Fathers
of this World
| Issue: | 22,2003 | Page: |
16-17 |
|
Abstract: |
The annual International
Fatherhood Conference in Oxford England |
| Keywords: | Fatherhood, families, international conference |
In
Oxford, UK, 40 of the world’s outstanding researchers, practitioners
and
academics in the field of fatherhood and families spent a whole week
debating
issues of international concern. Father & Child’s very own Harald
Breiding-Buss
was there.
An idea
was born in Atlanta two years
ago, at the Annual International Fatherhood Conference: to organise an
event
that would be more than a conference, but an actual working meeting
with
tangible results.
UK
fathers group Fathers Direct ran with this
idea and actually made it happen. For this they received the support of
the
Holland-based Bernard van Leer Foundation, which has a focus on Early
Childhood
Development. All the more significant that a major international funder
like
the Foundation, almost exclusively interested in children's
development, should
sponsor a fatherhood event. And, of course, it makes perfect sense to
see
fatherhood predominantly as a child development issue. Many delegates
pointed
out that there is a need, internationally, to see the father’s
contribution as
an asset to children's development, rather than exclusively focus on it
as a
potential liability or danger.
Sounds
familiar? In an article for
Father&Child, Massey University's Stuart Birks once pointed out
that the
Family Court, for example, regards access to his child after separation
as a
"treat" for the father, rather than a developmental component in the
child's life. The government's benefit system makes a single parent
financially
better off than a two-parent, but unemployed, setup, and also offers a
single
parent quite extensive extra training benefits, which two-parent
unemployed
families are not entitled to. Where a mother is a teenager, social and
government workers are simply not interested in the father, unless he
behaves
badly. To recognise a man's presence in his children's life as an asset
to the
child, we still have a long way to go in New Zealand and, it seems, in
many
parts of the globe.
And so,
many delegates noted that in order to
have a part in your children's life a father is expected to prove
himself. The
phrase of a "good-enough father" went around: sure, in all parts of
the world there are ideas about the ideal father - but should being an ideal father be a
condition for input into your child's life?
Being
an ideal father is made much
harder by limited
access to all kinds of health and social services. The delegates were
virtually
unanimous that this is a major problem, and international agencies
received a
lot of criticism for targeting so many programmes and campaigns at
women,
without ever considering outcomes for men. As the African delegates
pointed
out, HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns simply do not include men. And yet
higher
mortality rates of women than men once infected with AIDS mean that
more and
more children grow up predominantly in the care of men.
The only
significant disagreements surfaced in
the area of Domestic Violence. In many parts of South America rates of
physical
and sexual abuse of women and children by men are high. All delegates
from
South America - Peru, Brazil, Jamaica and Mexico were represented -
thought
that campaigns questioning concepts of masculinity need to be part of
the
solution. Many Western delegates were decidedly uncomfortable with such
ideas
of "social engineering" and academics or politicians defining what
manhood is or isn't. Especially in the
Anglo-American world, domestic violence legislation is abused by those
who it
aims to protect, and often produces worse rather than better outcomes for
children.
Debating. Right
to left: Maxim
Kostenko (CEO, Altay Regional Crisis Centre
for Men; Russia), Harald
Breiding-Buss (Father&Child Trust, New Zealand), Margaret O’Brien
(standing, Centre for Research on the Child and Family; UK),
Jorge Lyra
(Programa PAPAI, Brazil).
All photos courtesy of Jim
Levine
Perhaps
the answer was to be found in the
research section of the conference, led by Michael Lamb and Charlie
Lewis -
both internationally renowned in the field for their work. Citing only
scientifically sound studies with high sample numbers and/or sound
methodology
they pointed out that father-child contact is a key to a man's own
self-image.
A wide variety of studies from different parts of the world have shown that spending time caring for children
affects a man's hormonal balance, mental health and view of himself in
similar
ways as women's. Men's and women's ways of parenting are surprisingly
similar
when they are put in comparable situations. It is not being a man that
makes
the difference - it's being away from children. South American men do
not
usually have such opportunities. Comparing notes with a Mexican
delegate I
discovered that New Zealand's rate of single fathers (as a percentage
of single
parents) is nearly 100 times as high as in Mexico, where it is only a
fraction
of a percent.
It was with some of the South American
delegates and people from Australia and the UK that we staged a role
play that
displayed the exclusion of men from health services throughout
pregnancy and
young parenthood. The biggest surprise for me was that the South
Americans
never doubted the desire of their men to be involved like this. They
blamed the
health system far more than they blamed the fathers for men's often
very
negative role in children's lives.
What perhaps struck me most is just how thin
the base of practical fathers work is internationally. With the
exception
perhaps of the US, where programmes target non-custodial fathers,
teenage
fathers, fathers of Latin-American ethnicity and fathers in prison,
most
countries do not have any major practical initiatives
that fosters father-child relationships.
Where they exist, they almost always run as grassroots community
initiatives
without any backing of governments - financial or otherwise. Noone knew
of a
magazine such as Father&Child
anywhere else in the world, although
the British launched their own version at the conference. In the UK and
Australia there is government support at least for involvement in pre-
and
after-birth healthcare, and the US and Brazil have programmes for
teenage
fathers. Initiatives elsewhere are often restricted to producing
posters or
books, and without sponsorship of the Bernard van Leer Foundation, most
practitioners would not have been able to attend this event.
So what came out of it?
The cynic in me would say: just more paper
that noone is going to read. For those of us in whose countries fathers
issues
are simply not on the agenda , however, there is now a tool to make
policy
makers pay attention. An international gathering of experts, backed by
a large
international agency, has clout and boosts the credibility of those who
as yet
have no standing in the political system. The Russian delegate has
emailed me
after the summit saying that he can now organise local round tables and
events,
and his voice is being heard more than before.
The message is really quite simple.
To look after our
children, we also have to look after our men.
Hard
at work: Delegates sweating it at Christ Church
College.