A Shipley dad has moved the struggle for equality one step further by establishing Bradford's first club for house husbands.

Fed up with the traditional view that a woman's place is in the home while it's the man's job to go out to work, 37-year-old David Ford, of Marlborough Road, Shipley, has turned the tables by setting up his own group exclusively for "male mums" who look after baby while their partners are the ones who bring in the bread.

Backed by the National Childbirth Trust, from April 6 Mr Ford is to hold regular meetings at his Shipley home which will offer sociable advice and support to other dads bringing up a young family while their partners go out to work.

He said: "A dad's role is all too often seen in terms of a supporter to the mum during childbirth and then as a bread-winner as soon as the child is born.

"But that's often not the case. There are more than 60,000 men in the UK who stay at home and look after their children while their partner goes out to work, yet you hardly ever come across any support groups which cater for male carers.

"That's why I decided to set up this group- to provide a network of support for men who might be put off by organisations such as mums and toddlers groups, which tend to be attended mostly by women."

Mr Ford, who is prospective Green Party candidate for Shipley West, looks after his two children, two-year-old Jack and Ed, who is ten months old, while his wife, Katherine, goes out to work at the Council's education support service.

He said: "It's important to say that there's nothing special about men staying at home and looking after the children.

"There is a tendency for men to be portrayed in the media as either ridiculous or as some sort of super-dad. But at the end of the day, they are just ordinary people trying to do an ordinary job and there should be the same sort of support network for dads as there is for mums.

"We are trying to challenge people's views that child-care is purely a woman's domain and to question cultural expectations which side men away from parenting."

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