Society
It's time for Blair to stand up for dads everywhere
Published 24 July 2000
The photo of the handbag was splashed across the Telegraph: the symbol of Mrs T's political matriarchy had been auctioned off for charity and fetched £100,000. Misty-eyed Tories egged each other on during the bidding, unleashing their nostalgia for Mama Maggie as they competed for the prized accessory.
The Lady would not have been surprised, for she knew that, beneath their laddish exterior, every Brit was a mama's boy, as Oedipally hooked as a Latin mammone - just less noisily so.
Play mother in politics, and you'll go far. The most macho minister will take a lashing from Betty Boothroyd, and Mo Mowlam need only cluck in her mother hen impersonation for colleagues and the public to roll over and coo. Mother figures are trusted, revered and obeyed. Fathers, on the other hand, are deeply suspect: "a paternalistic approach" drips condescension and obstructs initiative; any politician described as "fatherly" is a has-been; as for "patriarchy", feminists have managed to turn that word into a synonym for oppression, dictatorship and totalitarianism.
Once upon a time, the father figure was seen as the protector and unquestioned authority; "father knows best" was an article of faith in even the most godless society. Today, play the papa card, and you're on to a loser. Just look at the way golden boy David Beckham got stick from his fans about baby Brooklyn: the doting dad, who swaddles his son in Armani and parades him in a baby sling by Prada, has been mocked for his devotion and pilloried for placing family above football practice. Had Posh plumped for feeding Brooklyn over rehearsing with the Spice Girls, she would have been hailed as a madonna.
It's as if we can't quite bring ourselves to trust paternal instincts, and are wary of men behaving like good daddies. A man waxing lyrical about his child to a woman risks being attacked for using Baby as a pick-up line. A politician giving birth in office stands accused of using Baby as a vote-grabber. As for a father who takes time off from work to drive Junior to the dentist - he is automatically disqualified as promotion material and worse, pitied from the boardroom to the washroom for being henpecked. Even in Hollywood, Dad has become an unsympathetic figure, recently condensed to the odious army man in American Beauty: a trigger-happy bigot responsible for fucking up his son, killing his neighbour and abusing his wife.
This modern demotion of the paterfamilias is useful in a society that needs to accommodate a growing number of single mothers, divorces and incidents of artificial insemination. Paint Papa as bad, and his absence raises cheers rather than alarm.
Shrinking Papa to a useless pygmy may be in tune with sociology, demographics and the sisterhood; but if it is such an all-round good thing, why is it that men today are in crisis? There is a suicide epidemic among young and elderly males; recorded cases of men suffering from depression and sexual anxiety are multiplying; and evidence shows that men suffer more than women after divorce and have lower rates of recovery from cancer if they are not married. These sorry statistics have been collected by the radio psychiatrist Dr Anthony Clare for his book On Men: masculinity in crisis, which argues that rubbishing Dad is ultimately unhealthy. Belittle father figures, and you are telling boys they have got no one to look up to or grow into. Strip Dads of authority, and you have no protector for the offspring or, dare I say it, their mother.
The father of six looks to the father at No 10 to remedy the situation. Rather than merely reproduce, Blair should promote policies such as paternity leave and the married couple's allowance. He should stand up to the macho culture of big business that dares sniff at paternal urges. In short, he should restore the father in our affections - why should Mother Thatcher enjoy a monopoly on these?
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