By IAIN DUNCAN SMITH 
Tomorrow Parliament will start debating a proposed new law that will erase fathers from applications by single or lesbian women for IVF treatment.
Under the existing law, clinics are legally obliged to take into account a child's need for a father when considering such applications. But that requirement will vanish if the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill becomes law next year.
Another nail will have been hammered into the coffin of the traditional family. And another blow will have been struck against fatherhood.
This move could not have come at a worse time. Just as we are beginning to appreciate the vital role fathers play in the successful upbringing of children, Labour Ministers are sending out the utterly wrong signal that fathers don't matter.
A guiding light: Iain Duncan Smith's father Wilfrid and mother Pamela on their wedding day
Earlier this year the respected all-party Commons Home Affairs Committee warned that shocking levels of family breakdown are propelling black teenagers into street gangs and a life of crime.
It pointed out that although young Afro-Caribbean boys make up less than three per cent of ten to 17-year-olds, they account for 26 per cent of arrests for robbery within that age group.
This was not a surprise to me. Six out of ten Afro-Caribbean youngsters grow up in single parent families - usually with no male role model to guide them.
However, my report Breakthrough Britain showed that it wasn't only Afro-Caribbean boys who were affected. The report pointed out that being deprived of a dad can have devastating long-term impacts on children.
A worrying number of British children are growing up in broken homes with no father figure - the worst record in Europe. And the report warned that in the absence of a positive male role model, too many young men get sucked into the crude and violent world of the street gang.
Breakthrough Britain showed that children of a broken home are more likely to be in poverty and poor health, but they are also more likely to go on to become teenage parents, offend, truant, face exclusion, leave school early and be unemployed.
The importance of a father in a child's life cannot be underestimated. Fathers play a unique and significant role in nurturing and guiding children's development. Another key report last year found that lack of father involvement is a key predictor of teenage behavioural problems.
When it comes to emotional intelligence, self-esteem, competence and confidence, the father's influence cannot be duplicated or replaced easily by the mother, no matter how well she is doing her job.
Faced with this avalanche of evidence you would have thought Gordon Brown would be trying to strengthen fatherhood. Far from it. In another report earlier this year, Frank Field, the Labour MP and former welfare reform minister, highlighted the way our current welfare system - created by Gordon Brown - positively discourages men from living with their families or marrying the mother of their children.
The "couple penalty" means that if a man and woman live openly together they can lose between £1,300 and £7,000 in tax credits and out-of-work benefits. When the loss of other benefits is taken into account, the penalty can be as high as £8,500 for a family with an income of only £20,000.
Furthermore, where a single mother will have to work for 16 hours a week to bring home £487 after tax credits, a two-parent family would have to work for 116 hours at the minimum wage to bring home the same amount.
But there is good news. David Cameron has accepted Breakthrough Britain's recommendations and is committed to restoring a tax break for marriage and ending the couple penalty.
Nor does the British public agree with what is being surreptitiously done by government in their name. As the ComRes poll for Christian Action, Research and Education shows, four out of five people believe it is important that IVF providers consider a child's need for a father when processing applications.
I think the public are right to be wary of this relentless crusade by the liberal elite to push back and confuse the boundaries of parenthood. The traditional meanings of fatherhood and motherhood are being redefined by our culture and our legal system - as this new Bill demonstrates so graphically.
What does "father" mean now that a second woman can be regarded as a father? How do children feel about these mindboggling decisions overturning the wisdom of the centuries? Because of the importance of the debate, the Centre for Social Justice is about to conduct a far-reaching review of family law.
In another assault on fatherhood, the Government has quietly expunged mention of marriage, spouse, husband and wife from official forms, so deleting the traditional family from the Whitehall mindset.
The State is denying the child's need to know and benefit from the origins of half of his or her genetic material. Such awareness is fundamental to one's personal sense of identity.
Nor do our schools offer an alternative for the fatherless child. For many children born in a dysfunctional family, it is possible they will not have a sustained, positive relationship with a man until they are 11 and are taught by a male teacher in secondary school. Just 14 per cent of primary teachers are male.
Substitute dads (stepfathers and live-in boyfriends) come and go and research also shows that with these looser ties, the levels of abuse of women and children have risen.
A significant percentage of today's young people are growing up with no positive male role model in their lives. By the time someone does come along, such as a dedicated teacher or a committed stepfather, behavioural problems may have become entrenched.
As the Home Affairs Committee warned, in many of the UK's most deprived inner city areas, young people, especially boys, are desperately searching for that role-model and stability.
Boys feel honoured when they are co-opted into street gangs, which often offer an alternative family to someone whose own family is broken.
Similarly, teenage girls feel flattered and special at the first signs of male attention. Never having known the security of a father's love, they often get drawn into early sexual intercourse which is usually non-consensual and regretted.
Officially airbrushing men out of the family portrait is a selffulfilling prophecy. The more men are told they are not necessary, the more detached they will become from society and personal relationships.
Marriage makes it far more likely that men will be closely involved with their children's lives but this Government refuses to do anything to acknowledge its worth.
We have enshrined adults' freedom to live their lives however they please. Any suggestion that a particular family form is better for a child is treated as an affront on that unassailable liberty.
My father Wilfrid was a remarkable man. He helped and guided me in my early years, so much so that a life without him would have been unthinkable. And if that goes for me, I know it goes for millions of today's young people. Let's hope Gordon Brown gets the message.
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