So you may have no job, no possessions and no money; but you can have the best smoke alarms and window locks in the business.Money not spent on the window locks initiative has been spent on luminous waistcoats for children at primary school. The project has been one of the most successful at winning grants from the Scottish Office: pounds 680,000 has been awarded to fix mortice locks, door chains, door viewers, hinge bolts and window locks onto every house on the estate. Stickers and even more leaflets have been distributed to encourage the occupants to use these locks properly. Follow-up leaflets, for those that couldn't understand the first, are now available, reminding you to "Make sure all cigarettes are extinguished properly before going to bed." In case you still don't get the message, smoke alarms are freely available.The Community Safety Shop is part of the Safe Greater Easterhouse Project, and is concerned with every risk imaginable, including the issue of "safety from the fear of crime". "Stop before you answer the door!" "If in doubt keep them out!" "Who is it?" "What do they want?" "Save a life, bin a knife!" "Beware of gas leaks!" "Stop attacks on buses!"Fire-safety leaflets, similar to ones I received as a child, wishing you a "Fire Safe Christmas" have been distributed to adults across Easterhouse. Divisions that are being fostered by a little shop of horrors known locally as the Greater Easterhouse Community Safety Shop. The "safety shop" is always kept locked - for safety reasons, of course - and it is plastered in posters warning of a thousand and one reasons to stay in bed, hidden under your covers. However, there are divisions developing in Easterhouse - not racial divisions, but divisions based on fear and insecurity.

But why choose Easterhouse? The racial divisions that dog inner-city areas of France are in contrast with the "social harmony" of Easterhouse - an area that now has its own Initiative and Development Corporation and is attracting a lot of money from the Scottish Office and the European Social Fund. Ever since the film La Haine (hate) was released, depicting the violence on a run-down Parisian estate, the French president has been under pressure to do something about inner-city deprivation in France. Prince Charles took Jacques Chirac to Glasgow's notorious Easterhouse estate yesterday to teach him all about urban regeneration and community participation. No child's rights should be sacrificed on the altar of holy matrimony or misplaced feminine pride.* 'Men and their Children' by Adrienne Burgess and Sandy Ruxton, pounds 7.50 from IPPR, 30-32 Southampton Street, London WC2E 7RA.The writer is deputy director of the Institute for Public Policy Research.. Every child has a right to a close, loving and stable relationship with both its parents, whatever their marital status.

The advocates of this point of view (among the more strident is the Observer's Melanie Phillips) argue that public policies should send out strong pro-marriage signals, as a matter of priority. Any pro-parenting signals (such as creating rights for unmarried fathers) which interfere with the main message should be eliminated.Getting a fair deal for fathers is going to be an uphill struggle It threatens deep emotions and entrenched interests But the case is overwhelming. They believe that social order depends on orderly families and that families are best kept in order by marriage. Instead, they should be allowed to apply to court for a simple declaration of parentage, conferring full parental rights - to be withheld only from men who are demonstrably unsuitable.For the moral authoritarians, this is just greasing the slippery slope. Public policy tells these men that they are good for nothing but money - and many of them respond by severing all contact with their children. At present, unmarried fathers are expected to pay maintenance, but they have no right to be consulted about key decisions in the child's life, or even to have their paternity recognised, unless the mother consents.