That's men for you: Padraig O'Morain's guide to men's health
Here we go dad-bashing again, I thought, when I read a report that the British government is to introduce courses to encourage "disengaged fathers" to get involved with their children.
Then I came to the bit that said almost half the children from separated families in a UK survey did not see their father last year - a remarkable figure.
Suddenly the idea of encouraging "disengaged fathers" to build relationships with their children did not seem so bad after all. And when Mary Corcoran of the Department of Sociology at NUI Maynooth sent me, in response to last week's column, a report on research she did on "absent" fathers in Ireland, it struck me that we need something similar here.
In Ireland, the issue seems to be how to get single young men, especially from low income areas, to involve themselves with their children. These single young men are probably not reading The Irish Times, nor are they writing for it, so why should we care?
We should care because the involvement of these young men with their children, now and in the future, can improve the whole quality of life for all of society.
Last week I quoted American research which showed that the children of "absent" fathers are less likely to get into trouble with the law if their fathers take an interest in them.
In the UK in 2001, a clinical psychologist, Jenny Taylor, interviewed two groups of boys in south London. One group had no criminal convictions and had never caused trouble to their teachers. Of these, 80 per cent said they were close to their fathers. The other group had criminal convictions and were in a secure unit. Of these, almost half could not identify a father figure in their lives.
Of the "good boys", as she called them in her report, just over half lived with their biological father while almost none of the "bad boys" were living with their father. But a quarter of the "good boys" had an absent father who was, nevertheless, involved in their lives.
In Ireland, the "bad boys" wouldn't be in a secure unit in the first place because we don't bother our heads about things like that. Therefore, the benefits of encouraging young, single fathers to take an interest in their kids would be even greater in this country, given our "free range" attitude to problem behaviour.
What Corcoran found was that separated fathers who had previously been married and involved in rearing their children were far more likely to stay involved than single fathers.
It is the young men who have never been married and never been much involved in the rearing of the child who need encouragement. They have become fathers under what she calls "spontaneous and contingent circumstances" - the most polite description I have ever seen of casual sex.
These young men tend to have neither money nor the emotional maturity to involve themselves in the rearing of their children. Minding the child the odd time - or getting their own parents to do it - buying presents and providing some meagre financial support seems to be as much as they do.
Some of those in her research wanted to make something of their lives because of becoming fathers. But this desire does not always translate into action.
Corcoran suggests that if they were encouraged to build a positive involvement with their children, both they and their children would benefit.
The rest of us would benefit too. These may be young men we would cross the road to avoid - but if education and other means can be used to get them involved with their kids, our streets will be safer to walk down in the future.
Padraig O'Morain's blog on men's issues, Just Like A Man, is www.justlikeaman.blogspot.com