Eight teenage fathers or fathers-to-be aged between 16 and 18 at Christchurch Prison’s Youth Unit went through a five-session course on parenting and fatherhood facilitated by Father & Child Trust staff at the request of the Youth Unit.

The course is believed to be the first such initiative anywhere in New Zealand.

The course was designed after a focus group was held to determine what participants most wanted to get out of it, and the resulting course covered early childhood development as well as Family Law issues and the impact of ‘lifestyle choices’ such as drugs and alcohol on parenting.

Feedback obtained after the course was unanimous in that the course was too short and more was needed.
Trust workers were surprised by the high proportion of parents in the 40-bed unit, which is about 100 times higher than in the general population of this age group.

A study by the Nelson-Marlborough Institute of Technology and the Public Health Service has found that new fathers are worried about different things than what their partners think they are worried about!

The new fathers participating in the study ranked three issues most important of all: the lack of involvement in the transition process to parenthood, a stressed relationship with the partner, and the joys of being a dad.

However, the mothers in the study thought their men are at least just as concerned with money, sex and the gender of the baby – issues that were mentioned in the men’s interviews, but not even ranked as important.

“The data ranked as important by the women (but not by the men) tends to reflect commonly held views about how men respond to fatherhood.” write researchers David Mitchell and Philip Chapman.

“This raises questions about discourse that is dominant, where it originates and whose interests it reflects.”
The researchers acknowledge the limitations of their study, which involved only 11 couples who were interviewed in gender-specific groups before the birth and 6 months after.

The fathers in the study also widely criticised not being involved by midwives, Plunket nurses or other providers and ranked this as one of the top issues.

Father & Child Trust Coordinator Harald Breiding-Buss, who has worked with men in antenatal classes for 9 years, agrees with the findings. “The failure of ‘maternity’ services to address, or even know about, new fathers real concerns is a major contributing factor to relationships making an irreversible turn for the worse around this time”, he says.

“We’re having a 21st century maternity service system based on 1950’s stereotypical beliefs.”

Previous research by the Mitchell/Chapman team had found similar discrepancies between views and needs that men expressed to their interviewers, and perceptions held by maternity health professionals

Funding for father services in New Zealand remains marginal after both national and local government funders have declined parting with money for solid project proposals by the Father & Child Trust.

The Trust is the only legal entity in New Zealand providing on-the-ground services specifically for fathers and the children in their care.

S.K.I.P., a fund administered by the Ministry of Social Development, declined an application for renewal of funding for the Trust’s parent education project, targeting specifically marginalised groups of fathers, after having provided financial support since 2004.

The position was subsequently made redundant.

A research project aiming to establish support needs of solo fathers was declined by the ‘Blue Skies Fund’, a Families Commission fund.

And shortly before Christmas the Christchurch City Council decided not to support a Trust project on parent education for inmates at Christchurch Prison’s Youth Unit for funding through the Ministry of Youth Development’s ‘Youth Development Partnership Fund’.

In all three cases the reason given was that the funders felt applications did not match the criteria closely enough.

The Trust has never received significant amounts of government funding in its 10 year history with the exception of two years of SKIP funding worth about $55,000.

Its teenage fathers survey, for example, had been funded by a Netherlands-based Early Childhood Development agency because no monies could be obtained in New Zealand.

The steady growth of single-parent households that began in the early 80s has turned into a small decline, according to 2006 Census data.

30% of households with children were single parent households in 2006, compared to 31% in 2001. Only the West Coast regions of both islands were bucking the trend with slight increases.

The drop in single parent households was strongest in the South Island, especially in Canterbury, Otago and Tasman regions.

The region with the highest proportion of single parent households is Gisborne at 40%, the lowest is Tasman at 24%.

More detailed data, such as sex of parent in single parent households, or age of parents, is not yet available from Statistics New Zealand.

Census and other statistical data is available from the Statistics New Zealand web site www.stats.govt.nz or through any of their offices.

The Father & Child Trust is now officially represented in New Zealand’s largest city. Brendon Smith has taken the role of Auckland Regional Coordinator. He will be in charge of establishing local networks and contacts that will lead to the provision of Father & Child services in Auckland.

Brendon became involved with Father & Child through this magazine about three years ago and has contributed regularly. For the last two years he has also been a member of the Trust’s Board.

In his other life Brendon helps build websites, works as a yardman and is a primary parent to his daughter and son.

Father & Child work in Auckland is planned to start with the maternity sector, which means involvement in antenatal classes and postnatal support for new dads.

The Trust had targeted the sector in Christchurch since its beginning nine years ago and has built up a fair amount of knowledge about new father support. Much of this is available through the Father & Child web site and through the resource ‘ Dads and Babies’.

Brendon also wants to get a core group of dads together to manage the Auckland branch.

“I think the Auckland region already has good press and several well established men’s groups.”, he says. ”While some of them focus on father’s issues, not many have the backing of a good research and services base like the Father and Child Trust. I hope to establish a positive and effective service for all fathers by sharing information, including local features and promoting the magazine.”

The Trust had tried at the same time to establish a Regional Coordinator position in Wellington as well, but so far has been unsuccessful in obtaining funding.

The Trust’s Christchurch-based general Coordinator Harald Breiding-Buss is optimistic about the Auckland branch’s prospects:

“This is the first serious attempt in a very long time to establish regular services for dads outside Christchurch and hopefully the first step in father support being provided everywhere in New Zealand”, he says.

Auckland Father & Child Trust contacts:
PO Box 11 931, Ellerslie
Ph (09) 525 1690 or 021-892 980

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.

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’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.”

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.

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.