About a month ago, I was shopping at the market when I came upon a woman smacking her young son. “I don’t ever want to see you hit your sister again,” she warned him. Apparently, the lad had walloped his (now-crying) sibling, which led to the mother’s admonition.

I don’t usually interfere with parents disciplining their kids unless I think that it’s crossing the line into abuse (or neglect), but I did make a mental note of the situation. If we were to dissect this scene, what part of it seemed incongruent? Surely, the mother was being reasonable in reprimanding her son for hitting his sister. But to make her point, she hit her son! I just didn’t comprehend how she didn’t see the inconsistency of her message, as well as the correlation between her behavior and that of her son’s.

This point was drilled home to me when a friend recently sent me a video called “Children See, Children Do.” It’s a powerful reminder that, in every sense, parents model the way for their children. Of course, we tend to think of role models in positive terms, as people who enrich our lives and teach us important lessons and values. But in truth, role models work both ways, showing good and bad behavior that kids pick up on. You need only look at rap artists or young celebrities out of control to realize that even if you don’t approve of the content of their songs or the antics of their lives, your kids quite possibly may be emulating them. How many girls thought it was “cool” when 15-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears became pregnant or when Mylie Cyrus posed provocatively on her MySpace page.

It’s no different for parents. Since parents are the strongest role model a child has, what you do matters - a lot. In fact, everything that you do, your children see and, most likely, will end up doing, as well. From screaming at the car that cut you off in traffic to lying to a friend to get out of dinner plans, your child takes it all in and considers it acceptable behavior.

Modeling the way is one of my favorite parenting principles. It’s a relatively simple concept to understand but far more difficult in practice. After all, as flawed souls ourselves, we do act inappropriately at times, especially when we’re angry, upset or anxious. We carry prejudices and biases that at times can be hard to mask. We have behaviors - whether it’s smoking, drinking or speaking negatively of others - of which we’re not proud. We don’t want our children to pick up on our bad habits, traits and behavior. But children take it all in and, seeing us as their primary role model, regardless of whether you tell them it’s bad or not (the old “do as I say, not as I do” mentality), they’re going to think it’s OK to model that negative behavior or attitude.

It’s hard being a parent. We all know that. But it’s also a privilege. Pay attention to your less desirable conduct, habits or attitudes. They all translate into messages that your kids, as your primary audience, are receiving. If you aren’t proud of them yourself, or if you don’t wish for others to see these behaviors in play, chances are that you shouldn’t let your children observe them either.

Step up to be the best parent you can be. And when you make a mistake, such as losing your temper or not following through on something you say you’ll do, be sure to admit the mistake to your child. A child hearing his or her parent say, “I was wrong. I shouldn’t have done that,” is a powerful thing. It tells your child: “We’re human and fallible, but we do our best, and when we fall short, we admit it.” And a parent who communicates that just may be the ultimate role model.

Source: DetNews.com, MI
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080826/OPINION03/808260378

As a child safety measure in the car, its importance could never be underplayed.

Researchers, however, yesterday warned that the convenience of the portable car baby seat is having some far less desirable effects.

They claim many parents are using the chairs to also restrain infants in the home, which in turn is damaging their development.

Such ‘cotton wool’ treatment later leads to poor concentration in the classroom because children’s reflexes have not been sufficiently developed, they say.

The researchers from Liverpool John Moores University examined 120 children aged ten and 11 at a school in West Yorkshire.

The youngsters were given tests in reading, non-verbal reasoning and shortterm memory and split into four groups.

One group took part in a specially designed movement programme, the second did sound therapy, the third did both programmes and the fourth did neither.

The movement programme involved 40 minutes of simple exercises, twice a week, for eight months within normal PE lessons.

Activities included crawling on a mat, hand-to-eye exercises and playground games such as skipping. Eight months later, all 120 children were re-tested.

The children who took part in the movement programme performed ’significantly better’ overall in comparison to the children who did not. Their reading, memory and general reasoning had all improved.

‘People are trying to be too safe but they are causing further problems.’

Meanwhile, the separate music programme involved children listening to classical music through headphones for 30 minutes a day over eight weeks.

The music was filtered to create higher frequencies to help boost the auditory processes, which is the speed at which one can process what’s being heard.

At the end of the experiment, the children performed better in reading than those who had not taken part in the music programme.

‘The Government should consider using movement programmes in schools to iron out difficulties children might have.’

Source: Daily Mail, UK
http://tinyurl.com/69anux

Barack Obama says he believes in universal preschool and if he’s elected president he’ll pump “billions of dollars into early childhood education.” Universal preschool is now second only to universal health care on the liberal policy wish list. Democratic governors across the country — including in Illinois, Arizona, Massachusetts and Virginia — have made a major push to fund universal preschool in their states.

But is strapping a backpack on all 4-year-olds and sending them to preschool good for them? Not according to available evidence.

“Advocates and supporters of universal preschool often use existing research for purely political purposes,” says James Heckman, a University of Chicago Noble laureate in economics whose work Mr. Obama and preschool activists routinely cite. “But the solid evidence for the effectiveness of early interventions is limited to those conducted on disadvantaged populations.”

Mr. Obama asserted in the Las Vegas debate on Jan. 15 that every dollar spent on preschool will produce a 10-fold return by improving academic performance, which will supposedly lower juvenile delinquency and welfare use — and raise wages and tax contributions. Such claims are wildly exaggerated at best.

In the last half-century, U.S. preschool attendance has gone up to nearly 70% from 16%. But fourth-grade reading, science, and math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) — the nation’s report card — have remained virtually stagnant since the early 1970s.

Preschool activists at the Pew Charitable Trust and Pre-K Now — two major organizations pushing universal preschool — refuse to take this evidence seriously. The private preschool market, they insist, is just glorified day care. Not so with quality, government-funded preschools with credentialed teachers and standardized curriculum. But the results from Oklahoma and Georgia — both of which implemented universal preschool a decade or more ago — paint an equally dismal picture.

A 2006 analysis by Education Week found that Oklahoma and Georgia were among the 10 states that had made the least progress on NAEP. Oklahoma, in fact, lost ground after it embraced universal preschool: In 1992 its fourth and eighth graders tested one point above the national average in math. Now they are several points below. Ditto for reading. Georgia’s universal preschool program has made virtually no difference to its fourth-grade reading scores. And a study of Tennessee’s preschool program released just this week by the nonpartisan Strategic Research Group found no statistical difference in the performance of preschool versus nonpreschool kids on any subject after the first grade.

What about Head Start, the 40-year-old, federal preschool program for low-income kids? Studies by the Department of Health and Human Services have repeatedly found that although Head Start kids post initial gains on IQ and other cognitive measures, in later years they become indistinguishable from non-Head Start kids.

If anything, preschool may do lasting damage to many children. A 2005 analysis by researchers at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley, found that kindergartners with 15 or more hours of preschool every week were less motivated and more aggressive in class. Likewise, Canada’s C.D. Howe Institute found a higher incidence of anxiety, hyperactivity and poor social skills among kids in Quebec after universal preschool.

The only preschool programs that seem to do more good than harm are very intense interventions targeted toward severely disadvantaged kids. A 1960s program in Ypsilanti, Mich., a 1970s program in Chapel Hill, N.C., and a 1980s program in Chicago, Ill., all report a net positive effect on adult crime, earnings, wealth and welfare dependence for participants. But the kids in the Michigan program had low IQs and all came from very poor families, often with parents who were drug addicts and neglectful.

Even so, the economic gains of these programs are grossly exaggerated. For instance, Prof. Heckman calculated that the Michigan program produced a 16-cent return on every dollar spent — not even remotely close to the $10 return that Mr. Obama and his fellow advocates bandy about.

Our understanding of the effects of preschool is still very much in its infancy. But one inescapable conclusion from the existing research is that it is not for everyone. Kids with loving and attentive parents — the vast majority — might well be better off spending more time at home than away in their formative years. The last thing that public policy should do is spend vast new sums of taxpayer dollars to incentivize a premature separation between toddlers and parents.

Yet that is precisely what Mr. Obama would do. His “Zero-to-Five” plan would increase federal outlays for early education by $10 billion — about 50% of total government spending on preschool — and hand block grants to states to implement universal preschool. This will make the government the dominant source of funding in the early education marketplace, vastly outpacing private spending.

If Mr. Obama is serious about helping children, he should begin by fixing what is clearly broken: the K-12 system. The best way of doing that is by building on programs with a proven record of success. Many of these involve giving parents control over their own education dollars so that they have options other than dysfunctional public schools. The Obamas send their daughters to a private school whose annual fee in middle school runs around $20,000. Other parents deserve such choices too — not promises of subsidized preschool that they may not want and that may be bad for their kids.

Source: Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121936615766562189.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Parents tempted to treat Junior’s misbehavior with a lashing from a tree limb out back or dad’s leather belt are being urged to think again.

A study released Tuesday by doctors at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill finds that parents who spank their children with an object - such as a belt, switch or paddle - are nine times more likely to abuse their child through more severe means. Also, parents are much more likely to beat, burn or shake their children if they spank frequently, according to the study which is being published by the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

“Parents get angry when they’re spanking and it’s not working,” said Adam Zolotor, lead author of the study and a pediatrician at the UNC-CH’s Department of Family Health. “If a child gets spanked so often, they just don’t care anymore and will misbehave anyway.”

It’s the latest finding in a growing body of research suggesting parents should use their voice, not their hands or household tools, to keep children in line. This study rests on anonymous admissions of 1,435 mothers of children from North and South Carolina randomly selected to share details of the discipline they and other caregivers use in the privacy of their own home.

Rates of abuse, the researchers found, are alarmingly high, even in a survey dependent on parents owning up to behavior that could cost them the right to raise their children. Twelve percent of mothers who reported spanking a child’s bottom with an object also admitted engaging in behavior researchers classified as physical abuse. Also, 12 percent of those who spanked 50 or more times in the last year admitted abuse such as beating, burning, shaking or hitting the child with an object about their body.

Spanking has been a mainstay in American parents’ discipline regimen for generations. Most national studies show that more than half of parents have spanked or slapped their child in the past year. In the UNC-CH study, Zolotor and his colleagues found that nearly half of those Carolina parents with a child between the ages of 7 and 9 whipped their child’s behind with an object in the past year.

Corporal punishment has been on the minds of North Carolinians this summer. In June, Triangle residents watched Johnston County mother Lynn Paddock admit she lashed out at her brood of adopted children with a plastic plumbing supply line; Paddock borrowed the parenting advice from an evangelical Christian minister who teaches parents how to rear submissive children. A Johnston County jury sent Paddock to prison for the rest of her life for suffocating her youngest son, 4-year-old Sean.

Over the last year, child advocates have appealed, without success, to legislators to outlaw corporal punishment in public schools. Some districts, such as Johnston County, have recently voted to abandon the practice.

“People want to change behavior immediately, and they think spanking is the way to go,” said Tom Vitaglione, a child advocate from Raleigh-based Action for Children who has pushed for the statewide ban on spanking in schools. “Down the line, though, (these children) do far worse. That relationship of trust is broken.”

At least 56 school districts still allow administrators to spank or paddle children. Efforts to ban that practice entirely have met fierce opposition.

John Rustin, vice-president of Family Policy Council, a non-partisan research group in Raleigh that focuses on family issues, opposed the ban and thinks there’s still a place for spanking in North Carolina’s homes and schools.

“Spanking can be administered in a loving manner to help children understand what’s right and wrong,” said Rustin. “But, it’s not just something that ought to be done with little thought.”

Some Christians heed the Bible’s admonition that parents who spare the rod will spoil their children. Several ministers have written books or taught seminars instructing parents how to employ the rod, preaching that a parents’ hand ought to be preserved for loving and nurturing, not discipline. Michael Pearl, the Tennessee pastor Paddock turned to for a discipline advice, suggests in his books that parents whip babies under one with “a footlong willow branch shaved of its knots” and for older children “plastic plumbing pipe, a 3-foot shrub cutting or a belt.”

Beth Taylor, a mother of two boys, said she finally gave up on spanking years ago when her oldest son began acting worse after she turned to a belt to punish him. It was the only tactic she knew, Taylor said. Growing up, her father had whipped her and her sisters with a strap.

“It made him lash out at me,” said Taylor, who lives in McDowell County in Western North Carolina. “It broke my heart. I worried about him hating me.”

Frustrated, she took a parenting class to figure out what was going wrong. There, Taylor said, she learned her spanking provoked her son. Now, to get her oldest son to behave, Taylor disconnects his cell phone. For her youngest, 7, she takes away his video game machine.

“Nothing gets their attention faster,” said Taylor.

Source: Kansas City Star, MO
http://www.kansascity.com/440/story/754399.html

Guidelines for managing attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder have alarmed leading education researchers, who warn they will cause an exponential increase in children being labelled as having ADHD by schools chasing funding.

A group of 14 researchers in education, disabilities and ADHD from seven universities have written to the Rudd Government, criticising moves to instruct teachers to look out for ADHD and to allocate special funding to schools for students with the disorder.

The guidelines are being reviewed by the Royal Australasian College of Physicians at the request of the National Health and Medical Research Council. Draft recommendations were released for public comment.

In a letter to Education Minister Julia Gillard and Health Minister Nicola Roxon, the researchers say the recommendations will encourage over-diagnosis of ADHD and give schools an incentive to have children classified with the disorder to gain access to extra money.

“This risk is particularly acute for children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds.”

A survey of children’s mental health, conducted by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare in 1998, found almost 8 per cent of 12- to 17-year-olds were diagnosed with ADHD.

A study of South Australian children taking medication for ADHD in 1999 found rates highest among children from families with low incomes and high unemployment.

The lead signatory on the letter, Linda Graham from the University of Sydney, said yesterday resources would be better spent on giving teachers the skills and support to deal with a variety of children’s behaviours rather than singling out disorders.

Dr Graham said diagnosing a child as having ADHD was sometimes medicalising normal behaviour and should be a last resort, but it had become the first step in dealing with challenging children. “The diagnostic criteria for ADHD over the past 15 years has been expanding and it’s now almost possible to diagnose one of my cats,” she said.

The chairman of the group writing the guidelines, David Forbes, said between 5 and 10 per cent of children had the features of ADHD and might need special intervention to help them learn at school. He disagreed that training teachers to recognise ADHD would increase diagnosis of the disorder.

Source: The Australian, Australia
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24203785-5013871,00.html

The secret to the academic success of many Asian students starts in the home, with a study of schoolchildren suggesting a regular homework routine carries benefits into the classroom.

The research examined the study habits of three groups of Year 3 students and found that Chinese children spent more time on their homework, completed more work and did it on a more regular basis than Anglo or Pacific Island students.

The study by University of Western Sydney researchers and the NSW Education Department challenges the myth that Chinese students perform better at school because of a cultural disposition to study.

“There has been inadequate attention given to the ways educational attainment is founded on embodied capacities, such as productive stillness and quiet, which are crucial to sustained attention and application in intellectual endeavour,” the report says.

Cathy Garde, a Year 3 teacher at Berala Public School in Sydney’s west, agreed that less attention was paid in recent years to the practicalities of learning, and training young bodies to sit still.

“I often have to start the year teaching the kids work habits, the capability to sit down and focus,” she said. “Some children struggle to control themselves. They don’t have any self-discipline. You get children who come into the classroom and start walking around the room in the middle of a task.”

The report, Cultural Practices and Learning, involved interviews with parents, teachers and 36 students in six Sydney schools, as well as classroom observation.

The study found that 56per cent of the Chinese students spent more than one hour a night on their homework, compared with 24per cent of Anglo children and 35per cent of Pacific Islander students.

But the study says the time spent on homework was not as important as the study routine.

A greater proportion of Chinese students, 40per cent, did homework in their bedroom or study at a desk compared with 13per cent of Anglo students and 25per cent of Islander children, who tended to do their homework sitting on their bed.

Source: The Australian, Australia
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24115399-2702,00.html

The United States is not making the grade.

The 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) shows the United States ranks 12th of 25 countries among eighth graders in math and science skills. In the No. 1 and No. 2 spots: Singapore and the Republic of Korea.

“There is a critical need right now in this country to do research on math. We need to identify the skills that children need to improve upon, and hone in on factors that can predict development. We really want to answer the question, ‘Why do some children succeed at math and others do not?’ There is an epidemic when it comes to children who just don’t have basic math skills,” said Steven A. Hecht, Ph.D., associate professor of pediatrics in the Children’s Learning Institute (CLI) at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

“CLI is expanding its math intervention program through satellite clinics that can offer extra small group tutorials. We also want to address needs at the elementary and middle schools levels. Right now, CLI’s math initiative only involves students in pre-kindergarten,” said Susan Landry, Ph.D., director of the Children’s Learning Institute and Michael Matthew Knight Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston.

According to Landry, if children can be reached when they first begin struggling with math, a better educational foundation can be built. “We don’t want them just thinking ‘math is not my subject.’ We want to give them ways to succeed, so they can be anything they want to be. CLI uses only research-proven interventions that can help them pursue their dreams,” she said.

Hecht said the CLI group wants to find the most sensitive ways to measure math difficulties to identify early on what areas of math might require additional instruction.

To better understand how the brain processes mathematics, experts are using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and magnetoencephalography (MEG). “We are studying the entire brain to obtain more information on how it responds to mathematics,” said Andrew C. Papanicolaou, Ph.D., professor of pediatrics and director of the Center for Clinical Neurosciences in CLI at the UT Medical School at Houston. “We are seeking more funding from the National Institutes of Health to further this study.”

In the future, those scans may be able to be used to correctly diagnosis individuals who are having trouble processing math, Papanicolaou said. Imaging could also be used to see if interventions are working.

CLI, which is in the Department of Pediatrics at the medical school, currently uses one-on-one testing to determine a child’s math ability. Once a learning disability is detected, interventions can be implemented to help the child succeed.

“I believe that most people do not realize how important it is to foster a love of science and math in our young people today. With special activities and interventions in these areas, we can grab their interest and entice these future leaders into careers in medicine and other areas of science, where there is so much need,” said Judianne Kellaway, M.D., the Stephen A. Lasher Professor in Ophthalmology and assistant dean for admissions at the medical school.

CLI is developing math satellite clinics, which would bring extra assistance into Houston Independent School District schools. The clinics are scheduled to open by next year. “If we could provide that extra help and encouragement, it could go a long way to improving our children’s math skills not only at the state level, but also nationally and internationally,” Hecht said.

According to Kellaway, the medical school is also responding through its students. “In the last two years, our medical students have designed and implemented several elementary science programs. We have tripled our outreach to high school students and are initiating elementary and middle school programs,” she said.

Hecht said math and science skills are vital for national security and American businesses. “The National Science Foundation has reported that most graduate students who are obtaining advanced training in engineering departments are not U.S. citizens,” he said. “How are we going to remain a world leader in designing and building new space exploration technology? Right now, we are also relying on other countries to fill positions in American businesses that thrive in the math and science industry. If we want to stay competitive, we need action now.”

Source: Newswise
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/543136/

The Space Cadet wants to know how many HSC units he should do in year 11. Jocasta, lying on the couch, waves him off. “Ask your brother,” she says, gesturing towards the telephone. She shifts in the couch so she can better maintain her viewing pleasure of Ladette To Lady.

Who would be a second child? For the first child, nothing is too much trouble. The first child is pampered and photographed. Books on child-rearing are purchased and read. On behalf of the first child, there is in-depth research so they can be properly advised on all manner of life choices.

But, of course, you don’t even achieve that. Standards fall from the very beginning.

With the first child, bedtime involves enthusiastic readings from Chicken Little and The Very Hungry Caterpillar, including the use of funny voices. You read as if the child’s whole future is dependent on the number of hours you put in. You read until the child begs for mercy. “Daddy, I just want to go to sleep,” the child sobs. “I don’t care if the caterpillar is still hungry.”

With the second child, you’re reading the same books and frankly you’re sick of the characters. The caterpillar’s constant consumption of leaf matter has lost its allure. The thrill is gone. As for Chicken Little, once you know the sky doesn’t fall in, the character seems shrill, panicky, even a little shallow. Who needs to spend this much time with neurotic poultry?

You start doing fake yawning, hoping the child will catch a yawn and fall asleep. More treacherous still, you secretly turn over two or three pages at a time, skipping whole chunks of plot. In extreme cases, you jump from halfway through the caterpillar’s travails to a tacked-on “and so he lived happily ever after”.

Surely they notice. Surely it must affect them. Is this why second children are generally a little wilder, a little more lateral in their thinking? Every time you skipped a whole chunk of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, did they internalise the anarchic notion that life is capricious, unpredictable and all too brief? Is this why they are more likely to be artists, professional surfers, high-risk rock climbers?

It’s not only the reading. With the first child, TV shows are thoroughly monitored, soft-drink is banned and homework times are enforced. By the second child, anything goes. It’s like a prison in which the guards have become very, very lax. The guards are lying around, scratching their bellies, the prison gates swinging open. About 6pm, they distribute pizza menus and invite the inmates to order in; in this prison, every night is a Johnny Cash concert.

A third child? I haven’t experienced it but surely standards would just keep falling. With a third child, parenting would consist of telling Matilda she can have a fifth glass of Fanta but only if she fetches you a beer and mixes mum a mai tai.

And sure she can watch Dexter - six years old doesn’t seem too young - but only if she lets you polish off the nachos.

Is there a positive side to being a later child? Most of all, it’s the lack of photos. The first-born is documented every second. It’s like being under ASIO surveillance. There are whole photo albums dedicated to the time between two months and three months old, a time during which their appearance changes from blob to slightly larger blob.

By contrast, the second has nothing. It’s like he’s Trotsky during the Stalin years, his very image scrubbed from the record. “Of course, you’re in the family photo album,” you assure your child, “look at the photo of the dog. I’m almost positive that’s your foot in the background.”

First-borns are said to be more dutiful, more likely to accede to their parents’ demands. Maybe it’s the existence of all those photos. One wrong move and you could upload the lot onto Facebook: the nude shot in the bath, the shot where they smeared their whole body with jam, the photo in which they are trying to insert a carrot up their own nose.

And so they live in fear. While the second-born sleeps easy.

The first-born is the battering ram with which the gates are pushed open; the first-born is the one who starts digging the escape tunnel. He or she is the slow drip that broke the spirit of the guards.

All the second child needs do is saunter through to freedom.

The Space Cadet wanders back into the room. He’s had a long talk to his brother about the HSC and together they have mapped out an academic plan. The prison guards pause and stop stuffing their faces with the nachos. They even turn down the sound on Ladette To Lady in order to ask for details.

The details are provided. He’s made sensible choices. Personally, I put it down to the excellent parenting.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
http://www.smh.com.au/news/richard-glover/secondborn-syndrome/2008/08/01/1217097505545.html

Children who are smacked or yelled at are much more likely to develop serious mental health problems by the age of three, research reveals.

A study of more than 700 toddlers found that those who were harshly disciplined by their parents were at much higher risk of depression and anxiety in later life. Disobedience and aggression were also common problems for infants who had been smacked or screamed at.

The study by Melbourne’s Murdoch Children’s Research Institute showed that parental stress could also have a huge impact on infant mental health.

Children from all walks of life were studied at the age of seven months, then followed up every six months until the age of three.

Researcher Jordana Bayer, a child psychologist, said up to 50% of early behavioural problems persisted through childhood. “In early childhood, behavioural problems such as hitting and kicking and biting and saying no are very common. But if they’re at high levels by preschool age then up to half will go on through childhood and lead potentially into adolescence with conduct disorder and drug use and depression and so on,” Dr Bayer said.

“It’s important for parents to pay attention to when young children behave well and actually reward that behaviour with praise and hugs.”

The findings, published in the latest edition of the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, will be used to develop family support programs.

Murdoch researcher and pediatrician Harriet Hiscock said doctors working with children should always ask about the parents’ stress levels. “There are ways to help reduce this stress and help parents manage their child’s behaviour in more calm and consistent ways.”

Source: The Age, Australia
http://www.theage.com.au/national/childs-mental-health-at-risk-from-tough-love-20080729-3mvf.html

Save the males! A new book says society is biased AGAINST men. Ridiculous? Hardly, says Amanda Platell

Every once in a while, a book not so much lands on your desk as lobs itself like a hand grenade, exploding preconceived wisdoms and shattering the bones of the status quo. Save The Males is such a book.

It is the fiercest and most fearless defence of men, fatherhood and ultimately the family I have read in many years.

American author Kathleen Parker’s courageous thesis is that initially, through extreme feminism, then via its craven implementation into society, women have demonised men and trivialised their contribution, especially to family life.

I say courageous because, in the eyes of many women and of the liberal establishment, suggesting men have had a rough deal is nothing short of heresy.

Parker should be burnt at the stake, they cry. But isn’t it ironic that only a woman could make such a plea for men?

She argues: ‘As long as men feel marginalised by the women whose favour and approval they seek, as long as they are alienated from their children and treated as criminals by family courts, as long as they are disrespected by a culture that no longer values masculinity tied to honour, as long as boys are bereft of strong fathers and our young men and women wage sexual war, then we risk cultural suicide.’

It’s enough to set a feminist’s hair on end. Parker argues that in trying to make the world fairer for women, an adjustment most agree was vital, we have made it unfair for men. In our attempt to honour women, we have dishonoured men.

By bending over backwards to make single mothers feel good about themselves, by diminishing the role of fathers, by elevating women as the superior parents, we have gone a considerable way to destroying one of the basic tenets of a successful society - family life.

Apart from the effects of this seismic social shift on society, it is also grossly unfair. Can you imagine a world where men demanded women be more like them - dress like them, act like them, even look like them. Because that is effectively what our post-feminist society has done, but with the genders switched.

The traditional male values, what Parker almost poetically calls ‘masculinity tied to honour’, are now seen as nothing more than a direct assault on women.

Unless men are like us, the thinking goes, they insult us and threaten our existence: hence the feminisation of men, or as we so disingenuously describe it, getting in touch with your feminine side.

Thus Hybrid Man was born. An acceptable male model now is more likely to be of the David Beckham variety, wearing more make-up than the missus, hairless, perfumed, varnished, emasculated by his bossy wife and perhaps fond of wearing her undies.

Good dads, loving husbands, supportive male role models, they’re few and far between even in the fictional world of TV.

But in the real world it wasn’t enough that we demanded they be more like us, we superior human beings. We had to traduce men as well, treating them in almost all forms of popular culture as useless, ineffectual, even comic characters, or as violent, cheating and untrustworthy.

And so Sitcom Man was born. Parker challenges us to try to think of a wholesome, reliable role model in myriad ‘dads’ created on TV or in movies. Fathers are always portrayed as incompetent or inconsequential, mindless or mean, comic or cruel. If you relentlessly portrayed any ethnic or minority group in such a biased way, you’d be pilloried on air.

Parker cites many reasons for the dereliction of men. First, there has been the institutionalisation of motherhood at the expense of fatherhood.

‘We seem to accept that children shouldn’t be raised without mothers, but we regard the contributions of fathers as optional,’ Parker says.

Just last week, Nicola Brewer, the chief executive of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said: ‘Fathers are being marginalised to the extent of simply “seasoning” in their children’s upbringing.’

And the state reinforces the ‘Mum best, Dad dodgy’ myth. ‘The family courts effectively make fathers a slave to the state, his wages become state property, his time with his children is determined by a family court judge, and he faces jail if for whatever reason he fails to pay his child support on time.’

Family courts in America increasingly approve of ‘virtual parenting’, which means Mum can take the kids and live wherever she likes and Dad can do it long distance, via the phone or internet.

‘Thanks to divorce, unwed motherhood, and policies that unfairly penalise and marginalise fathers, 30-40 per cent of all American children sleep in a home where their father doesn’t,’ she writes.

Parker believes that perhaps the biggest blow to men’s roles in families has come with the explosion and normalisation of single motherhood.

‘By elevating single motherhood from an unfortunate consequence of poor planning to a sophisticated act of self-fulfilment, we’ve helped to fashion a world not just in which fathers are scarce, but in which men are superfluous,’ she says.

It’s enough to set a feminist’s hair on end

Single professional women shopping for donor sperm on the internet has become the equivalent of buying designer shoes online. The number of babies born to unmarried mothers aged between 30 and 44 increased by a staggering 17 per cent from 1999 to 2003.

In short, slowly but surely, men are being made obsolete as society embraces single motherhood as the equivalent of the nuclear family for fear of not offending the sisterhood.

And so, hey presto, the marginalisation of men marches on.

And if the child is born of a normal sexual encounter, the consequences for men can be equally dire, as they have no rights, only duties.

‘If a woman gets pregnant she can abort - even without her husband’s consent. If she chooses to have the child, she gets a baby and the man gets an invoice.

‘Inarguably, a man should support his offspring, but by the same logic, shouldn’t he have a say in whether his child is born or aborted?’

The number of children living in fatherless homes has tripled since 1960, from eight million to 24 million in the U.S.. So it comes as no surprise that 21st-century man feels isolated and increasingly obsolete.

‘At the same time that men have been ridiculed in the public sphere, the importance of fatherhood has been diminished, along with other traditionally male roles of father, protector and provider, which are incredibly viewed as regressive manifestations of an outmoded patriarchy,’ Parker writes.

She also examines the feminisation of education. There is overwhelming evidence now that boys’ and girls’ brains are wired differently, but over 20 years both in America and in the UK we have made learning harder for boys and more suitable for girls. The result, Parker says, is that the gap between young men’s and women’s academic achievements is widening.

In 2005, 133 women graduated from college in the U.S. for every 100 men. By the end of this decade that gap is expected to be 142 females for every 100 males.

And as ever the poorest and most deprived are the hardest hit. Among African Americans, the figures are far worse. Twice as many women as men graduate. Parker blames the achievement gap on the absence of fathers.

What is especially refreshing is that Parker’s quest to Save The Males is not just about fairness to men. We need to do it, she says, not only ‘because we love our sons but because we love our daughters’.

And because she believes, as many of us do, that the best building block for a stable and peaceful society is the traditional nuclear family.

‘Part of our nation’s strength has always been a function of its families. Restoring the family is critical to our survival in these untidy and dangerous times.’ So, too, is ‘respecting men and the important contribution they make to children’s lives and society’.

Fathers are always portrayed as incompetent

Parker writes almost poetically about the ultimate beauty of men’s innate character. When she looks at her own father and fathers around her, she concludes that being a dad is, in fact, the manliest thing a man can do.

It encourages responsibility, sacrifice and the ability to put others before yourself - all essential qualities to a functioning society, let alone a home.

‘When we take away a man’s central purpose in life and marginalise him from society’s most important institution (the family), we strip him of his manhood.’

And it’s not all we strip away, as studies have discovered here. We reduce a child’s chance of a successful and happy life.

‘Growing up without a father is the most reliable indicator of poverty and all the familiar social pathologies affecting children, including drug abuse, truancy, delinquency and sexual promiscuity. Yet some feminists and other progressives still insist that men are non-essential‘

The powerful argument Parker constructs is that unless we wake up, and wake up quickly, to the importance of men in family life, society as we know it is doomed. In the creation of a more femalefriendly world, we have unwittingly created a culture hostile to men, not in the workplace, but the most important place, the home.

How refreshingly honest, how devoid of political correctness or feminist dogma for a woman to argue for and ultimately celebrate the necessity and the goodness of men.

She rightly warns of the dangers to our society of a world without manliness. It’s all very well for the armed forces to affect an equality between men and women, she says, but when the chips are down and a child or a society needs rescuing, it will not fall on the shoulders of our womenfolk.

And in an increasingly hostile world, we will need our men and we’ll need them to be men, to display unashamedly the sheer physical strength and courage that even after a century of feminist intervention still dwarfs women’s.

‘In the coming years, we will need men who are not confused about their responsibilities to family and country.

‘We need boys who have acquired the virtues of honour, courage, valour and loyalty. We need women willing to let men be men - and boys be boys.‘

And we will need women like Kathleen Parker with the courage to fight for men. Saving the males, she argues, will also save women and children as we all ’stand to benefit from a society in which men feel respected and thus responsible’.

By engaging men’s nobility and recognising their unique talents, we all benefit. And the process could start with us just being a bit nicer to them.

‘It wouldn’t hurt to fix a guy a burger now and then without the woman acting as though she’s just established democracy in the Sunni Triangle.’

Chastened, I’m off to buy some burgers and a few buns.

• Save The Males: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care by Kathleen Parker, published by Random House

Source: Daily Mail, UK
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1038469/Save-males-A-new-book-says-society-biased-AGAINST-men-Ridiculous-Hardly-says-Amanda-Platell.html