My right to nine years’ paternity leave

I want three years’ paternity leave for each of my children — backdated

22 August 2007

The new Tory proposals are bang on the money

It is assumed then, as a matter of course, that women are the ‘primary carers’ of their children; which is fine, unless your aspiration is to provide a job market which is truly equal for both sexes. The same assumption is made in our family courts and it is reflected by the increasingly extraordinary divorce settlements which take for granted the notion that the wife sacrificed her career in order to bring up the kids and is thus entitled to a vast wodge of the husband’s earned income. But you cannot have it both ways. Right now we have employment legislation and family courts which severely penalise men and as a direct consequence persuade women that this full-time working business is all a bit much and, frankly, we’d rather sit at home with the kids and get paid for doing so.

There are few more thoroughly derided pressure groups in Britain than Fathers 4 Justice; their stunts are sneered at, their leading lights subjected to ridicule. This, despite the fact that they have caused little or no disruption to ordinary people and I have yet to read a considered rebuttal of their demands. Compare the sort of press coverage they receive to the cheerful indulgence afforded to those arrogant pubescent trolls camped outside Heathrow airport, who have stated their intention to mess up the lives of people trying to go on holiday because the ordinary public is too stupid to realise that a short hop to Magaluf with the kids at Easter will lead to the destruction of the Earth and every creature which walks upon it. Just as an example. And yet in the wider world, beyond the reach of the metropolitan media, I suspect there is quite a bit of sympathy for the notion that dads should have greater rights of access to their own children, from whom they have been estranged by a sexist judiciary. Three years’ paternity leave? A ludicrous step in the right direction ...