MHM0056 - Evidence on Mental health of men and boys

Written submission from Lads Need Dads CIC (MHM0056)

1. Background

I approach this submission from a practitioner perspective as a professional who has worked predominantly with men and boys for twenty-five years. I have worked within the statutory and voluntary sector in the field of criminal justice, drugs and alcohol, domestic abuse, anger management, homelessness and complex families and found that most clients I worked with were males and many shared a common factor of growing up with an absent father or lacking a positive male influence. I felt compelled to set up Lads Need Dads to reduce the risk of young males from absent father homes, continuing the cycle and being over-represented within the fields of alcohol and drugs, offending, homelessness and mental health. Lads Need Dads would like Government to consider and acknowledge that boys growing up with absent fathers are high risk in many ways, including their mental health, as evidence laid out in this submission, suggests. Government then respectfully, needs to assist with instigating and supporting practical strategies to address this.

2. Executive summary

● Given the evidence suggesting that boys who grow up in homes without a father present risk factors and negative outcomes at rates significantly above those with fathers present, attention to this fact is warranted by Government and policymakers.

● It is important to point out that not all boys who are raised in absent father homes, will experience negative outcomes. This said, available evidence cannot be ignored. Rather, further investigation and research into the impact of the absent father on boys is urgently needed.

● Awareness and understanding needs to be increased throughout the UK, amongst the voluntary and statutory sectors and the wider community, about the positive role fathers play in the emotional, mental and educational development and well-being of boys.

(A) About Lads Need Dads

Founded in 2015 and based in Tendring, North East Essex, Lads Need Dads CIC is an award-winning Not-For-Profit Community Interest Company, set up to prevent potential problems and address existing ones where boys are missing a father-figure in their lives. It is to our knowledge, the only project of its kind in the UK that is early intervention, long-term and open-ended, specifically targeting males between 11-15 with absent fathers or limited access to a positive male role model.

Our aim is to equip and empower boys during the critical ages of 11 to 15 to be motivated, responsible, capable, resilient and emotionally competent. Lads Need Dads believe prevention is crucial in reducing the growing number of boys coming from fatherless homes each year who under achieve at school, struggle with their mental health, are excluded from school or engage in offending behaviour.

Our core services include an 18-month early intervention groupwork programme, called Equip, Engage and Inspire incorporating personal development, outdoor activities, practical life-skill training, community volunteering, peer mentoring and leadership opportunities. Once completed, boys become Ambassadors and can engage in fundraising activities and ambassador opportunities and attend an open-ended well-being group to continue accessing mentor and peer support. A high percentage of boys who complete our programmes not only increase in emotional literacy, confidence, motivation, self-esteem, have improved relationships, attitude and educational attainment at school, but additionally have improved relationships and/or renewed relationships with their biological fathers from whom they were initially estranged.

Resilience research has found that children who do well despite adversity, have often had a close and nurturing relationship with an adult from outside their family. Sir John Bowlby, Psychologist and child attachment theorist, found that children who develop three or more secondary attachment bonds (not counting parents) are usually more resilient, have higher self-esteem and fewer mental health problems than children with fewer secondary bonds.

The Lads Need Dads 18-month ‘Equip – Engage – Inspire Programme’ aims to facilitate the creation of secondary bonds through a supportive group of committed male volunteer mentors.

(B) Statistics and research

As a country we spend approximately 51 billion pounds responding to family breakdown (1) Research cited by the Department for Work and Pensions in 2018, (2) shows that children with highly involved dads do better at school, have higher self-esteem and are less likely to get into trouble in adolescence. In a study published in 2017,(3), the children of active fathers were up to 28 per cent less likely to suffer behavioural problems in their pre-teen years compared to children without a father figure at home.

References:

(1) Relationships Foundation 2018

(2) Department for Work and Pensions, Father Engagement Seminar, 29th February 2016

(3) Charles Opondo, Maggie Redshaw, Emily Savage-McGlynn and Maria A Quigley, Father involvement in early child-rearing and behavioural outcomes in their pre-adolescent children: evidence from the ALSPAC UK birth cohort [accessed via: http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/11/e012034.full (15/09/17)]

A report by the CSJ called Fully Committed? How a Government could reverse family breakdown (4) cites that when we talk about family breakdown in practice this almost always means a father figure leaving the family home, lone fathers with dependent children make up only 14 out of every 100 lone parent families. Across the UK 2.7million children have no father figure at home, representing almost 1 in 5 of all dependent children (5).

References:

(4) CSJ, Fully Committed? How a Government could reverse family breakdown, 2014 p.15

(5) CSJ calculation: 13.9m dependent children in the UK (2016), 22 per cent live in lone parent families (3.058m) of which 90 per cent live in lone mother families (2.752m)

Dr Warren Farrell PhD, author of the ‘Boy Crisis’ says that the absence of fathers from families, ‘dad deprivation’ has resulted in a lost generation of angry, resentful young men, vulnerable to destructive alpha male father figures like the local gang leader or drug dealer.

“These boys hurt: and boys who hurt, hurt us – and themselves. Prisons are centres for dad-deprived boys. There has been a 700 per cent increase in incarceration in the USA since the 1970s – in the UK it has more than doubled. 76% of all men in Prison in England and Wales had an absent father.” (6)

References:

(6) Prison Reform Trust (2015)

10. The impact of a positive father in a child’s life cannot be underestimated. Many of the boys we encounter on our programmes struggle with feelings of abandonment and low self-esteem, due to the lack of interest and a father’s love in their lives. Many are referred to our programme with anger issues which often appear to stem from a from a lack of trust. Without interventions like Lads Need Dads, as boys grows into adolescence and young adulthood, these problems may contribute to contact with the criminal justice system, use of illicit substances, as well as a variety of mental health problems. Our experience of boys who have witnessed and experienced domestic violence in the home, whereby Dad is absent, often results in boys struggling to manage and regulate their emotions resulting in conflict, disruptive behaviour, having issues with authority and strained relationships with their mothers.

11. Findings from a report on Father-Absent Homes: Implications for Criminal Justice and Mental Health Professionals by Jerrod Brown, MA, MS, MS, MS Industry News found that:

a. Children who come from a father-absent homes are more likely to experience attachment-related problems (the deep emotional bond that develops between a caregiver and a child), than those from a two-parent household (7) This may result in serious emotional issues throughout the lifespan. The inability to form a strong caregiver bond is associated with hypervigilance to anger and a misappropriation of hostile intent to neutral stimuli, both of which may result in conduct problems in the child. Such misconduct may have the unintended consequence of creating difficulties in the development of friendships and healthy romantic relationships (8/9/10) The active involvement of a father with his children can promote empathy and self-control for the child throughout life.

b. A high percentage of gang members come from father-absent homes (11), possibly resulting from a need for a sense of belonging. Gaining that sense of belonging is an important element for all individuals. Through gangs, youths find a sense of community and acceptance. In addition, the gang leader may fill the role of father, often leading members to model their behaviours after that individual (12)

References:

(7) King, V. (1994). Non-resident father involvement and child well-being. Journal of Family Issues, 15, 78-96.

(8) Hirschi, T. (1969). Causes of delinquency. Berkeley: University of California Press.

(9) Jensen, G. F. (1972). Parents, peers, and delinquency action: A test of the differential association perspective. American Journal of Sociology, 78, 562-575.

(10) Johnson, R. E. (1987). Mothers’ versus fathers’ role in causing delinquency. Adolescence, 22, 305-315.

(11) Davidson, N. (1990). Life without father. Policy Review, 51, 40.

(12) Leving, J. (2009, March 5). Absent fathers & youth violence. Retrieved from http://divorcemagazine.wordpress.com/2009/03/05/absent-fathers-youth-violence

12. According to David Lammy MP, of the 19 young offenders arrested in Tottenham after the 2011 riots, only two had active dads.

In 2010, the cost of young offending was put at £11 billion by the National Audit Office, with reoffending rates in 2013/14 at the highest level for more than a decade. In 2007 the Centre for Social Justice reported that 70% of young offenders came from broken homes. Ref: Youth Justice Board (2002).

13. Not enough informative research is available within the UK on the impact of the absent father on children, particularly on boys. This, begs the question as to why are we not doing more in the UK to research this vulnerable client group if we know that growing up without a father increases the likelihood of mental health problems, under achieving at school, school exclusion, alcohol and drug misuse, offending behaviour and gang involvement?

14. The first productive step would be a flagging system in schools, which identify boys from homes with absent fathers. Not all children who are raised in a father-absent homes will experience adverse outcomes, so risk factors and protective factors as outlined in the department for Education Mental Health and behaviour in schools (Nov. 2018) page 13/14, require consideration. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/755135/Mental_health_and_behaviour_in_schools__.pdf

Identified boys could then be provided additional support and referred to appropriate agencies ‘before’ problems start to arise.

15. Robust, Nationwide research be instigated into the impact of the absent father on boys.

16. Voluntary and Statutory services to be more informed about the impact of the absent fathers on boys, particularly where mum has experienced domestic abuse or had a complex upbringing herself where she experienced paternal abuse. Our experience at Lads Need Dads has been that Mum may respond to the absence of Dad by being too overbearing and controlling with her children and / or projecting the negative memories of their former partner / upbringing, onto the male child, and in ‘some’ cases, being volatile towards their sons. This results in the son often coming into conflict with mum and relating poorly to other females in authority, such as teachers.

17. Invest in mentoring projects like Lads Need Dads, so boys in all secondary schools with absent fathers can access supportive male mentors. Support the promotion of awareness of the impact of the absent father to both Fathers and Mothers, (particularly single parent mothers, with negative experiences of men), so they understand that the role of fathers or positive male role models in their son’s life, is important to their sons’ future health and mental well-being and not a criticism of their parenting.

March 2019