Report calls for a more 'father inclusive culture'

A significant overhaul of the family law and welfare systems to make them more "father-friendly" and give "due recognition to…

A significant overhaul of the family law and welfare systems to make them more "father-friendly" and give "due recognition to the rights of unmarried fathers" will be recommended in a report to be launched next week by the Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Mr Brennan. Kitty Holland reports.

The Government-funded report, Strengthening Families Through Fathers, also calls for the development of a "father-inclusive culture".

The authors, Prof Harry Ferguson of the University of the West of England and Mr Fergus Hogan of the Waterford Institute of Technology, interviewed 24 "vulnerable" fathers, 10 mothers, 11 children and 19 professionals for the study.

The study, supported by the Family Support Agency, seeks to establish how they viewed "the father, fatherhood, family life and the intervention work they had experienced".

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By "vulnerable" the authors mean men who experienced problems including marital or relationship breakdown, relationship problems with their children, poverty, addictions, survival of sexual abuse and/or domestic violence.

Highly critical of the welfare system and social workers, the authors say they found "that the overall orientation of welfare systems to exclude men so powerful that even in cases of inclusive practice clear evidence emerged of men's exclusion.

"The dynamics of such exclusion took many forms, the most common and powerful of which was a view of men as dangerous, non-nurturing beings."

The report finds social workers generally expect mothers to carry the load, "leaving the potential resource fathers have to offer largely untapped". It stresses fault lies more with the organisational culture of social work than with individual social workers

Young unmarried fathers "are perhaps the most at-risk yet invisible category of all", says the report. "Typically the position of men in public debates about teenage pregnancy is so absent and negative it is as if the children had no fathers.

"At its worst they are officially written out of the script of family life due also to the significant pattern of the man's name being omitted from the birth certificate."

Criticising the welfare payment system, it says the fact that lone-parent allowance is only paid on condition that the mother does not cohabit has the direct effect of excluding fathers.

Forty-two per cent (10) of fathers interviewed were separated or divorced. All of them "spoke with passion about the exclusion they felt by the family law system, including social services, which they saw as cruelly sexist and anti-man/father".

The report continues: "The children in such cases spoke openly of their desire to have relationships with their fathers."

Among the report's 12 recommendations are paid paternity leave; that all agencies working with children develop explicit father-inclusive policies and that a range of support services, including parenting classes, be funded for fathers.