Gird your loins...it's time for Daddy Daycare

Shivering in anticipation for Daddy Daycare, Channel 4's new series in which nine dads are sent on a crash-course in parenting at busy nurseries. We start next week at South London's Magic Roundabout nursery, where workaholic father-of-three Garry (38), reluctant dad-of-one Jay (39) and nervous father-to-be Stefan (26) join a staff made up entirely of single mums.

There's a point behind this show - a good proportion of British women feel their partners don't do enough childcare. (Incidentally, a good proportion of British men feel the same - they want to do more at home, but everything conspires to push them towards breadwinning, especially in the early years, all-too-often leaving them feeling on the margins of family life, rather than at the centre where they belong. Still, this is light entertainment TV, so let's put that to one side).

All the same, it goes without saying that the programme's methodology looks shockingly sexist. Just imagine a male equivalent...men think women don't bring in enough money - let's put a bunch of them in all-male workplaces and watch them do stuff for which they've had little or no training. Oil Rig Honeys, anyone?

It'll be a car crash, of course...but what type? A straightforward 'let's gawp at how useless men are' pile-up? Or a more subtle prang that cleverly plays on the viewer's preconceptions, showing in the end that maybe dads aren't so useless, and women so omniscient, after all? A nation waits with bated breath...

The whole jigsaw

There’s much to admire about the St Giles Trust children and families project, featured in Saturday's Guardian as one of the newspaper's Christmas appeal charities.

The article tells the story of Juliet, an 18-year-old whose mother is a victim of domestic abuse and is now being supported by the Trust – allowing Juliet to attend university rather than spending her late teens and early 20s looking after her mum and younger siblings, and thus missing out on her education.

So far, so inspiring – and yet in one important sense this story sounds typical of so many where public and/or voluntary services intervene in families’ lives: support is focused on the mother, but (from what we’re told in this article, at least) nobody’s doing anything to engage with the father. 

We’re not talking about an ‘absent’ dad here – the article tells us that Juliet’s siblings stay with him some weekends. We hear that the charity is supporting the mother 'to ensure the children are supported'. But what's happening to ensure the children's safety when they stay with their father?

Has anyone tried to speak to him? Do services know where he's living (and with whom) and whether it's an appropriate place for children to be? Is there a strategy for challenging his alleged abusive behaviour and/or (if the abuse, as implied by the article, was 'light' enough to permit continued contact) for helping him think about how he parents his children after the split, and what he can do to help them cope with the separation?

The article's failure to address the fatherhood angle might suggest St Giles hasn't gone there (yet)...or it might be that the author didn't think to ask the right questions. Either way, let's hope for the kids' sake that this crucial part of the jigsaw is filled in soon.