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Oh those poor, poor men. Paternity pay at only £117 a week! Surely maternity pay is much much higher than that ..... oh no wait. It's the same.

The baby boomers are responsible for this notion that you can spawn as many replicas as you wish and expect to fully support them while having just the one parent in a low status job, with all children having a room of their own, a car each for you and the missus, meat every day, eating out once a week, and a foreign holiday every year. it was never this way before, and the affluent yuppies in the 80s have set up a false expectation of a high standard of living.

The financial penalty has always been high. It is high for men and it is even higher for women.

What is a real father though?? That changes all the time,
actually being there and paying for the off- spring, those are 2 basics, the rest is down to social trends.

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Actually I can't ABIDE a man-woman who acts like he is a woman as far a kids go, makes me want to barf. A man is a man and shouldn't try and be a woman.

I do think we're set up to expect too much sometimes.
We see we have it better than our grandparents in so many other areas (health, life expectancy, NHS, technology etc) we reckon that we should have it better in all areas then get a shock when we don't.

Hmm I'm not really sure of the argument of that piece.

"[in the past] There were plenty of biological fathers who lived without families. This was not about men's moral failings, but a structural problem. Since the 1950s historic changes in the economy and in gender relations have returned us to this age. Paternity no longer means fatherhood."

I don't understand what this is saying. Or exactly what it means. Are we saying that a father-provided-for family is a recent invention, and then men in the past were equally feckless? What is the structural problem of the past being referred to?

"[in more recent times] As men's incomes stagnated or fell, women took on a double shift of paid work and unpaid domestic labour."

Yes - funny how men find themselves with LESS work so they just piss their time away at home while women look after the children AND work. I have a friend whose estranged partner has just been made redundant - but instead of taking on more childcare he is just smoking weed and pissing around on his playstation.

"Labour, despite the best efforts of feminism, is silent and evasive about both masculinity and fatherhood."

HMMMMMMMMMMM not QUITE sure what Labour should do to resolve the issue...

The trouble with these type of discussions is that there are no PRACTICAL solutions. I don't see why 'Labour' is expected to come up with some, if the article writer can't think of any...

Sometimes, despite my best intentions, I wonder whether men, at their very core, basically default to being useless depressed fecks while women just get on with things.

Kittywise, what on earth do you mean?

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I don't understand what he is saying!

I'm afraid I gave up on the article when he said "The model of the man as breadwinner is a modern invention and only became the norm in the 1950s" and then in the next paragraph "The Right wants to rewind 200 years and reimpose the patriarchal roles of mothers and fathers".

Ufnuwwww; what??; my brain hurts!

It is a muddleheaded article. Couldn't be bothered after the first few paras.

Yes I was confused by that Bramshott

i don't understand what he is saying either

it has NO point, that i can discern

these "obstacles" are what working women face, but they seem to just get on with it

full time job out of the home

full time job in the home

crap pay and no thanks

what a great deal women have

I mean I think it's a nonsense that in order to be good fathers nowadays man are supposed to act like women.
Personally I prefer a more 'traditional' set up where the roles of parenting are quite delineated.

I'm not talking about any sort of abusive patriarchal system but one where men and women play to their strengths because they are different.

Men I know who are expected to be both breadwinners and then assume the woman's role when they get home, eg, changing nappies cooking etc are pretty unhappy.

That's what I think anyway

paternity leave is a nonsense

'paternity leave is a nonsense'

bollocks

unless you pay a mat nurse / doula etc or have a handy (and co-operative) relative, a woman who's just given birth needs the support of her partner for those two weeks, if only to make sure she actually eats and has a chance to shower.

I don't think unpaid drudgery is the women's role, Kittywise.

I was unhappy when I was working outside the home and coming home to changing nappies and cooking.

Most people who spend every waking moment doing the shitwork for other people are unhappy about it.

Why is it only sad if they don't have testicles?

Kitty you think men and women should "play to their strengths"

What do you mean by that? Your post seems to insinuate than mens strengths lie in earning lots of money and women's in changing nappies and cooking. That's surely not what you meant is it?

<praying I have the wrong end of the stick>

I can see some of his points. But I don't understand how men 'today' have it any harder than years ago? Is he saying men have it harder because more women are working now - eh? Are women taking their bread winning income? I don't really understand that one.
My Dad was always the bread winner, working all hours god sent and we lived in a council house, this is the 70s and 80s. How is that any different to working class of today? I am now living in a ha house working parttime and my husband earns just under the so called average wage. Not sure how things are/have changed.
I tell you one thing that has changed - access to loans, hp, credit cards, buy now pay later, store cards. That is what has changed over the years!

men's strengths are hunting mammoths with spears, catching fish etc
women's strengths are tending the fire and picking berries

yes?

paternity leave is not nonsense and my DH was gutted that he only had 2 weeks, as i was

how on earth is it a woman's role to change nappies? Seriously - how does having ovaries make this so?

i don't believe changing nappies is the point of my existence

Kitty - with all due respect, just because you're not capable of anything more challenging than changing a nappy doesn't meant that all women are equally as useless.

Ha ha!

My dh is perfectly happy - he works full-time and is the main 'breadwinner' but he loves coming home to the kids and doing stuff with them. He always changed nappies etc - if we are both there why should it alway be me?!

agree that unpaid drudgery shouldn't be a woman#s role.

I think materialism to some extent prevents us all from being the best parents we could be <gulp>. Because we want things, some of them quite basic, like a decent place to live and these things cost money and to earn money we have to work and then when we do have things we want bigger and better things and we rarely stop and say what are we actually doing this all for, we just blindly carry on working in the pursuit of money to buy us stuff. I know I'm not being very articulate here and I'm not suggesting we all have a choice about whether to work or not, most of us don't at all, but just that the economy (which relies on people buying stuff, amongst other things) does rely on us all buying into this consumerist crap and going out there to earn money to buy stuff we don't need in order to keep the economy going and to give us some notion of happiness and we end up with no time. Which is what we need most of all if we want to be with our children and give them enough attention.

Paternity leave is important to me and to dh. I have to have a elective c section this time round and I will need dh to be sole carer for ds while I am in hospital, we have no one else to look after him.
We are lucky however to get full pay from dh's employer for 2 weeks and whole days off paid for attending hospital appointments with me. Not all men get the Government pay for paternity.