By Audrey Young
political reporter
Prime Minister Jenny Shipley and Welfare Minister Roger Sowry launched an attack yesterday on poor fathering, saying marriage split-ups give some fathers an excuse to neglect their children.
They say the role of men and fathers is the next big social issue.
Mr Sowry challenged fathers, saying: "Get off the couch, turn the TV off and engage with your children. Go on a bike ride with them. Go for a walk with them. Go and watch them play rugby or netball - or just listen to them read a book. In many cases, fathers not living with their children have used that as an excuse to disengage from their children."
Many fathers used all kinds of mechanisms to escape child-support payments.
"We need to make that as socially unacceptable as it is to drink and drive."
Mr Sowry has admitted that work commitments mean he spends little time with his own four children. His wife, Shirley, told the New Zealand Herald previously: "You could almost place me as a solo mum."
But Mr Sowry says he tries to have quality time with his children.
Asked about comparisons with the Code of Social Responsibility, Mrs Shipley said it would be wrong to misinterpret Mr Sowry's "courageous challenge."
"What the Government is saying is that you can't leave a child with a sense of loss and absence because a father is not present and believe it will have no social consequences."
Society had to have the courage to face "the vacuum we are leaving in the hearts of children through lack of fathers."
It was a challenge begun by the former Children's Commissioner, the late Laurie O'Reilly, and continued by the present one, Roger McClay.
Campaigning with Mrs Shipley in Gisborne, Mr Sowry said that programmes would be developed next year for "championing the role of fathers in society" not just within their families but with their children's schools, too.
