Received: from beru.its.uow.edu.au ([130.130.68.31]) by anubis.ad.uow.edu.au with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.3959); Sun, 7 Oct 2007 09:43:32 +1000 Received: from febris-nat.its.uow.edu.au ([130.130.68.210] helo=febris.its.uow.edu.au) by beru.its.uow.edu.au with esmtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from ) id 1IeJIy-0002El-PV for blane@uow.edu.au; Sun, 07 Oct 2007 09:43:32 +1000 Received: from servervs1.bosweb.local (eth3951.nsw.adsl.internode.on.net [150.101.126.110]) by febris.its.uow.edu.au (MOS 3.8.5-GA) with ESMTP id FZL02877; Sun, 7 Oct 2007 09:43:31 +1000 (EST) Received: from servervs1 ([127.0.0.1]) by servervs1.bosweb.local with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.3959); Sun, 7 Oct 2007 09:42:54 +1000 Thread-Topic: The Power of Appreciation Reply-To: Message-ID: <0E495DC8577245F48994101B56F0492A@bosweb.local> thread-index: AcgIcp3LI5CSzT9mRJqbdP3r4iUlNA== From: To: Subject: The Power of Appreciation Date: Sun, 7 Oct 2007 09:42:54 +1000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_3AA6_01C808C6.6F775EE0" X-Mailer: Microsoft CDO for Windows 2000 Content-Class: urn:content-classes:message Importance: normal Priority: normal X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.3790.4073 X-OriginalArrivalTime: 06 Oct 2007 23:42:54.0670 (UTC) FILETIME=[9DCB4EE0:01C80872] X-Junkmail-Status: score=10/49, host=febris.its.uow.edu.au X-Junkmail-SD-Raw: score=unknown, refid=str=0001.0A090201.47081DA3.0245,ss=1,fgs=0, ip=150.101.126.110, so=2007-07-31 18:51:00, dmn=5.4.3/2007-09-06 Return-Path: info@fathersonline.org This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_3AA6_01C808C6.6F775EE0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Unable to read this email? Please click here Issue 268 - 8th October, 2007 Go to our website Here * Welcome * Grandads * Laughter * Single Dads * Special Feature * Thought of the Week * All You Need is Love * News & Info * Dad's Prayer * Help Us Welcome I get a lot of letters, emails and requests across my desk, so when I received the following letter offering an invitation to a night of appreciation and networking, I was a bit taken aback. The letter read as follows: Dear Fatherhood Foundation Community organisations are the lifeblood of the nation, undertaking essential and difficult work that has a lasting beneficial impact upon the wider community. All too often though, their significant efforts are overlooked, ignored or taken for granted amongst the general public. We of the University of Wollongong Black Opal Leadership Program feel that it's long past time for the community to give something back. We want to recognize your efforts, and applaud your achievements; to appreciate your hardships, and promote your initiatives. Above all, we, along with members from the wider community, want to thank you. I figured that there must be a catch to such a night, and put off answering the letter. One week before the event I received a cheery phone message from a young lady named Kate. She asked if I was coming to the night as I had an opportunity to enjoy a complimentary meal and drinks. Now I definitely knew that there had to be another agenda operating! Who would give out free food as well as a pat on the back? I did some research and found that the organisers were a team of university students who had decided, as part of their Global Stewardship Leadership Assignment, to gather folk who worked in the community in order to say, 'Thank You'. What a great idea!! My wife and I ventured out for the evening, probably still subconsciously waiting for the hard sell. Young smiling faces greeted us at the door and ushered us in. Other young people enquired about our organization and how it worked. All of these young people were very interested in the work of the Fatherhood Foundation and all agreed that fathers are important in the life of a child. Later, when attendees had an opportunity for a short speech, my good friend Tony Miller from 'dads in distress' spoke about his important work for dads that he had founded. His story touched everyone's hearts and so did all the other stories from those who serve so wonderfully in the community. Lenny, whose passion is disabled surfing, touched everyone as he told of the joy that this association had brought him as a man with only one leg and one arm. - all very humbling to say the least. Every thank you speech was simple and deeply heartfelt. The quote from Gandhi that the students put on the screen said it all, 'The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others'. Perhaps we could rephrase that: 'The best way to enrich oneself is to enrich others' or 'When we thank others we lift ourselves'. Whatever the case, it was hard to dodge the brilliance of the moment. It was deeply humbling, enriching and inspiring all at the same time. We all went out of that event a few inches taller, including the wonderful university students. Why don't we appreciate each other more often? Lovework You don't have to hold a special dinner to appreciate others. Make every dinner in your home a special night of appreciation for your wife and children. Develop a life style of thanksgiving and appreciation. You will never regret it! ___________________________________________________________ Warwick Marsh has been married to Alison for 32 years. He is the father of five children, four boys and one girl, ranging in age from 26 years to 14 years. Warwick is a musician, songwriter, producer and public speaker who likes to think he can still laugh at himself. back to top Grandads It Takes Two to Raise a Child By Bill Jackaman Grandparents day at the kinder would have been so much better if our grand-daughter wasn't sick and stayed at home with her grandmother. As it was, I had to go alone to the kinder with the twins. Try keeping your eye on two 4 year olds at once. Whatever one was doing, the other was elsewhere. But I would not have missed it for the world. But it is a sobering thought, that you still need two to work on bringing up children. I know what it was like to bring up one by myself, but even experienced grandparents need help. ________________________________________________ Bill is the father of one child, and stepfather of 4 more. He and is wife Diana are the proud grandparents of 6 grandchildren ranging in age from 9 to 2. Bill is a computer technician with a firm in Melbourne. back to top Laughter Dad can we get a new Plasma please ! back to top Single Dads Children Need Both Their Parents (Pt 2) By James Adams I'm a smart bloke. A long time ago I was a leftie -greenie and then I got a masters degree and worked as a consultant in London for corporates. You've heard how I came to be a father, you can guess that, when I found that my future daughter was threatened I had to do something, to protect my future daughter. I had no legal recourse, so I did my homework instead. The one thing I discovered is really clear -children need BOTH their natural parents. Over 800 citations to published research in reputable pier-reviewed journals that all say the bleeding obvious -children who miss out on one of their natural parents typically suffer. That's why, in every religion on earth, God endorses marriage. I deeply respect loving step-parents. But this isn't about love. It is about hormones, about biology, about how we are built. No amount of dogma or feminism can reverse these fundamental facts about how we are made. For example: Girls who grow up without their natural father reach puberty 18 months prematurely, so that they can become pregnant in primary school! Even after controlling for race and class they are still 5 times more likely to become pregnant as teenagers. The US Senate recognized that children who live without contact with their natural father are, in comparison to children who have such contact: (A) 5 times more likely to live in poverty; (B) more likely to bring weapons and drugs into the classroom; (C) twice as likely to commit crime; (D) twice as likely to drop out of school; (E) more likely to commit suicide; (F) more than twice as likely to abuse alcohol or drugs; and (G) more likely to become pregnant as teenagers. Violent criminals are overwhelmingly males who grew up without fathers. (US Senate S.657- Strengthening Families Act of 2003) Children need both their parents and so the best place for children is living with both their natural parents, as husband and wife. Support Marriage - write now! For children's sake, we need to support marriage. Sadly as a society, we only tolerate marriage, but we need to encourage it! There are many incentives for people to remain single and many more incentives for divorce. We need to support marriage. We need to encourage people to have children and to love them and to take responsibility for them. Too many Australians are going to die childless and too many children are suffering in vulnerable single-parent homes. I ask you to do something about it -write a very short message to our politicians here www.fathers4families.com.au . Why? Because I believe in love. But love needs a little help sometimes. James ADAMS PartTimeParent@pobox.com www.fathers4Families.org.au 0417 258 364 PS. This is an effort that would not have happened if Warwick and the Fatherhood Foundation hadn't have done so much to encourage fathers and families back to top Special Feature DADS ARE KEY to children's success in school By Dwight R Worley, The Journal News September 28, 2007 Working 65 hours a week doesn't leave Bill Collins much time to help his son with homework and he can't always make it to soccer or football games. But with data showing children without involved fathers more likely to drop out of school or commit crimes, the Mount Kisco father of four is determined to do better. "I would like to be more involved. It's been a real struggle," said Collins, 46, a tow truck driver in White Plains. "I know it's important. It would be nice to be able to change it." At the Black Father/Black Men Back to School Night at Highlands Middle School in White Plains, Collins and about 40 other men were encouraged yesterday to make their children's educations a priority in their lives. In an audience that included White Plains Schools Superintendent Timothy Connors, state Supreme Court Justice Bruce Tolbert and members of black fraternities, speakers talked for two hours about the critical role fathers play in education and how their absence, whether through divorce or absenteeism, harms children. Divine Pryor, the evening's keynote speaker, said the involvement of black men in schools was more important than ever because of the growing influence of gangs and a world where their children see a stint in prison as inevitable. An ex-convict who later became a professor of criminal justice, Pryor said fathers are needed at teacher conferences, extracurricular activities and in neighbourhood streets counselling youth. "Women have been doing an extraordinary job bringing up our sons and daughters," Pryor said. "But men are not there, we're absent. Our future right now is at stake." Single-parent households and divorce can limit the involvement of fathers in schooling. But Frank Williams, director of the White Plains Youth Bureau, said too many men leave school visits and after-school activities to mothers. He said fathers need to expand beyond traditional roles and begin to nurture children to head off problems. "We want to send this group of men," Williams said, "back into the neighbourhoods to teach, to mentor, to visit our schools, to put your arms around our young people and to let them know you care." Charles Shuler, a father of two who came to the meeting, said he frequently meets with teachers and helps with homework. "Our kids need a role model who is pushing them or they're on their own," said Shuler, a 41-year-old highway maintenance worker from Elmsford. The event was sponsored by the White Plains Youth Bureau and several other community organizations, including African American Men of Westchester and Communities That Care Coalition. Organizers hope it will be the starting point for a series of talks in different Westchester cities that will culminate in a summit next summer. Dads needed in education Here are some ways for dads to get involved in education: - Attend parent-teacher conferences. Learn about school curriculum and class events. - Join the Parent Teacher Association or other parent groups. Volunteer as a tutor or field trip chaperone and pitch in during functions. - Help with homework and read to children. If you have trouble reading, stimulate the child's imagination by telling stories. back to top Thought of the Week One of the marks of greatness is the ability to develop greatness in others. J.C. Macaulay back to top All You Need is Love Children of the divorce Olympics stay married by Daisy Goodwin, London Times September 16, 2007 From the age of six I have lived a double life. Not because I was intrinsically deceitful but because, like 20million other people in this country (according to a survey last week), my life has been profoundly altered by divorce. My parents split up in the late 1960s and they both remarried and had more children. Like Diana, Princess of Wales, my childhood was spent rattling across the country with my younger brother from one parental home to another. In one house we drank coffee, went to bed at eight sharp and always had clean socks; at the other we drank tea, put ourselves to bed when we felt like it and had bare feet. In one house the bed was always made, in the other it was a mass of rumpled sheets with sand at the bottom. Capital radio was forbidden in one house, Elvis was compulsory in the other. Every holiday, Christmas, birthday was bisected by the iron curtain of the two incompatible ideological universes in which I lived. I became an expert at an early age in 'reading the room'. My mother thought it was funny that I was trying to read Lady Chatterley at the age of 11, my stepmother confiscated the book. I started learning Russian at school because back in the cold war 1970s I thought my upbringing made me uniquely qualified for a life of espionage. I was one of the lucky ones. I saw both my parents regularly, materially I had everything I needed - perhaps more: double Christmas presents for a start. As a child I used to say to sympathetic questioners that I was fine, lucky even, after all it was the only life I knew. But now that I am grown up, married and have children of my own I have stopped being stoical. I can admit that things were not fine. They were strange and bewildering and their mark on me is indelible. The circumstances of my childhood have made me adaptable, resourceful and emotionally intelligent, true, but I am also needy, insecure and unable to set boundaries. I have been clinically depressed. However, the one thing I am not is divorced, because I know what divorce means. And the latest statistics suggest that I am not alone in this awareness. Divorce rates have fallen slightly in England and Wales for the third year in succession. There are several explanations for this: people aren't getting married as much as they used to, the property boom means people can't afford to leave home, people are getting married later and therefore have less time to repent at leisure. But I wonder if there is another underlying trend - that my generation who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s when the divorce Olympics were in full swing have decided that marriages are not as disposable as their parents thought. The statistics appear to bear this out. The biggest drop in divorce rates is among the underforties - in other words, the children born during the divorce boom that started in the late 1960s. Having been through one divorce, the children of broken homes have no desire to go through another. They realise, because their parents didn't, that in Margaret Atwood's words, "a divorce is like an amputation, you survive but there's less of you". My mother and her three siblings have all been married at least twice. But the same is not true of my generation: my brother, half-sister and I have now all been married longer than our parents were. Never say never, of course, but so far we seem to be making a better job of staying together than our parents did. I don't think this phenomenon is confined to my family. When I was a child at least a third of my friends came from 'broken' homes, but there are few divorced parents standing at the gates of my daughter's school. And while there have been divorces among my cohort of metropolitan thirty and forty-somethings, they are the exception rather than the norm. Significantly, the people who have got divorced have been the ones who grew up in 'unbroken' homes. Even though divorce is not the legal blame-fest that it was when my parents split up, no one - children, parents, grandparents - comes out of it unscathed. There is always a loss. That loss can reverberate well into adult life. I have just written a book that goes back four generations to find a narrative that makes sense of the failure of my parents' marriage. Readers from similar backgrounds to mine have told me how their adult lives have been blighted by their past, of their longing for a different future. Outward success is no substitute for that early loss. Alex Mahon, 33, managing director of Shine media, has been married for four years and has a four-month-old baby. Her parents divorced when she was six and she boasts no fewer than 10 stepbrothers and sisters. Despite having a PhD in astrophysics she says that "to have four children and to keep my marriage together would be the biggest achievement of my life". My mother had married in a crochet minidress in the 1960s; at my wedding in the 1980s I wore a full-on meringue complete with veil, as if wearing the outfit would somehow make the whole thing binding. My parents were rather surprised that I wanted such a 'conventional' wedding, but to me a white wedding complete with cake was a talisman against what I knew to be the fragility of marriage. back to top News & Info The Pain of Separation especially on the children. Read this tragic story of a son's fight for life to no avail http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22540317-2,00.html Married Parents in the Minority by 2031 Married parents could be outnumbered by single mothers and cohabiting couples within a generation, with serious implications for the health and education of children, official figures show. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/05/nwed105. xml Divorce Rate in UK falls to lowest in 5 years. Among the '30 somethings' the decline in marital breakdown is attributed by experts in part to a growing awareness of the harm of divorce on young children. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/09/01/ndivorce 01.xml back to top Dad's Prayer Dear God Thank you for young people who have not forgotten how to be passionate. Thank you for people who can still say 'Thank you'. It is always humbling and yet incredibly inspiring. Help us join with those who have learnt the power of appreciation, because together we can make a difference. back to top Help Us Click here for more information about us Help Us! The Fatherhood Foundation is a Harm Prevention Charity. Fatherlessness and inadequate fathering has been proven to be a source of harm. The Fatherhood Foundation helps children by promoting excellence in fathering. Excellent fathers are in word and deed: responsible, involved, protective, loving and committed to the well-being of their children and their children's mother. If you would like to give financially to the Fatherhood Foundation Public Fund and receive tax deductibility: Fatherhood Foundation Public Fund (Name, address and amount details must be emailed for a receipt for tax deductibility) Westpac Branch Wollongong BSB: 032 695 A/C: 25-5558 Or mail cheque and address details to: PO Box 440 WOLLONGONG NSW 2520 AUSTRALIA The Fatherhood Foundation Public Fund is a public fund listed on the Register of Harm Prevention Charities under Subdivision 30_EA of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997. You have received the fathersonline.org newsletter because you have subscribed, or you have been subscribed by a friend. If you do not wish to receive future emails, please click the UNSUBSCRIBE button below or send an email to info@fathersonline.org with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject heading. back to top Click Here to Unsubscribe ------=_NextPart_000_3AA6_01C808C6.6F775EE0 Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Fatherhood Foundation
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Issue 268 - 8th October, 2007 Go to our website Here


Welcome

  

I get a lot of letters, emails and requests across my desk, so when I received the following letter offering an invitation to a night of appreciation and networking, I was a bit taken aback.

 

The letter read as follows:

 

Dear Fatherhood Foundation

 

Community organisations are the lifeblood of the nation, undertaking essential and difficult work that has a lasting beneficial impact upon the wider community. All too often though, their significant efforts are overlooked, ignored or taken for granted amongst the general public.

 

We of the University of Wollongong Black Opal Leadership Program feel that it's long past time for the community to give something back. We want to recognize your efforts, and applaud your achievements; to appreciate your hardships, and promote your initiatives. Above all, we, along with members from the wider community, want to thank you.

 

I figured that there must be a catch to such a night, and put off answering the letter. One week before the event I received a cheery phone message from a young lady named Kate. She asked if I was coming to the night as I had an opportunity to enjoy a complimentary meal and drinks.  Now I definitely knew that there had to be another agenda operating! Who would give out free food as well as a pat on the back?

 

I did some research and found that the organisers were a team of university students who had decided, as part of their Global Stewardship Leadership Assignment, to gather folk who worked in the community in order to say, 'Thank You'.  What a great idea!!

 

My wife and I ventured out for the evening, probably still subconsciously waiting for the hard sell. Young smiling faces greeted us at the door and ushered us in. Other young people enquired about our organization and how it worked.  All of these young people were very interested in the work of the Fatherhood Foundation and all agreed that fathers are important in the life of a child.

 

Later, when attendees had an opportunity for a short speech, my good friend Tony Miller from 'dads in distress' spoke about his important work for dads that he had founded. His story touched everyone's hearts and so did all the other stories from those who serve so wonderfully in the community.  Lenny, whose passion is disabled surfing, touched everyone as he told of the joy that this association had brought him as a man with only one leg and one arm. - all very humbling to say the least. Every thank you speech was simple and deeply heartfelt. The quote from Gandhi that the students put on the screen said it all, 'The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others'.

 

Perhaps we could rephrase that:

'The best way to enrich oneself is to enrich others'

or

'When we thank others we lift ourselves'.

 

Whatever the case, it was hard to dodge the brilliance of the moment. It was deeply humbling, enriching and inspiring all at the same time. We all went out of that event a few inches taller, including the wonderful university students. Why don't we appreciate each other more often?

 

Lovework

 

You don't have to hold a special dinner to appreciate others. Make every dinner in your home a special night of appreciation for your wife and children. Develop a life style of thanksgiving and appreciation. You will never regret it!

  

___________________________________________________________

Warwick Marsh  has been married to Alison for 32 years. He is the father of five children, four boys and one girl, ranging in age from 26 years to 14 years.  Warwick is a musician, songwriter, producer and public speaker who likes to think he can still laugh at himself.

back to top

Grandads

 

It Takes Two to Raise a Child

By Bill Jackaman

 

Grandparents day at the kinder would have been so much better if our grand-daughter wasn't sick and stayed at home with her grandmother. As it was, I had to go alone to the kinder with the twins.  Try keeping your eye on two 4 year olds at once. Whatever one was doing, the other was elsewhere. But I would not have missed it for the world.

 

But it is a sobering thought, that you still need two to work on bringing up children. I know what it was like to bring up one by myself, but even experienced grandparents need help.

________________________________________________

 

Bill is the father of one child, and stepfather of 4 more. He and is wife Diana are the proud grandparents of 6 grandchildren ranging in age from 9 to 2. Bill is a computer technician with a firm in Melbourne.

back to top

Laughter

 

Dad can we get a new Plasma please !

 

back to top

Single Dads

Children Need Both Their Parents (Pt 2)

By James Adams

         

I'm a smart bloke. A long time ago I was a leftie -greenie and then I got a masters degree and worked as a consultant in London for corporates.

 

You've heard how I came to be a father, you can guess that, when I found that my future daughter was threatened I had to do something, to protect my future daughter.

 

I had no legal recourse, so I did my homework instead. The one thing I discovered is really clear -children need BOTH their natural parents. 

 

Over 800 citations to published research in reputable pier-reviewed journals that all say the bleeding obvious -children who miss out on one of their natural parents typically suffer. That's why, in every religion on earth, God endorses marriage.

 

I deeply respect loving step-parents. But this isn't about love. It is about hormones, about biology, about how we are built. No amount of dogma or feminism can reverse these fundamental facts about how we are made.

 

For example:

Girls who grow up without their natural father reach puberty 18 months prematurely, so that they can become pregnant in primary school!  Even after controlling for race and class they are still 5 times more likely to become pregnant as teenagers.

 

The US Senate recognized that children who live without contact with their natural father are, in comparison to children who have such contact:

          (A) 5 times more likely to live in poverty;

          (B) more likely to bring weapons and drugs into the  classroom;

          (C) twice as likely to commit crime;

          (D) twice as likely to drop out of school;

          (E) more likely to commit suicide;

          (F) more than twice as likely to abuse alcohol or drugs; and

          (G) more likely to become pregnant as teenagers.

Violent criminals are overwhelmingly males who grew up without fathers.

(US Senate  S.657- Strengthening Families Act of 2003)

 

Children need both their parents and so the best place for children is living with both their natural parents, as husband and wife.

 

Support Marriage - write now!

For children's sake, we need to support marriage. Sadly as a society, we only tolerate marriage, but we need to encourage it! There are many incentives for people to remain single and many more incentives for divorce.

 

We need to support marriage. We need to encourage people to have children and to love them and to take responsibility for them. Too many Australians are going to die childless and too many children are suffering in vulnerable single-parent homes.

 

I ask you to do something about it -write a very short message to our politicians here www.fathers4families.com.au .

 

Why? Because I believe in love. But love needs a little help sometimes.

 

James ADAMS

PartTimeParent@pobox.com

www.fathers4Families.org.au  

0417 258 364

 

PS. This is an effort that would not have happened if Warwick and the Fatherhood Foundation hadn't have done so much to encourage fathers and families

back to top

Special Feature

DADS ARE  KEY

to children's success in school

By Dwight R Worley, The Journal News

September 28, 2007

 

Working 65 hours a week doesn't leave Bill Collins much time to help his son with homework and he can't always make it to soccer or football games.

 

But with data showing children without involved fathers more likely to drop out of school or commit crimes, the Mount Kisco father of four is determined to do better.

 

"I would like to be more involved. It's been a real struggle," said Collins, 46, a tow truck driver in White Plains. "I know it's important. It would be nice to be able to change it."

 

At the Black Father/Black Men Back to School Night at Highlands Middle School in White Plains, Collins and about 40 other men were encouraged yesterday to make their children's educations a priority in their lives.

 

In an audience that included White Plains Schools Superintendent Timothy Connors, state Supreme Court Justice Bruce Tolbert and members of black fraternities, speakers talked for two hours about the critical role fathers play in education and how their absence, whether through divorce or absenteeism, harms children.

 

Divine Pryor, the evening's keynote speaker, said the involvement of black men in schools was more important than ever because of the growing influence of gangs and a world where their children see a stint in prison as inevitable. An ex-convict who later became a professor of criminal justice, Pryor said fathers are needed at teacher conferences, extracurricular activities and in neighbourhood streets counselling youth.

 

"Women have been doing an extraordinary job bringing up our sons and daughters," Pryor said. "But men are not there, we're absent. Our future right now is at stake."

 

Single-parent households and divorce can limit the involvement of fathers in schooling. But Frank Williams, director of the White Plains Youth Bureau, said too many men leave school visits and after-school activities to mothers. He said fathers need to expand beyond traditional roles and begin to nurture children to head off problems.

 

"We want to send this group of men," Williams said, "back into the neighbourhoods to teach, to mentor, to visit our schools, to put your arms around our young people and to let them know you care."

 

Charles Shuler, a father of two who came to the meeting, said he frequently meets with teachers and helps with homework.

 

"Our kids need a role model who is pushing them or they're on their own," said Shuler, a 41-year-old highway maintenance worker from Elmsford.

 

The event was sponsored by the White Plains Youth Bureau and several other community organizations, including African American Men of Westchester and Communities That Care Coalition. Organizers hope it will be the starting point for a series of talks in different Westchester cities that will culminate in a summit next summer.

 

Dads needed in education

Here are some ways for dads to get involved in education:

- Attend parent-teacher conferences. Learn about school curriculum and class events.

- Join the Parent Teacher Association or other parent groups. Volunteer as a tutor or field trip chaperone and pitch in during functions.

- Help with homework and read to children. If you have trouble reading, stimulate the child's imagination by telling stories.

back to top

Thought of the Week

 





One of the marks
 of greatness
is the ability
 to develop 
greatness in others.
 
J.C. Macaulay

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

back to top

All You Need is Love

Children of the divorce Olympics stay married

by Daisy Goodwin, London Times

September 16, 2007

 

From the age of six I have lived a double life. Not because I was intrinsically deceitful but because, like 20million other people in this country (according to a survey last week), my life has been profoundly altered by divorce. My parents split up in the late 1960s and they both remarried and had more children. Like Diana, Princess of Wales, my childhood was spent rattling across the country with my younger brother from one parental home to another.

 

In one house we drank coffee, went to bed at eight sharp and always had clean socks; at the other we drank tea, put ourselves to bed when we felt like it and had bare feet. In one house the bed was always made, in the other it was a mass of rumpled sheets with sand at the bottom. Capital radio was forbidden in one house, Elvis was compulsory in the other.

 

Every holiday, Christmas, birthday was bisected by the iron curtain of the two incompatible ideological universes in which I lived. I became an expert at an early age in 'reading the room'. My mother thought it was funny that I was trying to read Lady Chatterley at the age of 11, my stepmother confiscated the book. I started learning Russian at school because back in the cold war 1970s I thought my upbringing made me uniquely qualified for a life of espionage.

 

I was one of the lucky ones. I saw both my parents regularly, materially I had everything I needed - perhaps more: double Christmas presents for a start.

 

As a child I used to say to sympathetic questioners that I was fine, lucky even, after all it was the only life I knew. But now that I am grown up, married and have children of my own I have stopped being stoical. I can admit that things were not fine. They were strange and bewildering and their mark on me is indelible.

 

The circumstances of my childhood have made me adaptable, resourceful and emotionally intelligent, true, but I am also needy, insecure and unable to set boundaries. I have been clinically depressed.

 

However, the one thing I am not is divorced, because I know what divorce means. And the latest statistics suggest that I am not alone in this awareness.

 

Divorce rates have fallen slightly in England and Wales for the third year in succession. There are several explanations for this: people aren't getting married as much as they used to, the property boom means people can't afford to leave home, people are getting married later and therefore have less time to repent at leisure. But I wonder if there is another underlying trend - that my generation who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s when the divorce Olympics were in full swing have decided that marriages are not as disposable as their parents thought.

 

The statistics appear to bear this out. The biggest drop in divorce rates is among the underforties - in other words, the children born during the divorce boom that started in the late 1960s. Having been through one divorce, the children of broken homes have no desire to go through another. They realise, because their parents didn't, that in Margaret Atwood's words, "a divorce is like an amputation, you survive but there's less of you".

 

My mother and her three siblings have all been married at least twice. But the same is not true of my generation: my brother, half-sister and I have now all been married longer than our parents were. Never say never, of course, but so far we seem to be making a better job of staying together than our parents did.

 

I don't think this phenomenon is confined to my family. When I was a child at least a third of my friends came from 'broken' homes, but there are few divorced parents standing at the gates of my daughter's school. And while there have been divorces among my cohort of metropolitan thirty and forty-somethings, they are the exception rather than the norm. Significantly, the people who have got divorced have been the ones who grew up in 'unbroken' homes.

 

Even though divorce is not the legal blame-fest that it was when my parents split up, no one - children, parents, grandparents - comes out of it unscathed. There is always a loss. That loss can reverberate well into adult life. I have just written a book that goes back four generations to find a narrative that makes sense of the failure of my parents' marriage. Readers from similar backgrounds to mine have told me how their adult lives have been blighted by their past, of their longing for a different future.

 

Outward success is no substitute for that early loss. Alex Mahon, 33, managing director of Shine media, has been married for four years and has a four-month-old baby. Her parents divorced when she was six and she boasts no fewer than 10 stepbrothers and sisters. Despite having a PhD in astrophysics she says that "to have four children and to keep my marriage together would be the biggest achievement of my life".

 

My mother had married in a crochet minidress in the 1960s; at my wedding in the 1980s I wore a full-on meringue complete with veil, as if wearing the outfit would somehow make the whole thing binding. My parents were rather surprised that I wanted such a 'conventional' wedding, but to me a white wedding complete with cake was a talisman against what I knew to be the fragility of marriage.

 

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News & Info

 

The Pain of Separation
especially on the children.

Read this tragic story of a son's fight for life to no avail

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22540317-2,00.html

 

Married Parents in the Minority by 2031

Married parents could be outnumbered by single mothers and cohabiting couples within a generation, with serious implications for the health and education of children, official figures show.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/05/nwed105.xml

 

Divorce Rate in UK falls to lowest in 5 years.

Among the '30 somethings' the decline in marital breakdown is attributed by experts in part to a growing awareness of the harm of divorce on young children.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/09/01/ndivorce01.xml

 

 

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Dad's Prayer

 

 
Dear God
 
Thank you for young people
who have not forgotten 
how to be passionate.
Thank you for people 
who can still say 'Thank you'.
It is always humbling
and yet incredibly inspiring.
Help us join with those
who have learnt 
the power of appreciation,
because together 
we can make a difference.

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The Fatherhood Foundation is a Harm Prevention Charity.
Fatherlessness and inadequate fathering has been proven to be a source of harm.

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