Families Need Fathers (and Mothers).

Today is Father's Day in the UK.

Some decry such events as American inventions or a means for shops to sell more The Simpsons tat and other made-in-China shoddy items.

To a degree they are right, but despite the fact that I received no breakfast in bed from the sprogs today (in spite of all my heavy-handed hints and prompts), I think that we need Father's Day today as never before.

In an age when more men than ever act like animals, when chivalry is dead in every sense, when feminism and the pc-brigade have degraded the father's role, and when more children are brought up in single-parent households: it's vital that we all get a reminder of just how important (responsible) fathers are.

I make no claim to be the perfect dad (can I hear the sprogs' cries of protest in the background?) but let's face it, this country needs dads, and good dads, as never before.

There was a time when the dad was the moral guiding force of the family, and whilst feminists decry such times as "patriarchal," the fact was that most families were as much matriarchal.

The mother was (and should be!) the bedrock of every family, the one the children turn to, day in day out, with their cuts and bruises, with their problems and joys.

But look at the dysfunctional ne'erdowells and druggie layabouts today and I bet a large percentage of them had no decent male role model, in the guise of a father.

With no dad to lay down the law when it's needed, to back-up mum when there's problems, and to be there for special events, and to take the children off now and then to give mum a break too - the children will be more likely to grow up with no respect for legitimate authority.

We've all heard of this in the coloured communities in places like London - where dads are rarer than hen's teeth. Of course race, displacement and all the rest of the problems of mass immigration and cultural disenfranchisement comes into the equation... but the lack of fathers and as such, authority and a male role model has helped the rise of the drug dealing, mugging and gun-totting teenagers on our city streets.

The family is central to our communities, to our nations and to our very civilisation. Anyone who says otherwise is an idiot.

The family has to be a partnership, it has to have a mother and a father, if it is to effective and be a place where the children can be raised as well-balanced as possible.

Of course there always has been and always will be single-parent families, just as there has always been orphans and adoptions.

But our task, our goal, should be to create a society where solid families, families blessed with children, become the norm and the idea that those who choose to have single-parent "Lifestyles" get rewarded with constant hand-outs and free houses is brought to an end: rather those families who choose to stay together (through thick and thin) and bring more children into the world (our future workers, tax-payers and professionals) get the rewards.

Fathers For Justice and similar groups say that children need dads. They do. They also need mums. This is nothing new - it's as old as the hills!

So as I munch my way through my paternal bag of wine gums (dispensing occasional ones to the sprogs as they beg and plead) this afternoon I will contemplate the role of the father in society and the stability to communities that well-balanced families can bring.


P.S. My favourite ones are the red ones...

(Pictured right: Me, Mrs FC and the sprogs. How we laughed when I found two wine gums I'd dropped in my beard!)