F4J Response to Sir Gerald Howarth Demonising Dads with Tory Stereotyping
Dear Mr Howarth,
We have read your reported comments here today http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2539511/Strip-feckless-fathers-benefits-say-MPs-Breakdown-families-costs-country-46billion-EVERY-year.html
Your comments not only demonise and stereotype dads as ‘deadbeats and feckless’, but they have caused great anger and upset amongst our supporters, not least because your party promised to introduce a legal presumption of shared parenting at the last election – a promise they reneged on.
Further, your party’s insistence on child support meaning only financial support contributes to the widely held belief that the Conservative Party is anti-father and anti-family. Child support should mean emotional and financial support otherwise fathers are reduced to the status of cashpoints and sperm banks.
If you, like us, want to support the family, the best way of doing that is for the Conservative Party to honour its 2010 election promises and support a legal presumption of shared parenting so fathers have rights and responsibilities. Until we recognise fathers in law and support equal rights, our country will continue to fail our children again and again and the only obstacle to making this happen is Parliament’s failure to uphold a child’s rights to their father.
I would ask that if you feel so strongly about fathers who refuse to take responsibility, that in the name of equality, that you also call for mothers who deny contact and breach contact orders to have their benefits withdrawn as well.
I therefore ask you to retract or amend your comments and recognise that these fathers are the minority and do not represent the majority of desperate fathers in this country.
Yours sincerely
Nadine O’Connor, Campaign Director, Fathers4Justice
