Duncan Fisher

My last post was about the FAMILIES who protested for better maternity services in London at the weekend. I took lots of photos, particularly of the men. This is the headline in The Independent. A different picture entirely.

My family once arranged a family photo and the photographer asked me to hand the baby to Clare “because it does not look right” with me holding the baby.

Does it matter that editors and photographers change the reality and tell a lie? So what if men who care for children are airbrushed out of the picture “because it does not look right”? Is not the important thing that they are doing it?

I think it does matter. Because a false picture underpins inadequate policies and services. There are striking statistics from the former Equal Opportunities Commission about how much more caring of children is shared these days. But people don’t believe these statistics - “they don’t look right”. And so policies and institutions remain unchanged. This affects the vulnerable families much more than the well-resourced, because it is the vulnerable who need services more.

It also matters in families. When one parent, the mother, finds that her role as a parent is persistently elevated and impossibly idealised, whilst the other sees that his role is persistently unrepresented, it has an impact on family dynamics. Take a debate about parenting methods between a mother and father - in most couples both parents will feel the mother is more entitled to assert an opinion than the father.

The new debate about families is all about relationships. This is good because a relationship implies more than one person; the word itself changes the picture. But to understand relationships, we still need to understand how differently messages are conveyed to mothers and fathers and how much this affects how they see themselves and each other and how they negotiate with each other.

Personal family, Fatherhood, gender equality, media, motherhood, parental relationships, parenting

As I have been preparing things to write about in these blogs, it has become evident that I am actually starting to write a book.  My journalist friends - particularly some of the Agony Aunts I am working with in the Kids in the Middle campaign - tell me I should resist the blogging for a while and focus on the book instead.  So that is what I am going to do.  Producing a blog a week is both fun and keeps me on my toes, so I look forward to returning to regular pieces in about a month’s time.  In the meantime, doubtless I will occasionally be provoked into outbursts by stories in the media!

Personal my news

I am going to write three blogs in quick succession on the Good Childhood Report - one on supporting c0-parenting instead of individual parenting, one on parents and work and one on pregnancy and birth.

Supporting co-parenting instead of individual parenting

Parenting in Britain is seen as an individual activity.  When a baby is due to be born, the NHS registers one parent only and targets one parent with information about baby health and baby care.  Only one parent is given time off work enough to be able to care for the baby.  Nearly all parenting support programmes are designed to engage with one parent only and are evaluated on this basis.  When parents separate, only one parent gets child benefit and all the tax reliefs and benefits that go with that, whatever degree of sharing there is.  Where there is serious conflict between parents, it is vanishingly rare for both parents to get adequate support.

The public debate this week about parents working focuses only on one parent - the mother - and debates whether she should work less; it does not consider whether fathers should work less, even though they work for more than mothers.

Anything to do with two parents is controversial – relationships between parents are held to be a private matter, supporting two parents together is seen as a risk to support services for a parent living alone.

And then there are the practical difficulties – working with two parents together, particularly if living apart or (worse) in conflict, and working with men, both require skills and knowledge that are simply not widespread in the children’s workforce.  Training for this workforce currently involves no challenge to personal beliefs and prejudices about men in parenting roles.

The Good Childhood Report unequivocally and absolutely repudiates this approach.  It does not just say that parental relationships are important – it says they are the most important thing in the world for children.  “Parents getting on well is one of the most important factors in raising happy children.”  “How can we reduce the level of conflict in family life?  Nothing is more important for children than this.”  “We need above all to reverse the increase in family conflict.”

And so we have the biggest study of childhood ever taken in the UK stating that the most important thing in the world for children is the very thing that is most notably overlooked in the entire infrastructure of family support.  One could not set a more radical agenda for change.

Just before the Good Childhood Report, a campaign to support parental relationships got underway backed by 24 of the nation’s Agony Aunts and Uncles – Kids in the Middle.  The campaign has already mobilised millions of pounds of Government spending and is now gearing up as a major partnership between relationship and parenting organisations.  It is calling for exactly the same things as the Good Childhood Report is proposing: real and effective relationship education in schools, relationship support around the birth of a baby, child centred support for separating couples with an emphasis on reducing conflict and maintaining the child’s relationship with both sides of the family.

What with this and the Good Childhood Report, the prospects for real change are very promising.

Fatherhood, Personal parental relationships, parenting