Feminist who thinks men should bring up babies is new Labour family guru

By Steve Doughty for the Daily Mail
Updated:

Dr Katherine Rake

Hardline: Dr Katherine Rake

A hardline feminist has been chosen as the Government's new chief spokesman on families.

Dr Katherine Rake, who wants to see men bring up babies, will head the Family and Parenting Institute, a heavily state-financed organisation set up by Labour to speak for parents and children.

The Institute boasts that it 'brings alive the real issues for families' and 'listens to parents and carers across the country'.

But critics said the appointment of Dr Rake, currently director of the women's equality campaign group the Fawcett Society, showed the Institute was out of touch with the concerns of ordinary families.

The organisation was set up in 1999 by then Home Secretary Jack Straw to shore up family life and encourage parents.

Last year it received nearly £8million from Ed Balls's Department for Children, Schools and Families towards its declared mission of 'supporting parents in bringing up children'.

Dr Rake, who will take over from the Institute's founding chief executive Mary MacLeod, has long declared her intention is not to support parents as they are, but to revolutionise their lives.

Writing in The Guardian three years ago, she said: 'We want to transform the most intimate and private relations between women and men.

'We want to change not just who holds power in international conglomerations, but who controls the household budget.

'We want to change not just what childcare the state provides, but who changes the nappies at home.'

Dr Rake added: 'It is only when men are ready to share caring and work responsibilities with women that we will be able to fulfil our true potential to form equal partnerships in which we have respect, autonomy and dignity.'

Under the direction of Dr Rake, a former London School of Economics lecturer, the Fawcett Society has campaigned for a 'changing role' for men.

The group, which is chaired by prominent gay rights campaigner Angela Mason, says the role reversal should be backed by longer paid parental leave, official encouragement for men to apply for flexible work hours, and the opening of mother and toddler groups to stay-at-home fathers.

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It has complained that women will never achieve equality with men at work without 'challenging the traditional roles of homemaker and breadwinner'.

Fawcett has also condemned Tory plans to give tax breaks to married couples, complaining that 'it penalises all those children living with unmarried parents or with one parent'.

The appointment of Dr Rake, who is likely to earn £60,000 a year, comes at a time of growing pressure on mothers to go out to work.

Despite overwhelming evidence that a majority would prefer to stay home to bring up young children, ministers have piled pressure on them to take jobs and warned that those who fail to do so, and who rely on the income of a husband or partner, are likely to face poverty.

Only two million mothers now bring up their children full time. Official figures show that two out of three children aged three and four now spend at least part of their week in nurseries.

Jill Kirby, of the centre-right think-tank Centre for Policy Studies, said: 'This appointment to a body which is supposed to speak for the interests of ordinary parents and families shows how out of touch the leadership of the organisation is with real life in Britain.

'Katherine Rake's agenda is more about reversing sex roles than helping parents.'

The chairman of the National Parenting Institute is Fiona Millar, long-term partner of Tony Blair's former spokesman Alastair Campbell.

She said that Dr Rake 'has a strong track record in research, policy and campaigning and will be a great asset to the organisation at a time when the recession is putting extra pressure on families up and down the country'.

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