Registration bill downgrades the status of fathers

THE Civil Registration Bill 2003 which is before the Dáil basically absolves unmarried fathers from the obligation to give any information at the birth registration of their child.

Some people have already proclaimed this legal State-sponsored absolution of paternal responsibility as a lads’ charter, giving feckless fathers the all-clear to do a runner.

This presumption that unmarried fathers are inherently uncommitted is a gross insult to all fathers.

This latest ill-considered piece of family legislation is definitely not a dads’ charter. Rather, it is further evidence of the process of the State continuing to downgrade the status and value of fatherhood.

When details of the father and his family heritage and culture are designated as being unnecessary, then fathers can be interpreted as being unimportant and, by extension, effectively irrelevant.

This removal of the protection for a child of knowing the identity of his/her father further propagates the concept of the State as substitute father, underpinning lone motherhood, using taxpayers’ monies, as a core, viable, sustainable societal scenario, for raising future generations of children.

This single-sex, parenting-by-mothers-only model of parenting effectively cuts children off from half of their family tree, history and support network.

Parental Equality, the voluntary charity and provider of shared parenting solutions, condemns this latest downgrading of the value and status of fatherhood.

This proposed legislation needs to be amended to insist that, at every registration of the birth of a child, the father’s details are, by default, to be included along with the mother’s details, regardless of whether the parents are married to each other.

When the father’s details are thus legally acknowledged as being of fundamental importance to the child’s welfare, within the larger vision of the child’s heritage, extended family network and culture, then the statutory services, family law and educational system can be obligated to positively support and facilitate fathers as equally valid parents of their children along with mothers, thus producing a more holistic and complete legacy for their children and for future generations.

Liam Ó Gógáin

Parental Equality

1 Muirhevna

Dublin Road

Dundalk

Co Louth