David Cameron has laid into fathers who do not support their children financially. Saying that they should be stimatised like drunk drivers.

He is right to this extent. They are a disgrace. Anyone who comes seeking the support of the Shared Parenting Movement will be advised to pay. Its a moral duty to help the children. Its also tactical. If you are seeking a relationship with your child and are not paying, it will be used against you. If your child is denied a relationship with you its going to help in the long run if you can tell them that you were paying for them.

But he is wrong to play the gender politics card. OK it wins cheap support, but while mothers are in a minority among those who should be paying maintenance, their record of doing so is worse by far than fathers.

But the greater shame should not be non-payers, but those who don't provide direct loving involvement.

There is actually an interaction. A high proportion of those non-payers that we know of are making the wrong sort of protest at being personally excluded. This can reach a peak when the ex and the new lover are in the former parental home, defying a court order to allow the children to spend time with the 'other parent' but still expecting money sometimes to live better than him or her.

The way forward with child maintenance is to approve and allow  shared parenting. You can't not spend money of the children when they are with you. And the experience of other countries is that where parents share the time of the children, they also want to help them financially and in other ways when they are not there. Out of, lets dare say it, love.

When shared parenting is the norm and has become the culture, then is the time to condemn and yes, co-erce, those parents who remain irresponsible.