MPs Vow To Tackle Male Suicide

At a political forum staged by Christchurch’s Men’s Advocacy Network, MPs from four of the represented five political parties agreed that a gender-specific approach is needed for male suicide.

Only National’s David Carter did not support gender-based health programmes, saying that programmes must be based on need.

Male suicide rates are 2-3 times that of women, and New Zealand is one of only a handful of countries where men under 25 commit suicide at higher rates than those over 65.

Predictably, the MPs disagreed on virtually every other issue discussed, from child support to prostrate cancer, to the Ministry of Women’s Affairs. David Carter said National would abolish the ministry, while Rod Donald, for the Greens, pointed to the ministry’s key achievement in ensuring recognition of the role of unpaid work.

Tamihere Featuring At Men’s Forums

Disgraced former cabinet member John Tamihere is doing the circuit on behalf of men’s groups. He featured at a men’s issues forum held in Auckland in April. The same event is being staged now in Christchurch.

Other speakers include Auckland men’s personal development guru and author of the book ‘Fatherless Boys’ Rex McCann, Massey University’s director of the Centre of Public Policy Evaluation Stuart Birks, and independent economic researcher Paul Callister.

When speaking at the Auckland forum, Callister pointed out that the sum of paid and unpaid hours worked is higher for men with children under five than for women, although the public perception is the opposite.

A former director of Lifeline, Bruce Mackie, claimed men are systematically being denigrated and that ‘begins early in the lives of boys.” He said that in Britain children aged 9 or 10 were taught that the reason for war was the violent nature of men. “The boys sat crumpled, apologising for their existence”.

Barnardos Publishes Teen Dads Book

Barnardos’s resource branch, ‘Fair Centre’, has published a book about teenage fathers by Massey University researcher Gareth Rouch. The book, called ‘Boys Raising Babies’, is based on interviews with 10 young men and tries to deconstruct the social stereotype of irresponsible young men.

Rouch expects the readership of his book to be mainly policy-makers or other social and community agencies rather than teen dads, because of the way it is written and edited. He is working on another resource targeted at the young fathers themselves.

In a letter advertising the book to agencies, the Fair Centre coordinator says “Perhaps one of the most disturbing tendencies in research policy and service delivery is to place the mother at the core of the family, with the primary responsibility for raising the child, while making the father a more unimportant figure.”

Father & Child Trust coordinator Harald Breiding-Buss welcomes Barnardos’s new focus on teen dads and says the book reflects the findings of the Trust’s own research on teenage fathers, which has first generated some publicity around the issue.

“It is good to see Barnardos admitting that service delivery is mother-focused, as many of our clients have commented very negatively about this.”

Working For Families Package Under Fire

The Child Poverty Action group is claiming that aspects of the governments new “Working for families” package discriminates against thousands of New Zealand children. Under provision of the Human Rights Act, the lobby group has been given permission to take their case to the Human Rights Review Tribunal.

The group’s claim is that the current Child Tax Credit and the Work Payment discriminates against the 300,000 parents who are currently on benefits or who don’t work enough hours to be eligible for extra payments.

The case could be a long drawn out affair, and it is likely that the government won’t be legally obliged to change the policy, even if the lobby groups wins the case. However, the case could be a groundbreaking one in terms of future policies.

Campaign Against Family Violence

The Families Commission is calling for a national campaign against family violence that would include asking parents to switch off violent television programmes. Chief Families Commissioner Dr. Rajen Prasad says the frequency of media violence, through television programmes, movies and computer games, is desensitising people of all ages to the effects of violence.

Speaking at the biggest ever domestic violence conference held recently in Auckland, Doctor Prasad said these attitudes to violence made it easier to justify behaving violently in real life. “What is needed is a sustained campaign that denounces violent attitudes and promoted the concept of strong, supportive relationships” he said.

The Families Commission is planning a study of people’s attitudes and behaviour towards family violence, with a view to changing people’s attitudes.

At the conference, the wider impact of television viewing was also on the agenda. British psychologist Doctor Aric Sigman proposed that parents place a total ban on children younger than three from watching television, and restrict older children to an hour a day.

Leaving the television on all the time was also considered to be particularly damaging.

Newman Challenges Policy Makers

Recently there has been a lot of media attention focused on the problem of youth gangs and associated street violence. Solutions usually involve talk about council initiatives, access to education, more stringent policing and the role of social agencies.

In a recent newsletter entitled “The Fatherless Generation” however, Dr. Muriel Newman of the New Zealand Centre for Political Debate, states that “little has been said about the underlying causes of the problem”.

In the newsletter, she turns the focus on personal parental responsibility, and the importance of a stable home with two loving parents. Using quotes from youth court judges and university professors, she makes a strong link between crime and the absence of fathers in children’s upbringing.

“This is why I am passionately opposed to public policy and practice that encourages family breakdown and excludes biological fathers. Removing (fathers) from the lives of children leaves them extremely vulnerable to abuse, neglect and failure” states Dr. Newman.

She goes on to say that New Zealand’s decision makers, driven by a feminist agenda, are implementing a raft of policies that end up excluding men and fathers from the lives of their children. This drive for equality for women, is actually undermining men’s position in society according to Newman.

According to Newman, New Zealand needs inclusive policies where men and women play an equal role in society.

Child Support Amendment Bill Proposed

New Revenue Minister Peter Dunne is willing to waive up to $500 million of unpaid child support debt. More than half of the record one billion dollar debt consists of penalty fees, which could be wiped under new legislation soon to be introduced to parliament.

The bill includes provision for penalty fees to be waived, provided that liable parents enter some kind of repayment arrangement for their existing debt. Expatriate liable parents accounted for the highest levels of unpaid debt; more than $312 million of the total owed.

A Christchurch father who said he was “squeaky clean”, still owed $25,000 at one point, most of which was penalties incurred because Inland Revenue thought he was paying the wrong rate. “The tax department cannot pick up a mistake for about six months and they continue to charge you penalties” he said.

“If you try and work it out they will not negotiate with you until you have paid the penalties. That’s why so many guys are in debt”. It is hoped the Bill will appear in parliament before Christmas.

Father Contribution Understated—Study

A study sponsored by the Families Commission’s “Blue Skies’ research fund found that available family data in New Zealand understates the contribution of separated fathers.

Victoria University researcher Paul Callister and Massey University’s Stuart Birks examined family data collection methods in New Zealand and found they do not accurately describe the living circumstances of children.

“There is considerable diversity in parenting arrangements, and one major group is often overlooked. These are the children of separated biological parents who, to varying degrees, have two active parents and two households.”, says the study.

The study comes at a time when Statistics New Zealand, the government-funded but independent statistics department, is conducting a review of official family statistics with an eye on improving family data.

Callister and Birks also take issue with terms often used to describe family types in the media and official documents. They conclude:

“As well as there being gaps in data collections, the language of research and policy debates is lagging behind the changes in family types. Many of the words currently used, such as ‘non-custodial’ parent and ‘non-resident’ parent have connotations of exclusion rather than inclusion. In some situations this will reflect reality, but in others the terms are misleading.

“While most researchers try to differentiate between single-parent households and single-parent families, the term ‘single-parent family’ can still be found in many research publications even when it is quite clear that the children involved have two active parents.”

Father & Child Trust has made a submission to Statistics New Zealand for their current review, emphasising that the lack of reliable data about fathers’ parenting contribution and situation may prevent necessary changes in the delivery of social and community services, and makes it hard for community organizations to obtain funding for working with fathers.

`Children’s Day’ now in March

National Children’s Day organisers advise that ‘Children’s Day’, which used to be held in October, has been shifted to March, with the next one on the 4th of March 2007.

‘Children’s Day’ was set up by a coalition of mainly child protection agencies such as Child Youth and Family and Barnados six years ago, and encourages people to organise local events on the day and do something special with children.

New Family Court Statistics: Majority of Care Orders Awarded To Mothers by Joint Agreement

The first gender-based statistics released by the Family Court since 1990 indicate that 65% of day-to-day care orders (previously custody orders) are awarded to mothers, 11% to fathers and about 12% to another party. 12% share the day to day care order.

Only 5.4 % of all day to day care orders are made by a judge at a defended hearing. The vast majority of parenting orders, 74%, are reached by consent between parents. with the remaining 20.6% by a judge where only one parent attends. The new figures cover nearly half of 5865 parenting orders for the previous year ending June 2006.

Principal Family Court Judge Peter Boshier suggests the figures indicate that “Mothers and Fathers seem to be saying that they prefer it that mothers care for children in the vast majority of cases. …In all probability what the Family Court is doing is mirroring social reality”.

Judge Boshier pointed out that judges awarded 18.4% of day-to-day care to fathers in defended hearings, a higher percentage than the 11% father care agreed to by consenting parents.

The Department of Statistics stopped collecting gender data in 1990 when sole maternal custody was 74%, sole paternal custody 13 %, and joint custody 9%. The new figures were requested by the NZ Herald.