Our future our children

Today is International Men's Day, Friday 19 November 2010. Being a man I have been waiting all year for my ten minutes of fame but maybe our children have been waiting longer.

So why are children waiting so diligently for International Men's Day?

The reason is that they want their fathers to grow up and become real men. Real men make good fathers, great men make great fathers and every child wants a great Dad.

No doubt you remember the school yard chant, "My Dad's better than your Dad". Or "My Dad's the best Dad in the world!"

Why do children say that?

Because they believe it. Whether it's true or not, they believe it, and that's all that matters to them. That is all that should matter to us too, but sadly it doesn't.

So what is the problem?

This morning while writing this article I picked up a children's story book that had been sent to me some weeks ago. It is titled The Tears that became Diamonds by Rebecca Coleman-Jones. It is subtitled beautifully, "A tender story for children of marriage breakdown". You all know I am a softie, so I am not ashamed to tell you that I did not get past page 3 before the tears started to flow.

Imagine a picture of a little boy playing with a construction set accompanied by the words on page 2:

"David was sitting on his bed fiddling with his construction set that his Dad had given him. Normally he enjoyed playing with it and making things out of it, but today he just didn't feel like it.

He felt jumbled up inside."

Further in the story David's Mum tells him that his Dad is not going to live with them any more.

There are hundreds of millions of children all around the world like David who cry themselves to sleep every night because "Daddy Doesn't Live Here Anymore", the title of a song I wrote many years ago. Eminem does a far better job in his brilliant biographical song (forty-two million hits can't be wrong) but I am glad I didn't have to go through the pain he went through to write When I'm Gone, my own pain was hard enough.

Believe me it is really hard not to let Hailie's (Eminem's ten year old daughter) words in the song bring you to tears:

Daddy it's me, help ... I followed you Daddy. You told me that you weren't leaving. You lied to me Dad, and now you make mummy sad, and I brought you this coin, it says Number One Dad, that's all I wanted ...

Every child wants a Number One Dad, but often has to settle for far less and in many cases, no Dad at all. Fatherlessness is the number one problem of the western world. Of course the problem of fatherlessness is being exacerbated by the anti-male legal and family court system which seems to be a problem most prominent in the western world. The media are often willing accomplices in the derogation of men as much by the sin of omission as well as commission.

A classic case in point can be found in Dr Elspeth McInnes’ article in Online Opinion on Tuesday 16 November. She asks a very good rhetorical question to start her article. "Do you remember what you were doing when you heard the news that a man had thrown his four year old daughter, Darcey Freeman, off Westgate Bridge in Melbourne on January 30, 2009? It was a shocking event which brought to a close a protracted custody dispute between the separated parents".

Let me pose a question for you today on International Mens Day. "Do you remember what you were doing when you heard the news that a woman had killed her 22 month old son Oliver Garcia by strapping the boy to her body and jumping of the Westgate Bridge in Melbourne on June 4, 2008?" You will rightly scratch your head and say, "I never heard about that story". It’s called selective reporting. It’s a pity that Elspeth’s story doesn’t help the cause of gender balance but continues the feminist Marxist media tradition that all men should be demonised.

Miranda Devine in her brilliant article asks, "Why are all men made to feel like Fiends?" She says,

Demonising men won't prevent child abuse. In the interests of children, we women must force ourselves to reclaim the notion of male innocence. The male protective instinct, after all, is one of the most crucial safeguards of childhood."

Of course Miranda’s wise words have been proven by sociologists the world over. Children are far more at risk when the biological father is not in the home.

Dr Greg Tooley from Deakin University in Melbournefound that children with a step-parent were at least 17 times more likely to die from intentional violence or accident. A limited version of the study found that the rate could be as high as 77 times. Former Human Rights Commissioner Mr Brian Burdekin has reported a 500 to 600 per cent increase in sexual abuse of girls in families where the adult male was not in the home.

It would seem that government departments are equally complicit in spreading lies and anti-male propaganda as I said in a recent Online Opinion article.

Journalist Laurie Nowell reported in an article called "Feminists 'Tilt' Figures":

The issues of child protection and domestic violence have been hijacked by politically motivated feminist cliques, according to a coalition of men's groups.

The claim came after an ombudsman's report found bureaucrats guilty of "unreasonable and wrong administrative action" after failing to correct false and misleading information that promoted the idea men were overwhelmingly responsible for domestic violence.

South Australia's Office for Women presented erroneous statistics, such as 95 per cent of domestic violence involves a male perpetrator and a female victim, the ombudsman found. Raw data show that, overall, at least one in three victims is male.

Men's Health Australia spokesman Greg Andresen said the SA Ombudsman's report should make the Gillard Government think twice about rolling back the shared parenting reforms introduced to family law by the Howard government - which effectively guarantee fathers some level of access to their children in the event of marital breakdown.

"The picture seems to be emerging of offices of women around the country - who advise state and federal ministers - having taken deeply feminist lines on domestic abuse and child protection," Mr Andresen said.

"These bureaucrats have a strong feminist perspective - and that's probably appropriate for people concerned with women's issues.

"But the problem is that when governments roll out programs relating to children, what gets rolled out is a program for women, not one that has equal regard for men and women.

"The conventional wisdom among these people is that the only perpetrators of domestic violence are men and the only perpetrators of violence against children are men.

"There is a wealth of research that shows that men are almost as likely to suffer domestic violence or abuse."

Space does not allow me to tell the stories of the father who was put in gaol for sending a birthday card to his daughter, or the father of good character who was banned from seeing his daughter for five years. Tragically most of these recent stories have taken place under the 2006 changes to Family Law which supposedly brought equity for fathers and families. Nothing could be further from the truth!

Even more tragically our present Labor government under Julia Gillard is intent on rolling back the Howard governments shared parenting laws under the guise of increased child safety when the opposite is the truth.

Children are safer with their biological mother and father by between 17 and 77 times according to Dr Tooley. The problem is a lack of appreciation for the importance of helpingpeople get married and stay married. If we could do that better we would prevent the custody disputes in the first place. Books for children in marriage breakdown could then hopefully become a thing of the past. In those sorts of conditions neither child would have been thrown from the Westgate Bridge because a harmful custody dispute would not have existed in the first place.

David Blankenhorn, author of Fatherless America wrote, "Fatherlessness is the most harmful demographic trend of this present generation". There are hundreds of millions of Hailie's and David's in the western world and their collective pain is making our civilisation sick. It is no accident that Richard Koch and Chris Smith in their brilliant book Suicide of the West establish that the greatest challenge facing the western world is the question of identity. "Who am I?" Only a father's unconditional love can provide the answer.

As Danna Vale said, "We get our nurture from our mothers but our identity from our fathers". Statistics show that 63% of teen suicides are from fatherless children, that's five times the national average (Source: US Dept of Justice).When you don't know who you are what have you got to live for?

International Men's Day www.internationalmensday.com theme this year is ‘Our Future Our Children’. This is the opportunity for men to shine as fathers and as husbands. This is the opportunity for men to lead by example. Children need unconditional love and so do their mothers. Unconditional love is the supreme sacrifice exampled by Jesus Christ himself. Only a real man can give it. International Men’s Day exists to champion great men and encourage great fathers.

My advice to you as a father for International Men’s Day is let the fact that your children believe you are a great father matter to you. It will inspire you to keep on trying to become the best you can be for them.Men and fathers who are celebrating International Men’s Day this year would agree with John F Kennedy when he says "Children are the world's most valuable resource and its best hope for the future."