Today Number 10 announced that the law could be changed so there is a default expectation that both parents sign a child’s birth certificate even if they are not married.

As reported in the Observer and Telegraph :

"The controversial move is one of a range of options being considered by David Cameron, who is keen to help promote fathers’ feelings of responsibility for their infants.

At the moment, only the mother’s name must be officially registered. If there is no father’s name on the certificate, he will be described as “unknown”.

It is estimated that around 50,000 births are registered in Britain every year without the father’s name being recorded.

In an intervention to mark Fathers’ Day, coalition sources said enforcing the move by law was one of the options being studied, along with an alternative of tightening existing guidelines to “encourage” more fathers to sign birth certificates.

With any law change, clear exceptions would be drawn up so that women who were victims of domestic violence would not be compelled to identify the fathers of their children."

This is a fantastic development, and as readers of our 23rd March blog post will know, something the Family Matters Institute has been calling for.  

The evidence from around the world indicates that we can expect 20,000 more children will have their fathers named on their birth certificates each year. 

What a magnificent gift for Fathers Day today and for the generations to come.