International Men’s Day

Steve Double Excerpts

Tuesday 14th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this important debate under your chairmanship, Mr Austin. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) on securing it, and am delighted that International Men’s Day is getting more recognition. It is important that we take a moment at least once a year—hopefully, perhaps, more often than that—to focus on and think about the challenges that men face today. The theme of this year’s day is celebrating men and boys, and the aspect of it that I want to focus on is the role of fathers. I believe it is essential for the country, today and in the future, that we do all we can to help dads be better dads, and to support them in their role. If we do that, not only will it help those men who are dads, and their children; the whole of society will benefit.

One of the reasons why I am particularly interested in the subject is that I had the honour, in the early 1990s, to be the first father working for Barclays bank to take paternity leave and request, and achieve, a change to my working pattern to help me balance my life—to balance my work responsibilities with those of being a new dad. Today that is not remarkable, and many big companies like Barclays make such provision; but it was quite unusual more than 20 years ago. There has certainly been progress in that area, but more needs to be done to enable dads to balance the many pressures and challenges that they face today, and get a work-life balance. Change has happened in this area, as the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) described, but we need to go further in changing workplace culture to support and respect the role that fathers play.

Britain has an appalling record on family breakdown generally, and that has an impact on childhood life chances. Children whose dads play an active role in their lives have better attitudes at school and enjoy school more. They have higher educational expectations, and they make better progress at school. I am sure that the Schools Minister, who is present to respond to the debate, would particularly like to comment on that issue: I believe that the more we can do to help dads play a positive, active role in their children’s lives, the better those children’s educational outcomes will be.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman also stress that those of us from single-parent families parented by men sometimes get on in life quite well?

[Steve Double]

I am happy to acknowledge that. We must acknowledge that families today come in all shapes and sizes, and that single parents work incredibly hard and, in many cases, are heroes in view of the time, effort, blood, sweat and tears that they put into raising their children. However, that should not mean we do not say that more often than not the best outcome for children generally is when they have a father and mother playing an active role in their life and upbringing.

The extent of fatherlessness in the UK is, I believe, a little-known statistic. According to the Office for National Statistics there are 2.7 million dependent children who have no father figure at home; that is roughly one in five children. When fathers are absent from children’s lives, levels of deprivation and poor economic and social outcomes are measurably worse, which has an impact not only on the children but, more widely, on society. One shocking statistic is that 76% of all male prisoners come from households without a father figure in the home. Boys with little or no involvement with their fathers are twice as likely to become offenders as boys with highly involved fathers. Those statistics should cause us concern and prompt us to take action.

We are, at last, increasingly understanding the impact of fathers in families. We do not really have a family breakdown crisis in this country; we have a crisis of fatherhood. I am hugely passionate about the work of the all-party group on fatherhood—I am one of its vice-chairmen—and about ensuring that we talk about families. We should do that much more in our political conversations. In doing so, we should not forget the vital role that fathers play. Dads today are often misunderstood and are seen within an out-of-date stereotype. The biggest stereotype of them all is that dads simply do not care, or do not want to be active dads.

Recent research by the University of Plymouth suggests that fathers face a negative bias, and suspicion from managers, when seeking a better work-life balance or applying for part-time working. That has been branded the fatherhood forfeit. Last year I did some work with the Centre for Social Justice on a small piece of research. We interviewed 50 working fathers about the challenges that they faced in balancing work and family life. What struck me was the strong emotional response from every single one of the fathers we interviewed. We found that all 50 interviewees were trying hard to be dads and in many cases they were making significant amendments to their working lives to accommodate time with their children. The stereotype of dads who do not care is out of date.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has raised concern about the stereotypes, which have always been around. In my constituency several years ago, Scotland’s national male cancer charity, Cahonas Scotland, did a piece of research called “Men, Masculinities and Male Cancer Awareness”, highlighting what happens when men are asked about services and their experience, and getting a breakdown of the reality of their everyday lives, especially with respect to parenthood.

[Steve Double]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, who makes a good point.

As I have said, we want to be an equal society—we want equality to be at the heart of society, including in the workplace. If we are to achieve that we must seriously consider a positive approach to fathers. We need to get to the stage where employers actively seek to have father-friendly workplaces. We can achieve that, and if we do it will not only be dads who benefit but children, mothers, families and the whole of society.