Children and Adoption Bill

Yes, I do. There is much research to support the greater role of fathers in the lives of the children and the benefit that that brings to the child. Figures on the amount of time that fathers spend with their children reflect our country’s social development. Compared with 30 years ago, men spend eight times as much time with their children. In the 1970s, the fathers of young children spent less than a quarter of an hour a day involved in child-related activities. Recent surveys show that, on average, the fathers of under-fives now spend an hour and 20 minutes on child care activities during the week. Our society has changed greatly over the past 20 or 30 years, as has the relationship that female and male parents have with their children. Research overwhelmingly highlights the fact that children whose fathers have been actively involved in their children’s lives achieve more academically, have more satisfying relationships in their adult lives and are less likely to get into trouble with the police. Indeed, if fathers are involved, children are less likely to have a criminal record by the age of 21. Pre-school children who spend more time playing with their dads are often more sociable when they enter nursery school. Children benefit equally, if not more, from their mothers, but I am making the point that both parents have an equal role to play and can have an equally beneficial effect on their children by maximising such contact where it is appropriate to do so. The Government need to do more to enable both parents to play an active role in the upbringing of their children, yet there is a cohort of dejected non-resident parents— predominantly, but not exclusively, fathers—who are being prevented from doing so often unfamiliarly and without good reason. That does not diminish in any way the fact that there are some very difficult non-resident parents, particularly fathers, who may have threatened violence and may have a detrimental effect on children, but they are the minority. We will table amendments to the Bill that maintain:"““that the court shall, unless a contrary reasons be shown, act on the presumption that a child’s welfare is best served through residence with his parents and, if his parents are not living together, through residence with one of them and through both of them being as fully and equally involved in his parenting as possible.””" I emphasise that that should happen where the safety of the child is not an issue. We also propose that contact with the non-resident parent should be frequent and continuing and that it should be reasonable—not a 50 per cent. share of the time or anything as prescriptive as that. We believe that the system needs to be fundamentally overhauled and effectively turned on its head. There should be a presumption of shared parenting and dissenting parents should have to put forward a coherent case explaining exactly why the right of the child to maintain reasonable and substantial contact with both parents should not be respected. Safety and welfare considerations should be duly weighed up by the court. I repeat that, in all that, the welfare of the child is paramount. Surely the welfare of the child is complemented, not contradicted, by maximising contact and interaction with each parent.