Good for The Guardian

Today’s edition carries two great articles. On p36 “Boys don’t suddenly become men at 18” describes the work of A Band of Brothers, a Brighton-based mentoring project which links older local men with disaffected young men, helping them in the transition to manhood. If this sort of programme could be rolled out nationwide, it might help ameliorate some of the issues faced by the 500,000 families we’re suddenly reading about.

Two pages further on there’s “Birth of a new era for fathers” (let’s hope). A full page article outlines the outcome of a roundtable discussion on 14th March involving 16 professionals from a variety of backgrounds. At least two of the participants also took in an earlier roundtable discussion at Portcullis House on 6th February, helping to "formulate the Labour Party’s position on fathers.”

And if A Band of Brothers can mentor disaffected young men, then it’s not too great a leap of imagination to suggest that disadvantaged young fathers-to-be could be profitably mentored in a similar way on their journey towards fatherhood.

Early Intervention

It looks like a Guardian journalist might be on our side. In yesterday’s edition, Suzanne Moore said, “we need to target children we try not to see, but who live among us, who are deeply neglected.” Of course it would be even better if we could avoid having to target such children by preventing that need by intervening earlier in the lives of their parents.

The Teenage Pregnancy Myth

Keen readers of this blog will be aware that Graham Allen’s Early Intervention review contained the word ‘mother’ nearly 8 times more than the word ‘father’. Radio 4’s programme on Monday, The Teenage Pregnancy Myth, went rather better. The words ‘mother’, ‘motherhood’ and ‘mum’ were mentioned 65 times, the word ‘father’ only 3 times, with the familiar ‘feckless’ adjective being attached to one of these. And a mother of a teenage mother was interviewed, but not the father.

It’s not that word counts say anything about the value of any document or programme. But they do suggest that the fact that men are also involved in pregnancy, that fathers are important in the lives of their children (see my paper at http://www.thepsychologist.org.uk/archive/archive_home.cfm/volumeID_23-editionID_184-ArticleID_1644-getfile_getPDF/thepsychologist/0310whit1.pdf), and that some of the consequences of fatherless families are of concern (see the previous post) are being glossed over.

More media dad stuff

The perils of reading The Daily Telegraph - in yesterday’s edition its political editor reported on an “official review into the causes of last summer’s riots (which) is expected to highlight the lack of “male role models” for many of the youths arrested in the wake of the widespread disturbances.”

The report can be found at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/9135087/The-72000-problem-families-with-no-father-and-no-male-role-model.html and points out that the majority of Britain’s 120,000 ‘problem families’ are fatherless. Of course, they’re not fatherless because somewhere there’s a father. So it might be profitable to develop policies that tackle the causes of 'fatherlessness', alongside those that only deal with its consequences. Prevention as opposed to cure once again.

Dads Matter Too - the DVD

It’s always good to receive a bit of praise so it was great to read the following from a contact who is interested in Dads Matter Too - the course. She said that the DVD had “gone down very well with our young mums who are keen for us to offer it out to the dads. Would it be possible to purchase 2 or 3 copies please?” It’s encouraging that someone is finding it relevant three years after it first appeared.

Behavioural institutions for five year olds

The perils of reading the Mail Online ... its education correspondent has written a piece about a report written by the government’s ‘behaviour tsar’, according to whom, “Children at risk of descending into a life of crime and aggression can and should be identified at the age of two ... His report is expected to be accepted by Education Secretary Michael Gove today.”

The article, which can be found at:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2111844/Children-age-TWO-lessons-anger-management-contain-themselves.html#ixzz1oWUljrO3 fails to mention the circumstances through which two year olds could acquire such behaviour traits. Those of us who believe in the value of (very) early intervention and think that prevention is better than cure - and possibly cheaper - might feel that the correspondent, and Mr Gove, is missing something.

Then again, perhaps we shouldn’t believe all we read in the press.