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The Forum > Article Comments > Fatherhood and the love revolution > Comments

Fatherhood and the love revolution : Comments

By Warwick Marsh, published 4/9/2009

Call it a renewal of fatherhood, family revival or a love revolution, but whatever you call it, it is happening.

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"Call it a renewal of fatherhood, family revival or a love revolution, but whatever you call it, if it continues, there will be empty gaols dotted all over the Australian landscape and that would be a big win for our nation, our families and our children."

Err....not quite Mr Marsh. One loving parent is sufficient to keep a child out of gaol. I can vouch for that! Many prominent and famous people in society have been raised by one dutiful parent.

Far better to have one caring parent than two where one is a mongrel and that mongrel's unacceptable behaviour is witnessed by tiny children.

If as you claim, kids are in gaol because the fathers aren't around, then you will need to ask the absent fathers why they've abandoned their children and why the sole parent isn't coping. Perhaps one or both are unfit to be parents.

On the other hand, the more responsible young dads of today are nurturing their young far more so than yesteryears's fathers and it is a pleasure to witness their participation in child-rearing.

And I support Andrew Potts assumption. Gays in stable relationships are fully entitled to provide a loving home for children. While there remains a paucity of published information on gays with children, the research that is available and the empirical evidence reveals that these kids are well balanced and happy individuals.

Only the ill-informed could confuse gays with incestuous paedophiles, lurking behind a mask of heterosexuality.
Posted by Protagoras, Friday, 4 September 2009 9:35:59 PM
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Mr. Marsh is very naive if he believes that Fatherless households are one of the main reasons people are incarcerated.

Not having a positive male role model could very well have been part of some prisoners problems, however, substance abuse would outrank this, as well as the mental health issues that follow the substance abuse.

These problems are certainly not the sole domain of fatherless households. If that were so, would we not have had an outbreak of lawlessness after the World Wars, when there were so many Fathers killed on the battlefields?

I am happy to see fathers more involved with their children these days, but I certainly don't believe that all, or even most, fatherless households give rise to criminal children.

I too am glad that Mr. Marsh did not deliberately crash his car and murder his son, and I think it was the wrong story to bring up at the moment, given the tragic deaths of two children by their father's suicide/murder actions in W.A.
Posted by suzeonline, Saturday, 5 September 2009 1:44:24 AM
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Suzie,

I think you're misreading the statistics. If U.S. statistics confirm that 78% of Us prisoners grew up in single parent housholds then that is a fact. That doesn't mean 78% of children from single parent homes end up in jail or that there aren't children from single parent homes who do well. It simple means that if you wanted to take one social predicator of a child's liklihood to end up in jail then coming from a single parent family might be a good start.

The contentious thing about this is of course that the single parent is almost always female and the 'jailbird' is male. Women will do everything possible to avoid this fact because is points to the bleeding obvious, which is that male children need a male role model. When it comes to role models for girls we constantly hear about the need for good role models and how important it is for girls to see successful women. But when it comes to boys, women resolutely deny any connection between role models and good outcomes. As practically all primary school teachers are female, and single mums tends have friends who are also single mums, the only role model many of these boys find are other boys they meet on the street. Once boys hit puberty at around 12 or 13 they are already bigger than their mum and become increasingly hard for their mums to control. The hard thing for women to understand is that boys are hardwired to respect size. They respect a male because he is bigger and stronger than them. And nomatter what women say, boys want to grow up to be a man and find it very hard to see their mother as a role model (if there is no male present). They don't want to grow up to be a 'sassy' strong women.
Posted by dane, Saturday, 5 September 2009 8:48:48 AM
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cont...

Of course the real reason for this unwillingness to admit the bleeding obvious is that women see children as their possessions. Pretty much all men would admit that mothers have a strong bond with their babies but there is a point where boys realise they don't want to grow up to become their mother. With a father they then have a much greater chance of finding role models in the wrong places. It's such a shame that feminists in particular are willing to allow generations of boys to flounder because of their own greed and search for power.
Posted by dane, Saturday, 5 September 2009 8:49:18 AM
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Houellebecq, an interesting POV, do you work with suicide survivors? I have little doubt with my experiences with suicide survivors that they don’t think at the time of the incident, the pain and suffering caused for those left behind, and very little care if they take someone with them or psychologically damage someone they don’t even know.

It is real easy to attack the author here without experience, I guess! What is hard to do, is to understand the emotional state of mind of ones self at the time and recognise any signal that could change ones mind from the contemplated act.

"Up to 90 per cent of child sex abuse the result of incest - report" AAP
Incest by siblings, close relatives and step family, in fact a very small percentage is from biological parents.
DeptChildProtection of WA data shows that 75% of abuse circumstances where a child is abused by a parent the mother is the perpetrator. The AIC data in the National Homicide Monitoring Program shows 75% of child homicides were committed by a mother or a step father.

Suzeonline “Not having a positive male role model could very well have been part of some prisoners problems, however, substance abuse would outrank this, as well as the mental health issues that follow the substance abuse.”
Research shows a major predictor for substance abuse is “a single parent household”
“I think it was the wrong story to bring up at the moment, given the tragic deaths of two children by their father's suicide/murder actions in W.A.”
ahh guilty until proven innocent. What if it was just a tragic accident...
Posted by Ross M, Saturday, 5 September 2009 9:23:29 AM
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Late 30s mum, you are right on! How can we miss the really important message of dads being there for their kids. Warwick Marsh, this is a wonderful article. Oh that men had a chance to be heard just a little more often, rather than just a token gesture each fathers' day.

As alluded to in your article, so many men find that ultimately the only way to be 'heard' is to suicide. The wrong way out, but one that I've certainly considered.

Keep it up Warwick!

Malcolm Pryor.
Posted by cmpmal, Saturday, 5 September 2009 10:05:39 AM
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