Just what we need: A high-profile politician seeking custody of his daughter (plus child support, too!). De-fathered men in the U.S. ought to be dancing in the streets about the great media coverage this one is going to get us, you would think, but....

The politico in this story running on CNN is the disgraced ex-gov of the State of New Jersey, James McGreevey, who resigned from office following revelations he was gay and had been caught with his pants down, as it were, having an affair with a male staff member.

Not that there's anything particularly unusual about all that, I should hasten to say; politicians are always getting caught having affairs with staffers; and if they manage to stay in public life long enough, they are almost bound to wind up disgraced at one point or another. There's also no reason he shouldn't be gay if he likes. Far be it from anyone here to cast aspersions about sexual preferences; what he does in private, and with whom he does it, is his business. Although it really would have gone down better if he'd managed to do it in the privacy of someplace other than the Statehouse. Hasn't he ever heard of Motel 6?

We can't help but wince at the thought of how easy both the right and the left are going to have it when they start taking potshots at him--which, according to my calculations, should be about 10 minutes ago. Is there anything Mr McGreevey has done which doesn't make him a target for someone? Thanks a lot, guv.---JXS (15-03-07)

In Iceland, fathers got some welcome news back in 2000 when legislation granted them subsidised paternity leave of up to six months (three months each for fathers and mothers, plus three more months available to either).

Six years later, according to Parental leave in Iceland : bringing the fathers in. Developments in the wake of new legislation in 2000, the Icelandic Ministry of Social Affairs and Centre for Gender Equality reports that the legislation has done nothing but good things for everyone: 90% of fathers now take advantage of their right to parental leave; the ministry finds that the legislation has 'leveled the status of men and women in the labour market;' and even the birth rate has been increased, rising to 2.1 children per couple. The ministry opines that all this shows that 'more fathers than ever are active in the caring for young children.' That's good to hear from a government department charged with overseeing gender equality; although it's fairly obvious to anyone who examines social trends dispassionately, it isn't acknowledged by the government very often in many other parts of the world.

An English-language abstract of the news short is running on the website maintained by Kilden (Norwegian Information and Documentation Centre for Women's Studies and Gender Research).---JTS (13-03-07)

A poor divorcée down in Kent, up to her jewelry box went. A thief got beside her, and with cords he tied her..., and off with several hundred thousand pounds worth of her jewelry he went. Okay, I suppose that's a bit mean, but it's almost impossible for me not to start thinking in limericks when the word 'Kent' comes into the story. And this story isn't about just any 'poor divorcée', it's about ex-Mrs Beverly Charman, she who recently pulled down the all-time record-setting contested divorce settlement in Britain, £48 000 000 (or about 92 million of these little dollar-thingies we use over here). So while I heartily disapprove of free-lance socialism as a general thing, in this case I can't bring myself to cry too many crocodile tears over Mrs Charman's loss, and I feel even less sorry for her insurance company. I mean, who feels sorry for insurance companies?

Wouldn't it be the peak of irony, though, if the insurance underwriter for the policy were her ex, John Charman. That's how he made the money she fleeced him of in the first place. But that's only surmise. All we know from the Reuters report is that Mr Charman is appealing the amount of the settlement, trying to get it reduced to £20 million. And that Sir Paul McCartney's lawyers (and those of his soon-to-be-ex, Heather Mills) are watching carefully to see how that turns out. No surprise there.---JXS (12-03-07)

Reuters is reporting on a man in Germany who believes in dividing the family assets in a concrete way.

According to the story currently running on the CNN website, a 43-year-old mason from the town of Sonneburg in eastern Germany took a measuring tape and a chain saw to the family home. This, as most of us know, is an old divorce gag that resurfaces from time to time as an urban legend. But in this case it actually happened, and the man added a neat twist to things by physically picking up 'his' half of the 8-meter by 6-meter house with an industrial fork-lift and taking it to his brother's place. He's been living there ever since.

A police spokesman reports that his ex-wife-to-be isn't too pleased, though. Maybe he should have let her choose her half, since he cut the cake...?---JXS (08-03-07)

Glenn Sacks, the well-known American fathers' rights columnist and broadcaster, is currently promoting a campaign to persuade the Volvo Corporation not to award its $150 million advertising contract to a firm named Arnold World Wide, because they have a track record of producing adverts which denigrate men and portray them as idiots, bumblers, or incompetents. The campaign has apparently gotten quite hot, gaining press coverage in both the general press and the trade mags for the advertising industry. Thousands of men and fathers have responded to Mr Sacks' appeal and e-mailed both Volvo and Arnold Worldwide to make their feelings known.

Mr Sacks has made it clear that he has no ill-will against Volvo, and that they have not (yet) done anything wrong. He merely wishes to encourage them to pursue a responsible corporate choice of advertising agency, citing the firm Euro RSCG as a good example. Arnold Worldwide denies it is anti-men, claiming it only produces the kind of ads that people want. Volvo itself remains non-committal, stating only that it will not allow its hand to be forced.

You might want to take a look at Mr Sacks' blog here for more information. He has e-mail links to enable you to e-mail Volvo executives to encourage them to choose their ad firm wisely.---JTS (08.03.07)

Denial is one of the human animal's favourite tactics. We love to deny things we don't want to believe are happening...and the usual result is that not only do they not go away, they have a nasty tendency to come back to bite us on the butt, too. For instance, denial is one of the prime symptoms of someone having a heart attack ('...it's just a bad case of indigestion...'). Another example is the classic case of the father who subconsciously knows his wife is getting ready to leave him and steal the children--we all know the symptoms, because it happens to so many of our friends--but convinces himself it will all blow over. (After all, this can't be happening to my family....)

Researchers at the Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland, Ohio (USA), recently got interested in a specifically feminine type of denial: Women who denied being pregnant, something which you might think would be pretty hard to hide and/or deny. But according to a recent report running on the Newswise medical news website, Women Who Deny or Hide Pregnancies Get Little Psychiatric Care, it happens in a quarter of a percent of all live deliveries nonetheless.

Okay, so that's not a big number. But lead author Susan Hatters-Friedman, M.D., worried quite rightly that '...in extreme cases, denial or concealment could be a risk factor in neonaticide, where children are killed shortly after birth by their parents.' Interesting that she used the word 'parents' instead of 'mothers' in that statement; we'd like to see figures for the number of concealed pregnancies wherein the father knew anything about the child's existance. After all, if the mother wasn't telling even herself she was pregnant, is it likely she told the father?

Dr Hatters-Friedman also seems to have had other pre-misconceptions about misbehaving don't-wanna-be-mothers. According to the press release, 'When they began their study, Friedman and colleagues suspected that the women most likely to deny or hide pregnancies would be young, pregnant for the first time, less educated, and likely to have been victims of abuse' (emphasis added). That last one is another classic, of course: These days, any woman guilty of some heinous crime is always 'a victim of abuse.'

But figures obtained from Dr Marcia Herman-Giddens, of the University of North Carolina School of Public Health (who has compiled one of the more extensive neonaticide databases in her study of infant deaths in North Carolina from 1985 to 2000) revealed that, although the women denying or concealing their pregnancies were, on average, in their twenties, the rest of the pre-conceptions of Dr Hatters-Friedman's group were faulty. Two thirds of deniers had finished high school, and the deniers were more likely than the hiders to be gainfully employed (researchers drew a distinction between women who hid the pregnancy from others and those who hid it even from themselves).

But most significantly for the women in this study, 'the pregnancy was not their first, and the researchers uncovered few reports of abuse.'

Hmmm. I suppose that the good news is that Dr Hatters-Friedman and colleagues may have actually learned something. We can only hope they won't deny it....

The full report, Characteristics of Women who Deny or Conceal Pregnancy, is published in the March-April issue of the journal, Psychosomatics. It's available free on their website at the moment.---JXS (08-03-07)

Abortion is one of those permanently insoluble social issues because it affects people at a molar level. There is virtually no chance worth mentioning that the two sides will ever agree. In fact, it may be the only issue susceptible to address by the diverse parties in the gender wars which is more difficult of resolution than child-support.

Nonetheless, there are elements of the abortion question which seem clearer than others, and one of them is the father's right--or lack thereof--not to abort. To address even this isolated question requires a recognition that, whether one agrees with it or not, abortion is legal in many jurisdictions, the United States being the most visible among them. Yet in no state there does a father have the right to prevent the mother of his child-to-be from aborting the fœtus should she wish to do so.

You won't likely see many politicians or pundits risk their professional necks taking this question on, but youth and the dare-deviltry which goes along with that condition often rise above the so-called wisdom of the professional hack of more mature years. At North Dakota State University a senior in management, Dennis Frohlich, writes this week in The Spectrum (the school newspaper), that 'Fathers Should Have Abortion Rights, Too.' Brave man, Mr Frohlich. And kudos to the University for publishing it.---JTS (23-02-07)

Dr. Tana Dineen may be the most widely-read critic of psychology no longer in the business; she's certainly a well-known and respected figure in Canadian media circles. Her seminal book, Manufacturing Victims: What the psychology industry is doing to people, was first published by Robert Davies (Montréal, Toronto, Paris) in 1996, and is currently in its third edition (2001). It describes psychology as “big business and examines how it operates like an industry complete with business formulas, marketing strategies, and periodic re-tooling to meet changing consumer demands.” More importantly, it called into question the validity of the very concept of relying on psychological expert witnesses...especially in family court cases where 'battling experts' often siphon off as much or more money than do the lawyers themselves.

Dr. Dineen's retirement career as a social critic has blossomed since then: She has presented opinions to the Canadian Senate on child custody, written scores of articles and columns for such newspapers as the Ottawa Citizen and the Vancouver Sun, and appeared frequently on radio and television shows across North America. She has just revised and redesigned her website, tanadineen.com which is a good resource for anyone looking for information on many of the issues which affect fathers and their children. Worth a look, in our opinion.---JTS (21-02-07)

Medical research is supremely important to all of us, but almost no one except the authors reads the stuff because it is so deadly dull or impossibly technical. However, The Society for Women's Health Research has just come out with an idea to remedy that. As reported by Newswise, our favourite source of medical bragging, the SWHR has recently founded an offshoot group known as the OSSD (for 'Organisation for the Study of Sex Differences'), and is encouraging scientists to 'get in on the ground level' of reporting on health differences between the sexes.

What, you may ask, does this mean? Let me quote the source:

'“Sex Differences in Health Awareness Day” will be observed on May 15. ...[T]his special day reminds health care professionals and consumers about key differences in health between women and men that are often overlooked or misunderstood. For example, women and men often have different symptoms and warning signs prior to heart attacks. Women are disproportionately affected by osteoporosis, autoimmune diseases, and mental health conditions, just to name a few conditions.'

That's all very fascinating, but I can't help but wonder why, if medical researchers have known for years that 'women are disproportionately affected by...mental health conditions', nobody believes the guy who claims his wife is crazy. Yes, I know, that sounds like the punch line of a bad (and very-politically-incorrect) joke--but the truth is, in divorce and custody disputes, men claim their wives are in need of psychological or psychiatric help almost as often as women claim it's all their husband's fault anyway. Of course, the women get away with it, and the men get laughed out of court.

But now we will have some medical research on our side. Hmmm.... JXS (20-02-07)

There's yet another research report in the news this week, but this one is a bit more serious. It testifies as to the importance of fathers in their children's lives, and it emanates from that eminent American institution, Boston College. Non-resident fathers help stem delinquincy is a news short from United Press International, which reports that the research tracked 647 youths between 10 and 14 years of age, over a period of 16 months.

The subjects were primarily Black and Hispanic, and most of them lived at or below the poverty line. Lead author Rebekah Levine Coley found that even increasing delinquency by the teenagers did not drive away those fathers who had managed somehow to stay involved with their children in spite of having lost custody to the mother. The fathers actually got more involved as things got worse. '...in the short term, as teens engaged in more problem behaviors,' says Coley, 'fathers increased their involvement, suggesting that non-resident fathers may be getting more involved in an effort to stem their children's delinquency."

The full report is published in the journal, Child Development.---JTS (20-02-07)

Without a doubt, this is the most bizarre story I've yet run across while researching gender violence stories for one of the Union's statistical analysis projects. John T. and I read hundreds of stories about gender violence each month, but this story stands out as the most 'DUH??' I think I've ever read. In Woman admits to trying to steal unborn baby, the Associated Press reports on the plea bargain entered by a 39-year-old woman who admitted to trying to steal her neighbour's unborn fœtus. After attacking the pregnant woman with a baseball bat, she said she tried to cut the fœtus out of the other woman's abdomen using a razor knife, planning to keep it alive somehow and claim it as her own child. It is a miracle that she failed to kill them both...and a complete mystery how anyone that stupid could manage to survive to the age of 39 years. ("Gee, I wonder what would happen if I pushed this button...?") Truly a nominee for a Darwin award, this one is.---JXS (13-02-07)

It's hard to be a man in Borneo, and it's about to get harder, if Minister of Women, Family and Community Development Datuk Shahrizat Abdul Jalil has her way. In a news short running on the Borneo Bulletin page of the Brunei-online website, she explains that fathers of abandoned babies should be prosecuted, and that not only the mother should take the heat. While one can't argue with her assertion that 'abandoning babies is wrong no matter what the circumstances', it does seem hard lines for the father who, in the great majority of cases doesn't even know about the child before the mother dumps it in an alley. And it strikes us as particularly unfair that the Minister is calling for fathers to be prosecuted while stating that her office's policy towards mothers is to 'counsel them and care for the baby.'--JTS (13-02-07)

If you're an afficionado of trashy celebrity divorces and custody battles, the Anna-Nicole Smith story must be making all your most base instincts twang big-time. She's just dropped dead from unspecified causes, only five months after her adult son Daniel died of an unspecified (but possibly drug-related) cause at the same time she gave birth to a brand new baby sister. Now that virtually every male listed (or unlisted!) in the Los Angeles White Pages is claiming to be the baby's father--no surprise there; Anna-Nicole was the widow of an oil billionaire and had been fighting his son for the billions for years (the son just died recently, too)--there are so many lawyers involved that the California Bar Association should consider holding its annual convention concurrent with the paternity hearing to save on travel expenses for its members....--JXS (13-02-07)

The Father's News Browser is updated as interesting stories come in. For older News Browser editions, please see the Archives Page.