Last month saw the plight facing men and boys become more mainstream than ever before with more commentary earlier this month - though there has been precious little in the way of practical solutions.

This week was the turn of fathers.

At the start of the week, the Centre for Social Justice published their Fractured Families research on 1 million children growing up without a meaningful relationship with their fathers (covered by BBC and Daily Telegraph). key issues in the policy context (page 73) include:

The legislation making it compulsory for fathers to be on birth certificates has been repealed/not enforced

Government backtracking on the enforcement of contact orders

A perception that the role of the father is not important and by some, a father's involvement is seen as a problem anyway.

This was followed up by the Netmums Survey (interesting that only NetMums carry out surveys complaining about the negativity on men, boys and father but Mumsnet is not interested in it - says a lot about the people running the sites). Their findings stated:

"Almost half of parents polled (46%) slammed books, adverts and children's TV shows like Peppa Pig, The Simpsons and even the Flintstones which show dads as lazy or stupid. Almost a third of parents (28%) claim it is a very subtle form of discrimination against dads while a further 18% were more strident, saying it makes children believe dads are useless from an early age and there would be an outcry if it was done against mums." Coverage was featured in in the Evening Standard, Daily Mail and Independent

David Lammy ran an article in The Guardian stating that everyday should be Father's Day (and urges the Left not to ignore fathers) and even the Guardian/Observer itself ran an editorial saying that men are not dud and their role should be celebrated. This also included a follow-up on open comment piece as did the Huffington Post.

And of course Louis De Bernieres in The Telegraph spells out succinctly with regard to how society is against men and fathers, and how many women today will be suffering not being able to see their children because their mother won't let them. Peter Hitchens was also on top form.

The point of pulling this all together (as well as making for a serious read) is that society, the media, opinion formers and (a few) politicians are actually waking to up to damage that the decades of negative stereotyping, discrimination and lack of appreciation that fathers (and men and boys) have have to endure and the effects it not only has on them but also on society as a whole.

The discrimination, whether intended, whether due to unintended consequences or whether the needs of women have come first (driven by legions of publicly funded anti-male feminists) has started to be discussed. The frustration will be the reluctance that nothing may change and we have the same discussion next year. But at least it is out there now.

It is up to men and women who care about these issues to keep the pressure on - whether it is setting up or joining organisations, donating to men's charities, writing/lobbying/complaining to newspapers and the authorities, but there is a chink of light here.

2013 is not yet six months old - we need to keep the pressure on to make it a year to remember for male equality.

Posted by Skimmington

Ps Tomorrow I hope to review the articles that have attacked fathers and Father's Day