Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Compensating for the father famine

What a mixed up and conflicted society we live in. It seems to boil down to not so much a breakdown between the genders but the different amount of trust and respect individuals feel towards the opposite sex.

Twenty eight percent of all families with dependent children are being led by just one parent, predominantly female. This has come about through a combination of changed attitudes and changed government provision. As we cannot possibly know the circumstances of all these families I am inclined to accept that collectively there is culpability on both parts. But the overriding ethos of socialists (and male socialists are just as much a part of this attitude) is that men are nearly always at fault when it comes to domestic difficulties. And so the past forty years has seen an increasingly feminist-influenced state compensating for his shortcomings.

Unfortunately there is a tendency for some people to turn into what you repeatedly tell them they are - deadbeat dads. And so, even more recently, it hasn't been enough to just replace fathers - they must also be financially and emotionally punished for their inadequacies.

NOW
we have schools crying out for male teachers to compensate for the father famine. Yet the expectations these guys have to meet (and suspicion they must endure) is keeping them well away. Who can blame them?

What worries me is those women who don't embrace feminist fascism in their everyday lives, don't do a very good job of opposing it. I understand why. "If you are not with us, you are against us," is the intimidating reception one encounters if you dare to criticise their cherished beliefs and institutions.

Some men are no angels. But 90 percent of those I have had anything to do with are not womanising pricks, or control freaks, or 'out-of-tune with their feelings' or bad fathers. That may be my good fortune. But I hope that it is more about expectation. We find what we look for. And if women have a singularly low opinion of men, men will reflect it. Heaven knows how the sons of men-maligners mature into anything but men worthy of malign. Behind every bad man is a mother.

Much of the feminist distaste for men, especially amongst the lower socio-economic ranks, has now developed into mutual loathing - except when temporary emotional and physical needs demand a ceasefire. Then babies result. And it becomes the preschool and school and secondary schools job to present the child with a positive male role model. But how is he viewed by the mothers? And what has she already inculcated in her female or male child? Is it ever going to be enough to expose a child to one good male role model she has to share and can only keep for a year? And if she is very young and inclined to physically express her fondness for her daddy-substitute, he has to keep her at a cool and uncompromising arms length. Is that really enough to compensate for a father?

I have a flashback to sitting on the back of my father's easy chair on Sunday afternoons while he watched the rugby, me endlessly combing his ever-thinning hair. He never complained. When I was sick he was very patient and would rub my tummy if I was hanging over the toilet vomiting. When I squashed my pet mouse accidentally, breaking its leg, my father made a splint and brought him back to health. (My ever-practical mother wanted to drown it).

It is just too sad that so many kids will never experience a good and loving father. And it is even sadder that the state, which is partly to blame for this tragedy, is now desperate to correct it through the education system. As I said last week about Key and Clark's youth policies, it is too little and too late for many of these children.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

A large north island town with eight primary schools,the highest decile 4 and four decile 1, has a total, between them, of three male teachers.
This same town recently had one of Annette King's "full moon" blips, and a street brawl between "criminal" gangs.
And Helen Clark has a State of the Nation speech proclaiming a success driven eight years in power.

Anonymous said...

Fishing sure beats mowing lawns and carting kids around town.

Anonymous said...

mawm said...
Fishing sure beats mowing lawns and carting kids around town.

I very much doubt that men who go fishing also fall into the uesless fathers category.

Anonymous said...

Please see www.cpr-mn.org, a MN based group trying to remove the bias in family court against fathers, where judges create forced fatherlessness and remove fit loving responsible dads who want nothing more than to be actively involved in their children's lives; but the government bureaucracy must strip fathers from the family, arbitrarily label them non-custodial dads (aka deadbeat dads), to create absent fathers, so they can pretend to fix a problem that doesn't really exist, in order to feed their bureaucracy (judges, lawyers, child support workers, guardian ad litems, custody evaluators, etc) and grow their own job security by creating increased family conflict at the expense of children. I am a rational feminist who believes in equal rights, but the man-hating radicals, posing as feminists, have taken over social policy. This must stop. Help us spread the message "hey government, get out of our families." Molly K Olson, Founder and Volunteer Executive Director, Center for Parental Responsibility

Anonymous said...

NEVER HEARD OF A MOTHERLESS SOCIETY, FUNNY THAT..I WONDER WHY THAT IS???

FERTILITY AND PREGNANCY IS A CONTROL TACTIC USED AMONGST BOTH THE RICH AND POOR MALES OF THE WORLD, THE EDUCATED AND UNEDUCATED. THE MARRIED AND UNMARRIED WOMEN, THE TEEN-AGED PARENTS AND THE THIRTY SOMETHINGS. LET'S FOCUS ON WHY MEN ARE ALLOWED TO DO THIS??? CONVENTIONS WERE ALL IN PLACE TO PREVENT THIS!! THERE USED TO BE SHAME ON THE MEN FOR WRECKING A WOMAN'S PROSPECTS, NOT VICTIM BASHING WOMEN WHO DON'T CHOOSE ABORTION, OR LOVELESS MARRIAGES.