'Why am I sent home from the maternity hospital after the birth when I want to stay around and do my share of looking after my new baby?" "What do you do if you want to be a good Dad and you work for a macho organisation like the police? They won't consider flexible working." "With the longest working hours in Europe 12 per cent of fathers work 60 hours or more why is the government not forcing a reduction in the working week?"
These were questions coming from the floor of the first national conference on fatherhood, organised by Fathers Direct. And Good Lord! They were asking "how can I juggle my work and my family?" just like women do. I can't remember the first time I said that when men and boys start to ask the juggling question we'll have begun to crack this equality business. Women have long dreamed of such a day, railing at the position to which the emancipation of women seemed to have brought so many of us.
This conference was packed with men who recognised Professor Jonathon Gershuny's Allerednic Syndrome Cinderella backwards. In the old days, he argues, the handsome prince married a scullery maid and turned her into a princess. In the modern world the handsome prince marries a princess and turns her into a scullery maid.
There wasn't quite the palpable anger that used to fizz at the Women's Liberation meetings of the late sixties and early seventies. It would be surprising if the 48 per cent of the population that still gets the best jobs, more pay, more leisure and, in a lot of families, a clean shirt, pristine children and a good dinner on the table every night were mad and pressing for change. But there was a real sense of a substantial group of men there were a thousand delegates to the conference who genuinely believed it is not the role of one gender to clean up the detritus of the other and who felt certain that noone would look in the mirror at the end of their life and wish they'd spent more time in the office.
It's a myth that the feminist movement set out to smash the family. There was a minority that held the view that all men were rapists and that violence and abuse lurked behind every closed door, but the best and most influential books argued for a renegotiation, rather than a rejection, of family life, and the raising of children by a mother and a father. All that was required was to get the men on board.
Betty Friedan, the author of The Feminine Mystique said: "We had to use our political power to restructure society in a way so that women and men can move equally in the world outside the home, so that women can have a share in the decisions that affect our lives. And we must restructure the home. Mother and father must take equal responsibility for the children." Anna Coote and Beatrix Campbell ,in their history of the women's movement, Sweet Freedom, said that while the family could be a source of violence, oppression and social control, it could also be a source of care, affection, strength and security.
Fatherhood has at times given itself a bad name during these years of social revolution and renegotiation. Families Need Fathers, set up in the seventies, advocated the abduction of children awarded to mothers in custody cases and ruled themselves out of the frame of respectability. The UK men's movement has been sullied by its pervasive misogyny, seeking to turn the clock back to the days when men were patriarchs and women confined their activities to the kitchen, nursery and bedroom.
But the new radicals, Fathers4Justice, seem to have reinvigorated the debate and contributed to moving it on.
Like Families Need Fathers, their concern is estranged fathers, but their tactics are different. They encourage their members to dress in superhero costumes and climb cranes (a good stunt for getting in the papers) and lobby the judiciary to take more account of the importance of a father in a child's life when the family courts come to make decisions about residency. There are some concerns about their bullying tone and about the willingness of some judges (a profession not widely known for its knowledge of or respect for feminist politics) to embrace their ideas with an excess of zeal.
In one recent worrying case a father was excused for having "gone too far, because he was driven to it". In what way he had gone too far was never made clear these cases are heard, as we've seen in the Münchausen's Syndrome by Proxy and shaken baby scandals in too great an atmosphere of secrecy. But those of us who read about the case assumed the father had hit the mother never an acceptable response from someone who wants to be considered a good father.
In other reported cases, though, the outcome has been more interesting. I have no doubt there are some mothers who use their children as a weapon and a punishment in a bitter divorce I've never been an advocate of the 'women are gooder' school and we've read about one couple, both lawyers, where the mother was determinedly unmovable about letting the child see its father. There is no point in such a circumstance in sending the mother to prison for failure to comply with a shared care order, but the judge's order in this instance was imaginative. He gave the child to the father, who appeared willing and able to take on the full responsibility of a child in his home 24 hours a day (that kind of commitment sure separates the men from the boys!) Within weeks, the parents had worked out a sensible joint arrangement.
In every social revolution there is a need for the angry radical and for the quieter getter of things done. Fathers4Justice are the suffragettes of this movement and Fathers Direct the suffragists organising, discussing, coordinating, making contacts among the powerful and influential and lobbying for legislative change. Representatives from Fathers Direct tell me that every time Fathers4Justice stage one of their attentiongrabbing stunts, the Fathers Direct phone lines are hot with men wanting to get involved with the campaign for more equal treatment, but not prepared to go so far as to risk breaking the law.
The government has already made some promising moves: improved rights to demand flexible working, proposals for a year's maternity/paternity care to be shared between the mother and the father and extension of parental leave rights for the care of sick children.
Alan Milburn the former health secretary for whom 'spending more time with his family' was not a euphemism for being sacked and the Chancellor Gordon Brown, who took paternity leave for the birth of his son, are laudable examples of politicians aiming to live rather than merely legislate for equal opportunities. Tony Blair, who said paternity leave and Prime Ministers don't mix, but who seems always to find the time for a holiday, is not. Neither are the parliamentary dinosaurs like John Prescott, who seem bent on returning to the old work/life balance work in the chamber and life propping up the Commons bars.
We are still a long way from the utopia where the term 'working father' carries the same resonance of automatic double shifting as 'working mother', and men and boys have the same opportunities to make choices about the way they conduct their lives as we've tried to make available to women. Those pioneers trying to bring about speedy change need to be the toughest of guys.
My partner gave up his job to take care of our two sons. He had to endure years of sidelong glances at the school gate. Was he a dad or a predatory pervert? There are no supportive networks for the dad who deigns to do a 'woman's job'. Coffee mornings are still primarily allfemale affairs. "After all", as one mother said to me, "what would my husband think if I invited another man round to the house?"
Mothersinlaw will mutter about what wonderful providers their husbands were and what a shame it is that we female breadwinners have it so hard (not true! It's a choice). Then there are the glazed looks at parties when the question "and what do you do?" elicits the response, "fulltime father". Mine started to joke that he made the bread rather than earning it.
Eventually, like so many women who've made the choice to stay at home and look after the children, the stayathome father will face an empty nest and probably an empty pocket, too.
There are no networks designed to help male returners ease themselves back into the workplace. Neither, as far as I'm aware, is there any mention of fathers in proposals for carer credits in working out pensions. Will men like my partner face a poverty stricken old age?
A little more anger than was displayed at the conference might make things move faster. As we learned in the feminist movement, the personal is indeed political, and you have to get mad to get even.
