On May 15, 2026, the United Nations (UN) marked its International Day of Families under the theme “Families, Inequalities and Child Well-being”.

Yet the measures it spotlighted — income support, parental leave, affordable childcare, and social protection — addressed caregiving in general while saying nothing about the place of fathers.

The International Council for Men and Boys (ICMB) is calling on the UN to restore fathers to its vision of the family.

United Nations Must Recognise Fathers

The UN once made the case itself. In 2011, its Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) published “Men in Families and Family Policy in a Changing World.”

The report urged governments to change family laws to encourage joint custody and to recognise men as caregivers. It also warned that strategies to fight poverty aimed only at women and children can treat men as marginal to the family. Little of that work continues today.

Around the world, children in single-parent homes live overwhelmingly with their mothers:

• North America: In the United States, mothers head 80% of one-parent family groups.
• Europe: Across the EU, women head 81.6% of single-parent households — 5.0 million of 6.1 million.
• Africa: In South Africa, 42% of children live with their mother alone and just 4% with their father alone.
• Latin America: The region has the highest share of single-parent households in the world, the great majority headed by mothers.

Family law is only beginning to catch up. Japan permitted only sole custody after divorce until a 2024 reform introduced joint custody, set to take effect in 2026.

The cost falls on children. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in Article 16(3), calls the family “the natural and fundamental group unit of society”. A family policy that treats fathers as optional cannot honour that promise.

At a minimum, ICMB calls on the United Nations and its member states to:

• Affirm that every child has a right to the care and protection of both a father and a mother.
• Establish shared parenting as the norm for the children of separated parents.
• Restore the study of fathers and family policy at DESA.

Fathers are not optional. We ask the United Nations to say so, and to act accordingly.

The International Council for Men and Boys (ICMB) is a non-governmental organisation working to end the 12 sex disparities that affect men and boys worldwide.

The ICMB is a leader of the emerging global movement to address these disparities.

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Image via Adobe.