Waitakere City has held a ‘fathering week’ in the lead-up to Fathers Day starting on Monday 27 August.
Events included a panel discussion on supporting new fathers, a father and son hike in the Waitakeres and a ‘training night’ for dads to play games with their pre-schoolers.
Auckland University lecturer Warwick Pudney pointed out that there is no specific ‘fathering service’ in Waitakere City.
Wellington researcher Sarah Farquhar has issues a new comprehensive web-based resource about male pre-school teachers , which includes the proceedings of the first ‘Men in Early Childhood Care and Teaching Summit’ held in Christchurch in March this year.
Called a ‘Record of Challenges, Changes and Thinking’ it includes both political analysis and stories by male pre-school teachers .
The resource is available online from the childforum web site www.childforum.com, or write to PO Box 58-078 , Porirua.
An Auckland meeting on men’s rights and issues ended with a call for a ‘Men’s Rights Department’ at government level, similar to the Ministry of Women’s Affairs.
The meeting was called by Julie Whitehouse of ‘Single Parents New Zealand’, who was alarmed by the stories she heard from men during picnics and outings of her group.
(more…)
Scott (l) and Stefan with babies Pyper and Noah
The Department of Corrections has surveyed its female prisoners on how many have children under five and what their respective prison terms were, but dads were not asked.
A proposed law change will allow children under two years of age to live with their imprisoned mothers if certain conditions are met, but the bill does not allow for such an option for fathers, regardless of the circumstances.
August saw the highest prison population ever recorded in New Zealand at nearly 8,300 people, despite over a decade of declining crime rates.
20% of the surveyed women has children under five, and about 10% had children under two. Two thirds of the surveyed mothers had minimum security classification, and just over half served less than two years.
The Father & Child project to establish an ongoing ‘New Dads Edition’ of Father & Child magazine has come closer to realisation after a significant funding boost from the Canterbury Community Trust as well as support from the Lion Foundation.
Other funders have also been approached to support seed funding for a special edition of Father & Child whicht will be distributed through the ‘Bounty Birth Pack’ to hospitals nationwide.
Eventually the publication, aimed to have 52 full-colour pages, is to become self-funding largely through advertising. It will cover issues and stories around childbirth and the early months from a father’s point of view.
Father & Child Trust had produced a New Dads Edition in 2000, which was distributed through Canterbury only and could not be sustained as an ongoing publication at the time.
Fat children are more likely to have their father to blame for their weight problem than their mother, a new study shows.
Research by Australian child health experts has revealed that fathers who are disengaged or do not set clear limits for their kids are more likely to have heavier children.
Dads who did lay down boundaries generally had children with a lower body mass index (BMI), the study of almost 5000 youngsters found.
Surprisingly, a mother’s parenting behaviour or style apparently had no impact on whether a child was overweight or obese, according to research by Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and the Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne. The specialists said it was vital to study early parenting because home life often established patterns for lifelong obesity.
Earlier research had shown that childhood obesity was highly stable during the primary school years, right from school entry, Professor Wake said. “For instance, the BMI of a prep-grade child has an 85 per cent correlation with their BMI three years later,” she said.
“Obese school children are very likely to become obese adults.”
Extra weight is a precursor to serious childhood and adult diseases such as asthma, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer.
A new research fund set up by the Families Commission lists fathers as one of six priorities considered for funding amongst some more obscure themes such as ‘Impact of Global Climate Change on Families’ and ‘Intergenerational Transmission’. The fund will distribute $1 million per year, and complements the two existing research funds, ‘Blue Skies’ and ‘Innovative Practice’, each distributing $100,000 per year.
A families commission report compiled from community consultations in the three main centres also identifies the need for ‘fathers to be more engaged in parenting programmes and [to be] generally better supported in their parenting role.’
Participants in all three consultation meetings also identified one-stop family service hubs as an optimal method of delivery of support and education for parents.
The Families Commission was set up in 2004 in what was considered to be a concession by the Labour government to its then parliamentary supporter United Future. Its total annual budget is around $7.5 million.
The United Nations’ Human Rights Committee has admonished the New Zealand government for the length of time it took for one father to have his case dealt with in the Family Court.
The father had been fighting for access to his three children since 2000 and had been subjected to allegations of sexual abuse and domestic violence.
It took more than three years for the case to reach the Court of Appeal, and the UN Human Rights Commission said that breaches the father’s human rights and the length of process could “irreparably harm the interest of a non-custodial parent”.
The NZ government had been given 90 days to respond to the Committee’s finding, and Courts Minister Rick Barker had already told the ‘Dominion’ that he accepts a breach of covenant had occurred.
Father & Child Trust coordinator Harald Breiding-Buss said that the criticism by the UN Human Rights Commission may well have wider ramifications.
“The overriding principle of the Family Court is the best interest of the child, but here’s a UN committee saying that there are also Human Rights issues involved for the parents. It may mean that an exclusive focus on the child by the Court is actually not consistent with Human Rights principles if it ignores the parents’ interests.”
21 August 2007 marks the official date when the Father & Child Trust has been in existence as an incorporated body for 10 years. The occasion will be marked on the day of the Trust’s Annual General Meeting in late June.
Father & Child Trust is based in Christchurch, but since 2006 there has also been a small home-based office in Mt Wellington, Auckland, with some funding attached to it.
The Trust evolved from a playgroup of mainly at-home fathers which started in 1994, and has worked towards better inclusion of fathers in health, social and community services ever since. The Trust funds and owns Father & Child magazine.
It was the Trust who put teenage fathers on the agenda and achieved a better recognition of these ‘other’ teenage parents.
The Trust has also pioneered working with fathers ante– and postnatally, and produced a ‘Dads and Babies’ resource for maternity health providers.
A special anniversary issue of Father & Child magazine is planned.
We produced NZ’s only ‘Dads and Babies Guide’ and since 2003, the national ‘Father and Child’ magazine.
As NZ’s longest established Fathers group, we now provide local support in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch while encouraging Dads all over NZ!
Father and Child Trust are funded by Lotto and Community Grants, Private Donations and magazine subscriptions.
