The absence of fathers in the lives of children is set to cause “huge problems”, according to Brendan Dempsey, the southern regional president of the St Vincent de Paul Society (SVP).
Mr Dempsey said that increasingly, mothers were being left to raise children on their own. Many fathers were shirking responsibility for their children, and this needed to be tackled, he added. Nine out of 10 homes visited by SVP on one housing estate in Cork, were run by single mothers, he told The Examiner.
The effects on children were far-reaching, he continued. “There is a great need for children to have both parents, but it is not happening, there is a great want in these children,” said Mr Dempsey.
Mr Dempsey recalled going into a house and a tiny boy asking him: “Will you be my Daddy?”
“I am often asked ‘are you my Daddy’. That to me says there is a want,” he said.
The claims are borne out by a study carried out in 2001 of young single mothers in two communities in 2001 by researchers from UCD.
According to the study, most of the women received emotional support from the fathers of their children during pregnancy and immediately after the birth. However, contact eventually diminishes. Forty per cent of women who took part in the study said they had no contact with the father of the child.
According to the researchers, the realisation that the responsibility is for the long term has a serious impact on the lives of women who become unmarried mothers as teenagers.
Mr Dempsey said that he was not blaming single mothers for this situation. “I have the greatest admiration for these women who scrimp and save to give their children the best,” he said. “If you calculate what they get, minus all expenses, they have about €80 to €100 a week of disposable income left for food, clothes and entertainment. It is not a lot.”
The majority of psychological assessments for children which the SVP paid for, because the State would not, were for children from broken homes, he said.
Mr Dempsey added that more and more single mothers are finding it a struggle to maintain rent payments, and many face eviction.
“The father needs to at least make a financial contribution. If you look at the US, a payment is automatically deducted from a father’s pay packet for maintenance from the day the child is born until they are 18,” he said.
Our state system is set up very badly, he said. He urged the Government to put a system in place whereby fathers had to take responsibility of some kind.
He suggested that “Cohabiting couples lose out on benefits so this can have the effect of discouraging the father — there is no incentive for him to stay.”
In fact, if a couple marries who are both on welfare it can also result in an overall loss in benefits. This is the so-called ‘marriage penalty’
In addition, a 2004 study by Ferguson and Hogan found that even when fathers sought more involvement with their children statutory social workers tended to exclude them or at least not include them. It found that they tended to be excluded from the bulk of child care and family support work.
