CLICK HERE FOR RESEARCH: Mike White runs a course for young fathers-to-be and is a director of a community-based organisation working with young parents in Wiltshire, UK
He writes about the successes of his course and similar initiatives to involve young fathers with the pregnancies and rearing of their children.
His advices should bear some consideration at a time when social, legal and UK Government practices do not encourage or require non resident fathers to engage with their children in any way but to contribute financially.
Quotes from Mike White’s paper:
“Attachment theories, in focusing on the mother, tend to underemphasize the role of the father in caregiving.”
“studies have shown that children with active fathers do show greater general sociability and ease with strangers (Frascarolo, 2004), improved cognitive functioning (Nugent, 1991) and fewer behavioural problems (Aldous et al., 1998).”
Mike White’s conclusion:
"Perhaps it is too much to hope that a national pilot project for young dads-to be is funded and properly evaluated to determine its value for young parents, their children and our society as a whole. Such a project would need to run for several years, but those of us who are parents know that parenthood lasts for the rest of our lives. Perhaps, as a nation, we should be developing a longer-term view of the needs of a particularly disadvantaged group of young people and the ways in which we might meet them. It may not be too fanciful to suggest that this intervention might be one way of impacting on the cycle of disadvantage.
"In many cases these young people are the children of parents who have been part of that cycle. By supporting them over a significant period of time, the possibility exists of improving their own life chances, and might also enable their children to break out of that cycle. However, we would need to take a generational view of such an intervention. Of course, the chances of that happening when politicians cannot usually see beyond the next election might present a particular challenge, but perhaps this is the time to encourage them to adopt such a view."
