Letter: Love is the key to good childcare

Sir: You gave the feminists a ball in your tabloid section on 30 October: wife-bashing Gazza supplemented by mothers with tearful tales of male infidelity and absent fathers.

I know the other side of the picture, through work with Families Need Fathers and my own experience. This is a tale of infidelity and cruelty, too (not physical cruelty, the only form that feminists will acknowledge, since they succeed better at other kinds). It is also a tale of fathers (neither wife-bashing nor unfaithful) desperately wanting to continue relationships with their children and being denied by the courts or their ex-wives.

Articles quoting the standard statistics on fathers losing touch with their children never investigate a common reason: inability to bear the pain at seeing the relationship become increasingly tenuous on the day or half-day per fortnight typically allowed. In single-father circles there's a name for the situation - the hamburger father.

IAN HUGO

Reading, Berkshire