Responding to today’s article in the Daily Telegraph revealing that ministers want to amend the Children Act to create a legal right for children to a relationship with both parents after divorce, FI chief executive Rob Williams said:

‘Current legislation allows over one million children in the UK to lose touch with their father by the time they reach 16. This has a profound negative impact on children’s wellbeing and outcomes and we should not simply accept it. Whatever happens to couples, we must expect a child’s relationship with both parents to endure. Our laws need to change to reflect this, and our courts, social workers, family support and benefit systems should also be working in ways that increase the likelihood of more children from separated families enjoying close relationships with both their parents.’

There is now a lot of evidence that people who suffer from problems with anxiety are more likely than average to have a relative who suffers from a similar problem. Whilst this may be partly due to shared genes, it is also likely that experiences and attitudes gained when growing up also play a role.

The IoPsych team is looking for dads with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder who live with a child aged 6-13 to take part in some research to help us understand this better. Taking part would involve a phone interview and some questionnaires. All the information would be anonymous and held securely and would  help families in the future living with similar difficulties.

Please contact Dr Rebecca Chilvers at Rebecca.chilvers@kcl.ac.uk or 07842 047339 (research mobile) for more information or to talk about taking part.

Filling out this questionnaire on the internet should take about 10 – 15 minutes. All answers will be treated as strictly confidential and data will be anonymised. No personal information will be shared with any third party. This research operates within the ‘Statement of Ethical Practice’ issued by the British Sociological Association (BSA).

Participants are also not obliged to answer every question should they choose not to.

To fill in the survey please visit: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/EnduringLove.

To read a summary of the research, which also looked at how migration affects fatherhood, by focusing on Irish and Polish families, follow the link below:

Fathers Over the Generations Briefing Paper ( A4 Final)

The goal of FF is to promote positive co-parenting (the way that parents support each other). Recent research indicates that positive co-parenting has a strong influence on parenting and on child outcomes.

What are the impacts of FF?

In families who have taken part in FF in the US there have been significant impacts on:

• Postnatal depression
• Improving parenting sensitivity and warmth
• Decreasing harsh parenting
• Fostering positive couple relations
• Establishing positive child self‐regulation
• Reducing child behaviour problems.

FF has also had particularly positive impacts on fathers in low-income families.

The first phase of FF

Family Foundations is currently being trialled at 12 local authority sites in England where teams of health and early years practitioners are training to deliver the course to couples. The programme is being evaluated at our Reading, Barking and Dagenham and Birmingham sites.

FF phase 2: sign up now

The cost of an initial training programme and the first year’s licence and all materials for FF is £10,000. Learning to deliver the FF programme involves four days of face-to-face training for up to 10 early years and health professionals.

If your organisation would be interested in becoming part of the next cohort of sites to become licensed and trained to deliver FF, we will be offering a limited number of reduced cost packages from April 2012 for the first ten organisations to apply. These courses will be priced at £8000.

Find out more about the evidence base in this Family Foundations Overview.

To find out more contact Jeszemma Garratt at j.garratt@fatherhoodinstitute.org or tel 07917 864130.

It’s International Men’s Day on November 19, and what better way of celebrating this year’s theme – Giving Boys The Best Start In Life – than to support the Fawcett Society’s march through London on that very same day?

Fawcett is a body that campaigns for women’s equality – so what could its November 19 Day of Action possibly have to do with giving boys the best start in life? An awful lot, when you think about it. Female unemployment, the gender pay gap, women on low incomes becoming poorer…these are all things that impact hugely on boys as well as girls.

A world that keeps women chained to the kitchen sink and men to their desks is not, ultimately, a happy place for boys to grow up in. Why should boys grow up with mothers paid less than a man for doing the same job, and then watch their sisters suffer the same indignity? When boys become men, why should their potentially huge contribution as carers as well as breadwinners remain so unrecognised, so marginal to public policy?

Giving boys the best start in life means giving them a balanced view of what men and women can aspire to and achieve – and that’s what Fawcett’s campaigning is all about. Find out more about the Fawcett Society’s day of action.

Oh, and if you used to be a boy, and haven’t done so already, why not also take a stand for men’s health by cultivating something beautiful on your upper lip this month? Find out more about Movember.

Centrica
Policies afford fathers flexibility and time off to spend with their children. Paternity pay is enhanced, and fathers are allowed to phase back from paternity leave (OPL and APL), they are also able to split paternity leave. There is awareness that life events, like having a new baby, may temporarily affect performance and work can be adapted accordingly. Father-friendly events are held, and there is a father’s champion who communicates messages aimed at fathers and is a resource for other fathers to use. As a result, Centrica has a very high rate of men using the flexible working options policy.

Henmans LLP
Paternity leave is paid at enhanced rates for one week, with no qualifying period for employees. Paternity returners are able to phase back to work. This is in support of a culture which seeks to treat men and women equally, with several men at a senior level working flexibly and sharing care more or less equally with their partners. The key drive is one of promoting the idea that parents of either gender may have the same opportunities for caring for their children.

LSE
LSE’s policies for fathers are part of a wider organisation-wide strategy aiming to promote a good work-life balance and better wellbeing amongst its staff. The School aims to make it culturally unremarkable for fathers to be involved in caring for their children, so paternity pay is paid at full salary, and the leave is flexible: fathers can even take their leave before the birth if they wish or split it into as many blocks as required. LSE is also working on enhanced communications aimed specifically at fathers, and is planning a fathers mentoring programme and a series of presentations on issues important for new fathers, which will be available to both LSE staff and the partners of female employees at LSE.

Registers of Scotland
Fathers are given paid time off to attend up to three antenatal appointments and are able to use a very flexible flexitime system to take more time off if required. Qualifying fathers can take four weeks of fully paid paternity leave. Fathers are able to phase back from paternity leave, and work flexibly. Ten per cent of male employees work reduced hours. The emphasis is on the use of the extensive range of flexible working options to allow fathers to achieve a successful work-life balance.

The Fatherhood Institute offers a range of services to help employers develop more father-inclusive policies, including the Fathers@ web package and workplace seminars, and our pioneering Staying Connected courses for separated fathers. Find out more here.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last couple of weeks, you’ll have noted that Hollywood blockbuster ‘I Don’t Know How She Does It’ is in town, garnering endless coverage as TV and newspaper reviewers queue up to pick apart (but largely agree with) its portrayal of the modern working mum.

Which led us to wonder, when might we be treated to ‘I Don’t Know How He Does It’, a warm, sympathetic yet hilarious rendering of the challenges of being a modern working dad?

The boring consumerist answer to this question is: when part-time working men and non-employed dads become a sufficiently significant niche market that they are worth film companies entertaining. And when employed men are seen as working dads, rather than breadwinners with children elsewhere (on that note, do please ‘like’ our Facebook page www.facebook.com/workingdads).

Until then all you’re going to get is the klutzy romcom, where newly single dad drowns in his own domestic incompetence until cute single mum realises that he just needs a bit of help…Various slapstick involving overflowing sinks, cross-dressing children and food poisoning, culminates in the two lone parents realising that they really love each other, and they move into a blended home with their tribe of children and a mischievous dog. At which point she realises that her dream has always been to start a fabric stencilling company in the attic (fits so well with the school hours) while his patented invention goes global – so he’ll be away a lot, secure in the knowledge that his and her kids are safe at home in their kooky menagerie watched over by creative mum…

Talking more scientifically, we need to know more about the experiences of flexibly working men and full-time fathers. We don’t really know what the average stay-at-home dad looks like. Wouldn’t it be great to compare how fathers and mothers who are not employed actually use their time and to see how (if at all) they differ? Plus we still don’t know very much about how employed fathers make work-life choices. Is it simply economics?

The exciting cultural answer is that the evidence indicates that there are growing instances of the working dad, for whom fatherhood is as important as career; and of the stay-at-home dad.

But there remains a hurdle: how come full-time fathers are usually described as ‘stay-at-home’ while full-time mothers can still be referred to as ‘housewives’? The man’s description implies that he has chosen his lifestyle; the woman’s that she is her husband’s dependent. So until we have househusbands and stay-at-home mothers – or even better when the term ‘parent’ doesn’t mean woman – the movie will have to wait.

Meanwhile the best first step is to sort out flexible working and parental leave so that it is equally available (and comparably paid) for working parents of both sexes. That’s something lots of us want (read our recent poll and submission to the Government’s Modern Workplaces consultation here), but unlike in Hollywood, we don’t always get what we want…

Did you wonder about some of the thinking behind the leaked No10 memo on reaching out to women voters? I was struck by how broadly they defined women’s issues. OK, it makes sense to think about changes to child benefit as having a negative affect on women’s support for the Government. But tuition fees? Do they think that only women care about their children’s education? And International Development?

There were some good ideas amongst the proposals – like the website where women can compare their salaries, and also the focus on promoting women as senior managers. But the memo betrays a confusion about the women the Government is trying to attract. At times it feels like they are talking about the 1950s housewife, staying at home and feeding the family on the housekeeping money handed over by her husband, the breadwinner! In today’s households, women are returning to work in record numbers after their maternity leave, and fathers are doing a lot more caring for their children, including the weekly shop. Despite this, the memo identifies the rising cost of living as being a women’s issue – implying that the Government’s understanding of women’s roles is out of date and may well, itself, be part of the problem.

At points the memo is spot on – for example, the new proposals on parental and paternity leave are good news for women, who find that the current maternity leave rules sideline them from the best opportunities whilst their male colleagues plan for an interrupted career. This seems much more relevant to the modern household and also to the shared parenting agenda. Ideas about parenting skills vouchers should be brought forward as soon as possible, for the sake of mothers, fathers and children. Better though if these vouchers also gave access to relationship support. When times are hard, investing in the resilience of family relationships is a good way to lay down solid foundations for the future.

Attitude surveys, and more in-depth research, show that when attention turns to policies designed to support men and women in their sharing of breadwinning and childcare roles, this is in line with the aspirations of the vast majority of parents, who do not want to organise their household duties along gender lines.

Let’s hope that the parts of the memo which reflect the modern family will feed through into policy over the next few months – and please, everyone, let’s consign the 1950s housewife to where she belongs….the history books.

If you’ve taken some of your child’s mother’s unused maternity leave under the new Additional Paternity Leave system, please get in touch.

Email our head of communications Jeremy Davies or call him on 0780 371 1692.