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| Mo Farah, with stepdaughter Rihanna after 10,000m Games gold, was voted celebrity dad of 2012. Photograph: Michael Steele/Getty Images |
Former minister brought up by single mother wants Ed Miliband to champion cultural change
Daniel Boffey, policy editor, The Observer,
A leading Labour MP brought up by his mother claims that the
left has failed to appreciate the pivotal role of fathers in the raising
of happy and successful children.
As the country celebrates Father's Day, David Lammy, who was 12 when he last saw his father, says his party has repeatedly failed to champion the importance of a paternal figure in a home.
The former minister for higher education complains that the ground has been ceded to rightwing commentators who attack absent fathers as feckless, demonise single mothers and blame cohabitation for the instability of families.
Last week the Centre for Social Justice thinktank said one-parent families are rising at more than 20,000 a year and will hit more than two million by 2015. It also said that at least a million children are growing up without a father and that some of the poorest parts of the country are "men deserts" because so few primary schools have male teachers.
Lammy insists that most fathers separated from their children's lives want to be involved. He also attacks those who assume that absent fathers are irresponsible or that the decreasing popularity of marriage is to blame for fathers being pushed to the periphery of their children's lives. He wants Labour to look at the economic pressures which he believes are, at least partly, to blame.
Writing on this newspaper's website, Lammy says: "My father walked out on my mother and her five children when I was 12. I never saw him again. I have always felt that hole in my life – and I am not alone. By the age of 16, nearly 3 million children in Britain no longer live with their dads."
Lammy has submitted a report to Labour's policy review calling for a proper engagement with the problem by his party leader, Ed Miliband, a father of two young boys. One of his recommendations may cause some embarrassment. Lammy's report laments that 45,000 children every year do not have their father registered on their birth certificate. He says that requiring both parents to sign the birth certificate would send out a powerful message.
Miliband was shamed into correcting matters in 2010 after it was found his name did not feature on his 15-month-old son Daniel's birth certificate.
Lammy's report, Doing Family: Encouraging Active Fatherhood, says: "Fathers who do not sign their child's birth certificate are less likely to be supported by family services in caring for their child, less likely to have close relationships with their children and less likely to support the family financially."
He claims that even where policies designed to promote the role of fathers are in place, they are not working because they are ill-thought out or underfunded. Trades Union Congress analysis shows that just one in 172 eligible fathers are taking the additional paternity pay and leave – up to 19 weeks of paid time off – which is now open to them if their partner returns to work early.
Lammy, Labour MP for Tottenham, says this failure to take up the leave is because paternity pay is "£135 a week – £100 less than a full time job on the minimum wage". Lack of men in schools and children's centres is also, he says, a failure of politicians to get to grips with the issue and change the culture. "Ed Miliband should pledge to make Britain the most father-friendly nation in the world," he says. "After five years of a Labour government, more users of family services should be dads and we should commit to increasing the number of children who have contact with their fathers where it is safe to do so."
As the country celebrates Father's Day, David Lammy, who was 12 when he last saw his father, says his party has repeatedly failed to champion the importance of a paternal figure in a home.
The former minister for higher education complains that the ground has been ceded to rightwing commentators who attack absent fathers as feckless, demonise single mothers and blame cohabitation for the instability of families.
Last week the Centre for Social Justice thinktank said one-parent families are rising at more than 20,000 a year and will hit more than two million by 2015. It also said that at least a million children are growing up without a father and that some of the poorest parts of the country are "men deserts" because so few primary schools have male teachers.
Lammy insists that most fathers separated from their children's lives want to be involved. He also attacks those who assume that absent fathers are irresponsible or that the decreasing popularity of marriage is to blame for fathers being pushed to the periphery of their children's lives. He wants Labour to look at the economic pressures which he believes are, at least partly, to blame.
Writing on this newspaper's website, Lammy says: "My father walked out on my mother and her five children when I was 12. I never saw him again. I have always felt that hole in my life – and I am not alone. By the age of 16, nearly 3 million children in Britain no longer live with their dads."
Lammy has submitted a report to Labour's policy review calling for a proper engagement with the problem by his party leader, Ed Miliband, a father of two young boys. One of his recommendations may cause some embarrassment. Lammy's report laments that 45,000 children every year do not have their father registered on their birth certificate. He says that requiring both parents to sign the birth certificate would send out a powerful message.
Miliband was shamed into correcting matters in 2010 after it was found his name did not feature on his 15-month-old son Daniel's birth certificate.
Lammy's report, Doing Family: Encouraging Active Fatherhood, says: "Fathers who do not sign their child's birth certificate are less likely to be supported by family services in caring for their child, less likely to have close relationships with their children and less likely to support the family financially."
He claims that even where policies designed to promote the role of fathers are in place, they are not working because they are ill-thought out or underfunded. Trades Union Congress analysis shows that just one in 172 eligible fathers are taking the additional paternity pay and leave – up to 19 weeks of paid time off – which is now open to them if their partner returns to work early.
Lammy, Labour MP for Tottenham, says this failure to take up the leave is because paternity pay is "£135 a week – £100 less than a full time job on the minimum wage". Lack of men in schools and children's centres is also, he says, a failure of politicians to get to grips with the issue and change the culture. "Ed Miliband should pledge to make Britain the most father-friendly nation in the world," he says. "After five years of a Labour government, more users of family services should be dads and we should commit to increasing the number of children who have contact with their fathers where it is safe to do so."
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