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.