The rate of offending in single parent-male households was about 3.5% across the nation. I am still trying to find useful data on the rate of single parent-male households. The ABS is quite coy on the subject.

The best I could find was this ABS report from 2006 about NSW http://tiny.cc/QkQEo. If you can find better, more recent data, please feel free to post it.

I quote:"Around 82% of all single parents were females as were 85% of those with children under 15."

Combining the data: 82% of female-headed households cause 40% of substantiated claims, while the 18% of male-headed homes account for just 3.5%. Therefore, while the total number of female-headed households is a bit less than 5 times that of male-headed single parent households, the rate of abuse and neglect is about 10 times as high. Kids are twice as likely to be abused if living with Mum alone rather than Dad alone.

Do let me know if you're having trouble with the maths, won't you?

As long as we have people like silly Suzie trying to distort the picture, the poor kids are going to continue to suffer at the hands of unfit mothers.

Pelican:"What I like about modern domestic violence services is that there is advice and support for women, men and children who experience violence"

And the advice is always based on the concept that the man is the perpetrator and the woman is the victim, thereby providing no useful help for the poor bloody majority who aren't in that position and encouraging malicious women to make false allegations.

A new approach is desperately needed.

Houellebecq and 'Septic. At no time did I say that women don't neglect or abuse their children at all! Of course they do.
Do you think I haven't seen this already in many households in the community where I work? Unfortunately, I know that people of both genders abuse and neglect their children.

You just love to twist people's words around to suit your agenda.
I am just trying to say that it is not only single mother households that abuse children.
By the way you guys present it, it is ONLY these sinful women (who dare to leave the fathers of their children- or throw them out-or have been abandoned by them)who neglect and abuse their children.

These allegations from you are in no way a cry for help for the children , but rather an angry swipe at these women for your own reasons.
And no I don't want to read any more websites. I would rather think for myself and make my own observations.

What would you suggest as a way of reducing this neglect and abuse in single-mother households? Let me guess.
You may say that women should be made to stay with the fathers of their children, under any circumstances?
You may say to take all the kids off the single mothers and give them all to their natural fathers full time?
Can I suggest maybe you would be more comfortable living in a middle eastern Muslim country.

Suzeonline:"I am just trying to say that it is not only single mother households that abuse children. "

Of course it isn't, they just happen to represent a disproportionately high risk, just as Aboriginality is a correlating factor.

Children of single mothers are 6 times more likely to suffer abuse or neglect than children of intact families and at least twice as likely as children of single fathers.

Suzeonline:"no I don't want to read any more websites. I would rather think for myself and make my own observations."

LOL. Silly Suzie; "the facts don't suit me, I prefer my prejudices". Just as I said earlier...

Suzeonline:"What would you suggest as a way of reducing this neglect and abuse in single-mother households?"

Remove the systemic incentives for single mothers to prevent the father(s) of their children from having meaningful relationships with their children. Increase the penalties and the interventions if single mothers choose not to work when they are able to do so.

Change the Family Law to make allegations of violence examinable by the Court. Abolish the Duluth model of DV intervention, which was only developed because the level of education of the average US cop is abysmally low and hence his/her ability to make complex decisions is virtually non-existent. We already have strong assault laws and any law that overturns both Habeus Corpus and the onus of proof is bound to lead to very bad outcomes.

Change the Family Law to a more inquisitorial rather than adversarial model.

Abolish the current child support model and replace it with a levy on all adults, parents or not, with a system of "top-up" payments for those on high-incomes. Perhaps even make the levy reducible if a parent pays above a certain minimum directly to the benefit of the kids. Remove the adversarial aspect of the CS Acts.

Provide positive incentives for fathers to be involved with their kids. At present, only overnight stays are recorded and have any relevance to the laws.

I could go on...

'I could go on...'

And you usually do.

Suze,

All I'm sayin' is I always hear from you and pynchme that men abuse and bully those weak and less powerful than themselves when we're ever talking about abuse from men. But when we're talking about abuse from women, there is all this fluff about loneliness, poverty, drug and alcohol problems, depression... from you two ie; The attitude is always that women would never just abuse people 'because they can' like you think men do, and men are never allowed any of these excuses you trot out for women when they're the ones doing the abusing.

You say I turn your words around to say you never admit women abuse. I never said that. You always admit to it, but you and pynchme both have a vastly different attitude to men abusing than you do to women abusing;

Women abusing; A societal problem that needs to be solved by more support for women as they are victims of some external problem that is the cause of their abusive behaviour, often leading back to the men in their lives.

Men abusing; An innate problem with men and these men need to be educated or punished for their behaviour. Men's abuse is evidence of their misogyny and patriarchal attitudes, and their abusive nature.

See the difference.

Antiseptic good suggestions on how to reduce some of the causes of conflict. I'm a strong believer that a system that leave parents financially impacted by the other parents choices long after separation is a recipe for harm. Anything that can be done to reduce that linkage needs to be looked at seriously.

R0bert

'Septic < "LOL. Silly Suzie; "the facts don't suit me, I prefer my prejudices". Just as I said earlier..."

Lol silly 'septic, I could say exactly the same about your' prejudices, as I have said before.....
Maybe we are more alike than you would care to think 'septic?

In actual fact, being the child of a broken marriage myself, I am more on the side of the children. Most parents use their children as pawns in their little game of 'I hate you for what you did to me, so I will make you pay....even if the kids have to suffer.'

As I have said many times, I have to deal with the physically abused children and women in their own homes- patching them up physically, while the social workers deal with everything else.

And yes, I am dealing with many Aboriginal families too.
They are different though, because there are rarely single women on their own looking after kids in their home. Yet, on percentage, the Aboriginal children are the most abused by far.

I don't often have to patch up the men in the home environment that I work in nowadays, so maybe my views are a little biased.

One thing is for sure. I would rather deal with an angry woman, than an angry man! Sorry, but they are just usually bigger and more threatening.
I guess that will never change for me- so I am a lost cause to you guys. :)