This week, a man won a victory in court, being legally accepted as the father of his daughter. The mother of the child went to great lengths to try and deceive the authorities, going so far as to present her friend’s daughter for a paternity test, and subsequently sending her friend in to pose as herself.  She wanted “unknown father” to be put on her birth certificate.

All too often, men make it into the news because they do not pay maintenance for their kids. Sometimes, they are also mentioned because they renounce the paternity of their children. Put in a nutshell, men are sometimes all tarred with the same brush and blanket statements are made.

True, there are many men who do not behave as a partner or a father should, and they deserve their rights being stripped. But for every ten of people of this ilk, there are an equal amount (if not more) who are good parents with a sense of responsibility and involvement in their children’s lives.

In this case, the father wanted to be legally recognised, yet the mother – for whatever reasons, decided that she would pull every single trick she could possibly think of to deny him that right.

We cannot pass judgment on the man, because we do not know the inside story.  But what we do know is that no mother has the right to try and have the father of her child erased from memory. Children grow up and become adults, it is when they reach a certain age (no necessarily the legally stipulated 18) that they can make decisions for themselves.

One wonders just how many men are in this position. Besides the legal implications of denying a parent their rights, there is also the moral implications. We all make mistakes in life, but we have to shoulder the consequences of those mistakes. Denying a child the right to her father being listed as her parent is one of the worst possible things that can be done. Aside from the social stigma that comes with such situations, there is the simple hard fact that the child could go on to grow up without ever knowing that he or she had a father and could have a relationship with them.

It will be interesting to see whether the mother will now be prosecuted in court. Perhaps, the best ending out of all this would be to let sleeping dogs lie and allow the child to have as normal as possible an upbringing with access to both parents. Fathers are still parents – their rights should be safeguarded, as the court did in this very sorry instance.