Around one million children in Britain are growing up without meaningful contact with their father, a major report from the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) has revealed.
Fractured Families: Why stability matters, which received widespread national and international media coverage, also highlights that lone-parent families are increasing at a rate of more than 20,000 a year and will total more than two million before the next General Election.
The CSJ branded the political response to family breakdown "feeble", and called on the Government to fulfil the commitments it has made to promote family stability.
The report was covered by BBC News, Newsnight, Radio 4’s Today and Woman’s Hour, 5 Live Breakfast, Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine show as well as Sky News, ITV and Channel 5. The CSJ also took part in more than 15 BBC regional interviews.
The research also reveals that one in four primary schools in England and Wales have no male teachers – sparking a debate about a lack of male role models in some communities. There was a Lords discussion on the report earlier this week.
The publication adds how children growing up today are more likely to have a television in their bedroom than they are to have a father at home by the age of 16.
Christian Guy, CSJ Director, said: “For too many children growing up in some of the poorest parts of the country, men are rarely encountered in the home or in the classroom. This is an ignored form of deprivation that can have profoundly damaging consequences on social and mental development.”
Fractured Families, which is part of the CSJ’s Breakthrough Britain II project, was the subject of a leader in The Times as well as columns in the Sun and Express.
Find more coverage of the report in the Daily Mail, Independent, Times, Metro, Herald, Telegraph, BBC online and Huffington Post.
Fractured Families follows on from previous family policy studies the CSJ has carried out, including: Breakthrough Britain: Family Breakdown, Forgotten Families?, Every Family Matters and It's Time to Back Marriage.
