Men Should Avoid Birthing Classes

Men are better off building the cot than going to antenatal classes

The modern insistence that men attend antenatal classes is ridiculous, says Tom Sykes.

As a father of two children aged four and three, I envy my male forebears whose responsibilities when their wives were pregnant were limited to two important tasks. They had to put the cot together, and they had to make sure that the motor car was filled with petrol in case of an emergency late night run to the hospital. And that was it.

But since the 1960s, when just 5 per cent of men attended the birth of their children, the notion that men should be there for the great event has become such an article of faith that 95 per cent of births are now attended by the father. Now, however, new research has appeared giving males an opt-out from the nonsense of being forced to attend antenatal classes and birth. According to Dr Jonathan Ives of the Centre for Biomedical Ethics at the University of Birmingham, men who are obliged to attend antenatal classes and be present for the birth of their children can actually become “deskilled” at parenting.