Too often, Mum's the word in family breakups

One of the most noticeable and defining features of the Coalition government has been its focus on family and its recognition of the importance of fathers to children. David Cameron’s Father’s Day comments about ‘runaway dads’, therefore, come at a very interesting time as the administration begins to look at how it will translate aspiration into legislation.

Not surprisingly, Mr Cameron’s comments provoked something of a backlash. What is notable, however, is that the negative responses they generated came more from the organisations representing single mothers than from those articulating the experiences of separated dads, with the prime minister being accused of double standards and of failing single mums over child maintenance.

Of course, family separation has been a battleground for many decades, with successive governments attempting to deal with the social and fiscal impact of increasing numbers of divorced and separated families and pressure groups fighting to influence policy and debate in ways that uphold the particular experiences of the groups they represent; whether they be mothers or fathers.

The continued role of fathers in children’s lives has been a political hot potato since, at least, the Finer Report on One Parent Families, in 1974. Father’s rights campaigners have increasingly argued that men are effectively excluded from children’s lives after separation and women’s rights organisations and feminist academics have argued that any focus on the rights of fathers to remain present in their children’s lives undermines a mother’s right to live, and bring up children, autonomously.

But recent years have seen some significant changes. These days, even most single parent organisations, in public at least, grudgingly accept that children benefit from the ongoing involvement of both of their parents after divorce or separation — although this is often couched in terms of mothers acting as gatekeepers to that relationship. And this government’s stated intention to encourage shared parenting and ‘to look at how best to provide greater access [sic] rights to non-resident parents’ seemed to herald a fundamental shift in the way that family separation was to be debated and responded to.

All the more surprising, then, that Mr Cameron should fall back on such outdated and, quite frankly, fallacious representations of family separation and fathers’ experiences of and responses to it. But, then, perhaps not. The stereotypes that surround family separation are so powerful and so pervasive that maybe it is naive to imagine that such a profound change can happen over night.

If we examine David Cameron’s comments in isolation, it is very difficult to argue against the idea that dads shouldn’t abandon their families. But why single out dads? Why not also castigate mums? Quite simply, it is because of the widespread and erroneous belief that it is fathers who cause family separation and that, having done so, they abandon their wife and children to a life of poverty and destitution.

Take, for example, Baroness Deech, Chair of the Bar Standards Board, who, in an interview with Family Law last year stated that ‘the behaviour most likely to make society unhealthy, that damages these children more than anything else, is their father — it is usually the father — walking out and leaving them with no support.’ Or the Sunday Mirror who, in a recent leader column argued that ‘in a perfect world, couples could be persuaded to stay together and if fathers did leave their children they would pay for them.’

But why is it that so many people believe that it is fathers who cause family separation and abandon their families? It comes from two sources. Firstly, the very effective campaigning of single parent organisations like Gingerbread who gain advantage from perpetuating such caricatures. Secondly, and perhaps more significantly, it comes from the social policy structure that surrounds divorce and separation and the division of parents into ‘parent with care’ and ‘non resident parent’ with all the attendant connotations associated with those labels.

Interestingly, the terms ‘parent with care’ and ‘non resident parent’ have no legal meaning outside the narrow confines of the Child Support Act 1991 and its various amendments. But, so widely used are they that they have permeated the consciousness of not only the legislators and policy makers, but the myriad of services that parents encounter when they separate; from child maintenance workers to nursery staff, advice workers to mediators.

Ask someone how they picture a ‘parent with care’ and they will likely respond that a ‘parent with care’ is a mum who has been abandoned and who is struggling to bring up her children alone; the PM’s ‘heroic’ single mum. Ask the same person how they picture a ‘non resident (or absent) parent’ and they will likely tell you that this parent was the cause of the separation and is probably doing everything they can to evade their responsibilities.

From this, people draw the logical conclusion that, as most ‘non resident parents’ are men, it is men who are more likely to cause separation and it is fathers who are likely to try and evade their responsibilities. In reality, women are just as likely to end relationships as men and women are just as capable of unhelpful behaviours as men. The truth is that mums become the ‘parent with care’ because they assume that role and because the Child Benefit rules allow them to.

It is this division of parental roles, along with the adversarial nature of parenting support, that is the greatest barrier to dads being able to fulfil their ongoing responsibilities. It is also the greatest obstacle to parents building collaborative post-separation parenting relationships. Because of this division of roles, all of the support, both financial and emotional, is delivered to mums. Dads feel that their experiences are unrecognised and unsupported and, worse, however hard they try to act responsibly, someone, somewhere is likely to be calling them names. Little wonder that many dads find it difficult to continue to parent after separation.

What is interesting is that the prime minister’s words seem to be at such odds with some of the work that the Coalition is doing around family policy, such as the hugely progressive reforms that are being made on child maintenance. The green paper, Strengthening families, promoting parental responsibility: the future of child maintenance is an absolute breath of fresh air. At the heart of the proposals is a philosophy that families, themselves, are best placed to determine what arrangements will work best in their circumstances and an intention to encourage the involvement of both parents in their children’s lives after divorce or separation.

Building on the Child Maintenance and Other Payments Act 2008, it contains non of the negative stereotypes of previous legislative drives and recognises that both parents need access to the kinds of support that will enable them to build family-based arrangements that put the needs of their children first. It also recognises the ongoing inter-dependency in families and attempts to respond to some of the complexities of family separation.

The government could go further in achieving its aspiration to encourage and support the role of fathers after separation. It could ditch the ‘lone parent’ model that supports one parent to the exclusion of the other and conceives separation as purely a poverty issue. It could reflect the  responsibilities of both parents in the tax and benefits system and take the income of both parents into account in the statutory maintenance scheme. And it could remove the divisive concepts of care and contact from family law.  Most of all, the government needs to promote and invest in services that encourage collaboration rather than division. And it need look no further than the Child Maintenance Options service to see how engaging with both parents without labels or judgements maximises the potential for parental co-operation. The number of ‘non resident’ fathers who approach this service without coercion suggests that this is a much more effective way of ensuring that parents continue to fulfil their responsibilities than hectoring and lecturing.

But, just as importantly, it is imperative that we move beyond myths and stereotypes; myths and stereotypes are so powerful that we believe men are always the cause of family breakdown even though 68 per cent of divorces are granted to the wife,  so powerful that we believe fathers always evade their financial responsibilities even though in the cases where there is no child maintenance arrangement, the most common explanation is that the ‘parent with care’ does not want any contact with the non-resident parent (33 per cent).  If we are really going to support children living in separated families, we need to dispel the myth that every separated family equals an abandoned wife and a philandering, feckless husband, even though that is sometimes the case.

The government must not lose its nerve in the face of hostility from single-parent organisations and the Opposition if it is to seriously tackle the issues of divorce and separation. Its child maintenance reform proposals have demonstrated that it is prepared to take a radical and rational policy approach to family separation and its cross-departmental work between the DfE, DWP and MoJ can only be good for families.

The Coalition has also signalled that it is prepared to think differently about fatherhood and to recognise and respect the vital contribution that fathers make to children’s development. It has the opportunity to make changes that will support families for many decades to come. A more nuanced appreciation of the barriers that parents face when they separate, together with respectful and empathic service delivery, is what will help families deal with the challenges that come with separation and meet their ongoing responsibilities to their children.

Nick Woodall works on policy and development at the Centre for Separated Families, a national charity that works with the whole family after separation in order to bring about better outcomes for children.