Fathers should be allowed to stay overnight in hospital after the birth of their baby, according to a senior government adviser on maternity services.

He said 86 per cent of fathers now attended the birth of their child and it was no longer acceptable for them to be ordered from the ward at 9pm.

Duncan Fisher, a member of the Maternity Matters advisory group at the NHS and chief executive of the Fatherhood Institute think-tank, told The Times that the move would be popular among mothers and fathers, and that the health service should respond.

A poll conducted for the institute published today found 70 per cent of parents think fathers should be able to stay with their baby and wife or girlfriend, while 79 per cent say more fathers should be encouraged to do so.

Yet only a handful of specialist mid-wife-led units offer accommodation for fathers. Although some hospitals allow new fathers to stay an hour or so after visiting ends, they are not allowed to spend the night on the ward.

The Fatherhood Institute is launching a campaign to give fathers a more formal role in pregnancy and birth, arguing that the treatment of fathers on postnatal wards is symptomatic of the NHS attitude towards them.

Fathers are not invited to antenatal appointments or classes for pregnant women on giving up smoking or breast-feeding, despite a wealth of evidence showing that more mothers quit smoking and breast-feed for longer when fathers encourage them.

When the baby is born, midwives and health workers take every opportunity to tell the mother all about her new responsibilities, while the message to the father is in effect “leave this place now”, the institute says. The only piece of information currently required about the father by midwives is whether or not he has any genetic abnormalities.

“There is currently no formal role for fathers in antenatal care or at the birth and the Health Department argues that is because they do not want to upset women who don’t have partners,” Mr Fisher said. “But research shows only 5 per cent of mothers have no contact with the father at the time of the birth. It is just an excuse.”

In its report on maternity services entitled The Dad Deficit, the institute says that the current NHS attitude to

800% fathers risks undermining other government initiatives to make fathers more responsible for their children.

“The default should be that the mother and father are expected to take full responsibility for the child. If, at the time of the birth, the mother is not taking responsibility the system goes into a panic. If the father is not involved, no one even asks why. This is the moment that we can communicate expectations,” Mr Fisher said.

Fathers should be registered by maternity services at the same time as mothers, and midwives trained to engage properly with fathers during birth, he said.

“Many midwives already do what they can to get fathers involved. But the higher you go up in the Department of Health, the more resistance there is to giving dads a formal role,” Mr Fisher said.

For

When Richard Bean was ordered off the ward at 10pm on the night of his baby daughter Maisie’s birth two years ago he sat in the car for ten minutes wondering what he should do.

“My place was with my wife and baby. It was natural that I should be there. Instead, I drove around aimlessly, bought some food, sat at home staring at it and then stayed awake all night wondering how they were,” he recalls.

Sally, his wife, had desperately wanted him to stay. She was “pretty out of” it after a long labour and emergency Caesarean section delivery and was very upset when her husband had to leave. The next day was worse. “We had spent all day together but when it came time to leave she got very emotional and one of the cleaning staff found her crying in the kitchen.

“We asked if there was any way I could stay and the midwives finally gave in. They said I could stay as long as I didn’t leave the room and no one saw me. I quickly popped home to get some things and was then smuggled back on to the ward and spent the night on a broken chair with a tiny blanket. I didn’t care. It was where I wanted to be.”

Mr Bean said it was time the NHS caught up with the reality of a 21st century birth. “I was treated like a spare part,” he said.

Against

Our daughter Mollie was born after the most frightening hour of my life at 2am one December night in 2006 (Ben Hoyle writes).

There was just time for me to calm down, feel overwhelming joy and wonder how Isobel already seemed to know what to do with our baby before the hospital staff sent me out into the East End gloom.

I went home, poured a large glass of red wine, phoned my parents, phoned my wife’s parents and slept.

Isobel was lying in a noisy ward with four other mothers and their crying babies, unable to sleep for fear Mollie might stop breathing.

Would I rather have been there too, slumped on a chair and listening to other fathers snoring? Of course. Was there also a guilty part of me that was glad of the rest? Afraid so.

However hard we try, men cannot experience birth as directly as our partners. The midwives tried to involve me but only out of politeness, I suspect. Sure, Isobel would have preferred me to be there, helping her out and I resented being made to feel like a wellwisher instead of a parent.

But I can see the point. If I’d been in the ward all night, so would all the other fathers. We would all have been talking and no one would have slept at all. Instead, when I finally did take my family home, I was still functioning, alert and able to look after my exhausted wife and baby.

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