Boys need Dads, not more demonisation
‘Boys are in crisis, on this the data is clear. They are consistently behind girls in school, twice as likely to be unemployed, and over three times as likely to take their own lives. In order to re-instil hope and opportunity to a generation of young men we need a plethora of big and small changes.’ (extract taken from the Executive Summary of Lost Boys: Boyhood, December 2025).
Both Parents Matter is delighted to have contributed to this latest report from the Centre for Social Justice, which focusses on issues faced by boys aged 0-12 and offers practical, innovative solutions which challenge the long-accepted status quo. The findings echo what we see every day and confirm the importance of fathers in children’s lives.
There is clear evidence that indicates that boys in the UK experience poorer outcomes than girls across a range of measures, including educational attainment, employment and mental health. These differences emerge early in life and tend to widen over time.
By looking at three key environments in which young boys spend most of their time – the home, early education settings and digital environments -the report highlights the ways in which boys fall behind and argues that early intervention would improve outcomes in the longer term. The 34 different recommendations are designed to reflect the interaction between policy, culture and early childhood development.
We are particularly pleased to see the following recommendations:
- For the government to rethink its unevidenced proposal to repeal the Presumption of Parental Involvement in the Children Act and to retain the Presumption
- Subject to well defined exceptions, for all dads to be automatically named on a child’s birth certificate to ensure he has parental responsibility from birth
- To move such birth registrations to Family Hubs and to introduce specific training for dads and bring them into Family Hubs.
These are key measures to help both parents step up to their responsibility to their children and to dismantle some of the barriers preventing children from having beneficial relationships with both parents after separation.
The report shows the need to address the factors affecting boys’ development which have been ignored for too long and we hope the government will act on them. The recent welcome government Men’s Health Strategy clearly aims to do the same for men’s health inequalities and the depth and breadth of the research included was much needed. It doesn’t though address the effects of child separation on fathers’ wellbeing and we will campaign for its inclusion.
However, compassion and a balanced, understanding approach needs to be applied in all policies regarding men and boys. The government has this week announced that teachers are to be trained to identify and refer boys who might be or are at risk of becoming perpetrators of violence against women and girls. Whilst supporting the commitment to halve violence against women and girls by 2035, this blanket approach is yet another demonising of all boys, as young as 11, as potential abusers which won’t, in fact, tackle the underlying issues. It instead tells boys there’s something wrong with them, that they are a problem to be dealt with, rather than young people who need our support. We call for a parallel, though this time properly targeted, policy to tackle violence against men and boys, as well as more prevalent stranger violence and homicide, also covering abusive relationships (the Youth Endowment Fund shows that 41% of girls and 37% of boys have suffered in abusive relationships proving that we need to consider the wider picture and the hidden issues within).
Read the CSJ report in full here Lost Boys: Boyhood and the CSJ’s other reports here lostboys.org.uk.
