Just one in 50 teachers of the youngest schoolchildren in England is male, figures revealed.

Only 2% of staff in nursery and reception classes - teaching under-fives - are men, Department for Children, Schools and Families figures show.

Critics say men are deterred from working with young children because of the idea that it is women’s work, the low wages and fears they may be branded paedophiles, the Daily Telegraph reports.

Anastasia de Waal, head of family and education at the think-tank Civitas, told the newspaper: “It is very important for children, particularly young ones, to see men as teachers.

“Seeing men as role models is very important.

“The idea that men are afraid of being seen as paedophiles is very serious. Obviously we want to protect children but we don’t want to get to the stage where we are harming them because they dont see any men in schools.”

A Department for Children, Schools and Families spokesman said: “Male childcare workers act as positive role models for children, which is why we launched a campaign to attract more men to the sector last year.

“The campaign challenges the stereotypical view that childcare is a woman’s role.

“Also, several of our recent early learning partnerships projects focused specifically on engaging fathers in their children’s early learning and our Children’s Plan called on all public services to take account of the needs of both parents.”

Source: The Press Association
http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5jtHGZzALO6_KynChwlehtUDnc3fg

Growing numbers of people are concerned about the impact of working mothers on family life, a survey by Cambridge University suggests.

It compared results of social attitude polls from the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.

In 1998, 51% of women and 45.9% of men believed family life would not suffer if a woman went to work.

This had fallen to 46% of women and 42% of men in 2002, amid “growing sympathy” for the old-fashioned view women should be in the home and not the workplace.

‘Super mum’

The survey, which questioned between 1,000 and 5,000 people, was conducted by Professor Jacqueline Scott from the university’s department of sociology.

She used recent data from the International Social Survey Programme and older polls.

Professor Scott said the idea that support was steadily growing for women taking an equal role in the workplace, rather than their traditional role in the home was “clearly a myth”.

She added: “Instead, there is clear evidence that women’s changing role is viewed as having costs both for the woman and the family.

“It is conceivable that opinions are shifting as the shine of the ’super-mum’ syndrome wears off, and the idea of women juggling high-powered careers while also baking cookies and reading bedtime stories is increasingly seen to be unrealisable by ordinary mortals.”

Overseas figures

Yet, it also showed the numbers of people who believed it was the man’s role to work and the wife’s to look after the children had fallen.

In 1984, 59.2% of women and 65.5% of men believed that was the case, compared to 31.1% of women and 41.1% of men in 2002.

The survey focuses on results from Britain, the US and, because the earlier surveys pre-dated the fall of the Berlin Wall, the former Federal Republic of Germany.

In the US the percentage of people arguing that family life does not suffer if a woman works has plummeted, from 51% in 1994 to 38% in 2002.

About the same number of West Germans (37%) agree; but the number there has risen, having been just 24% in the mid-1990s.

‘Considerable strain’

The report adds there should now be further investigation to understand why the attitude shift is occurring.

It asks whether this is because caring for the family is seen as women’s work, or because people feel there is no practical alternative to a woman taking the role.

Prof Scott said a change in attitude was not the same thing as a change in behaviour, but it mattered.

She said: “Women, particularly mothers, can experience considerable strain when attitudes reinforce the notion that employment and family interests conflict.

“If we are to make progress in devising policies that encourage equal working opportunities for women, we need to know more about what gender roles people view as practical, as possible and as fair.”

‘Transformation needed’

Meanwhile, the Fawcett Society, which campaigns for equality between women and men in the UK on pay and pensions, said attempts to force women into a male-created workplace were failing.

Its campaigns officer Kat Banyard said: “The long working hours culture and lack of flexible working means women are presented with impossible choices - forced to choose between caring for a family at home or maximising their career opportunities.

“The result is that motherhood carries a penalty and women and men are strait-jacketed by gender stereotypes.

“We need wholesale transformation.”

Source: BBC News, UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7543576.stm

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

It’s not a matter of race or class. Our economic structure is to blame for the lack of real fathers

Fatherhood is back in the political ring. In the right corner, David Cameron’s comments about black fathers revive the Conservative instinct for a scapegoat. In the left corner, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission’s Working Better initiative has joined with Mumsnet.com and Dad Info to launch ‘Home Front: What do mums and dads need to make life work?’ For the right, paternal responsibility is the bedrock of patriarchal social order. For the left, paternal responsibility is about a new kind of democratic settlement between men and women.

Fatherhood today is measured against the model of the man as family provider, the breadwinner supporting wife and children. This is a modern invention of the middle classes and only became the norm in the 1950s. In the past paternity was never enough to qualify men for fatherhood. Patriarchy was limited to propertied men. Colonialism ensured it was further restricted to white men.

There were plenty of biological fathers who lived without families. This was not about men’s moral failings, but a structural problem. Since the 1950s historic changes in the economy and in gender relations have returned us to this age. Paternity no longer means fatherhood.

In the 1980s, mass unemployment and the closure of manufacturing industries destroyed many men’s role as family breadwinner. Capitalism restructured around a low-wage, flexible labour market. Men’s ‘family wage’ and job for life disappeared and large numbers of women were drawn into the workforce. As men’s incomes stagnated or fell, women took on a double shift of paid work and unpaid domestic labour. Working class survival and middle class lifestyle once managed on a man’s single income now require two incomes, and often multiple part-time jobs. The role of family breadwinner is now unattainable for the majority of fathers in Britain.

For many young working-class people, marriage and setting up a family home has become a distant dream. Low wages and a lack of affordable housing makes it increasingly difficult for many young men to create an independent life of their own. The traditional rites of passage into adulthood – leaving home, entering employment, establishing a family, and taking on legal obligations and rights – have disappeared.

Research by the centre right think tank Civitas suggests that the higher rates of single parenthood and cohabitation in low income areas are not about feckless fathers or an anti-marraige trend but to do with the structural problems of poverty and a low wage economy.

Debates about fatherhood in recent years have all failed to recognise the structural changes within which men and women are forced to make choices and take decisions. Politicians of all parties go along with tabloid explanations of ‘deadbeat dads’. The Right wants to rewind 200 years and reimpose the patriarchal roles of mothers and fathers. Labour, despite the best efforts of feminism, is silent and evasive about both masculinity and fatherhood.

The growing popularity of Cameron’s Conservatives has emboldened them to revive the old right wing ‘responsibility agenda’. Chris Grayling, the Shadow Minister for Work and Pensions has made a number of eloquent speeches on the subject: “We have a growing generation of young men, alienated and drifting without a purpose in life; They are causing trouble; Welfare programmes don’t work and the criminal justice system is too soft; Many have grown up without fathers and many are becoming ‘fathers in name but not in action’; The lack of fathers is a huge problem for all of us.”

Grayling is good at describing the problem, but pointing the finger of blame at individual behaviour does not confront the bigger problem. He has no solutions. Nor, for that matter, does Labour. The fact is that the kind of democratic fatherhood society aspires to is not compatible with our economic and class system which leaves men with either too little or too much work. Only one in five men takes advantage of the new paternity leave provision of two weeks off, paid at £117 a week. Because of financial pressures 40 per cent don’t take up the right. As the EHRC’s NIcola Brewer has argued, “The central issue is that the economic penalty for fatherhood is too high.”

Source: guardian.co.uk, UK
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/19/race

Research shows that two parents are better than one. So why does the legal system still favour mothers?

In the 1979 movie Kramer vs. Kramer, a New York mother bored with child care bolts to Los Angeles “to find herself,” leaving her husband suddenly in sole charge of their little son.

The heart of the movie is the riveting evolution of a patriarchy-era father — career-obsessed, domestically disengaged — into a New Man: putting career ambitions second to his child’s needs, parenting clumsily and frantically at first, but eventually with tender efficiency.

Not without realistic missteps and emotional pain along the way, they form a loving bond. The child is happy. Nevertheless, when the mother swoops back into town 18 months later and sues for custody, a patriarchy-era court ignores the dad’s obviously superior moral claim — and the child’s wishes — awarding the mom custody on the basis of her gender.

Thirty years later, New Men are the norm in bourgeois society. But the instinct to privilege the mother-child nexus, ironically a dominant feature of both the sentimentalist patriarchy and today’s feminist-dominated family law, continues to rule in family court.

Thus, with mom-friendly courts always the trump card up a mother’s sleeve, even the best of fathers in all custody negotiations must depend on the mother’s good will, rather than justice for anything approaching equal access to his children.

In 1997, when the current Divorce Act came into effect, a special joint committee was convened to make recommendations on child custody and access. After 55 hearings and more than a year of study, the 48 recommendations of the 1998 report, For the Sake of the Children, converged on one theme: The sole-custody adversarial system, as it pertains to the majority of custody and access disputes, denies children and non-custodial parents basic human rights, and puts children’s psychological and emotional health at risk.

The report recommended the “non-rebuttable presumption” of equal parenting (in the absence of abuse) as both fair to parents and best for children. But it was ignored by the then-Liberal government and fell into a political black hole.

We know what Canadians think on this issue: Polls show that 80% of Canadians support equal parenting.We will know the present government’s frame of mind when Saskatoon-Wanuskewin MP Maurice Vellacott’s Motion M-483 in support of equal parenting comes up for debate in Parliament this fall.

A hopeful sign: On June 19, the Northwest Territories passed a supportive motion for Vellacott’s initiative with a vote of 11 to zero (with seven abstentions).

Vellacott has lined up 17 of a necessary 20 seconders to his motion and feels optimistic about its reception: “The social science is air-tight on the importance of fathers and mothers in the whole range of life experience as [children] grow older.”

He is correct about the social science. In a September, 2007, policy paper, University of British Columbia sociology professor Edward Kruk, Canada’s foremost expert on custody, adduced a wealth of peer-reviewed data to support the superior effects of “shared parental responsibility.”

Yet, as he observes, judges in family courts tend to perpetuate old stereotypes, ignoring evidence in cases where the father is provably the more responsible caregiver, or presuming fathers only seek sole custody to evade financial responsibility.

Under mounting critical scrutiny in recent years, the judiciary’s lack of expertise in determining the “best interests of the child” has become increasingly apparent. As a result, a new parental “responsibility-to-needs” discourse has emerged in the socio-legal realm.

A child’s “needs” cannot be optimally met by a single parent, however loving. Kruk’s findings show that a child must spend at least 40% of his time with a parent to establish and maintain a beneficial attachment.

Kramer vs. Kramer ended happily, with the mother’s recognition that fairness to the child required voluntary relinquishment of her legal entitlement.

Unfortunately, Hollywood is not running the divorce industry in Canada. In real life, mothers are rarely so selfless; court-battle endings are rarely so happy for fathers and children.

In 2006, Stephen Harper’s electoral platform promised to implement “a presumption of shared parental responsibility, unless determined to be not in the best interests of the child,” with mediation as an alternate method of conflict resolution.

Campaign talk is cheap. When can divorced Canadian fathers — and their children — expect justice, so long demanded, so long promised and so long deferred?

Source: National Post, Canada
http://tinyurl.com/68eh7u

David Cameron echoed the words of Barack Obama yesterday by calling for absent black fathers to take more responsibility for their children.

The Conservative leader called for a ‘responsibility revolution’ to change patterns of behaviour.

Mr Cameron’s high-risk appeal appeared to pay off, winning widespread support from leading members of the black community. They agreed that the lack of traditional family influences is a serious problem.

One of Britain’s most prominent black police officers told the Daily Mail Mr Cameron was right to highlight a ‘crisis in fatherhood’.

Detective Inspector George Rhoden, president of the National Organisation of Black Law Enforcement Executives, said: ‘We all know that young people need both parents in their lives. This is a particular issue and we should be dealing with it at a governmental level, looking at how we can encourage black fathers to face their responsibilities.

‘In the black community we are all aware that there is major concern with gun and knife crime. Clearly we are not the only part of the community affected by absent fatherhood but parental responsibility should be of major concern.’

Labour ministers have been anxious to play down the idea that the absence of fathers is a major influence on crime rates. Around 59 per cent of black Caribbean children and 54 per cent of mixed-race youngsters are looked after by a lone parent. In the white British population, the figure is 22 per cent.

MPs who have investigated the problem say that in the absence of a male role model, many young black men choose to emulate negative, violent lifestyles popularised in some black music and in films.

The charities Barnardos and Babyfather warn that boys and young men can develop ‘father hunger’, a state which leaves them vulnerable to peer pressure.

Mr Cameron said that Mr Obama had been ‘absolutely right’ to warn in a recent speech that some African American men were behaving like teenagers and abandoning their parental responsibilities.

He said that many black church leaders had expressed their concerns to him about absent fathers in the UK.

‘They are concerned about family breakdown and social breakdown, and want to see what I call a responsibility revolution take place.’

The Tory leader said the discrimination and economic disadvantage black people experienced had to be addressed, but insisted: ‘We will never solve the long-term problems unless people also take responsibility for their own lives.’

Mr Cameron has suggested that a Conservative government would introduce powers to ‘compel’ fathers to look after their children in an effort to tackle gang culture. He backs tax breaks to help families stay together and promote a ‘culture of responsibility and respecting authority’.

The Reverend Nims Obunge, chief executive of the Peace Alliance, one of London’s main organisations working against gang crime, welcomed Mr Cameron’s remarks and urged him to back them up with concrete policies.

Tony Sewell, director of Generating Genius, a charity which encourages black youths to study science, said: ‘This is an issue that needs to be discussed, and Cameron is well placed to discuss it, as it is in keeping with the current Tory agenda around social investment. This used to be very much a Labour agenda, but Labour isn’t delivering on it.’

And what do the women themselves have to say? LORRAINE FISHER interviews four women who have personal experience of the problem of absentee black fathers.

Marva Thomas, 36, lives in Hackney, East London, with her husband Owen, a 36-year-old self-employed builder. They have a three-year-old daughter, Cutania, and a son due in October. She says:

The culture with black parents is that when you split up, you don’t see each other any more. I don’t know how you can change it.

Black fathers need to step up to the plate and say to their ex-partner: ‘Let’s do this together’ because if a boy sees his father run off, he thinks it’s OK for him to leave too when he has a child.

Men leaving their children within black society is part of the culture.

Most men get involved with a woman simply on a sexual level - yet the women think they’re in a relationship.

The moment they become a father they say: ‘No, I’m not ready for that, I want to be free and single’.

In Jamaica, where I’m from, ghettos have taken over.

Ghetto people think if a man isn’t wearing this and doing that, they’re not a man. They feel they have this image to live up to.

And the girls are silly. Despite the man they’re seeing not taking care of his child at home, they move in with him, thinking it will be different for them. Of course, when they get pregnant, he moves on.

Men’s attitude is: ‘If you want a baby, I can give you a baby - but don’t expect me to look after it’.

I don’t remember my mum and dad ever living together. He was there for weekends although when I was about 11, it stopped. He was cheating and Mum wouldn’t put up with it. He didn’t really pay child support so my mum was working more than one job to support us.

It hurt me to see my friends going to the movies with their fathers when I couldn’t, but it hurts sons more, although they don’t feel able to show it. So they start taking things out on women.

My brother, who’s two years older than me, didn’t know how to talk about it. And he never forgave my father for leaving us.

He missed out on love from his father and there was no one to instil principles and values into him - like how to treat a woman and how to be a man. He has three children by three different women. He even denied the first child was his.

Because so many black men leave their families, I do worry about my daughter’s future.

I’m in a good marriage but I want her to have a career, to be independent, so she can support herself and her children if a man leaves her.

Judith Valentine, 44, lives in Ladywell, South-East London, with her four sons - Ashley, 15, Stefan, 14, and 13-year- old twins Karl and Kallum. She says:

I was divorced 11 years ago and the boys’ father doesn’t help with anything and they don’t see him.

I’ve tried to get money from him but it’s like getting blood from a stone and although he’s had the chance to see them, he hasn’t.

It’s common in the black men I know. I know they may begrudge their wife but I don’t know why they’d stop seeing their kids.

Bringing up four boys on my own has been hard. I’ve just qualified as a teaching assistant and am looking for a job, but for most of their lives, I’ve been on benefits.

You can’t give your children what they want - you try to explain why they can’t have the latest trainers but they won’t accept it.

They need a father figure. I’m just a mother, I can’t give them fatherly advice and I don’t know what they’re going through. But I’m trying to bring them up the right way.

I hope my sons don’t abandon their children, I hope they say: ‘I’m not going to do the same to my kids’.

If a mother puts her mind to it, she can be as strong a parent as a man. The problem comes if they are too soft - that’s where the children go wrong.

If a boy sees weakness, it’s natural for him to try to dominate. You have to really put your foot down.

I come down on mine like a ton of bricks - I won’t let them out at night, they’re in by 9pm. They listen to what I say.

I don’t think any more black men leave their families than white men, or fathers from other races, but it is a problem and it needs addressing.

Anne Marie Smith is a 43-year-old counsellor from Camberwell, South-East London. She has a 17-year-old daughter, Simone. She says:

There are many more black one-parent families than Caucasian or Asian. It’s a crazy situation but one that people aren’t open about.

I think they’re fearful of people playing the race card or of stereotyping black males for not being around their children.

I think it’s caused by a combination of things. There are some black men who pull their weight but not many - and women play a part in that.

If you allow your child’s father to treat you a certain way, it will continue, it won’t improve.

Black women are independent and just get on with it, but we should make sure we have more solid relationships before we get pregnant.

My daughter was about one when I split up with her father. She says she hasn’t missed out because we’re quite close and she has seven uncles.

It’s different for boys, however - they need a role model and there are no prominent positive role models at the moment.

There is no expectation that children will do well, they’re not monitored or disciplined. Discipline is hard for a single mother to administer to a boy.

I think black men have to learn they have to own their responsibilities. You can’t get a woman pregnant and walk away.

But I don’t know how you can do that. Black men need to provide the answers.

Patricia Brown is a 42-year-old factory worker from Catford, South-East London. She has three children - Joseph, 29, and Kerrin, 26, from one relationship, and Peter, 20, from another. She says:

What David Cameron says is not racist - black fathers do need to take more responsibility.

They have children here, there and everywhere because they know the responsibility lies with the mother. They need to be educated and sent to parenting classes.

It’s now getting out of hand with teenagers stabbing people - something needs to be done but there is no quick fix.

The problem is, when men leave their families, the mothers have to work so the children grow up on their own with no father figure or role model. There is no one to set boundaries or let the children know there is always a consequence.

Fathers rather than mothers have the power to make their children get home at a certain time or challenge them about why they are carrying a knife.

A single mother is often too tired to even ask how her children’s day was at school. And I should know.

I didn’t mean to get pregnant at 13 but I did and I thought I was in a good relationship.

We had a second child but then I found out he had two other children with two other women so, when my daughter was seven, I ended the relationship.

So many black men who finish their relationship with the mother also finish their relationship with their children and forget about them.

Luckily, my children’s father saw them at weekends but even so, I had to work five, often six days a week in a factory to make ends meet, then I had to go home to do all the washing, cooking and cleaning. It was exhausting.

But I don’t think my children have suffered - I’ve made them independent. Joseph is married and has an 18-month-old son. He was old enough when his father left to know he didn’t want to do that.

Kerrin has a five-year-old daughter - the father went off with someone else.

Source: Daily Mail, UK
http://tinyurl.com/5lohjs

This week there have been calls for British men to be given more paternity leave, so they can be become more hands-on dads.

Mums and dads in Britain have the most unequal rights in Europe, with dads entitled to only two weeks paternity leave compared with 52 weeks for mums.

According to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, if men were entitled to 12 weeks’ parental leave on 90 per cent of earnings instead of the current £117 a week, they’d be more able to bond closely with their kids.

Why dads matter

I’ve always believed that fathers should be heavily involved in their children’s upbringing.

People talk of mums bonding with their babies but the paternal bond can be equally strong. Research shows that, if a father holds the baby to his chest within half an hour of birth, a bond is forged that’s just as intense. And the baby noticeably quietens and relaxes when dad picks him up in future.

This bond has long-lasting positive effects as children with hands-on dads grow up happier and more confident.

Research at Uppsala University in Sweden found that having an active father figure reduced behavioural problems in boys and psychological problems in girls. Plus boys with a good father-son relationship are also less likely to play truant or get in trouble with the law.

With two parents involved, children have a secure base, and a hands-on partner allows mum to be the kind of mother she really wants to be. With the workload halved, she has twice as much energy, affection and patience.

The good dad guide

(1) Be there from the start: Hold your baby as soon as possible after birth, preferably with a bare chest as the baby will smell the male hormones and bond strongly. Speak too, so the child bonds with your voice.

(2) Stay close: In the first few weeks and months of a child’s life dad should be holding, rocking and talking to the baby as much as possible.

(3) Split parenting 50:50: Don’t see your involvement as just “helping” - parenting is an equal job for both of you to share. Whether it’s changing nappies, cooking or dressing the kids, parents should be interchangeable.

(4) Be an activity planner: Become the leader for weekend activities such as going to the park, swimming or cycling.

Not only will this strengthen your bond with the kids, it ensures they grow up active rather than couch potatoes.

(5) Don’t use work as an excuse: Even dads with busy jobs should take part in the evening routine - whether it’s bathing, reading bedtime stories or helping with homework.

(6) Share appoinment duty: Ideally both parents should take turns to take the kids to the doctor or dentist, for instance.

Some employers still frown on men having time off for the kids so, if possible, choose an employer with family-friendly policies.

Source: Mirror.co.uk, UK
http://tinyurl.com/5hbc23

In the words of one new parent, after the baby arrived her brain “went all jelly-like and foggy”. New mums swap stories of forgetfulness, mistakes and domestic disasters.

Women with babies tend to regard themselves as coping worse after the baby arrives, due to factors such as sleep deprivation and the constant demands and distractions of caring for children. However, Kinsley’s research suggests that, in fact, their brains might be functioning much better.

Kinsley’s starting point was the changes in behaviour after an animal has babies. For example, a mother rat will confront predators to protect her babies (called pups), whereas previously she would have run away. Compared to rats that have not had pups, laboratory tests showed that mother rats are much less fearful when confronted with a variety of stressful situations.

Of course, it is relatively easy to take a group of genetically similar female rats raised in a controlled laboratory environment with the only difference being that half have had pups. There are many factors affecting the lives of adult women that might impact on how anxious they are, but it is interesting to consider whether human mothers are less anxious than women who are not mothers.

Or do the complexities of human society create so many potential worries that, despite brain changes designed to make them less anxious, mothers are actually more fearful?

The mother rats were found to have lower levels of stress hormones, both during and after pregnancy. This difference associated with motherhood was still found at 24 months (roughly equivalent to a 60-year-old human), long after the pups are gone, so there appears to be a lifelong improvement in the ability to cope with stress.

Pregnant women also show a reduction in stress hormones. According to German researchers, these changes are designed to reduce anxiety and emotional reactions to stressful events and promote calm. While perhaps true in an ideal world, this description of their emotional state may seem improbable to many pregnant women, juggling work, home, relationships and the physical demands of pregnancy. We don’t know whether the reduction in stress hormones in pregnant women lasts into later life.

The idea that motherhood turbo-charges the brain comes as a surprise to new mother Shana Stone, 32, who doubtless speaks for many when she describes the experience as “a rocky road” and “full of highs and lows”. “It’s been very hard to concentrate — your only focus is the baby,” says the Melbourne mother, who gave birth to Jake 14 weeks ago. “It’s physically exhausting as well.”

But research on rats shows that, besides being less anxious and more able to deal with threats, mothers are much more capable at performing a range of tasks. Kinsley illustrated this during a talk at the recent International Conference on Women’s Mental Health in Melbourne. He showed video clips of female rats catching a live cricket inside a small glass cage. First, he showed a video clip of a lactating mother rat (a mother rat who had recently given birth and was still feeding her pups). She swiftly pounced on the cricket, killing it efficiently so the whole episode was over in seconds.

Then he showed a video clip of a female rat that had not given birth. She messed about, jumping at the cricket but missing and slamming into the wall of the cage, apparently struggling to work out what she was doing before finally catching the insect.

In another study, a female rat was placed in an enclosure bedded with wood chips, in which a cricket was hidden. This experiment was repeated many times. Lactating females took an average of 50 seconds to find the cricket and eat it, whilst rats that had not had pups took an average of 270 seconds.

There are many other studies showing that mother rats are smarter (at least on the laboratory tests used) than non-mothers. They perform especially well on tests of learning and spatial memory, such as remembering where food is hidden in a maze. They have more cognitive flexibility, and can change from one task to another more readily. In addition, mother rats that have had more than one litter are smarter than rats that have had only one litter.

Pregnancy, birth, and caring for offspring therefore appear to cause specific changes in how the brain works. During pregnancy, areas of the brain associated with learning and memory become more developed, and nerve cells in these areas grow more connection fibres to link to the rest of the brain.

Again, these changes persist into later life. When the rats reached old age, examination of their brains showed that the mother rats had fewer deposits of amyloid precursor proteins — associated with ageing — in the hippocampus, an area of the brain crucial to memory. Old mother rats also had less degeneration in some parts of the brain.

So, do human mothers’ brains age more slowly? Are human mothers less likely to get dementia in later life? There has been very little research in this area, but two small studies in Europe found the opposite; they found that women who had children had higher rates of dementia.

The improvement in learning and memory is not simply due to the hormonal changes that occur in pregnancy, although these are clearly important. Female rats who have never given birth show similar changes, though to a lesser extent, when exposed to pups — so there is something beneficial about being around pups, even if they are not her own.

Even more interesting, some positive brain changes are seen in male mammals when they care for their young.

Marmosets are very cute small monkeys that live in South America. They are unusual in that marmoset fathers take a very active role in looking after their babies. Researchers from Princeton University showed that male marmosets who are fathers have more connections between nerve cells in some parts of their brains than male marmosets who are not fathers. It appears that the brain has grown and changed, as a result of the experience of fatherhood.

Again, it is tempting to draw parallels with human experience. Does taking a hands-on approach to helping with the care of young children improve brain function in human fathers?

The challenge lies in translating research in other mammals through to human individuals, families and communities. The human brain changes constantly in response to the events and interactions of everyday life. From an evolutionary perspective it makes sense, for the survival of the gene, that mothers (and others who care for her offspring) are as brave and clever as possible. Maybe people who take “smart drugs” to improve brain function, or use strategies to reduce anxiety and improve confidence, might also consider spending time caring for babies and young children.

There is a need for more research on the effects of childbirth and child-rearing on the human brain, both male and female. Despite more than a decade of animal research, looking at hormones, brain structure and function, and behaviour, there has been very little work building on these ideas to find out whether these brain changes also occur in human mothers (and fathers).

The few studies that have been undertaken generally compare women who are already pregnant with women who are not pregnant. Despite the researchers’ best efforts, there is no guarantee that all the women had similar abilities prior to some of them becoming pregnant, and that the differences between the pregnant and non-pregnant women are actually due to pregnancy.

To settle this, we would need long-term studies where women are evaluated before they become pregnant. Over time, we could follow the changes that occur during pregnancy and after delivery, using sophisticated laboratory measures, brain imaging techniques, and psychological tests.

There has been a lot of research on the effects of the mother’s behaviour during pregnancy on the child — for example, looking at how alcohol, tobacco and cannabis use, or maternal stress, affect the child’s later development. There is very little work from the opposite point of view, looking at how being pregnant, giving birth and looking after the child affects the mother.

Source: The Australian, Australia
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23965099-23289,00.html

As they get more involved, dads may face even more challenges than women in balancing work and family.

Women aren’t the only ones having a rough go of it in Europe. Men, these days, are embracing fatherhood with the round-the-clock involvement their partners have always dreamed of– changing diapers, handling night feedings, packing lunches and bandaging knees. The time British dads spend with their kids has risen eightfold over the last 30 years. Today, 79 percent say they’d be happy to stay at home and 9 out of 10 say they’re as confident as their partners in looking after the kids. “These dads are going to be guide and a mentor in a much more visible way than their own fathers were,” says Armin A. Brott, author of “Fathering Your Toddler.”

That’s good news for Europe, whose economic future depends on a rising birthrate. Studies show that women with involved partners are more inclined to have more than one child. To tempt moms back to work, governments are also putting in place more policies to help dads take time off. Britain, for instance, announced recently that fathers would be entitled to up to six months of paternity leave. In Germany, companies are required by law to give all employees up to three years parental leave and guarantee their jobs on return.

But all these devoted dads may have a harder time with the same issues women have faced for decades: namely, how to balance work and family. “There’s a constant feeling of guilt,” says Robin Mungrah, a 37-year-old London accountant with two children. “No matter how early I leave work or how often I take the kids to Legoland on the weekends, it never seems like enough.” Unlike women, many find they’re negotiating their new roles with little support or information. “Men in my generation [25-40] have a fear of becoming dads because we have no role models,” says Jon Smith, author of “The Bloke’s Guide to Pregnancy.” They often find themselves excluded from mothers’ support networks, and are eyed warily on the playground.

The challenge is particularly evident in the workplace. There, men are still expected to be breadwinners climbing the corporate ladder; tradition-minded bosses are often unsympathetic to family needs. In Denmark most new fathers only take two weeks of paternity leave–even though they are allowed 34. As much if not more so than women, fathers struggle to be taken seriously when they request flexible arrangements. Though Wilfried-Fritz Maring, 54, a data-bank and Internet specialist with German firm FIZ Karlsruhe, feels that the time he spends with his daughter outweighs any disadvantages, he admits, “With my decision to work from home I dismissed any opportunity for promotion.”

Mind-sets are changing gradually. When Maring had a daughter, the company equipped him with a home office and allowed him to choose a job that could be performed from there. Danish telecom company TDC initiated an internal campaign last year to encourage dads to take paternity leave; 97 percent now do. “When an employee goes on paternity leave and is with his kids, he gets a new kind of training: in how to keep cool under stress,” says spokesperson Christine Eiberg Holm. For a new generation of dads, kids may come before the company–but it’s a shift that benefits both.

Source: Newsweek
http://www.newsweek.com/id/56905

Work and family are organically linked by the people who split their days between home and workplace. Inevitably, there are conflicts between these two worlds, and the way we manage those conflicts determines the health of our society.

When faced with a conflict between work and family responsibilities, the majority of Canadian employees put work first, according to Linda Duxbury, business professor at Carleton University. They also strive to meet their family commitments, with the result that the employees themselves can become the victim of burnout and depression. The Globe and Mail series on mental health last week provided vivid personal histories of some of the victims.

Some of the most “toxic” working conditions affect professionals who serve the public – nurses, doctors, teachers, police, military and public service executives - according to Bill Wilkerson, chair of the Global Business and Economic Roundtable on Addiction and Mental Health.

And Dr. Duxbury’s study of 6,400 employees working for large employers from business and the government shows that work-life conflict is affecting more people every year – rising from 47 per cent of the work force in 1991 to 58 per cent in 2001.

People are working longer hours, they are coping with email messages into the night and early in the morning, and some are off-shifting so one parent can be at home while the other works. What gets squeezed out is sleep.

The main indicators of distress are rising absenteeism and increasing costs of disability leave, with about 40 per cent of disability claims generated by depression. Other indicators relate to the health of the children and the number of adults who are limiting family size or deciding not to have children because of the pressures of work.

Doug Willms, Canada Research Chair at the University of New Brunswick and author of Vulnerable Children, says that 28.6 per cent of Canadian children exhibit cognitive or behavioural problems that mean they are not ready to learn at age 6. Children living in low-income households are more likely to be vulnerable, but, overall, 60 per cent of vulnerable children are not living in poor homes, and many live in well-to-do homes.

Why would children in well-to-do families experience these problems?

“What matters most is the kind of family environment a child lives in: the benefits of good parenting skills, a cohesive family unit and parents with good mental health far outweigh the negative effects associated with poverty,” Dr. Willms says.

How then, as a society, do we support men and women to be the best they can be in the world of work and in the home? Barack Obama, in his instantly famous Father’s Day Speech, started from the proposition that family is the most important rock on which we build our lives.

We need families to raise our children, Mr. Obama said. Only families can set the standard of excellence, pass along the value of empathy, and give the gift of hope – hope that something better is waiting for us if we’re willing to work hard for it.

Much of his speech focused on the personal responsibility of fathers, but, he said, “if fathers (and mothers) are doing their part, then our government should meet them half way.”

So, too, should employers. In a recent Health Canada publication – Reducing Work-Life Conflict: What Works? What Doesn’t? –Dr. Duxbury gives two reasons why having family-friendly policies on the books is not enough: the policies are not being applied effectively; and many employees fear repercussions if they ask for help.

There are two concrete things for employers to do to meet employees half way: Give employees a greater sense of control over their hours of work and their work schedule. Clear criteria should be agreed and transparent, the process for changing work hours should be flexible, and there should be mutual accountability.

Increase the number of supportive managers within the organization – managers who make work expectations clear, plan the work to be done, and openly discuss decisions that affect the employee’s work.

As for Canadian governments, there are four priorities: Ensure that people who work full time can earn a living wage by consistently adjusting minimum wages to reflect inflation and by expanding the Working Income Tax Benefit introduced in the last budget.

Expand access to affordable early childhood education by offering day-long junior and senior kindergarten, expanding child care spaces for children who are 3 and under, and making access to maternity and parental leave universal. (Only 2 in 3 working women are eligible under current EI rules.) Expand after-school options for recreation, the arts and homework clubs.

Ensure that every neighbourhood has a resource centre to support parents and healthy child development.

In acknowledging the organic links between work and family, employers and governments give parents choices about when they work, about giving their children a good start in life, and even about how many children to have.

In any aging society, we want every adult to be able to work to their potential, and every one of their children to be ready, willing and able to be a great parent as well as a great worker.

Source: Globe and Mail, Canada
http://tinyurl.com/5jhhx2