promote the idea that caring responsibilities belong to women only. Government could also find ways to reward private information providers who change and start to introduce new ways of presenting family life.
Take maternity services, which nearly all families use. The entire logic of the medical model of birth is that one person is the client or the patient. The NHS as a whole still does not really know what to do with the families that invariably turn up with the mother – a real pressure on midwives who are eyeball to eyeball with these families every day. And yet if midwives work with the family, the health outcomes for mother and baby are a great deal better. The good news is that midwives are next year addressing this issue – the Royal College of Midwives is organising a conference, Family Matters. Another major partnership waits for Government to take up.
Antenatal education is in crisis within the NHS. It is time to rethink this from scratch. The key function of antenatal groups should be to connect parents into supportive local networks, such as local training colleges, local campaigns, local activities. And these should be inclusive of both mothers and father so that both parents have equal opportunity to receive support.
The NHS guide to pregnancy should be re-written and addressed to families, not to mothers only. Changing this will be a test case of the Government’s resolve: when it tries this most simple of tasks, it will hit all the ice-burgs of resistance.
4. Mainstreaming relationship support
Mainstreaming relationship support for parents is another policy just declared by Government. This needs to engage with both those involved in a relationship, not just one of them. If that happens, it will help shared parenting because it will support both parents and help them towards cooperative patterns.
I believe in Nick Clegg and David Cameron. They are the two most powerful men in the country. They are also parents of young children, confident and competent in caring for their children in their own right. They know shared parenting from the inside out. They moved Cabinet meetings for the sake of the school run. They have just declared they are taking personal charge of family policy. The prospects could hardly be better. But I am pretty sure they will find it more difficult than they think – I have been trying to change things for 10 years and I know all the barriers they will encounter.
“Dads who don a pinny and muck in with the housework are less likely to get divorced than those who leave it to the missus.” That’s the story in the Mirror today, also in Times,Telegraph, Independent.
This research at the London School of Economics confirms the same findings in USA and Scandinavia.
The issue is not whether mothers work, it is how fathers adapt to this by changing the way they operate too. And the reality is that men’s work is not changing nearly enough. The irony is that all the emphasis on helping mothers, without focusing on fathers, has steadily made things worse, particularly giving mothers 39 weeks leave and fathers only 2 weeks.
1. Don’t end up with one parent doing all the caring and the other doing all the earning unless you really cannot avoid it.
2. Both spend time alone with your baby. Both become competent and confident with him/her and learn your different parenting styles.
3. Mothers: put yourself first sometimes (and fathers – let them do this). Mothers who make the children such a big part of their lives that everything else is forgotten often become depressed.
4. Fathers: move mountains to get flexible work, even if it gives you only a few extra hours with your baby every week.
5. Talk and listen. Don’t just barge into the role you think is yours – find out if your partner is happy with what this means for them. Things will then feel fairer, you will be more loving and less stressed – which will also be good for your sex life.
6. Make time for each other and do things you used to do before you had children. A happy couple relationship means happier children.
7. Don’t feel guilty about working – nearly all mothers and fathers for all of human history have had to work.
8. If moving house could mean a smaller mortgage or more involved grandparents, think hard about it.
9. Each agree to do the one task around the house that the other likes least. If you can afford it, pay for some of the tasks to be done for you.
The other day The Independent published an article on marriage, A taxing problem for single-issue campaigners. Sarah Cassidy set up a “mums’ panel” from Mumsnet to consider the issues and interviewed a number of women (and only women). The only men she referred to were the political leaders (all men, obviously). Babies are a women’s issue, families are a women’s issue and now, taking this idea to an extreme that becomes manifestly absurd, marriage is a women’s issue.
It reminds me of the times when our girls were on the way and just born. The midwives and health visitors often made the same assumption: because it was about a baby, the conversation could only take place with the mother. Is there any part of modern life where there is more extreme stereotyping than the public face of family life? The other day I was hoovering the stairs and it occurred to me that there is absolutely no external representation at all of what I was doing; it is utterly invisible.
In a few weeks time I am launching a book about parenting and family life. I am not just writing about men in families, I am writing the whole thing, including motherhood and child welfare. I wonder how the media will react to a man taking a role that only women inhabit? Fingers crossed, the novelty will work to my advantage – watch this space!
Clare has been reading Sir Charles Grandison, written by Samuel Richardson in 1753, a book that Jane Austen read. (The edition is so old, Clare is cutting the pages as she proceeds through its vast length.) Last night she read me this passage. Lady G, Sir Charles’ sister, recounts being caught breastfeeding by her husband, Lord G.
The nurse, the nursery maids, knowing that I would not for the world have been so caught by my nimble lord, (for he is in twenty places in a minute) were more affrighted than Diana’s nymphs, when the goddess was surprised by Acteon; and each, instead of surrounding me in order to hide my blushes, was for running in a different way; not so much as attempting to relieve me from the brat.
I was ready to let the little leech drop from my arms. “Oh wretch!” screamed I – “Begone – begone!”
Never was a man in greater rapture. For Lady Gertrude had taught him to wish that a mother would be a mother: he threw himself at my feet, clasping me and the little varlet together, in his arms. “Brute!” said I, “will you smother my Harriet?” I was half-ashamed of my tenderness – “Dear-est, dear-est Lady G.” – shaking his head, between every dear and est – “how you transport me! Never, never, never saw I so delightful a sight! Let me behold again the dear sight. Let me see you clasp the precious gift, our Harriet’s Harriet too to that lovely bosom.”
“Begone, Lord G.,” said I – “See! see! How shall I hold the little marmouset, if you devour first one of my hands, then the other!”
He took the little thing from me, kissed its forehead, its cheek, its lips, its pudsey little hands, first one, then the other; gave it again to my arms; took it again; and again resigned it to me.
“Take away the pug,” said I to the attendants – “Take it away while any of it is left.” They rescued the babe, and ran away with it.
After a period off-line, I’m back, with a whole new set of ideas about how to improve support for families. I have rejuvenated my blog (lots of pictures of leaping children!) and I have found a fantastic new foundation for my work at Connect Assist, led by Patrick Nash, the real thing when it comes to social entrepreneurship.
