Plans for parenting GCSE must include importance of fathers, warns think tank

The fatherhood think tank raised the concerns after the government’s poverty tsar Frank Field proposed that young people take a GCSE in parenting in order to avoid further generations of disadvantage.

But Fiona McAllister, Fatherhood Institute’s policy officer, claimed that much of the information around parenting in the current PSHE curriculum is female-centred.

"We urge that any proposal to create a GCSE in parenting includes information about the importance of fathers in their children’s lives and the capacity for boys to become nurturing men, and enables both boys and girls to reflect on their own experiences of being fathered," she said.

McAllister also dismissed comments that Field made, in a piece for the Daily Mail, claiming that the number of "feckless, absent fathers" and "toe-rag parents" in Britain has become a "social catastrophe".

She argued that Field’s vocabulary "flies in the face of the need to provide support for the most disadvantaged families, which has been put at the heart of the coalition’s agenda".

"If the parents who are struggling most are dismissed as uninvolved and ‘toe rags’, there is little room for pulling together to build stronger communities based on mutual respect," she added.