Oh dear, nappy changing 'back breaking work', since when? Having changed more than my fair share of nappies, my back is fine.

Another emotive propaganda article.

It certainly looks like our so called higher learning centres are little more than centres of propagande and mis-information.

By the way what ever happened to the vasectomy campaign in India?

"It is overwhelmingly women who carry the bulk of the physical and emotional responsibilities of parenting." - and it's overwhelmingly men who carry the bulk of the physical and emotional responsibilities of providing for and defending women and children.

Thankfully both are changing and the division of responsibility does become more a matter of choice for those involved. The article had too much spin, ignoring the uncomfortable fact's of mens lives for the sake of playing men as the bad guy's and women as the oppressed victims.

I found nappy changing to be stomach churning but not exactly back breaking (regardless of access to a change table of not). Perhaps the author could try some genuinely back breaking work.

If family friendly workplace policies create discrimination against women it will be where they are discriminatory by nature, maternity leave rather than parenting leave etc.

Old hat stir up the troops spin trying to perpetuate a gender war that we should be putting behind us. It's not all perfect but shallow self serving articles like this have been doen to death, time to start thinking about the social structures that impact on both genders and how we can fix themk for everyone.

R0bert

Notwithstanding that women in third world countries face challenges that most Western women couldn't even contemplate, to describe nappy changing, feeding and bathing as "backbreaking" was perhaps imprudent.
And why would anyone be surprised that men in India would assume that it is women's work = traditionally it is women's work. That doesn't mean that men won't or can't do it, but it stands to reason that the female of the species usually tend the infants - hello?

Where in the Western paradigm is it demonstrated that women are "fulfilled" and "emancipated" by fashioning a situation where they are forced to "juggle" their paid work responsibilities and their child rearing?

Fulfillment for women the world over is more likely to flourish if both genders learn to acknowledge and value women's maternal maternal and nurturing role - not to relegate it to mere drudgery or collateral status.

There has been a problem with pharmaceutical fraud, that the active compound is either non-existant or below the stated concentration, this has lead to a few deaths.

It is my understanding, that countries looking for cheap medications get some of those supplies from India.

Pharmaceutical manufacturing companies where women are the head, have been involved in this fraud.

On the other side, in India it really doesn't matter what gender you are, if you are poor, affording health care is well and truly out of your reach.

It would seem that the really privileged feminists of the first world, have to look outside to the third world countries to find justification for feminism.

Thus there is what is known as cultural conflict and religious conflict as well. But this is conveviently ignored.

Of the comments, Poirot's take comes closest to my own, as others also commented the thread starter scratches the surface, but then shys away from an examination of the context and pre conditions that create the current global disaster as to poverty alleviation for the masses, against the imperatives of global capitalism and its military tinpot satraps in control of poor countries, instead opting for line of least resistance by way of a general grumble about "men".
It will take a lot more than a bit more changing of nappies, like their women folk and kids, men are scrambling for survival in the worst of these places also.
Try some thing like the scheme they introduced in Bangladesh, then parts of Africa, where they developed finance for poor women trying for economic self sufficiency. Thus, the change in attitude point is valid and the start of a new approach.
As current ecological policy "ignores the science", so global poverty alleviation ignores need before greed.
As a side efect, poverty reinforces the conservatism of near feudal peasant societies living in grinding poverty. Some thing like the events in Egypt recently, a mass eruption of social consciousness could the way forward.
But look what happened with Egypt.
The Americans and Israelis combined to thwart the democratic impulse because it didn't suit their narrow tastes that Egypt move to democracy.

If, in order to achieve equality, women need a whole raft of laws, policies, and penalties operating unequally in their favour, obviously the sexes are not equal.

Women don’t have babies as a matter of gender, they have them as a matter of sex.

All we are witnessing in this article is the special pleading of vested interests in a double standard, backed by force, by which it is hoped women will have the advantages without the disadvantages of patriarchy, and men will have the liabilities both ways.

The grand furphy on which this article is based, is the assumption that men and women have an equal responsibility for the care of any given child. They don’t. Of course *women* think men should decide more in their favour. “They would say that, wouldn’t they?” But it’s no less an arbitrary social construct, no less an abuse of power, than saying we should have laws for the sake of equal opportunity to promote women’s equal “responsibility” for casual no-strings-attached sex.

paul walter
Oh yeah, and so the way for a society to get rich is through socialism? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! Good one.

The resurgence of the women's liberation movement in the post-Friedan late sixties and 1970's took a wrong direction that has bedevilled us ever since. The worm in the heart of the rose was the assumption that nature could be transcended, and that biological differences were irrelevant to social policy. Instead of re-investing power and honour in mothers, the assumption was made that to be "equal" women had to be like men. That women had children was belatedly discovered circa 1980, and since then there has been a desperation-fed effort to make paid work mother-friendly. The entire domain of thought needs a complete rethink. This does not mean re-introducing negatives about and for women that were common in the fifties and early sixties, but it does mean trying to identify what was wrong in that era, and trying to find a new pathway out of those troubles that valorises women's biological and intellectual endowments instead of trying to deny that men and women have physical, psychological and social profiles that do, and should, differ.

It would also be VERY helpful if "third world" countries like India were not used as counterfoils to try and prove how wonderful was the western recipe for sexual and social misery. India could easily be written up as the world's last great matriarchy, because in India, until recently at least, the family outranked the state as the primary politico-social institution. Where the family rules, women rule - no matter what formal deference is paid to the male. Most 'traditional' societies with differentiated gender roles allow a large and significant fraction of their women to become strong leaders. And the social problems listed as indicators of female disadvantage are actually indicators of poverty.

poirot,

'Fulfillment for women the world over is more likely to flourish if both genders learn to acknowledge and value women's maternal maternal and nurturing role - not to relegate it to mere drudgery or collateral status.'

Men have always valued 'women's work'. That's why they look for a good wife. It's feminists that de-valued it and decided it was 'beneath' women. Of course, men absolutely love being wage slaves. It's oh so fulfilling.

'It makes sense, as why bother when someone else will look after the child that may result from any sexual encounter?'

Is that the reason they gave, or your interpretation? It's a different culture. Perhaps it's an insult by implication of disease, infidelity etc.

'the country also had one in three of its female residents over the age of 15 victims of physical assault. '
How many of it's male residents?

'it appears that social scientists are correct when they say that women continue to face inequality in their daily lives. '

It does when you don't quote the male victims. Tell me the numbers and I can decide if an inequality exists. Why is anything bad that happens to women

a) Evidence of inequality
b) Assumed motivated by a hatred of women

Bad stuff happens to everyone, and it normally has FA to do with their genitals.

'Whether this inequality is about career advancement, better pay or life and death issues, it is clear that women around the world do it tougher than men simply because of their gender.'
'Having children or not is the great divide around the world when it comes to women's equality'

So, by your own admission, it's *not* due to their gender, it's due to them caring for children.

I find it an odd argument that women in poor countries having poor medical services is evidence of inequality. Unless you can conversely prove all the money is going toward cosmetic surgery for men in those same countries.

I see poor people with poor conditions. Nothing to do with gender at all. Where is the gender inequality?

Houellie,

I agree that men always valued "women's work"- and, yes, it is feminist agenda to devalue it.
That was my point - that entrenched Western thinking in this day and age does devalue it.

Peter,

I thought you'd had treatment for that uncontrollable laugh...seems it has returned.

Poirot
It breaks out on exposure to extraordinary ridiculosity.

The CEO of Westpac is female. I don't see that bank becoming more nurturing and considerate of women or men than any other.

No Western feminist will make inroads into the circumstances of women in developing countries without first respecting and acknowledging the cultural differences, and the power those cultural attitudes have. Then you have to find a way to work within them, even if they do shock your feminist sensibilities.

As another poster has pointed out, empowering women in developing countries to start their own businesses and take economic charge of their lives is a great beginning. Health care and education is another.

Teaching them to complain about gender inequality is useless. All we've done for the last forty years in the West is complain about gender inequality, and address it on a middle class level, and still we have one in three women and girls assaulted in this country, and the abuse of children continues unabated.

So we haven't exactly achieved much with our complaints, have we, if we've made superficial changes while at grass roots level we're still looking at these appalling figures.

The author seems to be of the opinion that raising children is like being imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay. There's no denying it can be tedious and mind numbing. But women can do much to make this better for themselves for the four or five years before kids go to school, if they choose to take responsibility for doing that. If they choose to help each other, for example, with child care and support. I know this is true because it's what my group of young mothers did when our partners were too caught up in providing support for us and our children to be available.

I would hate to see the feminist culture of complaint exported to developing countries. Women can do much to assist other women, but teaching them to whine about being hard done by is not the way to go.

Previous posters have me wondering if it is just a bridge too far, for westerners to understand what it is that third world people go through. The last generation in our country to know hardship in a sense that would have them understand global poverty and what that experience would mean, would be my parents generation. From the boomers onwards we have had relatively easy times.
We just can't understand what it must be like in a dusty refugee camp in the Syrian desert for years, or fleeing civilwar about the Horn of Africa, or being an Idian dalat mum in some dusty corner of the subcontinent where,in times of famine the mothers must suffocate their daughters with sand because there is no food for anyone.
What do we know of Cholera, Malaria etc, when the worst we cop is 'flu, or a belly ache from too much food?
On the women's issues front, how about being sold into wedlock at fourteen in Ethiopia, and having your lower body ruined because you were too small to birth properly?
Let alone the horror of GFM, or producing then having to care for ten kids?
But this happens not because they are different to us, but because of historical time and the current adverse conditions this has created in some parts of the world. The world just hasn't got around to the proliferation of the "goods" that come from the west, only the rubbish, like cluster bombs.
And we are only a few generations removed from conservative rural lifestyles ourselves.

international women's day is 102 years old, not 100! why do recitations of the day this year (2011) ignore that international women's day is based in the march of women garment workers in new york in 1909 - and that 100 years anniversary is/was 2009?

yet another revision of women's history which cuts out entirely the action of a bunch of strong, courageous women whose action should be acknowledged and affirmed, not written out of history/herstory. yet it is true that in 1911 women marched in different countries - sweden, etc - however this does not mean that 1909 doesn't count! why do we as women engage in the smothering of our own history/herstory, the rewriting of history/herstory and actually engage in a celebration which is two years late!

Paul Walter, I agree that many people living in Australia don't know how the other half live in poor third world countries, especially the women and girls.

However, you are forgetting that many Aboriginal people still live in third world conditions here in Australia.
Aboriginal women are far more likely to suffer higher domestic violence issues, stillbirths, infant mortality rates, death in childbirth, diabetes, STD's and earlier age of death than any other females in Australia.

I am sad that we are 'celebrating' 102 years of women's liberation in this country when our Aboriginal sisters are still doing it so tough.

Let's fix up our own backyard before we go on to help somewhere else.

Peter, I agree with you. If we are so equal than why do we need laws that distinguish on the basis of sex at all?

Grand slam tennis is a good analogy for the whole debate. Females argued that they were equal and so should get the same prize money as men but then only wanted to play 3 sets and of course not actually against men. That is what females call equality.

Of course in reality, women value themselves much higher than men. Changing a nappy is 'back-breaking' but the thousands of miners who die providing for their families each year (most of them in the third world) goes unmentioned.

I just don't get it. How can women write endless articles about women when men do worse on so many more social indicators? I think many modern western women are so narcisstic.

Well I changed nearly every nappy at night when I was at home from work, (she was usually snoring so much she claimed she didn’t hear), and I made the nappy changing table, complete with two sets of shelves to store clean nappies, pins and talcum powder.

And then I painted it, and also painted little gum tree leaves and banksia flowers on it.

In all, a rather good job I might say.

It is easy to see why the author has chosen to write about another country, as the state of motherhood in this country is abysmal.

- The rate of breastfeeding is well below government standard.
- High rates of smoking and drinking when pregnant (particularly in some Aborigional communities)
- Often insufficient foliate in the diet.
- Increasing rates of overweight babies being born, now with doctors having to break bones of some babies so they can be delivered.
- Very high rates of cesareans.
- Higher than necessary abortions, including late abortions.

If the child is lucky enough to be born:
- About 1 in 4 are destined to become fatherless.
- Many will be living in single parent families, and often end up welfare dependant.
- Increasing rates of obesity and diabetes, normally attributed to lack of proper food and exercise.
- Increasing rates of myopia and other eye ailments
- High rates of depression and other mental problems.
- High rates of suicide.

It is difficult to get much worse, and nothing at all to celebrate with motherhood in Australia.

In fact, an inglorious and abysmal record of motherhood.

Hooray for Evelyn.

A good essay and summary of the situation which really has nothing whatsoever to do with the "narcissism" of Western middle class women.

On the contrary as the report by Kate Ellis on the levels of violence against females (in particular) here in the land of Oz shows. It is quite shocking. The Every Mother Counts website is not at all narcissistic, nor is it about Western women.

Somehow in a few paragraphs Evelyn is supposed to deal with the entire history of the Western and world-wide feminist movement?

And all of the vastly complicated individual and collective sexual and gender based psycho-dramas, which vary from culture to culture. Which ARE the emotionally causative sub-stratum (or unconscious child-hood Oedipal script) of everything that every single one of us dramatizes in EVERY moment of our lives.

Violence against women is a hugely enormous world-wide problem. Pornography in which women and children are degraded is a huge industry, absolutely enormous on the internet.
As with the negative exploitation and killing of human beings altogether, such violence etc violates the heart of one and all.

It helps to create a toxic collective unconscious which now permeates our entire "culture", and the entire world too.
It creates an unimaginably (hell)deep reservoir of fear sorrow and anger. Have you read the "news" re all of the casual nastiness that is now the norm "out there". And of course in Parliament as dramatized by the "honorable" members. Which is now nothing more than a growling pit of adolescent hoons strutting their diminished humanity.

In my opinion the work of Lloyd deMause provides unique insights into the origins and consequences of our deadly collective psycho-dramas.

http://www.psychohistory.com/index.html

My oh my, look how all of the usual narrow minded curmudgeons have come out of the wood-work today!

Ho Hum,

"The Every Mother Counts website is not at all narcissistic, nor is it about Western women."

Non-western women don't have the luxury of the endless navel gazing we see here. They don't have government departments, laws and endless millions spent creating a sense of entitlement.

"Which ARE the emotionally causative sub-stratum (or unconscious child-hood Oedipal script) of everything that every single one of us dramatizes in EVERY moment of our lives."

This sentence could only come from someone who sucks from the public teat. Which womyn's studies department do you work in?

<men value the work of women.> <men have always valued the work of women>

Men don’t value the work of women, they treated women’s work as a God given service. It is only now when women have their own income and the freedom of choice that brings, that men are finding out that if they bung on the old attitude, women will very quickly leave the situation. It takes women having their own money and the support of social services that allows them not to have to endure being subservant to any man as was the case in the old days., When men so valued women’s work.(written with sarcasm).

I had an aunt who used to have to write down every little thing she bought on a piece of paper while the husband who demanded this, thought nothing of spending big amounts betting on the horses or drinking.

This is the kind of tyranny women were subject to in the good old days before women changed things by gaining financial independence.
I agree it would have been better if woman’s liberation could have gained the same financial renumeration for woman in their role as mothers instead of as now having paid strangers taking care of their young babies and toddlers. So if women had to leave their homes and their babies to be given any sort of financial equality or regular breaks from childrearing it is the fault of the men for refusing to address the Charles Dickens workhouse conditions that mothers were subject to.

The fault lays at the feet of men who only wanted control of women. Who still do in most of the world today or they would have worked out some deal with the United Nations long ago to use foreign aid to provide world wide contraception and medical aid to women. The fact is most of the men in the United Nations don’t want to lose their tyrannical control over women.
Until they address this problem the misery, war, famine and pollution in the world will continue at an ever accelerating rate.

Cherful,

I don't know of any country where the life expectancy of women is less than men.

India would be typical of many developing countries. Its mortality rate is not high because of post-natal care or women's issues, but because of more usual problems, such as lack of sewage treatment or lack of safe drinking water, that effect both males and females.

"Diarrheal diseases, the primary cause of early childhood mortality, are linked to inadequate sewage disposal and lack of safe drinking water. Roughly 50 percent of all illness is attributed to poor sanitation; in rural areas, about 80 percent of all children are infected by parasitic worms. Estimates in the early 1980s suggested that although more than 80 percent of the urban population had access to reasonably safe water, fewer than 5 percent of rural dwellers did. Waterborne sewage systems were woefully overburdened; only around 30 percent of urban populations had adequate sewage disposal, but scarcely any populations outside cities did. In 1990, according to United States sources, only 3 percent of the rural population and 44 percent of the urban population had access to sanitation services, a level relatively low by developing nation standards. There were better findings for access to potable water: 69 percent in the rural areas and 86 percent in urban areas, relatively high percentages by developing nation standards. In the mid-1990s, about 1 million people die each year of diseases associated with diarrhea."

http://www.indianchild.com/life_expectany_mortality_india.htm

Never believe anything said by a feminist or a journalist, without first checking it with several other sources.

In Australia, feminists and journalists are normally the same thing, as both are normally trained in universities.

Yes, but you see, Vanna, what they're saying is that this inequality of distribution of wealth and opportunity seems skewed against women, kids and the poor, some thing has been proposed since before Marx.
Some feminists have taken it the next step and offered the opinion that its not just class related, but also gender related, and given how little it would take to remedy things like fresh water ($50 billion globally to ensure everyone has access to fresh water, from 1990's figures), you wonder if our institutions are indeed dominated by men of a certain class ( with some middle class female fellow travellers in tow, for appearances sake) who can't empathise through lack of personal experience with those less well off.
Many women take the feminism thing seriously, because when you look at some of the laws relating to property and so forth, it wasn't long ago that western women were caught up in this cycle of powerlessness and poverty and had to fight hard to have the more stupid ideas, like a woman giving up her property to her husband, upon marriage, got rid of.
The women's movement is like the trade union movement. It emerged as a response to a situation that had many suffering unfairly and out of a fight for survival. As friends keep telling me, it is pointless arguing, they have their tails up and are no more going to give up what they've fought for than the average worker in a factory wants to go back to a WorkChoices type environment. But more than that, because there is still much to do, helping the global poor (women and kids suffer the worst from this) drag themselves out of the mess history has put them in.

Paul Walter,
Access to property makes little difference. In our feminist society, a woman can walk into a marriage with no money, and walk out with the children and the majority of the assets.

But as I have mentioned in a previous post, motherhood in this country is in a deplorable state, and it can’t get much worse, and most of that deplorable state of motherhood is not attributable to men.

There wouldn’t be one area of motherhood that has improved in recent years, and most probably the only way to improve motherhood in this country would be for men to take much more control of families.

They need to do this as a part of “Save The Child”.

http://www.indianchild.com/life_expectany_mortality_india.htm "The average Indian male born in the 1990s can expect to live 58.5 years; women can expect to live only slightly longer (59.6 years), according to 1995 estimates"

It's easy to see how oppressive Indian men are in the following clip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47xvK-pVe84

I get the impression that some of the usual players are out in India. Poverty, lack of education doing their part to create some real DV and some spin to distort the picture.

R0bert

<Women in the suffragette movement asserted they were campaigning for “equality”, we accepted that assertion due to the extent of discrimination women faced, but men also faced discrimination. For example: Class discrimination for those not entitled to vote. The direct discrimination of conscription. The cultural discrimination of the expectation they would fight and die for their country, the consequences of this aspect of sex discrimination alone would mean death for 700,000 British men, who were exclusively expected to make the ultimate sacrifice for the freedom of others.

There was a timeless, widespread and enduring acceptance the safety and well being of women was of greater social importance than the safety of men. Equality should have also meant front line military service for women but that was inconceivable.

These and other aspects of sex discrimination were never recognised by our society or the feminists who claimed they were fighting for “equality”.

We accepted the feminist assertion of equality, but who amongst us would claim the feminists fought against the injustice men faced with the same enthusiasm they fought against injustice faced by women.>

http://www.ezinenewsarticles.com/feminism-the-birthplace-of-sexist-hypocrisy/

<By 1914, sexual issues permeated the literature and propaganda of virtually every suffrage organization. Prostitution and venereal disease were the favored topics employed to illustrate the condition of women in a male-controlled society (Kent 159). As the influence of the Pankhurst’s WSPU (Women’s Social and Political Union) increased, so did the sexualized nature of the feminist struggle play out in the public forum.>
http://itech.fgcu.edu/&/issues/vol1/issue1/feather.htm

CHERFUL,

'Men don’t value the work of women, they treated women’s work as a God given service.'

I think you're wrong. I think women appreciate men defending them at war, putting out the garbage and sucking up to a boss they hate and renovating the house and putting their comfort first, going cold while they volunteer their coat to keep her warm, and doing all sorts of things. Most of my mate's dads had a list of jobs to do on the weekend, prepared by their wives during the week. Their marriages were a true loving partnership, and if anything the wives ran the show because their husbands adored them so.

Men appreciate the things their wives do for them.

I pity you if you think men and women haven't enjoyed each others company and worked together as a team to raise their families in a loving environment full of respect. So sad. You must have had terrible role models, or must have been brainwashed by the feminist black-armband view of history, that denies the love men and women have had for each other throughout the ages.

Go and talk to some old people and ask them about their wives and husbands.

Women have come a long way in 100 years.

From:

A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle

To:

A woman without a man is like a very lonely, recklessly environment polluting spider in a fabulously exotic Web without a big juicy fly to consume, only a host of bloody nuisance gnats who won't put out the garbage, put the toilet seat up or take the blame for her environmental carnage.

Such are the consequence of a having two headed coins or your left hand being equal to the RIGHT.

Confucius say:

Any commodity on equal free market only popular & valuable if unequal, rare & like fish, spend much time in schools.

vanna,

It seems that your opinion of motherhood in this country has obviously been skewed by your own experience.

I'm a mother who takes motherhood seriously. All the mothers I know are dedicated to their role. In fact, our towns and cities are teeming with mothers whose devotion is plain to see.

It's the same the world over - mothers devoting themselves to the care and consideration of their families - who, in the blink of an eye, would sacrifice their own welfare for the sake of their child.

<Mothers' alcohol abuse is a stronger indicator of antisocial and criminal children than rough neighbourhoods, a new study has found>
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/alcohol-key-factor-in-criminal-kids-20110225-1b7ws.html

Mind you if it was about the fathers alcohol intake, we'd all be hearing about, it would be on the radio, the circle, kerryanne, in the new idea, women weekly, cleo, cosmo, vogue, on the morning show, a current affairs, the view, even on good old OLO.

But because research does not support feminist ideology about fathers being a risk to children, there is a deafening silence.

The Suffragettes were around for more than 100 years.

In Australia Louisa Lawson was the mother of Suffragettes before the 1880's and her major accomplishment was, not getting the vote, but lobbying the Federationists to ensure they included the Married Womens Property Acts of Victorian and South Australia in the Federation in 1901.

Women voted Federally first in 1903.

While you lot lose your historical perspective you'll always struggle ... for only those who know the truths of the past can see more clearly the future.

Oh and for the record, I'm male and raised my children from an early age by myself.

And as a man I can tell you all that men are not cut out to undertake such a demanding task.

My teachers in that art were other mothers I encountered at school P and C's, swimming clubs, music groups, Little Athletics, Surf Clubs, supermarkets and Post Offices. They taught me the things I needed to know to remain in control and sane.

Rarely did I encounter rabid Feminazis or understanding males anywhere.

And obviously they are not here iin this article or discussion.

None of you have anywhere near the understanding of the position of the real women, and sometimes men, who will determine the role and position of women in our future society.

For it's the hand that rocks the cradle ...

Dead right, Suzeonline.
What did you think of them backing off further inquiries into the death of Mulrunji, in today's papers?
You so right about indigenes, even a cursory read through the history books shows how gross this history can be and now where more so than with aboriginal women, where there also seems to have been a sadistic element involved.
Sickening.

Firstly Keith, congradulations, my fathers best man, also wound up raising his children by himself in an era when men worked and women stayed home and kept house and looked after the children.

Having been a member of mens groups on and off over the years, I have met other men who were house husbands, and typically parents will exchange information and hints in regards to certain things.

Some people will be willing to help and others not so.

Ever heard of maternal gatekeeping?

Long before I discovered research on the subject, I had already observed and became aware of how it worked.

Until recently I had forgotten that there was another level of male wage in some industries,there was the single man's wage and a married man's wage. Recognising the fact that married men had more mouths to support.

Poiriot,
I have given facts in a previous post about mothers that are easily gathered from newspaper reports and general government and medical reports.

When combining together several sets of facts, the situation is that motherhood in this country is in a deplorable or abysmal state, as there are few other words to describe it.

Keith,
"And as a man I can tell you all that men are not cut out to undertake such a demanding task. "

You can only speak for yourself,

I found childraising easy compared to many other tasks, but it would be much easier with two parents.

Some data is being gathered in the US on single parent fathers, and it does appear that children being raised by single parent fathers are doing better than children being raised by single parent mothers.

The single parent fathers are more likely to earn more money, and less likely to be on welfare, while at the same time they are spending almost the same parenting time with their children as single parent mothers.

So if we are too live in a feminist society where men and women cannot live together, then it may be better for children to be raised by their fathers.

Tell me Vanna how did you feel when your child was hurting and they ran to the nearest female for comfort?

Keith,
My children rarely got injured. In fact one has only been to the hospital once, and the other never. They have rarely been to a doctor.

One got an award for the top sportsperson of the year for her grade at her school, and both have always received high marks at school.

They are both very healthy.

I save one from being killed by the mother, as I convinced the mother not to have an abortion.

I mostly raised one of the children myself, and I have not had any problems at all from other men.

I have mostly had problems from a few mothers, and from the education system, where I came across some of the most bigoted, prejudiced and feminist of individuals.

The most difficult part in raising children was the taxi-driving, or having to drop them off then pick them up some hours latter. Almost constant driving on some weekends.

Cooking and cleaning is very easy, and in fact I was a commercial cleaner for some time. I regard cooking and cleaning as very easy work, and almost relaxing compared to other work I have done

Keith, I know one girl who is mid thirties, and her 70+ father cuts and stacks her firewood for her.

Other girls in their twenties and thirties often rely heavily on their fathers to fix cars, leaking taps etc

<Tell me Vanna how did you feel when your child was hurting and they ran to the nearest female for comfort?Posted by keith, Tuesday, 15 March 2011 5:50:13 PM>

So your point is?

VANNA<I don’t know of any country where the life expectancy of women is less than men.

That has a lot to do with the fact that women are genetically stronger than men and also the self destructive habits of men who usually smoke and drink more than women. The article who’s link you posted mentioned sexually transmitted diseases in India. I’ll bet it’s the men bringing most of those sexual diseases home to their wives and girlfriends in India.

Also a lot of the poverty and hardship in India(in your linked article) is related to the extreme overpopulation.
As I stated in my post unless the need for world wide contraception for women resisted in so many poor countries by men is addressed ,then those countries like India will go on having poverty and a lack of clean water and all the water borne diseases that produces.
I believe I also included famine and war.

You do remember that women had to go to court to fight for the right to use contraception in Western countries too. (A court full of male judges) No women judges in those days.

Also it was stated in an article on this forum recently that the Indians are now drowning thousands of baby girls every year, the desperate form of contraception because less girls means less babies.

Houellebecq,

Just because I am pretty realistic in my summing up of the world
Does not mean I have not had a happy life. I have had as stable and happy a marriage as most . Those old people you would have me talk to would tell me what I already know, that marriage has it’s ups and downs.
And sometimes love is warm and sometimes it is cold but the marriage endures and gives a security and happiness and as you grow older a companionship that is not as easy to find as when you have the flaming bloom of youth as a drawcard.

My husband and I have raised good kids, who are intelligent and hold down good jobs and live in nice homes in good suburbs. I have grandchildren who I am very close too and who always want to sleep over at Grandma’s on Saturday nights because I always take an interest in them and we have lots of giggles and fun.

I had a happy childhood.

My Dad always taught me to question and not except the status quo. Dad grew up in the great depression and he took any kind of job in his long working life to keep us fed and clothed. The stories he would tell me of his experiences in life and some of the things that people he had known had done, taught me to see things without any rose coloured glasses I suppose. Such as the one about the cook who worked at the canteen at the meatworks who refused to throw some rotten meat out that was starting to turn green. He cooked it all up in some sort of gravy.

When people started getting sick the ambulances came to take them to hospital. When they questioned the cook. He pointed to the windows and said it’s because there’s no fly screens on those windows and doors and they believed him.
I still enjoy a beer with my Dad, although my mother died about ten years ago.

Hey vanna,

When you've got a spare minute you might like to pop over to the Australian parenting website, Raising Children Network.

http://raisingchildren.net.au/forum/

It's full of dedicated parents sharing ideas and finding solutions to problems.

Funnily enough, the overwhelming majority of participants are women.

Poriot,
I found that there isn’t much need for “parenting ideas”. Common sense is most necessary, or some initiative.

I also have safety and first-aid training.

The general system seems to be to label men as “abusers” and to label women as “nurturers”.

This system of discrimination is a part of feminism, and most of feminism is connected to the university system, and that system of discrimination from the universities also extends down into the secondary schools and primary schools.

One of the problems I had with the education system was various teachers always denigrating men, and trying to turn children against men or against their fathers.

I didn't tolerate that, and the eventual result was one teacher who was eventually sacked, and a principal forced into early retirement.

I am quit proud of that record, as I believed it also forced various other teachers to re-think their feminist philosophies.

vanna,

I think Poriot's suggestion grand.

It's the sort of thing I would have embraced and I probably would have learned more quicker if it had been available 20 years ago.

I think it's great you are there for your children and every little contribution helps. And mum's are experts.

I used to joke that my kids had thousands of mothers as I 'took' little bits of advice and from observation of many other mothers.

keith "And mum's are experts."

Some are, some are not, like dad's mum's repeat some of the mistakes of their parents, pick up on some good stuff and miss other stuff.

I do think that there are some generalised differences in the way men and women parent, both have strengths and weaknesses. As a generalisation I'd agree that mum's tend to do better at providing comfort to a hurting child, by the same token I suspect that often dad's do better at seperating their own needs from perceptions about the children's needs. Plenty of exceptions to both.

R0bert

Houellebecq's comments about successful relationships actually, in turn, convince me the more as to what a worthwhile project it can be living comfortably with a woman and that they are indeed worth fighting for.
Not that Cher and co are wrong, that's the other side of a realist coin.
But definitely, being extended is part of life and without it never comes the sense of accomplishment that comes with dealing with complex issues.

Keith,
“mum's are experts”

This is one of the fallacies of our era, and a dangerous fallacy.

If someone has to run to a website to learn what to do if Johnny or Mary cuts their finger, that person is an expert in nothing.

The author would know of some of the true facts regards motherhood in this country, and there would not be one aspect of motherhood in this country that is improving over time.

Everything regards motherhood is in decline, and now we face the situation where children are likely to die at a younger age than their parents (that is, if they were allowed to be born in the first place)

Certainly the home economics courses run at high schools are in definite need of review, but no one can mix feminism with education.

How can someone teach the correct food to give to children, while having the unofficial policy that children should be raised by their mother, with the father removed from the family.

Mothers have had every opportunity to improve on what they do, but have failed.

Best now to leave fathers in much more control of families.

If the mothers don’t like it, then they can go someplace else, but they leave the children behind.

Vanna, I repect your participation and have to say I think you are off beam as to the last post, because you see Australia as a sort of closed system, quarantined from the passing of time.
You have to include certain contexts such as rapid change imposed by forces and factors not always easily identified or controlled in the way things are produced and what is produced and how it affects how people live. I remember my mum stsying at home to wait on the breadwinner and the joys of having on old fashioned mum, back when this was the norm. But I also remember the marriage breaking up because my dad lacked flexibility and mum never returned to domesticity, preferring her independence; free of control.
Most of mankind has spent life in small labour intensive villages since the neolithic and Australia, America, Europe and the like now live so differently from the life lived by people for thousands of years and still by billions today.
Women will point out they have been collaborators in a great project to advance humanity from the old days, will regret not being able to "have it all" any more than most blokes and point their offspring, who will probably live to their seventies rather than thirties or forties as they did in Dickens' time in western civilisation and still do in the hundreds of millions in the developing world.

<The practice of "awarding" the white feather often got out of hand. Many Australian women became excessive and over-reaching in their attempts to force men to enlist.

Men who came home on "Anzac Leave" after 4 years of war were issued with badges to be worn on civilian clothing so that they wouldn't be accused of "shirking".

In both world wars the Australian Government found it necessary to award badges to men who had enlisted and been rejected because of>

Feminist often claim that without men, there wouldn't be any wars! Yet barely a century ago, women were prepared use tactics to shame, vilify and harass men into joining the armed services and becoming cannon fodder, many families in Australia lost all their male children as a result of this.

The right to vote, use to be the exculsive domain of the ruling class, in the hysteria over women's right to vote, people forget that the common man only got the right to vote a few years before hand.

In South Australia, women got the right to vote, a year before Tasmania granted the right to vote to all british males over the age of 21.
http://www.aec.gov.au/elections/australian_electoral_history/reform.htm

Yep in history it is amazing how certain inconveniant facts get left out in times of propaganda.

Paul Walters,
While feminists and their supporters portray women as being "nuturers", the facts are that motherhood is in an abysmal state of decline (and I have yet to see any statistics that shows that motherhood in this country is improving in time).

While feminists and their supporters portray women as undergoing great advances, the facts are that women's levels of happiness have not improved for about 4 decades (and I have yet to see any study that has concluded that they have).

If only feminists would be honest, or would this be too much to ask of a feminist.

Give the true facts regards motherhood, and give the true facts that women's general levels of happiness have not improved.

They can also give the true facts about children while they are about it, and I can't think of too much that is improving for children either.

As for fathers, well they don't count or have no value in a feminist society, and there have been almost no studies undertaken into fathers in this country.

Factory acts UK

1842: Mines Act. This stopped children under 9 and women from working underground.
http://www.angryharry.com/refactoryacts.htm

1845: Calico Print Works Act. This related to factories printing designs on cotton fabrics. Children under 8 were not to be employed. Those under 13 and women were not to work between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. Children under 13 should attend school for 30 day per half year.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1312764/Britains-child-slaves-New-book-says-misery-helped-forge-Britain.html

Perhaps maybe an unintended consequence of the suffuregettes and feminists, is that in some cases they lead indirectly to better working conditions for men.

There's an interesting piece on The Order of the White Feather at http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWfeather.htm

Especially some of the material at the bottom of the article.

The Wikipedia entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_feather

There is also a sad piece on World War 1 executions for cowardice.
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/world_war_one_executions.htm

R0bert

Two things have dawned on me.

Firstly because of the sufferagettes and feminists, the common man indirectly gets better working conditions.

Secondly, Many of the third world countries are similar to where england was 150 years ago and whilst conditions are poor for many women who do not happen to be members of the ruling class, it is also equally poor for many of the common men as well.

So improved conditions for women in these countries, will indirectly benefit men by providing them with better conditions as well.

James H, that's exactly the rationale behind an apparently successful scheme to finance women as small operators, first in BanglaDesh, now also in other third world countries. The women have proven to be careful and diligent in using the small loans to pay off debts and establish income of a steady nature. For instance, a woman has a talent with sewing and clothes making, so they finance her to acquire a sewing machine and when given that sort of chance, it's apparently remarkable how often the women will make a fist of utilising their new lifeline.
I forge the name of the chap who dreamed it up, a South Asian himself but an economics professor who may have ended up winning the Nobel prize for it if my memory serves me correctly.

JamesH
I would place no reliance on the trickle down effect. It is a very blunt instrument that seldom achieves worthwhile results in a worthwhile time frame.

While men pay the majority of personal income tax, I believe there was someone who analyzed the federal budget, and found that for every $300 being spent on women, only $1 was being spent on men.

From that view point, men are simply being used in our feminist society, while at the same time, almost nothing positive is said about the male gender.

I would place much more reliance on risk assessment and risk control measures that can be applied for either gender.

Unfortunately for feminism, almost every ideal of feminism has been found to have high risk.

De facto relationships are normally short lived and are not suitable for raising children.

Single parent families are notorious for producing disadvantaged children.

The abysmal state of motherhood in our country is now becoming a direct health threat to children

Etc, etc

The so-called patriarchal system of society, while it had negatives, it had many more positives than negatives compared to the feminist models.