#15, Jul-Sep 2001
Father&Child Work
Promoted in The Hague, Atlanta
Father&Child Trust delegate Harald
Breiding-Buss has presented the work of the Christchurch-based
Trust to international audiences in Holland and the US. On invitation
of The Hague-based Bernard van Leer foundation Harald travelled
to the Hague before presenting a workshop in “Building the
Father-Child relationship” at the 3rd International Fatherhood
Conference in Atlanta.
In Atlanta, Harald presented the Father&Child model of working
together with other organisations by providing a ‘male face’
to their services, such as ante-natal classes or the new Plunket
postnatal adjustment programme. Harald describes this as a ‘Rent-a-Dad’
approach: organisations who want to involve fathers in their existing
programmes, but don’t have any male facilitators to do so,
can incorporate a fathers component fronted by a Trust facilitator,
without having to undergo a major restructuring of their service
first.
“The common experience is that this leads to increasing cooperation
between the Trust and that organisation in other aspects of the
programme or the organisation”, says Harald.
New
Resource For At-Home Dads
Whether you call them at-home dads, househusbands or fulltime
fathers, one thing is certain: there are more and more of them.
The Father&Child Trust has completed a special edition of
Father&Child magazine for these guys featuring 16 pages of
stories, analysis, history resources and survival tips. A must-read
for every househubbie - or whatever you call them...
Write to F&C Trust, PO Box 26040, Christchurch, or ph. 372 9140 for a copy. Agencies: please let us know if you want a supply for your clients.
New dads in the UK can look forward to two weeks paid paternity leave after the current UK government was re-elected by voters earlier this month. As in Scandinavian countries the leave will be flexible, i.e. can be taken at any time during the first five years of the child’s life and does not all have to be taken in one installment. Currently only mothers are entitled to six weeks non-transferable maternity leave, and there area further six months paid parental leave to be shared between the partners as they see fit.
Paternity leave will go to the natural father, although
live-in partners of the mother may also be entitled where the
parents are separated. The UK Home Office - a kind of ministry
of domestic affairs - has also set aside funding for various other
father-related projects.
Men
on Children’s Agenda
Delegates to the Children’s
Issues Conference in Dunedin, 28 - 30 June, passed a resolution
to ask the minister for education to “explore barriers to
men’s involvement in Early Childhood settings”, and
take steps to reduce those.
Father&Child Trust delegate Harald Breiding-Buss gave a paper at the conference on “Bringing Men Back Into Children’s Communities”. The Children’s Issues Centre, who organised the conference, said to the Trust it wanted to use the paper for its post-conference media work.
Other resolutions passed concerned
the promotion of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of
the Child throughout the education sector, and the inclusion of
child advocates on all levels of government.
Dads
“Tossing and Teasing”
A nationwide US study on fathers
from welfare-receiving families showed no difference in attachment
indicators between these dads and what is known about their wealthier
counterparts. It also found no significant difference between
fathers living with their children and non-custodial dads. The
researchers from Michigan State University were surprised, however,
that far more children lived with both their parents than official
statistics indicate, and pointed out that there is a financial
incentive for welfare recipients to claim you are separated.
65% of fathers in the study said they thought about their child(ren) “all the time”. 85% said “holding the child is fun”. Favourites amongst play activities were ‘teasing’ (70% of residential fathers do that every day), tossing the child in the air, playing ball or letting the child ride on shoulders (about 30- 40% of fathers do it daily). “Chores” scored similarly high - except for one: nearly 80% of fathers said they never take care of their child when the child is ill, and nearly 90% never take the child to the doctor. Perhaps the worried mums rather do that themselves...