The myth of the fatherless society
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Anna Tarrant, University of Lincoln and Michael Ward, Swansea University
Society has a problem with absent men. Every other week it seems there are warnings that fathers aren’t there for their families, and that men are absent from social institutions like childcare, schools and other support settings. It’s a problem that is driving concern over how children are being raised, as well as the wider difficulties it can cause outside the family.
This “crisis of fatherlessness” debate has remarkable endurance, attracting regular and considerable public and policy attention, particularly in recent years.
Andy Cook, chief executive of think-tank the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), recently claimed that almost half of all children born in Britain today will not be living with both of their parents by the time they reach the age of 15. Cook said that parenting is too much of a throwaway culture, adding that “we need a societal shift in perspective from regarding fathers as a dispensable ex...
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