Research on IPV against Men

Today I received a forwarded email from Dr. Denise HINES of Clarke University in Worcester MA.  She studied at UNH with Dr. Murray Strauss and so has immediate credibility in many men's eyes as coming from a  balanced "sociological" environment and not subject to mandatory feminist indoctrination.

However, most notable was that she and some of her colleagues had participated in a Round-table on Family Dynamics organized by Sen. Anne Cools in May 2011.  Sen. Cools is also very highly regarded due to her courage in advancing father-friendly solutions after Divorce.

Here is Dr. Hines presentation entitled  "Overlooked Victims of Domestic Violence: Men"

WSJ: What They Know

Because many are not aware of what goes on "behind our browsers" this is a shock to many. Certainly I was not aware of the extent of so many "tracers" - and the WSJ had done an excellent job of illustrating them.

Below are some of the examples of what websites are tracking and how:

And taking a single example:

Dictionary.com places 234 "trackers" on your PC when you visit their site.   These trackers consist of more and more sophisticated software codes - cookies were the basic trackers developed long ago, but with the ubiquitous use of Flash in ads and software usage, there are "Flash" trackers left behind as well. Finally, as newer browser technology like  HTML5 gets established as the new standard, even more sophisticated trackers called "beacons" are left behind.

Then there are the users of these "trackers". In our Dicionary.com example, only 11 trackers are "First" party trackers - that is directly related to fulfilling the request to Dictionary.com and perhaps additional cookies that allow them to keep track of when you return etc.  159 are cookies from a vast array of users - they could be Microsoft (from the version of IE Explorer, or from the  Search engine that got you there like Bing or Google. Finally, there are trackers from any one of Third Parties that have reached an agreement with Dictionary.com (which is actually owned by web marketer IAC/Interactive Corp.  The purpose and relationships here are among the most murky and little known and basically depend highly upon the goodwill of the "First" party dilligence. WSJ wryly notes that  "These privacy policies do not generally apply to the activities of the third-party trackers."

Power of a fathers presence

I read about this piece in the St. Louis Today.

A new Pew Research Center report on fathering trends reports that today's fathers are more active in their children's daily lives to a degree not seen in nearly half a century.

They also log more than twice as many hours on kid duty than did their own dads: In 1965, the average married father spent only 2.6 hours a week caring for his children; by 2000, that average had risen to 6.5 hours.  Live-in dads now regularly eat meals with their children, play with them, read to them, help them with their homework and ask them about their day.  

But, in 1960, just more than one in 10 children lived apart from their fathers. Today, more than one in four do.

Shockingly, 40 percent of dads who dropped out of high school live apart from their children, while only 7 percent of college graduates do. 

The consequences for children are profound. As statistics in the 2011 Father Facts report make clear, children who live apart from their biological fathers are more likely to suffer abuse, run afoul of the law, abuse drugs or alcohol, struggle with emotional and behavioral problems, live in poverty and engage in early sexual activity. Children raised by their married fathers and mothers, by contrast, fare better on nearly every sociological measure available, from their rates of graduation to their incidence of out-of-wedlock childbearing and divorce. 

Many children who grow up without live-in dads manage to succeed, of course. And some live-apart fathers make heroic efforts to stay involved in the lives of children from whom they are separated against their will, sometimes by mothers who undervalue a father's importance. But as University of Virginia sociologist and fatherhood expert W. Bradford Wilcox put it when I asked him about the issue this week, marriage and fatherhood are, for most men, "a package deal."

It is so clear - Father absence hurts children.

Keep Dad in the Game

Mexico’s Drug War, Feminized

I saw this article in today's New York Times, another shibboleth of feminism goes down.  Except they make it sound like all of theses women are idiots for love - and were taken advantage of by boyfriends, husbands, male relatives etc.  Of course, the question of where their new cars, fashionable clothes, makeup and support came from was never their concern.

Book Review: Spreading Misandry: Vol1

This book came out some time ago and has evolved into a series.  Since then Nathanson + Young have continued to explore the topic - currently the are working on the last Vol 4.

Here is a review I found online.

Sao Paulo council calls for Heterosexual Pride Day

...and the measured, egalitarian response of the San Paulo LGBT community?

The Brazilian Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Association criticized the legislation, saying it could provoke homophobic violence.

How many LGBTs will be attacked because of the message that only heterosexuality makes someone a moral person and a good citizen," the association said in a statement.

"The celebration of heterosexual pride is inappropriate because it belittles the just cause of the LGBT community," the statement added. "Unlike homosexuals, heterosexuals are not discriminated against simply for being heterosexuals."

Link1 

Only the good die young?

I greatly enjoyed this article as it addresses a persistent topic well known to men - we die earlier - and this article points out the most likely reason why deeply embedded into our genetic code.

Again and again across the animal kingdom, males die younger than females — a consistent, puzzling pattern of premature expiration that new research suggests may be the unavoidable biological cost of impressing the ladies.

An emblematic example of the trade-off is seen among houbara bustards, a large Middle Eastern bird with exuberant male courtship displays. Males age faster than females, and biologists found that exceptionally exuberant males age fastest.

The measure of aging was, appropriately, declining sperm quality.

Female Perpetrated DV

Some relevant references:

• SAVE (Stop Abusive and Violent Environments) - http://www.saveservices.org/
• Independent Women's Forum - http://www.iwf.org/
• media RADAR (Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting) - http://www.mediaradar.org/
• Dr. Martin S. Fiebert - Examining Assaults by Women on Spouses/Male Partners - Annoted Bibliography.
• Dr. Murry Straus - University of New Hampshire Family Research Lab

[A Propos: UK Daily Mail Online Aug 2, 2011 "Woman kills her boyfriend with spiked heel to the head"]

h/t Vidiot9000

Gender Inequality - a Male Perspective

Despite being a bit dated (video was produced in 2008, courtesy of The National Coalition for Men) there are still some useful website resources referred to at the end of the video.  This initial effort has "morphed" into a call for a special White House Counsel on Boys To Men.  It has accomplished a number of good updates since then and I recommend reading there. [Also, another academic effort in same direction I have referred to in this blog before.]

Here are the websites mentioned in video:

• www.trueequality.com/booklet/
• www.standyourground.com
• http://news.mensactivism.org/
• www.mensnewsdaily.com/
• www.glennsacks.com (now merged into http://www.fathersandfamilies.org/)

Also,

• www.mensightmagazine.com
• http://warrenfarrell.com
• http://menshealthnetwork.org/
• http://fathers-4-justice.org/
• www.mensweb.org (dead link)
• http://paternityfraud.com/
• http://notjustskin.org  (anti-circumcision awareness?)
• http://www.acfc.org
• http://www.menaregood.com/

[Another shorter, but still powerful summary of the issues facing men is here - Men's Movement Revealed - Sex Culture and a Mission.]   

Casualties from Afghanistan

Because these figures are not well documented as a matter of "Defense Department" policy due the controversy associated with "validating harm" (sort of the same reason why suicides - that are 78% Men/Boys - are never disclosed) I thought I should bookmark this website which appears to have the most up-to-date information I could find.   There are also other Conflicts mentioned and Causalities by Nationalities tabulated at this website.

It is correct that 157 Canadian Military Men and a few Women died in Afghanistan.  On July 1, 2011 Canadian Troops were relieved of this duty.  They have done an excellent job and I certainly hope their efforts help the people of Afghanistan achieve some greater autonomy in the future.  In their July Edition, Walrus Magazine reproduced portraits that had been painted of all of these fallen hero's.

Red Fridays Memorial webpage.

100th Anniversary of Fathers Day by Council on Contemporary Families

Too late, I came across these comments to mark the 100th Anniversary of Fathers Day from the Council on Contemporary Families. Fathers Day was 1st held on June 19, 1910 in Spokane WA - and as it mentions:

Unlike Mother's Day, politicians didn't immediately jump on the bandwagon.  In fact, the holiday was met with mockery in its early years. Not until 1972 did President Richard M. Nixon sign the holiday into law. 

Here are some of the Facts

1. There are 30.2 million fathers living with children under 18. Eighty-five percent of these men live with their biological children only, 11 percent live with stepchildren and 4 percent live with adopted children.
2. Almost one-quarter (24 percent) of the nation's 11.2 million preschool-age children with a working mom are regularly cared for by dad during mom's working hours. An estimated 158,000 men are stay-at-home dads whose wives support the family financially.
3. Fathers have more than tripled the time they spend in child care since the 1960s.
4. More than 24 million children live apart from their biological fathers. That is 1 out of every 3 (33 percent) children in America - three times the proportion (11 percent) of children who lived in absent-father homes in 1960.
5. Another 2 million children live without a mother in the home. In 2009, there were 1.7 million single fathers in the United States.  This amounts to 15 percent of all single parents. About half were divorced, 29 percent never married, 18 percent separated, and 5 percent widowed.
6. More than 250,000 children aged 18 and younger are being raised by two parents of the same sex.
7. Children whose fathers are positively involved with them have fewer behavior problems, higher cognitive development, greater maturity and a lower likelihood of drug and alcohol abuse than children whose fathers have only fair to poor relationships with them. Also, Fathers themselves benefit from being involved with their children and mothers tend to be less depressed when fathers have relationships with the children.  
8. It doesn't matter whether dad is a "biological" dad or whether he lives in the same home as his child: social support from dad is protective for children.   Adolescents with close emotional ties to both a stepfather and a nonresident biological father have better health outcomes than teens who are close to only one dad.
9. In Heterosexual Families, the Single Most Important Predictor of Whether Fathers Are Actively Involved with their Children is the Quality of the Father's Relationship with the Mother.
10. Successful programs do not focus on fathers as income providers but on helping men have relationships with their children that are more positive than their fathers had with them. Key components of this involve helping men find  ways to relate better to their children, especially how to discipline effectively but not harshly, and how to communicate better with their children's mother.

Reference: Unconventional Wisdom Vol. 3 April 2010

Link1

Link2

Link3

Eight-year-old drives truck while drunk father sleeps

Well, I would have thought he should receive some recognition that he - at least - wasn't driving, but 8 yrs old seems just as dangerous.  I believe the limit on driving a farm vehicle or a ATV in some locations is 12 yrs old.