>you espouse two basic views: Fathers are incapable of being mothers; mothers are in the best interest of children, and
Men are not women; men should be more like women.

The first is a really profound misreading of my work. Have a look at http://www.xyonline.net/downloads/Fatherhood_DP59.pdf. I argue here that other than the biologically distinct contributions of birth and breastfeeding, mothers and fathers are equally capable of providing nurturing parenting to children. Both can be equally valuable, or terrible, parents. And I argue at length that the best interests of children are served by *quality parenting*, and that this is possible in a variety of household types, whether nuclear, single mother or single father, lesbian or gay, extended, and so on. See e.g. the sub-section on "Parental harmony and positive parenting".
The second issue is more complicated. I do think that men will benefit from being more open to stereotypically feminine qualities such as nurturance, compassion, and emotional expressiveness. (Funnily enough, it's precisely these qualities that *involved* fathers develop.) Similarly, women will benefit from being more open to stereotypically masculine qualities such as strength, courage, authority, and so on.
There are two key problems with the models of how to be a man with which boys and men grow up. First, they are limiting and unhealthy for boys and men: they limit our relations with others, our friendships and relationships, and our own physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. Second, they are damaging and oppressive for women, girls, and other men. In other words, they are dangerous for others. The old model of manhood encourages violence towards women and other men, and a destructive spirit of aggressive domination and competition.
Some of these qualities associated with masculinity are positive (strength and assertiveness for example), while others are negative and destructive (aggressiveness and insensitivity). There are two problems here: (a) Men miss out on some of the positive qualities of femininity. (b) Men are expected to follow the model all the time. Men are supposed to be unafraid, tough and confident all the time.

Dr Michael Flood,

The paper you reference is mainly on men as fathers, but there are times when men are not directly parents, such as when men are at work, (and I might add that if men did not work then society would collapse very rapidly). Also men create much of the art and culture in society, although males are normally stereotyped as being unemotional.

But parenting is important because the majority of men want to be parents, although divorce, separation and Family Law are now very relevant, because if more young men knew their statistically likely fate, they would no longer want to be parents.

With the divorce rate at 1,000 per week (and ? number of separations in de-facto relationships) then questions should be asked.

Can society sustain this rate?
Is this rate good for children who eventually grow up to be men and women?
What can be done to reduce this rate?

I once looked, but I could find minimal research into such questions, and it could be that Social Science is avoiding such questions. Perhaps too many Social Scientists are following basic feminist philosophy of wanting to eliminate marriage and have de-facto relationships (although de-facto relationships are more fragile, produce worse rates of poverty, STD, promiscuity, child abuse, abortion, DV etc.)

However nearly everything said about fathers in that paper could also be said about mothers, particularly if they were expected to be the main breadwinners also (and numerous surveys routinely show that the mother expects the father to be the main breadwinner)

Any idea that non-custodial fathers (and there now are many 100,000’s of them ) can be proper parents when they see their children once a fortnight or less is simply absurd, together with any idea that the majority of fathers are accepting of this situation.

If a divorced or separated father has a “minimum” of $10,000, a few spare years, and a good solicitor he can try for some extra parenting time. Many men don’t have those types of resources of course, and so they have to accept what is presently the norm.

Dr Michael Flood,

Thank you for taking the time to share your science.

My first point was related to divorced fathers, and in that context, cannot be brushed aside as “profound misreading” of your work. For example, in http://www.xyonline.net/downloads/Joint_custody_DP59.pdf, you say “A rebuttable presumption of joint custody would apply to the five per cent of divorcing couples with children whose cases are decided in the Family Court.” - you then proceed to destroy any hope of average men sharing the parenting.

Even if the father was willing to give up all work at separation – too late. Even as in your utopian society, where the pre-separation father was an equally effective parent - exerted equal effort, and achieved equal outcomes – unless by consent, or unless it can be proved that the mother is unfit (in which case both are unfit, since we presumed they are equally effective), the father would be extremely naive to expect a 50% chance of success. That is, providing he has the guts or the resources to contest the case in the first place.

How many men have to be broken by a system fed by such science, in its quest for that seemingly undefinable and therefore, probably unattainable, equality?

In the meantime, nature will almost certainly continue to dream up its own designs, regardless of what we, its human social engineers and legislators, have to say. Hopefully our children will eventually endorse our tinkering, but more importantly, let us hope they never get carried away with the idea that it’s all about their best interests.

Ringtail, I'm probably wasting keystrokes but I will try again.
I am not making any attempt to support or brush over male violence. I have no proof or belief that it is at a lower level than stated in various reports. My contention is that the under reporting of female violence in the home both against other adults and children is creating an unbalanced view of family violence which has a number of flow on impacts.

- The victim of such violence (physical or otherwise) finds it very hard to get help, especially if the victim is a male and physically bigger than the abuser. What is he supposed to do?
- The abuser does not know she needs help. How many spots on TV have you seen where female violence against a male is shown in either a neutral manner or portrayed as acceptable?
There are more issues worth considering but those two are sufficient.

R0bert

>My contention is that the under reporting of female violence in the home both against other adults and children is creating an unbalanced view...

Timkins wrote too that, "I have seen studies showing that men are much less likely to report DV [domestic violence] than women".

Yes, men underreport, but so do women. I've seen no evidence that men are more likely to underreport than women are, and the reverse seems true. I wrote the following as part of a longer piece exploring men's experience of DV;

It has been argued that men are likely to under-estimate and under-report their subjection to domestic violence by women, because admitting such victimization and vulnerability is emasculating (George 1994, 149). For example, many of the twenty male victims in an Australian qualitative study said that they did not report the domestic violence because of their humiliation at not being to handle themselves as men, a sense that as men they had to fix things themselves, and the expectation that police would laugh at them or be biased towards them (Stockdale 1998, 63). Men’s under-reporting is cited as one key reason why reported rates of domestic violence do not substantiate claims for widespread ‘husband battering’. However, it is well documented that female victims also under-report their victimization, and there is no evidence that men are more likely than women to do so. In fact, the evidence is that men tend to over-estimate their partner’s violence (e.g. because of the masculine norm that violence is only legitimate if in retaliation for violence already committed) while women under-estimate their partner’s violence (e.g. in normalizing and excusing it). On the other hand, men tend to under-estimate their own violence, while women tend to over-estimate theirs (because women using violence is a greater transgression of gender norms and thus more memorable) (Kimmel 2001, 10-11). Currie (1998) too finds that men upgrade women’s violent behaviour, finding it ‘notable’ and ‘remarkable’, while women discount, under-estimate, downplay and normalize the violent behaviour of their male partners.

The full text of Kimmel's piece is here: http://www.xyonline.net/malevictims.shtml. See pp. 11-12.

michael flood.

Dr Flood, I have not had opportunity to follow the reference yet (nor to digest most of the last weeks comments, I've had a big week). Sorry if I've missed relevant material from that period.

My concern is more to do with the public reporting of DV than individual reporting.

I am concerned when I see published DV info which does not reflect the complexity of the issue or is just straight out dishonest. Earlier in this thread I referenced the Qld Health Web site which has the following gem (http://www.health.qld.gov.au/violence/domestic/default.asp).

"DOMESTIC VIOLENCE is the physical, sexual, emotional or psychological abuse of trust and power between partners in a spousal relationship. Most (85% to 98%) domestic violence is perpetrated by men against women."

Now try and fit the description of DV to the 85%-98% figure.

This thread has included comments regarding men being the perpetrator in the overwhelming majority of child abuse cases. Government stats appear to show fairly clearly that this is not the case.

I think the continual focus on genderising the family violence is inhibiting the finding of real solutions. I suspect the issue has little to do with chromozones and lots to do with cultural values.

The lack of support for men with violent female spouses is certainly devestating for the men involved. Too many people who should know better excuse such violence on the basis that "she is smaller than you so she is unlikely to do real harm to you".

Take the genderisation out of the issues, denounce family violence regardless of the gender of the perpetrator and there should be no basis for complaint.