Should Gay Old Elton be Allowed to be a Dad?

THIS ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN IN JANUARY 2011

The news that Elton John has become a dad has sparked public debate and reminds us once again of the divisions in The Men’s Movement that can been seen most starkly across the many different dads’ groups– and in the ongoing divides between gay men and straight men (and gay men and gay women too)

But first let’s deal with the slightly less controversial question – should Elton John be allowed to be a dad …….

The rights and wrongs and pros and cons of alternative families have divided us for decades. This includes unmarried families, separated families, single parents, gay foster parents, test-tube babies, lesbian mums, surrogate mums and separated gay sperm-donor dads – to name but a few!

As far as gay parents go the debate has been a prominent issue  in the UK since the childrens’ book Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin came to symbolize the Thatcher government’s fight against the “promotion” of homosexuality in schools enshrined in the notorious “section 28” that Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron apologised to the gay community for in 2009.

In the intervening 30 years individual men and men’s groups have taken a lot of separate activity around both fathers’ rights and gay rights and it is a little know fact some of the high profile Fathers 4 Justice stunts were inspired by lesbian direct action against section 28 which included lesbians abseiling into the House of Lords (a direct inspiration for the Fathers 4 Justice Purple Powder Protest Against Tony Blair by two Susssex dads including James Blunt’s brother-in-law - and the famous lesbian invasion of the BBC’s Six O Clock News during which one woman managed to chain herself to Sue Lawley’s desk and was sat on by the newscaster Nicholas Witchell which inspired Fathers 4 Justice invading the National Lottery years later

Despite all this, fathers’ rights campaigners and gay rights activists have never really gotten in bed together (politically that is) – let alone been uncomfortable bed fellows.

In fact the closest Dads’ Rights came to Gay Rights was when in 2003 it was revealed that the fathers rights campaigner who scaled a crane dressed as Spiderman (another Sussex dad) had previously been charged with public indecency for consensual sex with a man in public toilet in Brighton & Hove as a teenager.

Insiders at the time the story broke speculated on whether the Sun would run with a homophobic headline like “Spiderman Dad Is A SuperQueero!” but in the end the Sun plumped for the more direct headline “Spiderman is a pervert”

But back to Elton….it’s important to note that while the chattering classes have focused on the question of whether Elton John is too old to be a dad – or whether his lifestyle is too rock ‘n’ roll – the real question the public is still struggling with is this –should gay men be allowed to be dads?

Gay dads have always been around though their public profile is largely restricted to controversial cases like the millionaire surrogate dads Barrie and Tony Drewitt-Barlow - or the gay rights campaigner Michael Turberville whose son was abductedsparking national headlines like Lesbian mum has stolen my son and sparked debate on Men’s Rights forums around the world- or the tragic case of 4 children abused by gay foster parents Craig Faunch and Ian Wathey in Warrington where social workers failed to stop the abuse because they feared being seen as homophobic.

So back to the most recent high profile gay dad stories, should Elton John be allowed to be a dad……

Well it’s important to note that gay dads really are nothing new – they are just a little more public now. Gay dads fall into three broad categories:

1. Gay dads who are either in – or have come out of –  straight relationships
2. Gay sperm donors (who are frequently chosen by lesbian mums)
3. Gay men who choose to be fathers by fostering, adopting or surrogacy

It’s difficult to find out much about these different experiences as there are few groups specialising in working with gay dads.

For the gay dad in the closet, for example, there is not an obvious place to turn – parent support groups favour mothers, fathers’ groups favour straight men, gay parents’ groups favour lesbians and gay men’s groups favour childless gay men. There is however a Gay Dads Group in Scotland and a Gay Dads Group in Australia and a Gay Dads International website and a Gay Dads USA facebook group but not a gay dads group in Brighton & Hove and England that we are aware of.

For gay sperm donors like Michael Turberville who had his son abducted by a lesbian mum their stories make for good sensational tabloid  headlines – like “Gay Dad Fights Two Lesbians” - but where is the support group for separated gay dads?

Traditionally the Fathers Rights Movement has not been a comfortable home for separated gay dads in custody battles with lesbian mums despite the fact that if you talk to any long-serving member of groups like Families Need Fathers and Fathers 4 Justice they will most likely have personal experience of supporting straight dads who are fighting custody battles with mums who have come out of the closet.

As those who take on the task of working with separated dads for any length of time know, it is surprising how often this happens.

It’s also difficult to consider what it must be like for a straight separated dad struggling with access to his kids while his ex’s new lesbian partner has daily contact with his children.

Dealing with your life partner coming out of the closet, losing your relationship with your partner and children and dealing with the fact that your children will now be brought up in a gay family does not have the same hilarious consequences for real dads as it does for Ross in Friends finding out his wife is Lesbian.

It’s an uncomfortable and relatively common scenario that the fathers’ rights movement has struggled to tackle – often for fear of allegations of homophobia – the same fear of allegations of homophobia found in the Warrington sex abuse case - and in the meantime both straight and gay separated dads don’t get the help and support they need to deal with this issue.

Equalities campaigners who are quick to brand men and fathers fighting for their rights as being sexist and homophobic - but slow to understand why they are campaigning in the first place – should take note!

Which is all well and good but should Elton John be allowed to be a dad…..?

Well as far as adoption goes we can assume that everyone supports adoption but not everyone supports adoption by gay parents. What’s interesting from the gender perspective though is that while the majority of people in the UK now support gay adoption – opinion polls show that the public is more comfortable with lesbian adoption than gay male adoption.

And common sense suggests that despite the fact that surrogacy is legal in the UK under certain guidelines – the public is generally less comfortable with surrogacy than it is adoption – and is no doubt more comfortable with infertile straight parents using surrogacy than gay parents – and amongst gay parents is more comfortable with gay mums using surrogacy than gay dads.

So this being the case should Elton John be allowed to be a dad…..?

Well whatever your personal opinion the law allows for gay men to foster, adopt and have surrogate babies and so of course he should be allowed to become a father as equally as the next man or women is allowed by our national laws to both be a parent and be treated fairly and equally regardless of gender and sexuality.

But let us not let the tabloid sensationalism pass without acknowledging the following:

1. Dads around the world have less rights than mums
2. Gay parents face prejudice compared to straight parents
3. Gay dads face more prejudice than lesbian mums

And if gay campaigners want to tackle the prejudice that gay parents face then they need to address the fact that dads face more discrimination than mums – whatever their sexuality.

And if fathers’ rights campaigners want to be a credible force in the modern world then they need to stand up for all dads – whatever their sexuality – and address the fact that gay parents face discrimination in the UK and fathers’ rights groups help to cause that discrimination by failing to stand up to the prejudice against gay parents which affects more gay dads than it does gay mums.

Historically, some activist dads have tended to see gay parents as the enemy because they saw equalities campaigners focusing on improving rights for the LGBT community while either ignoring or opposing better rights for dads.

This viewpoint is reflected (but not directly addressed) in the Coalition Government’s New Equalities Strategy which states thatthe old approach to Equalities meant that “too many people were made to feel that equality is not for them”

As a result of this anti-gay sentiment, opportunities to work together and support each other have been missed – notably in opposition to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 which removed the “need for a father” from IVF treatment.

While this law didn’t affect activist dads directly, they were angered by the act of politicians removing the “need for a father” from IVF treatment because they felt it was symbolic of the previous Labour administration’s apparent unwillingness to take action to support the “need for a father” when couple’s separate.

The group of dads that this change in law did impact on most was gay dads donating to lesbian mothers which, as the gay rights group Stonewall rightly points out means that “a gay father who donates sperm to a lesbian couple may have no legal recognition as a parent”

Stonewall has some good guidance for gay dads but it is notable that it published its guidelines for lesbian mums first – a strong signal that it too puts more priority on gay mums rights than gay dads right –  and its section on separation and custody completely ignores the discrimination that all dads face in custody battles because of the prejudicial assumption that mums (gay or straight) are better parents that dads (gay or straight).

Yes, yes, yes, but should Elton be allowed to be a dad……

Well yes of course he should be allowed to be a dad – but maybe we should try and put a caveat on this.

Maybe we should demand that Elton in his new role as the world’s most famous dad should take a stand for dads’ rights and gay right’s campaigners to finally start working together on these issues.

It’s true that the anti-gay anger of some activist dads is a big part of the problem here – as was most visibly seen when NEW Fathers 4 Justice campaigners – a splinter group that is not to be confused with the official Fathers 4 Justice campaign – tried to highlight complex issues like the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 which led to gay sperm donors losing their parental rights – with the spectacularly stupid slogan “Kids Need Real Dads Not Lesbo Dads!”

There is also truth in the perception that male gay rights campaigners have happily jumped into bed with other equalities campaigners who have systematically excluded men and boys and ignored or opposed demands for better fathers’ rights whilst at the same time not reaching out to or standing up for the collective rights of all men and boys.

When a father separates from his partner we shouldn't  be interested in whether he is straight or gay or if his partner is a man or a woman or if his partner is straight or gay – all we should be interested in is providing services that make it more likely that those two parents can work together to do what’s best for their children.

At the same time we need to find new ways to make sure that less children experience their parents separating and that all children have the best possible relationship with both their biological parents – and in particularly their dads.

To do this we need to deal with fact that our society treats men and boys (straight or gay) as being more disposable both as fathers and surprisingly as children too.

It is a little know fact that 3 out of 5 children in care are boys and so whatever your opinion about gay dads the fact remains that if you care about the rights of men and boys (straight or gay) then you’d be better off asking yourself – what can we do to take better care of our boys and support more dads being involved in bringing up their children?

However if you want to, you can follow the Elton John is a dad debate here on the BBC website.

Every Man in Bristol Is a Murder Suspect Says MP

THIS ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN IN JANUARY 2011

Are you a man?  Would you mind being DNA tested if a woman was murdered in your city?

DNA samples from every man in Bristol should be screened as police continue to hunt for the murderer of Joanna Yeates, one of the city’s MPs has urged according to newspaper reports.

Is this a sexist request?

Most men would understand why they were being asked, said Kerry McCarthy, the Labour MP for Bristol East.

She added that DNA testing had proved critical in other murder cases.”Rather than taking DNA just from men in the Clifton area [where Ms Yeates was abducted], where the population is somewhat transient, the operation should be widened to include the whole of the city,” she added.

However, the former Labour junior whip conceded: “Quite how the police would organise this I don’t know.”Ms Yeates, 25, was last seen alive on 17 December. Her frozen, snow-covered body was found at the roadside by dog walkers on Christmas Day.Avon and Somerset Police previously used mass DNA screening in the 1995 investigation into the disappearance of 18-year-old Louise Smith. Officers collected 4,500 DNA samples from local men.

Is it sexist to make such a request? There are certainly sexist assumptions about victims and perpetrators that affect men and boys adversely.

We know, for example, that male victims of domestic violence  are twice as likely to suffer in silence and tell no-one about the abuse they are experiencing.

Furthermore, female rape victims are twice as likely to report the crime to the police as male rape victims are.

All the evidence suggests that if you don’t fit within the sexist assumptions of who is a perpetrator and who is a 

victim it is far more difficult to get help and support.

And just because most murderers are men, it doesn’t mean that all men are murderers or that all murderers are men.

And what’s nearly always overlooked is the fact that the majority of violence and murder victims are also men.  Globally, men account for two-thirds of the 1.6 people million people who die a violent death every year and in  2008/2009 in the UK 71% of murder victims were male.

More significantly, MEN ARE THREE TIMES MORE LIKELY TO BE MURDERED BY A STRANGER than women.

So even if you don’t think that DNA testing 50% of the adult population in this case would be excessive, you are left with the question, why are there no calls to DNA test all men in a city every time a man is murdered by a stranger?

Men are, after all, THREE TIMES MORE LIKELY TO BE MURDERED BY A STRANGER than women.

Maybe the people making the call to DNA test all men in this case are being a little bit sexist in that they think that the lives of the 71% murder victims who are male are less valuable than the 29% of victims who are female.

Whether this is the case or not, it is vital for people who care about men and boys to keep putting out the message that the majority of  the world’s victims of violence are  men and boys which is why we need a global campaign to  STOP VIOLENCE AGAINST MEN AND BOYS and not just campaigns to stop violence against women and girls.

21st Century Dad Facts

THIS ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN IN JANUARY 2011

THIS QUICK SUMMARY OF BADLY DRAWN BUT REALLY QUITE INTERESTING AND ACCURATE DAD FACTS ISFOR THOSE WHO LIKE THEIR STATISTICS ROUGH AND DIRTY……

Research from the Equalities and Human Rights Commission in the UK  reveals that 53% of fathers and 52% of mothers with children under 1 year old say dads spend too little time with their children.

The same research shows that dads are twice as likely as mums to feel that they spend too little time with their children.

Meanwhile, a new report called Work Life Balance: Working For Fathers? report by the charity Working Families and Dr Caroline Gatrell at Lancaster University supports the theory that being the main breadwinner is no fun for men with 82% of fathers saying they want to spend more time with their families.

Take up of paternity leave is growing, and more than half (55 per cent) of fathers have taken it according to YouGov/Demos survey. Of those who haven’t, 88 per cent would have liked to. Nearly half (49 per cent) could not afford to, and 19 per cent were either too busy or felt their employer would not be happy if they took it.

According to polling carried out by NOP for the think tank Demos women say they are 15 times more likely to take the day off work than their partner if their child was sick. 44 percent of mothers said they would take the day off work if their child was unexpectedly ill and couldn’t go to school, but only 3 percent said that their husband or male partner would take the day off work in these circumstances.

Children living apart from their dads in lone parent families are twice as likely to live in poverty than children living with both parents –  though the risk of poverty is reduced seven-to-eight-fold when mum is working full time.

There is a widespread failure of services to engage with of non-resident fathers – for example 31% of the non-resident fathers who have contact with their children go into their schools, compared with 75% of fathers who live at home (Nord et al, 1998) – and this  may be contributing to school failure in this group. However, it would be wrong to assume that non-resident fathers are unwilling. A UK survey (Peters et al, 2008) found 70% of two-parent-family fathers and 81% of non-resident parents (mainly men) wanting to be more involved in their children’s education. School processes that fail to include non-resident fathers and staff anxieties may be key (Burgess, 2009; McBride et al, 2000; Lloyd, 1999; Fletcher, 1997).

There are an estimated 1.9 million lone parents in Britain today caring for 3.1 million children. Lone parents now make-up a quarter of all families and the United Kingdom (UK) has proportionately more lone parents than most Organisations for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. The median age for a lone parent is 36 and two per cent of lone mothers are teenagers. Thirteen per cent of lone parents come from black or minority ethnic communities. Around ten per cent of lone parents are fathers (One Parent Families, 2008)

The Fatherhood Institutes Family Fairness Index states 14% of children live with their mother only, compared with only 2% of children in father-only households and that that non residence with a child is the single greatest predictor of low father or mother involvement.

Around 15% of fathers are not living with partner when their child is born (Kiernan, K. (2003) Unmarried parenthood: new insights from the Millennium Cohort Study. Population Trends)

This report states that 15% of babies had mothers who were not living with a partner when they were born. 0f these 4% had mothers who were not in any relationship. For 7% of babies their parents were “closely involved”, 2% were “just friends” and 1% were separated or divorced .

An Equal Opportunities Commission survey in 2007 showed that mothers recorded an average of 2 hours 32 minutes per day looking after their own children, compared with 2 hours 16 minutes by fathers – so that’s just about 50:50 (though women still do more housework while men still do more paid work – and these are shared fairly according to research by Dr Hakim at the London School of Economics)

One of the most stark figures is that while dads share parenting fairly equally when couples are together only 11% share parenting when couples separate (compared with around 33% in Sweden) – this is the family fairness index again.

According to the DWP what happens then is around a third (33%) of children have contact with their non-resident parent at least once a week, a third (35%) see dad less than once a week and a third (32%) have no contact at all.

Interestingly, children in lone parent families and nearly twice as likely to see their real dad regularly than children in step families seeing their non-resident parent on a more regular basis than re-partnered couple families (35% on a weekly basis compared to 18%), although the proportions that never saw their non-resident parent were similar (32% against 30% respectively).

In 2010 Harry Benson, of the Bristol Community Family Trust, undertook analysis of cenusus data  using census data and found that 60 per cent of families remain intact until their children are 15 – 97 per cent are married. (though remember many will have got married as a result of having children and staying together – not the other way around)

Fathers Suffer Under 'Mad' Parental Leave System Says Clegg

THIS ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN IN JANUARY 2011

Fathers suffer under ‘mad’ parental leave system that marginalizes men and denies kids time with dad says UK Government

The UK Coalition Government is set to strike an important blow for men’s equality by accepting proposals made by the former Labour Government to give mothers and fathers the right to share parental leave and committing to put a “proper system of shared parental leave” in place by 2015.

The Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, will condemn the current system of parental leave – introduced by the previous Labour administration in the face of criticism from Fathers Rights’ campaigners – as a system that marginalizes men, patronizes women and denies children time with their dads.

The last time the Conservatives were in power they vetoed parental leave making the UK the last member state in the European Union to implement the Parental Leave Directive.

While Labour can be credited for the introduction and extension of longer parental leave rights for women, it defied calls for equal treatment from Fatherhood experts for over a decade and chose to deny men equal parental leave rights.

As a result, the UK’s parental leave system ranks 14^th out of 21 developed countries according to the 2010 Family Fairness Index which revealed that dads get an unfair deal.

The index, produced by the Fatherhood Institute, states:

“Our leave system is neither generous nor egalitarian. The difference between men’s and women’s entitlements in the UK is particularly large [and] we have been slow to make leave for fathers financially viable. This differential in entitlement acts as a major driver of gendered responsibility in earning and caring.”

Announcing plans to reform this unfair system of parental leave Mr Clegg said:

“Right now, when a child is born, fathers are entitled to just a paltry two weeks of paternity leave. These rules patronise women and marginalise men. They’re based on a view of life in which mothers stay at home and fathers are the only breadwinners. That’s an Edwardian system that has no place in 21st-century Britain.”

Mr Clegg says that children suffer as result of a system that denies children valuable time with their children.

“Children suffer, often missing out on time with their fathers. Time that is desperately important to their development. We know that where fathers are involved in their children’s lives they develop better friendships, they learn to empathise, they have higher self esteem, and they achieve better at school.

“And men suffer too. More and more fathers want to play a hands on role with their young children. But too many feel that they can’t. It’s madness that we are denying them that chance.”

The move is in line with a commitment made in the Coalition’s new Equalities Strategy to promote shared parenting from the earliest stages of pregnancy.

Today’s announcement will come at the launch of a new report on parenting in Britain by the left-of-centre think tank Demos which will include a “Big Society” recommendation to direct money to train community organisers to help parents set up new neighbourhood groups and may include recommendations to train frontline staff to be more effective in engaging fathers.

Previous research by Demos/YouGov found that take up of paternity leave is growing, and more than half (55 per cent) of fathers have taken it. Of those who haven’t, 88 per cent would have liked to. Nearly half (49 per cent) could not afford to, and 19 per cent were either too busy or felt their employer would not be happy if they took it.

The Government will now consult on its plans to design a new system of parental leave for the 21st Century.

Attack the Fecking System Frank, not Feckless Dads

THIS ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN IN JANUARY 2011:

BBC Panorama’s investigation into “Britain’s army of absentee fathers” began with a bold statement from the Coalition Government’s Poverty Tsar, Frank Field, who has called for “feckless fathers” who are unemployed to be forced to either work or have their benefits removed.

According to the Labour MP for Birkenhead:

“We are the first generation in recorded history where society has not made the man who begets a child responsible for that child.”

But Frank Field’s focus on  “feckless fathers” in the UK is “unthinkably crass and damaging to poor young men and their families who deserve better from the UK’s Poverty Tsar”.

Field’s controversial assertion is also at odds with the equally controversial view of the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, who had announced on the day of the broadcast that one of the primary causes of the so-called “feckless father” phenomena was a benefit system whose rules penalize low-income parents who want to bring up their children together.

”These rules patronise women and marginalise men,” said Clegg.

“They’re based on a view of life in which mothers stay at home and fathers are the only breadwinners. That’s an Edwardian system that has no place in 21st century Britain.”

“Women suffer,” Clegg continued. “Mothers are expected to take on the vast bulk of childcare themselves. If they don’t, they very often feel judged. If they do, they worry about being penalised at work.”

And Clegg didn’t stop at the suffering of mothers, he went on to address the suffering of children who miss out on their dads.

“Children suffer, too often missing out on time with their fathers,” he said. “Time that is desperately important to their development.”

But that wasn’t the end of it, because men in the UK are suffering too according to the Liberal Party leader, here it comes:

”And men suffer too. More and more fathers want to play a hands-on role with their young children. But too many feel that they can’t.”

If the focus on all this “suffering” was a little dramatic, the truth of the argument still rang out through Panorama’s investigation into “Britain’s Missing Dads” but the strange thing was, that Clegg was nowhere to be seen.

Having nailed the issue so completely by identifying that the key problem is our Edwardian benefit system that takes a view of life that fathers are the only breadwinners  - and as a result mums suffer, children miss out on their dads, and dads want to be more involved in parenting but can’t – why on earth did Panorama not show this footage?

There was a very simple reason for this. The Edwardian system that Nick Clegg condemned yesterday as having no place in 21^st century Britain wasn’t the benefit system that makes it financially more rewarding for low-income mums to live apart from dad, it was the UK’s parental leave system.

And yet the parallels are obvious. Both systems seek to support parents who are bringing up children and both systems work on the sexist “Edwardian” assumption that men are the breadwinners and women look after the children.

The difference is that while Clegg, Cameron and their mates understand what it’s like to be a modern dad struggling to find the right balance of breadwinning and childcaring between them – they have no idea what it’s like to be a poor young man who didn’t have a father, underperformed at school, has limited work options, gets a young woman who didn’t have a dad herself pregnant, has little idea yet how to manage a career or take care of a child  – let alone how to juggle to two – and be told that you are a “feckless father” and that “we the state” demand that you be the primary breadwinner whilst “we the state” continue to provide financial and practical support for the mother of your child to stay at home on benefits.

If this Edwardian approach to family life has “no place in 21^st Century Britain” when it comes to the UK’s parental leave system, then why is it okay to impose such a system on young dads who have had a pretty wretched start in life?

A few months before he came to power (albeit shared) with Mr Clegg, the Prime Minister, David Cameron pledged to make the next Conservative government “the most family-friendly government ever”.

Now in Government, Cameron’s Inter Ministerial Group on Equalities has also pledged to “encourage shared parenting from the earliest stage of pregnancy” and “support mothers and fathers to share their child’s care between them” in its new Equalities Strategy.

But what do they mean by shared parenting?

So far the focus has been on the welcome news that parental leave will be reformed to give mums and dads “in all types of families” greater flexibility to share both childcare and career.

But what about separated families?

In the UK while the former Equal Opportunities Commission found in 2007 that couples now share childcare about 50:50 (though mums still do more housework and dads do more paid work) – when couples are separated – before or after a child is born – only 11% share childcare – according to the Fatherhood Institute’s Family Fairness Index.

So if this Government is serious about its worthy intention to tackle inequality in the UK by supporting mothers and fathers to share parenting then it has a very long to go because in nearly 1 in 4 families in the UK mums and dads are separated and not sharing care.

For established couples who separate, family law reform is long overdue, not just for the many Fathers 4 Justice dads but also for couples who need help and support to work things out together.

And for the “feckless fathers” in last night’s Panorama programme we need radical reform of the benefits system and a transformation of services for men, boys and dads

We need to see projects like the excellent St Michael’s Fellowship in South London, featured in the programme, available right across the country. They gave us a very different view of “feckless dads” as young men “who want to be the best dads for their children – young men who very much want to be good dads”.

The charity has reconnected more than 100 dads with their children helping these young men to tackle issues they are facing such as homelessness, illiteracy and unemployment first.

We saw one young dad who described himself as “lost” and “left out” of his child’s life who was getting help to be more involved in his daughter’s upbringing than his own father was in his. We also met a “feckless dad” who wanted to live with his partner and child but couldn’t afford to because she would lose a chunk of a benefits if he lived in the same house as his family.

It was at this point that Frank Field agreed that the benefit system keeps fathers away from their children by paying parents to remain apart.

“If you were designing a crazy system that would mess up kids you’d come up with the system you’ve got now,” he said. “I think the tide is changing because people are seeing what the consequences for children are when you have a benefit system that pays parents to remain apart”.

And here a big unanswered question hung in the air.

If it is the Edwardian benefit system that pays parents to stay apart, shouldn’t our Poverty Tsar be waging war on the system first, rather than demonising poor young men who are “lost” and “left out” as “feckless fathers” who should simply get a job or lose their benefits?

And if that challenge is too big for Frank Field – as it proved in 1998 when he walked out on his jobs as Minster for Welfare Reform – shouldn’t he at least be backing projects like St Michael’s that are working hard to support young dads who want to share in every aspect of parenting with the mother of their child (like privileged dads like Cameron and Clegg dads) -  and not just be seen as ‘feckless” when they fail to live up to the expectations of the Edwardian breadwinner?

Sadly, Field dismissed the reporter Declan Lawn’s notion that we need projects like St Michael’s all over the country changing attitudes and working with young as an idea from “cloud cuckoo land”.

But surely if the right to share parenting in “all types of families” is now deemed to be an issue of equality  by the Government – and the Government is to reform the parental leave system to give privileged fathers like Cameron and Clegg support to share parenting with their partners – they why on earth would we not also take action to support the poorest, most challenged young fathers in the country?

In a recent speech to the Charities Parliament, Frank Field bemoaned the fact that the sector hadn’t “woken up to the huge opportunity that is being offered to it” by the Big Society agenda by “picking up the ball and running with it in its own direction”.

Surely in a Big Society that works it isn’t a “cloud cuckoo land” idea  that every community has a project like the St Michael’s Fellowship championing and supporting struggling young dads to be the great fathers they so badly want to be.

Yes it’s a Big Idea – maybe even a Big Society idea – but all of the biggest ideas start with one person having a conversation that inspires other people to take action.

Mr Field priding himself in trying to “think the unthinkable” when he was Minister for Welfare Reform  – that was a great conversation to start.

This conversation he has started about “feckless fathers” is unthinkably crass and damaging to poor young men and their families who deserve better from the UK’s Poverty Tsar.

What poor young dads need is people of Mr Field’s position to start conversations about reforming benefits that keep dads out of their children’s lives, reforming a family law system that leaves just 11% of separated dads parents sharing care and championing the idea of developing support services like St Michaels for every dad, in every community whether these are delivered by charities, community groups, businesses or the public sector.

We already have a national infrastructure in place for supporting mothers and children through maternity services, health centres, Sure Start centres, teenage mother projects, schools and other local partners – all we need now is an unthinkable vision that theses services could be developed to provide services to all dads too.

If supporting parents like Cameron and Clegg to share parenting by reforming our Edwardian  parental leave system is not unthinkable, then it shouldn’t be unthinkable to reform our Edwardian benefits and social care systems to support fathers and mothers equally and make it easier for mothers and fathers in “all types of families” to share responsibility for caring for and providing for their children.

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Sexist Cancer Campaign Targets Feckless Ugly Men

THIS ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN IN JANUARY 2011:

More men die of skin cancer because they are too feckless and ugly to take care of themselves according to female health experts in South West England 

During February men aged over 50 in the county of Dorset will be in the spotlight as the focus of a new health campaign to encourage more men to take care of their skin and avoid getting a malignant melanoma.

But why target men? Well according to Caroline Cerny from Cancer Research UK it’s because “men leave it up to their partners or mothers to remind them to use sunscreen or cover up with a shirt and hat” –  which is obviously a big problem in Dorset during February where temperatures soar to an average high of  9°C/48°F.

Her view that men need to take better care of their skin is backed by Julia Verne, Director South West Public Health Observatory (SWPHO) who adds to Caroline Cerny’s description of men as feckless fools who are incapable of looking after themselves, by suggesting that men aren’t just feckless, they’re ugly too –  and don’t give a stuff about how sunburnt or cancerous they look, unlike smart old women who are less likely to die from skin cancer because they  are ”more concerned about their appearance than men”.

But wait a minute, are men really too stupid and ugly to take care of their skin? If so then presumably men get lots more skin cancer than women?

Er, not really. There are around 9,000 new cases of skin cancer every year and about 53% are found in women – who are presumably far too busy taking care of their appearance and telling their feckless husbands and sons to put on some cream and a sun hat, to take care of their own skin.

So if women are more likely to get skin cancer, why focus on men?

Well, the sad fact is that about 20 men a week die of skin cancer in the UK accounting for about 57% of all skin cancer deaths per year.

And when it comes to diagnosis, 1 in 5 cases are terminal by the time they get a diagnosis, and around 60% of those late presenting cases are men.

So why are men slower at presenting?

Well here’s the really interesting statistic, men are more than twice as likely as women to get skin cancer on their backs with nearly 40% of malignant melanomas appearing on the torso where even men who check themselves regularly cant find them – because – well – that sneaky little mole is hiding around the back!

In comparison women are nearly 3 times as likely (42% to 15%) to get skin cancer on their legs where they can see it according to Cancer Research UK’s own statistics on men, women and skin cancer.

And when you really drill down into the available statistics you discover that 98.9%  of men and 98.7% of women are not at risk of developing malignant melanoma in their lifetime – so for the vast majority of men and women this is not an issue.

For the minority who do get skin cancer, 76% of men and 85% of women present for early diagnosis and the remainder – which accounts for 1 in 400 men and 1 in 500 women will get a skin cancer that is terminal by the time they get a diagnosis.

And not even all of the 1 in 400 men who get a malignant melanoma that is terminal by the time they get a diagnosis will have got the disease because they don’t care about their appearance and they rely on women to tell them to put sun cream on – despite what Caroline Cerny would like to have you believe.

According to the Skin Cancer Facts the men most a risk aren’t feckless men who don’t care about their appearance – but men with a high number of moles; men with red or fair hair, blue eyes, fair skin and freckles; men who tan with difficulty and burn in the sun and men with a history of the disease in two or more family members.

Having said all that, it is true that Skin Cancer has increased over the last 30 years more than any other common cancer in the UK, with the male incident rates increasing more than five times from around 2.7 per 100,000 people in 1978 to 14.6 in 2007, while the female rates have more than tripled from 4.5 to 15.4 over the same period.

And it’s also true that men are more likely to die of skin cancer each year – accounting for 47% of cases and 57% of deaths.

And I strongly welcome health interventions targeted at men like Cancer Research UK’s men and skin cancer campaign in Merseyside and the charity’s inconclusive research into why more men die of cancer.

What I do not welcome is a spokeswoman for a charity known for spending more than four times more money on researching women’s cancer than men’s cancer launching a campaign with a primary message that stereotypes men as feckless fools who don’t look after themselves:

“Too often men leave it up to their partners or mothers to remind them to use sunscreen or cover up with a shirt and hat, and even to visit the doctor about a worrying mole.”

Particularly when the charity’s own conclusion into its research showing that when you factor out sex-specific cancers men are 60 per cent more likely to get  cancer than women, and 70 per cent more likely to die from it was this:

“As a science-based organisation, we can’t make decisions and strategy based on stereotypes and personal stories – we need hard data (and) will carry out research as to why people put off going to the doctor with early cancer symptoms, and how best to get across messages about the signs of cancer.  Armed with this information, we will be able to target the right messages to the right people, at the right time.”

If “we can’t make strategy based on stereotypes” why launch a major communication strategy by stereotyping men?

We don’t know how well Cancer Research UK’s work into identifying the best messages to help beat cancer is going but the research above would suggest that some effective messages might be:

Men, did you know that women like Carolyn Cerny at Cancer Research UK are more likely to get skin cancer than men and three times more likely to get skin cancer on their legs than you, please remind them of that fact the next time they tell you that you are rubbish at looking after your skin.

Women, the men in your life are twice as likely as you to get a malignant melanoma on their back where they can’t see it, please check their back for them occasionally – and while you’re there, ask them to check your legs because you are more likely to get skin cancer than men and three times more likely to get it on your legs than the men in your life.

Cancer Research UK, you spend four times more money on women’s cancer than men’s cancer  - now we know women are not as good at looking after their skin as men – being three times more likely to get skin cancer on their legs – but when you factor out sex-specific cancer men are 70% more likely to die of cancer so how about pushing a few more of your millions towards men’s health please?

Until that happy day, here’s a final footnote:  people who believe that the BBC is biased against men may be interested to note that as well as quoting two female health experts, this BBC article on MEN and skin cancer quotes a local resident who has had skin cancer who IS A WOMAN – but NO MEN – and is written by a woman 

too.

For the sake of balance, this article is 100% man!