I suspected it would happen; I just didn’t think it would happen so quickly. Shortly after the historic achievement of Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps, and just before the historic nomination of Sen. Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention, a major newspaper ran a full-page story celebrating the news that single moms succeed in raising accomplished sons.

The article cited Mr. Phelps, Mr. Obama and others, including cycling great Lance Armstrong, to make the case that boys raised by single mothers are doing just fine, thank you. It also quoted a number of supportive experts, including Peggy Drexler, author of a book called “Raising Boys Without Men.”

Interestingly, Mrs. Drexler, who has been married for more than 36 years to the father of her son, asserts quite firmly that although boys do need men, they do not need fathers. Her position is essentially that one should not fret about fatherless boys because they have a way of finding the male involvement they need.

Well, yes and no.

Boys certainly will find male involvement, but since boys will be, well, boys, they often do not make the right choices. Case in point is convicted D.C. sniper Lee Malvo, who selected John Muhammad. And there are countless boys who join gangs to find the male involvement they so desperately crave.

That said, my biggest problem was less with the article than with the “straw man” - or rather, “straw father” - argument that it is “news” that single mothers can and do raise successful boys. As one who was raised by a single mother and has undergraduate and master’s degrees from two Ivy League universities, I am a bit of a poster child on this point. (Thanks, Mom.)

However, “Can single mothers do it?” is not the right question. There are more thoughtful ways of viewing the issue.

First, should single mothers have to raise their children alone? Remember, every child has an “involved” father at conception. I do a lot of speaking about the importance of involved fatherhood. No parent has ever come up to me after a speech to say they hope their daughter will become a single mother.

Second, this issue is not about what kind of a man a boy will become but, also, what kind of a father he will become. It’s difficult to be what you don’t see. Accordingly, as a nation, we have to ask this question - how does a culture that promotes and, too often, celebrates father absence, create an environment in which boys develop a desire to become present and involved fathers?

Third, in addition to the well-documented social and emotional costs of father absence for our nation’s children, it is also expensive. Recently, National Fatherhood Initiative released a report called, “The One Hundred Billion Dollar Man - The Annual Public Costs of Father Absence.” The report measured the federal expenditures on child-support enforcement and 13 means-tested benefits programs that support father-absent homes. The $100 billion cost represents nearly 4 percent of the 2006 federal budget. Indeed, in these difficult financial times, we cannot afford father absence.

Finally, I believe the way we look at smoking is the most appropriate and thoughtful way to look at father absence and the resulting single motherhood. Specifically, it is pretty clear the majority of people who smoke do not immediately get lung cancer. This is why it is so difficult to curb teen smoking. Nonetheless, we spend millions of dollars on campaigns and efforts to reduce smoking. Why? Because we know that those who smoke are at a higher risk for cancer, heart disease or worse. Knowing this, would anyone support celebrating the fact that many smokers beat the odds? I doubt it.

Social science data assert overwhelmingly that boys in father-absent homes are more at risk to be poor, fail in school, use drugs or be involved in the criminal justice system. Therefore, we should encourage responsible fatherhood and discourage a culture of single motherhood for the same reason - the increased risk to our sons. In my view, we do not have a fatherless boy to spare.

Source: Washington Times, DC
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/nov/02/despite-successes-boys-need-fathers/

Spending some quality time with the children might seem the perfect antidote to a stressful day at the office.

Around 24 per cent of fathers sometimes even leave for work early or return late so they spend less time with their children.

More than 40 per cent become really stressed if they go straight home from work to a house full of rowdy youngsters.

The survey of 3,000 fathers was carried out by Bounty, a company which offers advice to parents.

Managing director Ian Beswetherick, who is a father of two young children, said:

‘Nowadays most modern dads are happy to share the responsibility of looking after the children and in doing so they now truly appreciate mums’ hard work.

‘The fact that dads are leaving for work early and not heading home to help with bath and bedtime can also be due to the pressures of working for old style ‘dinosaur dads’.

‘Traditionally supported by wives that stayed at home to raise their kids, these older dads hold senior positions and don’t appreciate the fact that they employ a different kind of dad who is struggling to get to grips with combining his work with the expectations of modern fatherhood.’

The survey also found that whilst 80 per cent of dads felt an instant rush of love when their baby was born, 28 per cent said it took them longer to bond with the newborn than their partner did.

Seventeen per cent said they bonded with their baby two days after it was born, 10 per cent said it took a week, and 8 per cent said it took a whole month before they finally felt close to the child.

A quarter of fathers said they felt completely left out when their partner was pregnant - which could explain why they took longer to bond with their new baby.

But 55 per cent tried to get closer to their unborn child by stroking their partner’s bump and 44 per cent spoke to baby in the womb.

More than a third, 34 per cent, attended all ante-natal classes and around 10 per cent stopped drinking and smoking.

Two-thirds of fathers admitted that when their partner was pregnant they were secretly hoping their firstborn would be a boy.

Overall, 57 per cent said they preferred boys over girls.

That said, 30 per cent of dads said they actually bonded better with their daughters than their sons, and 46 per cent feel much more protective of their little girls.

In an ideal world, fathers would like to have two girls and two boys.

Bounty conducted the survey to mark the launch of its website newdadssurvivalguide.com, which provides advice for fathers.

Mr Beswetherick said it is aimed at new and expectant fathers who ‘worry about asking the wrong thing at the wrong time’.

Source: Daily Mail, UK
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1081667/Stay-home-No-thanks-work-easier-say-dads.html

Australian fathers spend only six minutes alone with their children on weekdays, according to new research which found that dads Down Under leave most child-raising chores to their female partners.

In a study which also looked at parenting roles in Denmark, France, Italy and the United States, researcher Lyn Craig found that Australian fathers were among the most traditional.

“The difference between men’s and women’s lives when they have children is particularly pronounced in Australia,” Craig told AFP.

“In terms of the total amount of child care that’s done within a household in Australia, 10 percent of it will be done alone by the father and 90 percent of it will be done alone by the mother.

“In Denmark, 17 percent of the household care will be done alone by the father. So it’s quite a lot better but it’s by no means equal.”

Craig, from the University of New South Wales Social Policy Research Centre, said that Australian fathers spent more time with their children on weekends, but this was mostly as part of a family group than as a solo dad.

And when they were alone with their offspring, Australian fathers were less likely to do the chores of bathing or feeding the child and more likely to take them to the park or play games with them, she said, adding that men are more prone to volunteer only for “the fun stuff”.

“That’s true worldwide really, but it’s slightly less true in Scandinavia,” she said.

Craig said Australia was quite traditional in comparison to the other countries, with only 18.5 percent of households having both parents in full-time work compared with 64.7 percent of households in Denmark.

“Part-time work for women and full-time work for men is the usual thing in households with children (in Australia), and other countries are a bit more equal in workforce participation,” she said.

“Just about all over the world, men spend relatively little time alone with their children.”

Source: AFP
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5j3ao1sJAmC-dOJ-PEz4f79CsHxJA

Motherhood is thought to make women brighter, faster and more spatially aware. Now scientists believe that the birth of a baby also gives men a welcome boost

What transforms footloose, feckless men into switched-on, dedicated fathers? Science is starting to discover that, just as nature prepares women to be committed mums, it can also make dads’ brains significantly sharper and more empathetic. A study being presented next month to the Society for Neuroscience by researchers at Richmond University, Virginia, shows how hormone changes in motherhood seem to make women brighter, faster at solving problems and more spatially aware. But it’s not only mums’ minds that get chemically enhanced.

While the biology of fatherhood remains largely uncharted, a growing body of research shows how new dads undergo a series of hormonal changes that may boost their nurturing instincts, make them kinder, more concerned and attentive to the point of obsessiveness. And, because there’s usually a downside in nature, the changes may also induce phantom-pregnancy symptoms and attacks of the baby blues.

Fatherhood triggers hormonal changes

In a surprising series of tests by Canadian scientists, up to 90 per cent of dads have reported pregnancy-like symptoms such as nausea, cravings and weight gain. Anne Storey, of Memorial University, Newfoundland, analysed 31 expectant men’s blood and found that those with phantom-pregnancy symptoms had significantly raised levels of the hormone prolactin, which is named for its role in promoting lactation in women. It also prompts animals to build nests. Storey reports in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior how she also found that the boisterous male hormone, testosterone, falls in new and expectant fathers by as much as 33 per cent. It also decreases in response to an infant’s cries and when men comfort their own child. The reduction, she suggests, may serve to encourage fathers to relate, rather than compete, with their children.

Men become more alert to a child’s needs

The two hormones may boost male empathy in other ways. Research by the Toronto University researcher Alison Fleming shows that men with high prolactin levels are more alert to a baby’s cry. Fleming has also found that new fathers with lowered testosterone levels feel more of a need to respond to their infants’ bawling. The characteristically calming female hormone, oestrogen, plays a part, too, according to a report in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings. It reports that new fathers have higher levels than other men.

“The evidence suggests there is a biology of fatherhood,” says Barry Hewlett, an American anthropologist who has studied Aka hunter-gatherers in Central Africa for three decades and considers them hugely attentive fathers. Aka men spend almost half their time either holding their babies or being within reach of them. They let their offspring suck their nipples for comfort, Hewlett says.

But they’re not just the tribal equivalent of metrosexual dads competing to know most about baby slings - Aka men take their babies with them when they go out to drink palm wine with their pals.

“They have their babies, but they are talking guy talk. It’s amazing to watch,” says Hewlett, whose Aka studies sparked his interest in the role of hormones in fatherhood. He ran a study in the United States that took blood samples from fathers before they held their infants, and again after they had them on their chests for 15 minutes. Their prolactin levels went up.

They feel a real sense of responsibility

Jack O’Sullivan, the author of the BBC Guide To Fatherhood and He’s Having A Baby, says his own experience and his discussions with thousands of dads make him a firm believer in paternal brain-shaping: “There are definite changes. I suffered an attack of ‘provider fever’ both times my children were born. I suddenly experienced a real sense of responsibility, of needing to work at having a secure job and a supportive income.” O’Sullivan, who founded the pressure group, Fathers Direct, adds: “These are instinctive feelings. I think that new dads should listen to those instincts, rather than be told by many parenting books that they don’t actually know anything about childcare.”

But what sets off these hormonal changes? Here the research is scant, but two mechanisms may be responsible: the first is the environmental fact that men are meeting a new range of social expectations that can alter their brain functioning. The second agent is pheromones: the chemical messengers that all animals emit.

But it’s not all good news

Classic studies show that women living together in dormitories have their menstruation cycles synchronised through pheromones. Similarly, a man and a woman who share intimate space may communicate chemical messages that cue a man to start getting parental. Certainly, men’s brain-patterns do change. James Swain, a researcher at Yale University, used an fMRI scanner to examine 25 new dads’ heads when they heard their infant crying or viewed a picture of their newborn. The scans showed activity strikingly similar to that seen in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms.

New dads aren’t mentally ill, but they do tend to fuss - often on typically male matters such as whether the car seat is strapped exactly right. Over-attentiveness can be one problem - and postnatal depression is another.

The Adelaide University researcher, Karina Bria, says about 10 per cent of fathers develop the disorder. “Many don’t acknowledge it,” says Bria, who has conducted a national study on depression in first-time fathers. One man who isn’t in denial, though, is Will Courtenay, a San Francisco psychotherapist who has launched Saddaddy.com after suffering the disorder following his son’s birth in June. “These hormones coursing through our bodies can really wreak havoc on a man’s functioning,” he says.

As far as Mother Nature is concerned that’s small price to pay for turning millions of men into smart, caring parental partners. (…)

Source: Times Online, UK
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/families/article4962480.ece

When Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears ran amok, the public blamed their mothers. Their fathers - Lohan’s had served time in jail and had addiction problems - escaped rebuke entirely.

Now an Australian study provides some evidence that bad mothering has a worse effect on children than bad fathering.

It shows that mothers who exhibit “toxic” behaviours - from being cold and indifferent to being abusive, manipulative or over-controlling - are far more likely to warp their children’s outlook on life than fathers with similar behaviour.

Wayne Warburton, a research fellow at Macquarie University’s Children and Families Research Centre, said: “Mothers have a really powerful effect on the way their kids view the world and themselves, probably because kids spend more time with their mothers, especially in the crucial early years.”

Dr Warburton asked 441 university students to fill out detailed questionnaires on the parenting styles of their mothers and fathers, and on their own patterns of thinking.

He asked them to recall 72 parenting behaviours, including “making a child feel ashamed”, being unloving or rejecting, and frequently telling the child they were stupid or would fail. He also asked questions designed to uncover destructive thinking patterns in the students, such as being “clingy” out of a fear of being abandoned.

He found young adults were two-thirds as likely to develop unhelpful patterns of thinking if the toxic parenting they had experienced came from their father rather than their mother.

If a range of poor parenting behaviours existed, they tended to be found in the same parent, the study found.

Just over 22 per cent of the mothers and 14 per cent of the fathers were classified as toxic.

Dr Warburton said he was surprised that toxic mothers outnumbered toxic fathers. “When I first saw the figure I thought many of the people came from single-parent families but that wasn’t true. I’m at a loss to explain it.”

He said while mothers had more influence on their children, it was surprising that fathers had two-thirds the effect of mothers, given their lower levels of contact. “Fathers still have a significant effect on the development of their kids’ patterns of thinking.”

Source: Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
http://www.smh.com.au/news/parenting/the-sins-of-the-mothers/2008/09/11/1220857740080.html

So much of what babies do - and how their parents react - is a relic of our hunter-gatherer past, says Desmond Morris in his new book, writes Mary Russell

He has published some 50 books, enjoys a parallel career as a surrealist painter, does one drawing every day without fail, has a theory about the office of the future (it will be a huge televisual voice-activated screen occupying one whole wall of your living room, on which your work colleagues will appear in hologram form), and because he is entranced with the subject matter, is unashamedly enthusiastic about his latest book, called simply Baby. Yes, Desmond Morris is back again with an examination of that most intriguing of animals, the human infant.

It is 41 years since he first hit the headlines with The Naked Ape. “If I wrote that book now,” Morris tells me in his Oxford home, “I’d call it ‘The Talking Ape’, because that’s what sets us apart from other animals: we can make symbolic equations. I might say to you, ‘look at that tree’, and the sound of the word bears no relation to a tree, yet you immediately visualise a tree. I know we’re only divided from apes by two chromosomes, but they’re pretty big chromosomes.”

An instant bestseller (12 million copies sold to date) it allowed him and his wife, Ramona, to buy a house in Malta, where she had their son, Jason.

“We were married for 16 years,” he says, “and people were asking why we didn’t have a child. They thought I should be studying a human child rather than other animals, but we were living in a flat in London and an urban environment with all that concrete is no place to raise a child. Then, when he was born, people said ‘now you can study him’, but I said, ‘no, I’m going to love him’. You can get too scientific.”

Jason, now himself the father of four children, lives with his wife in Co Kildare, where he is director of racing at Horse Racing Ireland.

This latest book, Baby, is gorgeously illustrated, with the text covering every aspect of human growth from conception through to the second year, thus taking in that minefield of childhood: the terrible twos. Not that Morris sees it like that at all: “What happens is that a small baby who is secure and loved can do very little for the first year or so, but then that very security allows him to try things out and sometimes it gets out of hand.”

Thus the terrible twos go through what he benignly describes as the “eccentric phase”. Does he tell us how to deal with such matters? “No. I just give people the facts about the child’s development, and after that it’s up to them,” he says.

He has great sympathy for the young single parent - it’s usually a mother - coping on her own in an urban setting. “That’s a very lonely place to be. It’s part of our birthright to come together in groups and that doesn’t happen any more,” he says.

And then he gets to it - the hunter-gatherer bit - about how in the old days, and we’re really going back here, the male could display his manliness by hunting and killing and so forth, and thus, his masculinity recognised and established, he could return home to display tenderness towards his children without anyone calling him a girl’s blouse. The other thing was that when we lived in small tribes, the mother could take her child with her to work, swaddled on her back or placed in a hanging basket on a tree so that the two were always within sight or hearing of each other. “Now,” Morris says, “that’s gone. You can’t breastfeed in the boardroom - unless you’re Karren Brady .”

His other concern is with what he calls “yes parents” and “no parents”. A controlling one (a no parent) robs the child of the feeling that the world is full of possibilities. These children grow up to be over-cautious and conservative in their outlook, whereas a child with a yes parent is adventurous and non-conformist. I can tell from this that his own mother was a yes mother and he agrees.

“When I was about five or six, I asked if I could have a tame fox for a pet, and I got not one but two.”

And lots of other creatures as well, which was very noble of his mother, he remarks, because we all know it’s the mother who ends up looking after all these pets.

Mothers rate big with Morris and this is partly because the female is pre-programmed to relate to babies. Come, I can’t help interrupting, surely nurture is a big player in the ping-pong game of gender bias. But he is unperturbed.

“I’m not so sure,” he says, far too genial to contradict me outright. “Children will make a choice. They’ll filter things.”

And so I tell him of my son who, when small, was given a doll’s house to play with and the doll family always ended up on the roof of the house awaiting rescue by a fire engine or a helicopter because some action-packed drama was taking place below. He nods. “Yes, the child will make a choice that accords with its gender,” he says.

But I’m still not convinced by his pre-programming theory. How can he say for sure, I ask, feeling like Doubting Thomas. After all, this is a man who has spent his life studying animal behaviour.

“Well, there’s the pupil test,” he explains. “You have a device that measures pupil dilation, which, as we all know, is an indication of how much you like something. When you show a female an image of a baby, her pupils will dilate whether or not she has had a baby. But do the same with a male who is not yet a father and there is no response. No emotional bonding. However, do it with a male who has become a father and the pupils dilate just like a female’s.”

Sitting in Morris’s wonderfully comfortable library, its walls lined with books (all catalogued), masks and whatnot on the wall, rugs on the floor and a soft, low sofa that just begs to be sat upon - it’s a joy to watch the show as he acts out a woman’s pupils dilat- ing to an alarming size, popping his own eyes to emphasise his point. And because, in this dark world of bank crashes and credit crunches, he’s so smilingly positive, you’d almost want to hug him. But of course I don’t, because this is a serious interview, and so instead I ask him which creature might act as the best role model for a would-be parent.

“Birds,” he says promptly. “They have to make a nest and keep the egg warm, and both parents feed the young, and that’s what’s important: pair bonding. It demonstrates that human babies need two parents just as birds do. This is partly due to the fact that humans have serial litters. They need someone else there. In the animal world generally, a cat or a bitch will have a litter but won’t have another one till those babies have grown up and left the nest. The human mother will have a second litter before the first one is even weaned, sometimes.”

It’s not like monkeys, which cling to their mother’s fur and go wherever she goes. Incidentally, in the human baby, there’s what’s called the Moro reflex. Check it out. It occurs in very young babies when they fling their arms out and then bring them together again as if embracing something. They do the same with their legs.

“It’s a relic gesture,” says Morris’s book, “from when a baby felt itself falling from its mother’s body.”

Although Morris doesn’t tell parents how to behave, he does hint: “The relic gesture alerts the mother to the fact that her baby is suddenly feeling unsafe and physically insecure.”

So do something about it, is the gentle hint.

The baby book, says Morris, was a gift, as it allowed him to do what he’d trained as a zoologist to do: observe. “I’m not an experimenter. I just watch. You can’t ask babies questions or give them a questionnaire to fill in. You just watch them.”

There are gender differences that he outlines but doesn’t emphasise. Boy babies cry less because in the hunter-gatherer period they couldn’t make much noise or their prey would run away. Men are focused on one goal while women multi-task, though that doesn’t mean one can’t do the other.

” Ramona,” he says, “can multi-task, but so can I. It just means I have to try a little harder.”

The book is full of observations that we once knew but have forgotten. Small children’s feet are best left unshod, so only put shoes on them when they go outside. Tests have shown that toddlers rarely stray more than 60 metres from their mothers, so you don’t have to yank them back, they’ll come of their own accord. Unless they’re going through their eccentric phase, of course. At which point, you may find you’re giving yourself a hug. This, as Morris notes in his book, People Watching, is a comforting device employed by adults in moments of stress. Well, it’s better than reaching for a bottle of mother’s ruin.

• Baby: The Amazing Story of the First Two Years of Life, by Desmond Morris, is published by Hamlyn

Source: Irish Times, Ireland
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2008/0912/1221138432919.html

Better childcare will curb social ills

The first few years of a child’s life are the most important; it is in these early years that the quality of their lives is laid down. Yet too many parents who wish to nurture their children at home are being forced back to work by financial pressures when their children are still babies.

We need to level the financial playing field for parents. The current system pressurises mothers - and it is mostly mothers - into going back to work soon after their children are born. Yet the research shows that the seeds of later unhappiness and antisocial behaviour by young people are often sown by the failure of parents to form a close and loving relationship with their babies.

Society is paying a high price for the quick fix of getting mothers back to work so soon after birth.

We seem, as a society, to place economic and academic concerns well above relationships despite the latter’s crucial role in a child’s - and later an adult’s - wellbeing. Regardless of the very large body of scientific and sociological evidence, children’s policy and political thinking miss the influence of the early years on a host of social problems we face today.

I asked Dr Samantha Callan to form the Early Years Commission to study this question. Its report, which will be published tomorrow, should make compelling reading for policy makers and parents. Crucially it shows that violent and antisocial behaviour by young people can be traced back to parental neglect when they were very young. They in turn pass on this dysfunction to their own children, perpetuating the cycle.

Professor Margot Sunderland, a child mental health expert on the commission, unambiguously stated that the quality of childcare has lifelong consequences for mental health as the first three years of a child’s life are crucial for healthy brain development and psychological stability.

The yardstick of quality applies across the spectrum of childcare: parental, informal and formal. It’s not the case that home care is always good and nursery always bad. But whether it is politically correct to admit this or not, there is a “hierarchy” of quality in childcare that policy is currently ignoring.

If parents want more than anything else to be with their children most of the time in the early years, and want to give them the continuity and intensity of relationship that science says they need, then surely they are the ones best placed to provide it.

Facilitating this aspiration should be a cornerstone of childcare policy. If parents don’t want to do this or cannot (and 81% of parents said financial pressures made them return to work early), the emotional and cognitive needs of their children must still be met.

This can be done by well motivated family members, well trained nursery nurses or other childcare professionals who have the time to give them enough one-to-one care. The evidence shows that, after motivated parents, family members offer an excellent childcare source.

Yet at present they are discounted by policy makers. Worryingly the commission also heard that childcare professionals are unsure if they should even hug children and that many nurseries prioritise health and safety and administrative needs, not personal childcare. Empathy doesn’t feature in the measurement of care quality, yet it is critical.

It seems that most of the public sense that policy is wrong. When asked in our poll, 82% of adults said that more should be done to help parents who wish to stay at home in those early years and some 70% felt that parents were encouraged to put their children into daycare too soon.

We need a fairer system in which the financial sacrifice of giving up work to look after a baby is offset by extra help from the tax and benefit system. The commission’s report recommends “front-loading” child benefit so a larger proportion of the child’s total entitlement would be available during the first three years when parents most want to spend time caring for children and when attachment and intensive nurture are most important.

It also recommends transferable tax allowances to reflect the fact that, if one spouse is not working outside the home, that family requires more support from the tax system. Similarly the benefits system should not penalise low-income couples who want to live together – which requires tackling the “couple penalty”. And it proposes a change in the rules to allow working parents to use childcare tax credits to pay unregistered close relatives to look after children.

With the growing demand on mental health facilities, the rising number of children in care and the peculiarly high levels of dysfunctional family behaviour, our failure to place cognitive and social development in the early years at the heart of our policy for children is already costing us dear. It is surely time to change all of that.

Source: Times Online, UK
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/article4692207.ece

QUESTION: What does research actually say about the impact of men in children’s lives?

ANSWER: Fathers often do not have the same parenting styles as mothers. There is a difference in the way men get their kids ready for the outside world. For instance, fathers tend to give their children more freedom in the park, letting kids befriend a new dog or climb the jungle gym alone. Mothers tend to ask the children to stay close. Dr. Kyle Pruett, a child psychiatrist, researcher and author of The Nurturing Father: Journey Toward the Complete Man, found that a dad’s style of letting kids figure things out for themselves can teach them not to get so upset when they make mistakes and to try again.

Fathers may be the greatest untapped resource in the lives of their children. That goes for grandfathers and uncles as well. When men are involved, children have a tendency to have better problem-solving skills. They also tend to do better both socially and in school.

So, men, think about how you spend time with the kids in your life. Get involved, get more involved, or stay involved. Carve out a special time in your day to be with your kids. Decide how you’re going to spend that time together: shooting baskets, playing a duet, building a model, or sitting quietly and talking about how the day went for both of you. If you’re too tired to get down on the floor to play with your younger kids, cuddle on the couch together for a story. Make a connection with your children’s school. Drop them off or pick them up when you can. Get to know the teachers, go to school conferences, participate in school activities, chaperone a school event or field trip. Introduce your kids to your daily routine. Make a trip to your workplace together. Make sure your kids, or grandkids, know that you have a current picture of them at your job or in your wallet.

Sadly, the average amount of time a father spends with his child per day, other than giving directions or reprimands, is less than 10 minutes. For the sake of your child, and ultimately the community, be determined to find the time to talk and laugh and eat with your child every day. (…)

Source: Albert Lea Tribune, MN
http://www.albertleatribune.com/news/2008/aug/31/dads-talk-laugh-eat-your-child-each-day/

A new Father’s Day poll shows nearly 75 per cent of Australian dads learned their most valuable and important life skills from their own fathers.

Top among those skills was how to drive a car, how to ride a bike, changing a tyre, changing a light bulb, building a fire and knotting a tie.

According to parenting expert and author Michael Grose, the findings of the Braun Series 7 Father’s Day Poll reinforced the importance of the father and son relationship in a child’s development.

“We know from previous scientific research that boys who have active and involved fathers are more likely to do better academically, socially and emotionally,” he said in a statement.

“Given that many dads of today credit their father as being their most important teacher of life skills underscores just how important male role models can be for young boys.”

The survey was conducted online by Galaxy Research this month among 410 fathers, ahead of Father’s Day next Sunday.

Mr Grose said the reason why dads were number one when it came to teaching their sons life skills was because activities were at the centre the father-son relationship.

“The language of fathering is all about doing things - sometimes it’s kicking a football around, other times it might be helping to tinker around with the car,” he said.

The survey also found the quality most admired by sons in their fathers was their hard working approach, followed by honesty, supportiveness, loyalty, strength and kindness.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
http://news.smh.com.au/national/sons-get-vital-life-skills-from-dads-20080831-46b0.html

With a pre-schooler to raise, household chores and new life priorities, the first years of motherhood are not the most obvious time to seek promotion.

On Tuesday, the results of an Australian Public Service Commission survey on the promotion of female public servants after they took maternity leave was touted as proof that motherhood is the death knell for career advancement.

The survey found that only a third of women who had taken maternity leave in 2000-01 had been promoted six years later, while more than half the women who had not taken leave had advanced in their positions. The finding was labelled “alarming”, particularly as the public service is deemed to have the most family-friendly working conditions in Australia.

There was a chorus-style response to the news from stakeholders. All agreed it was not fair. All agreed that when a woman decided to have a child, they had to begrudgingly accept their career opportunities would be limited from that time on. All asked for jobs and workplaces to be redesigned to accommodate the changed circumstances of young mothers.

When did we get so full of ourselves? Who started the idea that the world should revolve around mothers?

Didn’t our society get the memo about not being able to have it all? Why on earth do some people still want it for themselves and for others?

Why is it seen as a right that a woman can match it with the boys in the career stakes, have a fulfilled, loving, healthy relationship with another, have a child when they choose and combine it all with enormous success? Memo to the idealists: it is impossible.

Moreover, while most women have been given the notional, legal and social right to limitless career advancement, commentators and critics seem to miss the point. Could it be that fewer mothers want promotions in the workplace? The question was not asked in the survey. Could it be that their work-life balance is hard enough without having to learn the ropes of a new and more senior role in their place of work?

I not only think so, I know so.

If a woman chooses not to have a child because she wants to pursue a sparkling career instead, I say go for it. Whatever floats her boat. But only a handful of mothers with babies or small children (the ones in the public service study all had babies in the past seven years) crave more responsibility at work. Only a few want to forge a path, climb the ladder and reach new heights.

Most find they want to share time with their child and that they have more in their life now than their work and career path. Nothing can change the view or the heart like having a child. Many mothers also have the emotional and financial need to continue working, but work finds a different place in their life, as it should.

This is not to say that mothers do a worse job in their paid employment, or lose interest in their work. On the contrary, I wager that mothers use their time more efficiently, are more focused and have a clearer sense of purpose in the work they do. Most of them just don’t want to do it all the time.

I had three children in three years. I never had more than a few months off and have worked all their lives. My children did not spend a day in daycare. How is this possible?

Equality does not mean doing the same things or participating equally in all activities. This is naive and simplistic. Equality means celebrating the differences, but valuing each role.

Now that our oldest child is almost an adult, there might be a lot of lost sleep, odd work hours and unexpected professional roles in our pasts, but if we had our time again, neither my beloved nor I would have done anything differently.

You can’t have it all, but it is possible to combine work and parenthood and have no regrets.

Source: Courier Mail, Australia
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,24212923-27197,00.html