Following a recent visit to No.10 with Family Matters Institute, we were asked: what five things the Prime Minister might do for fatherhood?
We recommended a Big Society approach:
1. Strengthen the hand of fathers in the workplace to negotiate more opportunities for family friendly work patterns.
2. Strengthen the hand of innovators and social entrepreneurs who are changing how we support families.
For those of us out there on the coal face making change and not just talking about it – a difficult and often lonely place to be – a bit of prime ministerial validation of what we are fighting for could do a lot. This is how David Cameron could do that.
1. Parents
The ultimate engine of change in relation to the role of fathers in family life is what mothers and fathers choose to do. A characteristic of human childrearing is extreme flexibility in how it is organised, depending on the environment and resources. It is no surprise, therefore, that the changing social and economic conditions since the Second World War are fuelling a spontaneous and unplanned change in how families want to care for children, with much greater emphasis on sharing economic and domestic roles between women and men.
But, as with every social change, this bumps up against institutions and belief patterns that formed in an earlier age. Mothers and fathers face barriers to how they need and want to operate. (My book, Baby’s Here! Who Does What? explores these barriers.) Ultimately only parents can take these barriers down. Leaders like the PM can strengthen their hand, by putting the public spotlight on their aspirations and validating their experience.
In the light of this, I would suggest that the PM stimulates public debate in a way that invites parents and children in. A number of ideas on this theme:
• Speak at key events about modern fatherhood
Not just Government events, however – the emphasis should be on bottom-up not top-down.
• Participating in on-line chats with mothers and fathers
The topic would be fatherhood, the participation would be both mothers and fathers.
• Fathers Breakfasts
The spotlight here is the aspirations of working fathers – even talking about “working dads” shifts the narrative.
• Fathers Day
I have in the past used Fathers Day as a way of connecting with the aspirations of children to be close to their fathers, and this adds a powerful and rather heart-rending perspective to the discussion. We ran writing competitions for primary school children.
2. Innovators and social entrepreneurs
The current debate is still predominantly about “axing” of services (a Google search on ‘Children’s Centres axed’ gives 219,000 results!) But there are innovators, visionaries and entrepreneurs all over the country in communities and workplaces and local services crafting new ways of supporting families, often at their own risk. These are not necessarily people who have a high national profile nor people who are asking for or getting central Government money.
This is not directly related to fatherhood, but cutting edge change in family support actually changes the rules of the game and many of the barriers to engagement with men fall away. Using digital channels in a more sophisticated way, for example, makes things a lot more accessible to fathers and working parents. A US programme in South Carolina that focused on families helping each other unleashed a huge contribution from men in the community. (I wrote this up as a case study in my report last year for ResPublica and Action for Children, Children and the Big Society.)
The PM could help these local innovators and leaders to prominence and allow their unique perspective to be heard and shared, so that they can inspire wider change. There is already talk in the field of a national conference on innovations in family support. Perhaps the PM could support and attend such an event and give social validation to these change-makers
In this video interview with Sir Michael Rutter, a pillar of the world of childhood research, he says something remarkable – that multiple attachment is vital.
In so doing he indicates a change in the foundation of the debate about fatherhood.
The myth of a single essential attachment between mother and child emerged as Bowlby’s insights combined with the social norms of the time, leaving the father-child relationship as icing on the cake, increasingly appreciated but always secondary.
Understanding of multiple attachment is not new, but a person of Sir Michael Rutter’s reputation talking about it is. The myth of the single essential attachment remains deeply embedded in our culture and serves many purposes, but things are changing.
Multiple attachment is a hallmark of the human race.
Today I wrote to Tim Loughton, the Minister who has so publicly declared the Government in favour of support for shared parenting. I congratulated him and made these six proposals for action.
1. Ensure that we make the most of the learning from Australia
The negative representation of the Australian experience in UK is in marked contrast to the official evaluation from Australia.
The evaluation, for example, states:
Significant increased use of support services, mostly by families with serious relationship problems. A “cultural shift” in the way problems that affect family relationships are dealt with.
“High levels of satisfaction” – over 70% of users of post-separation services (tending to be higher conflict cases) felt that the post-separation services treated everyone fairly without taking sides and 50% felt the service met their needs.
40% of parents approaching court did not pursue the case following a dispute resolution process.
The evaluation provides very valuable learning for us in the UK, in particular:
The need for clear court procedures to ensure cases not suitable for dispute resolution are transferred to alternative court processes.
The need for clarity about the difference between shared responsibility and 50/50 time.
We need to look again at the Australian evidence and commission a more dispassionate assessment of it – we can benefit much from learning from their experience.
2. Pilot the Early Interventions Parenting Plan process in the family courts
The key issue now is to embed processes that articulate the new expectations that both parents will continue to care.
A quorum of leading judges in the UK is ready now to pilot the court-based Early Interventions programme, and have been ready for over five years. Such a pilot has zero risk (it’s just a pilot) and potentially huge benefits in proving a case – a case already proved in other countries, including now Australia.
When judges set clear goalposts – expressed as a variety of typical arrangements for different families (age of child, geographical distance between parents, etc. – an approach that avoids misconceptions about 50/50 time) – and when information programmes and mediation around parental agreements are made an integral part of the court process before the first hearing (and not a pre-court ritual before the real fight begins!), it creates the optimum conditions for the parents themselves to come to a workable and sustainable solution.
The Early Interventions approach has the robust court procedures for determining which cases should not be referred to mediation, thereby addressing one of the problems highlighted in Australia.
Experience from other countries shows that the 40% diversion from a full court case, as achieved in Australia, is rather low – it can be considerably more. This frees up the courts to deal with high need cases and reduces costs to the public purse very considerably.
3. Support shared parenting post separation: change the configuration of financial supports to families
The current framework sees only one “parent with care” after separation. This can turn the ideal of shared responsibility into little short of a nightmare for the parent not lucky enough to be assigned the caring role. In December 2010, I wrote a blog post describing the experience of an ‘ideal’ separated father – it was the most read post I have written.
I have recommended that a working group is set up to look at the range of supports to families and work out how to reconfigure these. Some changes will be difficult, but there are several quick wins that simply await the political will that is now present for the first time.
4. Bring back the legislative proposal for Joint Birth Registration
Another valuable step would be to enact mandatory Joint Birth Registration as set out in the Welfare Reform Act and which the current administration initially decided not to proceed with. This is another vital marker of social expectation that unmarried fathers will, like married fathers, commit themselves to shared responsibility. I was involved myself in helping civil servants think through and develop the new policy, which was put together through months of patient discussion and research. How sad to see this well grounded and well considered policy set back again in the face of a strong, persistent and ultimately successful lobby to retain the status quo.
5. Don’t delay changes in leave entitlements for ever!
One vital means of supporting sharing of responsibility before separation is reform of the leave system, which so strongly channels mothers and fathers down different pathways as ‘carer’ and ‘earner’. Modern Workplaces takes important first steps in that direction. The economic constraints of the current situation are an understandable cause for delay, but the reality is that the current leave system is a major engine for dividing responsibilities, and research is clear that less sharing of responsibility in the early years is correlated with less family stability.
6. Reform parenting education on a partnership parenting model
A simple step on the part of Government could be to create a new default expectation for all parenting education funded by the public purse: whenever there are two parents, both participate. Research shows that parenting education that works with both parents and works explicitly with the relationship between the parents, gets better results than working with mothers or fathers individually. Some currently popular methods of parenting education do not lend themselves to such an approach, but adaptations to other popular methods are possible and the Fatherhood Institute is promoting Family Foundations, which explicitly focuses on parenting in partnership.
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 an exciting new project with employers, of which more anon!
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.
