The government recently published its long awaited Green Paper on the family and, as part of this, has announced its intention to provide all new fathers with a "Dad's Guide" to matters such as pregnancy, parenthood and sharing household chores. Whilst, in principle, it seems right to help fathers become more involved in their children's births and upbringings, this move by Ed Balls so soon after having denounced the Tories' tax plans as "social engineering" is a severe case of the pot calling the kettle black.

First of all you have to question the need for such state intervention at all. The guide, of which a total of 600,000 copies will be published, will cover topics such as "explaining why dads matter", "communication with baby and keeping them safe", "providing financially", and "keeping a good relationship with mum." Critics, such as Ann Widdecombe, have argued that this is a "nanny state" measure which is,  "Remarkably patronising to fathers. A mother and a father go into hospital for the birth of their child, not to receive a lecture on what to do afterwards."

It also seems appropriate to ask why we need the government's answers to such questions now, at the expense of the taxpayer, when families have managed to successfully rear children in the absence of such "assistance" since the human race came into being. It appears, even in today's highly technological world, that the government has concluded that the British citizenry are so acutely lacking in both intelligence and common sense that they are incapable of picking up a telephone or turning on their computers should they be in need of help or advice. Further to this, they seem intent on reinforcing the socially destructive idea that the state must do everything for us, thus infantilising our society.

However, a matter which I find particularly nonsensical and incongruous is the fact that Balls, without irony, simultaneously attacked David Cameron's pledge to recognise marriage in the tax system. Mr Balls commented that "The idea of trying to socially engineer family life through a tax policy which is designed to say that some types of families are first class, and other types of families are second class and should be financially disadvantaged, is hugely expensive and unfair."

Is it not the case though that producing a guide for fathers is effectively a way of labelling certain approaches to parenting as "first class", having met government approval, and others as inferior or wrong? Indeed, New Labour has hardly proved reluctant to interfere in family life. As The Telegraph put it, Ed Balls has "spent the last decade trying to do precisely what he decries: that is, trying to re-engineer family life through tax policy."

In Labour's case, this was done by way of the Working Family Tax Credit, the effect of which has been to "increase the number of children raised by single mothers." It is notable that, whilst disagreeing with the Tories in terms of their tax policy, Mr Balls is fundamentally still in support of marriage as "the most important institution for making sure we have strong and stable families." Therefore, through previous forms of social intervention, it seems that his party have gone some way to shoot themselves in the foot in this regard, and that the new Green Paper was necessitated by a need to remedy problems which they themselves have generated.

I suggest that Ed Balls should heed the warning that people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.