August 6, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

Today someone sent me some sort of statement (I received it a number of times already) falsely alleged to have been composed by Andy Rooney.

I wrote to her:

Claire,

No, anyone searching his memory for a 60-minutes program in which he did say that will search in vain.  It was not Andy Rooney who said or wrote it.

Here is the truth about that one: http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/rooney2.asp  [You can find the whole piece she sent at that link.]

As you can see at his website, the true originator of it, Frank Kaiser, did not say the gross parts of it either.  Which proves that one does not have to be gross to be clever, because clever he most certainly is, even though he is a feminist who is smart enough not to mention the female version of Western Chivalry.  Still, perhaps now there isn’t a female version of that anymore, especially not to be found amongst the young women of North America today, although in some nations and cultures it still exists.  I believe, if memory serves me right, that it was called femininity.

Mozart once wrote something to his sister about the power of women, and that one, I think, is truly clever.

…a free translation of a poem by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (the poem was part of a letter he wrote in Vienna, August 18, 1784, to congratulate his sister on her impending marriage):

You’ll experience much in matrimony
that was half a riddle to you;
soon you’ll know from experience,
how Eve once had to deal with
giving birth to Cain.

However, sister, those matrimonial duties
you’ll do gladly with all your heart,
because, believe me, they aren’t hard.
But every matter has two sides:
although matrimony brings much joy,
it’ll bring you grief as well.

Therefore, when your husband offers,
what you feel you don’t deserve,
dark demeanor in his bad mood,
then think, that is male whim,
and say: Lord, Thy will be done
by day and mine at night!

A little later, in the beginning of the 19th century, Alexander Pushkin told us about the travails of Eugene Onegin and his views about the power that women exercised over their husbands.  (The husband may think he rules the roost, but who rules the rooster?  Right!)

XXXI She was like him and always sported the latest fashions of the town; but, without asking, they transported her to the altar and the crown. The better to dispel her sorrow her clever husband on the morrow took her to his estate, where she, at first, with God knows whom to see, in tears and violent tossing vented her grief, and nearly ran away. Then, plunged in the housekeeper’s day, she grew accustomed, and contented. In stead of happiness, say I, custom’s bestowed us from on high. XXXI For it was custom that consoled her in grief that nothing else could mend; soon a great truth came to enfold her and give her comfort to the end: she found, in labours and in leisure, the secret of her husband’s measure, and ruled him like an autocrat - so all went smoothly after that. Mushrooms in brine, for winter eating, fieldwork directed from the path, accounts, shaved forelocks,4 Sunday bath—, meantime she’d give the maids a beating if her cross mood was at its worst — but never asked her husband first. – Alexander Pushkin, “Eugene Onegin,” (begun in 1824) Chapter Two, (Translated by Charles Johnston)

[From the translator’s notes]: 4. Serfs chosen for the army had their forelocks cut off. [Note, as always during the history of mankind, it was the men, not the women, who were chosen for the army and to die on the battlefield, but that, like so many other things that men do (anyone can see the evidence all around), is something many women readily forget about. —WHS]

Aside from the bit from Snopes, all of that is — except for a couple of very small edits — from the web page at http://fathersforlife.org/hist/gerst.htm, which presents the translation of a somewhat longer poem about a prison pastor who had his very own patriarchal ways of looking at and dealing with dissidence in marital relations in the late 1840s.

Here is another side of the story.  It is more about the things that your story alluded to, “The ‘evil’ that men did.”

Enjoy,

Walter

Posted in Men and Women Work, Men's Issues, Feminism, Propaganda Exposed, Women's Violence | Print | No Comments »

May 13, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

Bill [not his real name] wrote:

Dear President or Chair person,

I’m [name omitted], a student of the [location omitted] Film School.

I’m going to make a 10 minutes mini documentary about marriage life of Man.

I came from Korea and had run Korean Fathers Club for 10 years before I moved to Canada. So I have quite a keen interest in fatherhood.

According to your research, about 75 % divorces are being initiated by women.

I would like to interview about this matter

It won’t be long and it will take 2 hours maximum.

This film will show that why young people hesitate [to enter] marriage.

Your prompt reply would be highly appreciated.

Thanks and Regard

Hello Bill [not his real name],

Thanks for writing,

The research you referred to is not mine.  I just reported on it.  The research was done by the authors of the studies mentioned in the article that may have sparked your interest.  (Unfortunately, you failed to identify which specific article out many on the topic at our website it was that you referred to.)

You can find more details on the statistics of concern in the following (source location):

Shattered Myths

When it comes to child custody, Canadian divorce law is weighted in favour of the wife.  But new research has stripped women of their moral superiority: It suggests they initiate divorce twice as often as men. (Alberta Report, Jan 11, 1999; the article is no longer available at the website of the Alberta report.  It is now available here.  2003 03, —WHS)

See also the study report “These Boots are Made for Walking: Why Wives File for Divorce,” by Margaret F. Brinig and Douglas W. Allen.  The article quotes extensively from that report.

• “These Boots are Made for Walking: Why Wives File for Divorce,” by Margaret F. Brinig and Douglas W. Allen.

This study report is based on an analysis of 46,000 divorce certificates from Connecticut, Virginia, Oregon and Montana.  The authors state that the data from these records are relatively accurate, “since they are compiled by judicial personnel from facts alleged by the parties and proven based upon sworn testimony in court hearings.”  [My emphasis, —WHS]
That would reflect assumptions that all allegations are true, that only sworn true testimony is being accepted by the courts, and that the judicial system is absolutely neutral and doesn’t exhibit any gender bias.  Because all three of those assumptions are patently false, it is debatable to what extent the conclusions by the author are accurate, namely that although often the act of filing for divorce is being motivated by considerations of material gain through seizing assets, it is also driven to a considerable extent by the wish to escape exploitation.  The impression is given that in the latter case it is the wife who has the impression that she is being exploited by her husband.

The authors found that “who gets the children is by far the most important component in deciding who files for divorce, particularly when there is very little quarrel about property, as when the separation is long.”  Although the authors report that women file more often for divorce, by far, and increasingly so, they purport that this is so because women generally are more attached to the children of the marriage than the fathers are.

Information from the report was extensively quoted in Shattered Myths.

MS Word files containing the study report are available at

• http://fathersforlife.org/boots113.doc (text and footnotes)
• http://fathersforlife.org/tables10.doc (tables)

Caution: The footnotes weren’t shown when I displayed the files using MS Word6 on my PC.  However, the printouts of the files contained all of the footnotes.

The study report by Brinig and Allen is also available in HTML (abstract) and in PDF format (full text — 189 kB).

I suggest that you read the study report by Brinig and Allen, and that you then try to arrange for an interview with them.

For some constructive alternatives to that, I suggest that you contact Stephen Baskerville, the author of “Taken into Custody: The War Against Fatherhood, Marriage And Family.“  He has researched and written extensively for a considerable number of years on the issue of fatherhood.  His website is at http://www.stephenbaskerville.net/

A discussion of marriage and fatherhood lacks in an important aspect if it leaves out divorced and expunged fathers, that is, fatherhood (or the lack of it) for children of divorce.  Feminist propaganda tells us that fathers routinely and overwhelmingly walk out of their marriages and their children’s lives.

A thorough debunking of that feminist, propagandistic maxim is contained in a book you should also familiarize yourself with before interviewing either Brinig, Allen or Baskerville.  That book is based on the findings of extensive, government-sponsored research done by Sanford Braver.

Braver, Sanford Ph.D. — Divorced Dads: Shattering the Myths : The Surprising Truth About Fathers, Children, and Divorce (Hardcover - 288 pages (October 1998) J P Tarcher; ISBN: 087477862X ) Review

According to Marty Witbeck: “…Buy extra copies for judges, key lawyers, and members of your state legislature.  Send a copy to your Governor, the Speaker of your House, and the presiding officer of your Senate.  Send a copy to each journalist writing on family issues in your local newspapers.  Send copies to the editors of those newspapers.”

The book reviews accessible at Amazon.com are few and short.  They do not do either the subject or the book full justice.  I wrote extensively and frequently about Sanford Braver’s book.  He and his book are mentioned in everyone of the articles on this list.

It is my understanding that Dr. Braver, too, is readily available for interviews.

It is not that I don’t wish to be interviewed by you, but the reality of it is that I am sufficiently well informed to be able to judge correctly that any or any combination of the individuals mentioned above (or any others like them) would be a far better choice for interviews.

I am getting on in age (74 years old), am very tired and have not done any original research (other than writing about the research done by others).  Most importantly, I have no academic credentials.  I would not be the best choice through which to promote objective knowledge about the issue of interest to you.

All the best,

Walter Schneider
http://fathersforlife.org
_______________
P.S.: Much of the social research and the issues it relates to that I wrote about it somewhat dated.  That does not mean that the information pertaining to it is now false.  It is just as correct as it always was.

Things have become worse for fathers, families and marriage.  We see now some of the final battles in the war against the family.  That war is nothing other than an outcome of the agenda for the implementation of the planned destruction of the family.

By the way, and on a more personal level, I worked in Seoul, in 1961 and 1962, on the construction of the Kwang Wha Moon telephone switching exchange.  Perhaps that is why I was happy to accommodate a more recent comment from Korea about the issues of men and fathers.  Well, I can’t date that information quite exactly.  Normally I show the dates for when something was posted or updated but, for unknown reasons, not in this case.  Nevertheless, I believe that the information dates to about the time when you left Korea, for which reason you can probably relate to it fairly well.  Therefore, you will be able to determine to what extent things differ now with respect to how little men are respected in our society.  But that is not all.

Things are no longer the way they were for families and fathers in Korea when I was there or when you still were.  Things will become somewhat worse yet, before or if they become any better.  However, before any improvement takes place we will most likely have to endure a socialist, totalitarian world government through which we will all become normalized down to the lowest common denominator, the status of the poorest nations in the world.

The goal of the agenda for the implementation of the planned destruction of the family is the reduction of the world population down to 300 million to one billion people. –WHS

Posted in Men and Women Work, Men's Issues, Family, The New World Order | Print | No Comments »

May 3, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

Vicky [not her real name],

You told me that you don’t like reading.  Nevertheless, do me a favour and read all of what I am writing here.  After all, it’s not that long a write-up.

I know that you did not write anything in relation to those two photos you sent under the heading “Why we have two hands”, one of a little girl with a credit card and a cellphone, and the other of a little boy holding a remote control and his genitals.

Up-front, I don’t feel offended by the two photos, even though the photos offend both women and men.  The reason why I don’t feel offended is that the premise of the alleged “humour” in those photos is based in ignorance or, perhaps more correctly, in propaganda.  Jokes are humorous because they contain a kernel of truth.  They are often the more humorous the more of the truth they contain.  As far as that goes, your two photos contain very little truth and even less humour.

Objectively, I don’t want to over-analyze what is behind the two photos, but both of them are serious distortions of reality.  Many of such distortions are not as funny as they appear to be at first glance.

The photos brought something to my mind that happened when Ruth and I went with my older brother, who is somewhat of a feminist, to Northern Michigan.

I wrote a comment about that incident, and I made sure to drive my point home with my brother after the fact, by sending him a copy of that commentary.  Here is the main issue.

We had just arrived at the Mackinaw bridge and were at a visitor information centre.  There was an exhibit of a model of the bridge.  The short write-up associated with that model provided a few statistics, such as how long the bridge was, when it was built, how much time it took to build, how many men it took to build the bridge and how many of them had died building it.

My brother speaks and understands English, but to let the facts sink into his memory, he translated the facts and figures into German.  In doing so, he mis-translated “men” into the German word “Menschen”, which means “people” and not “men”.

I corrected him and explained that the bridge was built by men, specifically, and not just by “people”, and that it was men and only men, not just people, who had died during its construction.

It is something that many people, especially those of a feminist bent, forget when they re-write history, even if it is nothing more than propagandistic jokes or photos such as the two you sent out, photos that downplay the role of men in our society and throughout civilization.

As I explained to my brother, just about everything you see that did not grow by itself, was built or made by men.  Certainly, many things were made by women, clothing, for example (although even much of that is being made by men), but also the tools with which clothing is being made were designed and made by men, too.

Look around you.  Everything, absolutely everything you see and use right now, has been made by men.

Look out of the window.  Everything that did not grow by itself has been designed, engineered and made by men: your car, the roads it travels on, the materials both are made from — all made or produced by men.  The trailer you live in, the materials it was built with, the tools to work those materials, the mining that was done to produce some of the raw materials for the construction materials, all made by men.

Men have two hands, and so do women.  I won’t run down the good things that women do with their hands, no more so than I wish anyone to forget or make light of what men do with their hands.  Let’s not forget that men use their hands for far more than holding remote controls and their genitals.

It is said that women’s work is never done.  Just the same, it can also be said that men’s work is never done, but that, far more importantly, men’s work is never seen or, thanks to feminism, hardly ever recognized properly.

However, men’s work comes at a terrible cost.  Men’s lives are on average ten percent shorter than women’s lives.  That is mostly because men’s work kills far more men (e. g.: about 100,000 men — and no women — died throughout the world in mining accidents during the last century) than women’s work kills women.

For as long as statistics on that have been kept, about 18.5 job fatalities out of every twenty involved men as victims.  The reasons why women have not yet reached equality with men in that area of human endeavor (the statistics show not the slightest trend of that being changed any time soon, if ever) is a subject of a different and far longer discussion.  I will not go into that right now.

So, even if we try to be funny, let’s be a bit more honest about what we do with our hands.  A lie, even if made out to be humorous, is still a lie.

All the best,

Walter

Posted in Men and Women Work, Feminism, Propaganda Exposed | Print | No Comments »

April 1, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

You may have an interest in odd things, but I don’t know whether you have an interest in odd art.

The front page of today’s Edmonton Journal carries an image that is an example of Escher’s art.  That image does not do complete justice to the relationship between mathematics and art that Escher’s art focuses on.  Escher’s art fascinated me since before I could read.

Here is a gallery of Escher’s art.

There is a specialized branch of such art, perspective street art, something that M.C. Escher did not focus on.  A more specific designation of such art is anamorphic painting.  That is not a modern art form but goes back to the exploration of perspective in painting during the Early Renaissance, close to 500 years ago.

Main Entry: ana·mor·phic
Pronunciation: \ˌa-nə-ˈmȯr-fik\

Function: adjective

Etymology: New Latin anamorphosis distorted optical image

Date: circa 1925

: producing, relating to, or marked by intentional distortion (as by unequal magnification along perpendicular axes) of an image <an anamorphic lens>

(Source)

You see practical applications of that sort of distortion every time you drive on major thoroughfares: the direction arrows painted on the pavement for the turning lanes and for the through-lanes on the highway. I would appreciate it if anyone could point out examples of female artists who made inroads into the artistic exploration of the peculiarities of anamorphosis. It seems to me that, as a rule, just as in mathematics, here, too, female genius glares by its absence throughout history.

Posted in Men and Women Work | Print | No Comments »

May 5, 2009 by Walter Schneider.

By Allan Chinnery

It is now official that Canada is in a depression as deep as any that it had been in before.  The Bank of Canada interest rate at 0.25% tells you that they are scared —-less and see no solution to the problem.  However there is a bigger problem.

The smart money, that of judges and lawyers was invested offshore because with Canadas judiciary it is not safe to keep it in Canada.  Such investments lost much of their equity when the banks started going down.  Most notable of interest to members of the Canadian Bar Association would have been UBS and the British banks.

Oh well, that is the nature of the investment game and it had a better chance of survivng there than being raided by Canada’s judges and tax department.  But it is high time Canada came up with a stimulus package for Canada’s divorce industry.

There are rumors floating around among the women of Canada that just stamping their pretty little feet does not add to the national product or in anyway raise the standard of living for Canadians.  What is worse, a few way-out-there females are actually saying it might be possible that Mr. Judge stomping his $400 dollar shoes and blustering about the power of his prison gangs will not produce wealth for anyone in Canada.

These terrible and seditious rumors have caused a serious slowdown in the divorce industry making it almost impossible for the afore-mentioned investors to recoup their losses.  It has been said that there are women in Canada that are working in and outside of the home, maintaining their credit ratings, being financially responsible.  I even heard of one who, for the good of her family, was driving a 5 year old car.

No wonder the auto industry is broken.  As you can see these untruths about how money is made are destroying the whole economy and are putting the judiciary’s credibility and powers into disrepute.

Stevie and the boys should immediately hold a secret meeting on how to infuse millions of dollars into the domestic violence sector to get these heretical ideas from the minds of Canadian women.  Failure to do this will undermine the power of judges blustering and foot stomping as well as perhaps resulting in calluses on the hands of members of the Law Society.

Such things will destroy the Canada that we have known for the last 20 years as it will fall backward in time to a place requiring effort not effect.

____________
Allan Chinnery is an expunged, squeezed-dry father who survives by working as a gardener for about ten to 15 hours a week.

Posted in Child Support, Economy, Judiciary, Social-Destruction Enterprise, Men and Women Work, Men's Issues | Print | No Comments »

April 9, 2009 by Walter Schneider.

The pay gap between what men and women earn continues to be in the news. New legislation that aims at eliminating that pay gap is constantly and repeatedly being put into force.  Yet, as Warren Farrell explained in a 2005 speech at the Cato Institute, there are very good reasons for the pay gap.

The pay gap, where it exists, is due to women’s choices.  On the other hand, when women work just as men do — never marry, don’t have children, work in risky, stressful jobs, as many hours as never-married, childless men work at those jobs — women not only earn equal pay, they earn more than their male counterparts do, more by a considerable margin.

If you are interested in that issue and its causes, watch the video clips identified by the following.

mensnewsdaily.com
Apr 8, 2009

Why Men Earn More
By Bernard Chapin

What follows is a series of video segments from Dr. Warren Farrell’s 2005 speech at the Cato Institute entitled “Why Men Earn More.” I thank Argus Eyes for posting this last fall. A reader reminded me of it the other day. I was not yet writing the daily blog at the time in which it was originally published so I could not link back to it. By the way, if you’re not familiar with Argus Eyes check out some of his other videos and don’t forget to subscribe if you like him. He’s a fine fellow. Here’s Part I: (Full Story)

Posted in Civil Rights, Economy, Men and Women Work, Men's Issues, Feminist Jurisprudence, Family, Propaganda Exposed | Print | No Comments »

March 13, 2009 by Walter Schneider.

The following two excerpts from a couple of articles illustrate an instance of government censorship of information that has had a major impact on the promotion of pro-female and anti-male labour legislation.

Rather than using the truth to debunk the need for that intended legislation, the US Government pushed through the passage of that anti-male and discriminatory legislation, while at the same time removing all pointers to the report that had already been published prior to any attempts to have the legislation pass. The truth is now hidden, and the legislation that ostensibly but falsely and unjustifiably addresses non-existent inequities in wages and salaries paid to women now has the force of the law.

1. US Chamber of Commerce

January 28, 2009

Reasons for Wage Disparity - The Missing Report

by Mike Eastman

Earlier this month (before the end of President Bush’s term), the Labor Department released a report called An Analysis of the Reasons for the Disparity in Wages Between Men and Women – it was prepared by a contractor, the CONSAD Research Corporation and included a forward written by the Labor Department.

When the report was released, it was posted on the “highlights” section of the OFCCP’s web site (the OFCCP is part of the Labor Department’s Employment Standards Administration).The link to the file was www.dol.gov/esa/ofccp/Gender_Wage_Gap_Final_Report.pdf but don’t click just yet.

After the change in administration, we noticed that the report has been removed from the Labor Department’s web site. The previous link does not function and other searches on the DOL site have not been successful at finding any reference to the report.This report is very timely – the House has already passed two bills, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act, dealing with pay equity issues – one of those bills could be signed into law by the end of this week. We are disturbed that the DOL would take this step while Congress is considering these important issues – especially in light of the President’s call for a “new era of openness” in government.

Today, we filed this Freedom of Information Act request to receive an “official” copy of the report in addition to all records related to the Department’s decision to remove the report from its web site. You don’t have to wait for a response though, we fortunately have a saved copy of the analysis, take a look….(Full Story)

2. Renew America

March 12, 2009

Obama’s first cover-up: the gender wage gap myth

By Carey Roberts

Liberals never tire of convincing persons to believe they are victims in dire need of a government hand-out. But this time it’s a case of outright mendacity aided by the concealment of a high-level government official.

During the Democratic primaries, Hillary Clinton repeatedly made the claim that women suffer from pay discrimination. Barack Obama’s website likewise asserted, “Despite decades of progress, women still make only 77 cents for every dollar a man makes. Throughout his career, Barack Obama and Joe Biden have championed the right of women to receive equal pay for equal work.”

It was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who engineered the recent passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Act. And just a few weeks ago Rep. George Miller of California made the red-meat assertion that women earn “78 cents for every dollar that is earned by a man doing the same job with the same responsibilities.”

Democrats call it as the “gender wage gap,” but I prefer to think of it as the “scare-the-female-electorate-into-submission” ploy. Claims about sex-based wage discrimination have been repeated so often that many Americans simply accept them as fact. But a recently published — and quickly suppressed — study reveals a different picture.

Titled “An Analysis of Reasons for the Disparity in Wages Between Men and Women,” the report tallies the results of over 50 studies. No one questions the fact that on average, men are paid more than women. But turns out this is an apples-to-oranges comparison.

The paper concludes the 20-cent odd wage difference is not caused by discrimination. Rather it’s women exercising their right to make lifestyle choices. What choices are we talking about?

1. A greater percentage of women chose to work part-time.

2. Women may opt to leave the work force for childbirth, child care, or elder care.

3. Women are often willing to accept a lower paying job in return for family-friendly policies that allow them to have fewer hours, flexible schedules, and a shorter commute.

In addition, women work fewer hours than men. According to an article posted on the Department of Labor website, “Among full-time workers, 24% of the men, compared to 10% of the women, usually worked more than 40 hours per week:” http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1984/06/art4full.pdf

And then the fact that men tend to work in occupations that are far more likely to injure, maim, or kill….(Full Story)

The US Government is not the first to engage in such a cover-up. There was a similar cover-up of a government-published study report that debunked the wage gap myth. That was during the early 1990’s, in Canada. The report that was covered up then, after it had originally been published at the website of Statistics Canada, was a study report by Ted Wannell and Nathalie Caron, commissioned by Statistics Canada, “THE GENDER EARNINGS GAP AMONG RECENT POSTSECONDARY GRADUATES, 1984-92″ (11F0019MPE No. 68, ISBN: 0-662-22499-X).

Abstract:

This study attempts to compare the earnings of men and women on an equal footing by concentrating on recent postsecondary graduates and using survey data on a number of earnings-related characteristics. The data cover three graduating classes of university and community college students: 1982, 1986 and 1990. These data indicate that the gender earnings gap among graduates has narrowed in recent years. In fact among the most recent class, we found that female university graduates are rewarded slightly better than their male counterparts after controlling for experience, job tenure, education and hours of work. A small gender gap persists among community college graduates: about three-and-a-half percent on an hourly wage basis. For all graduates, the earnings gap tended to increase with age, even after controlling for previous work experience….(Full Story)

Carey Roberts, in his article on the wage-gap myth and on the US Government’s efforts to promote that myth and to keep it alive, marvels that,

Claims about sex-based wage discrimination have been repeated so often that many Americans simply accept them as fact. But a recently published — and quickly suppressed — study reveals a different picture.

Nevertheless, even if such revelations of the truth about such persistent myths (there are many comparable myths, such as the age-old canard about male violence) would not be so extremely and purposely short-lived, there is one aspect of such propaganda that must never be forgotten:

The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan….

The function of propaganda is, for example, not to weigh and ponder the rights of different people, but exclusively to emphasize the one right which it has set out to argue for. Its task is not to make an objective study of the truth, in so far as it favors the enemy, and then set it before the masses with academic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly.

—Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, Chapter VI

There it is. The task of successful propaganda “is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly,” and therefore includes deliberate censorship of the truth.

–Walter

Posted in Men and Women Work, Censorship, Men's Issues, Propaganda Exposed, The New World Order | Print | No Comments »

February 2, 2009 by Walter Schneider.

New York Times
January 29, 2009

2 Kids + 0 Husbands = Family

By EMILY BAZELON

At 5:45 a.m. on a recent weekday morning, Fran McElhill padded into her kitchen, in square-framed glasses and a knee-length cotton nightgown, and put on the day’s first pot of coffee. While it brewed, she sorted laundry — pencil jeans for her slight 7-year-old daughter, Lili, Nike T-shirts for 10-year-old MeiLin. When the girls woke up, their long hair matted from sleep, Fran gave them each a mug of Campbell’s vegetable soup and parked them in front of Nickelodeon so she could get dressed for her job as a lawyer at a regional New Jersey firm….

In 1960, unmarried mothers accounted for about 5 percent of births in the United States. Now they are having almost 40 percent of the country’s babies….(Full Story)

Posted in Men and Women Work, Civil Rights, Men's Issues, Child-Custody Awards, Family, Feminism | Print | No Comments »

February 2, 2009 by Walter Schneider.

TopNews.in (India)
02/02/2009

Submitted by Mohit Joshi

London, Feb 2 : A new survey suggests that kids are being “damaged” with more and more mothers going to work.

It has been said that the growing economic independence of women from their male partners is contributing to family break-ups.

As per the report from The Church of England-affiliated Children’s Society and the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams’, more mums with babies just under a year old are working, and carers are looking after their kids.

About seventy per cent of the mothers of 9-12 month-old babies do some paid work compared to a quarter 25 years ago, and family break-ups are up, with a third of 16-year-olds now living apart from their biological dad, reports the Sun….(Full Story)

Posted in Men and Women Work, Health, Child-Custody Awards, Family | Print | No Comments »

January 20, 2009 by Walter Schneider.

The Sydney Morning Herald
20 January 2009

By Catharine Munro

As I switch roles and become the parent leaving for work, I can’t even
score a cute little wave in response to my faux-brave calls of “bye, bye”.
Instead I am the target of the baby stare as she glides off in her father’s
arms to the car for a busy day of beach, supermarket and kid-shuttling….(Full Story)

_____________
F4L: I read the whole article and was reminded of a little poem that was often told to me in a sing-song voice when I was about 4 years old, in 1940.  The poem can be adapted to wean just about any child that age from the habit of being greedy, unsatisfied and what have you:

Little Cathy doesn’t-know-what has everything she wants,
And what she has she doesn’t want,
And what she wants she doesn’t have.
Little Cathy doesn’t-know-what has everything she wants.

I wonder if Catharine Munro is a true feminist who is in touch and miraculously connected with all other women; have them feel what she feels and she feeling what they do.

That can hardly be so.  If she truly were so connected would she not feel what other women feel, what feminism promised: The joys of motherhood - undisturbed by her husband and father of her child; the liberated feeling of being beholden to no man, and being able to earn her own living on her own (even though her husband contributes generously through baby-sitting services and the other household chores he does); the pride of being able to do everything that needs doing in the home, as well or better as any man could?

But would she not also feel what other women not so liberated as she is feel: To love a man and be loved back by him, to be able to devote herself to her child without having to rush off to work; to have a husband do all of the things that husbands do in addition to working a full-time job earning the income for their family, to love him for it and again to be loved back by him for being appreciated?

Even if she were thus connected and were to get mixed messages, should she not be grateful for having the liberty of doing everything she wants, whenever she wants, whether she is a stay-at-home mom or whether at a given moment her husband is a stay-at-home dad?

She should feel that way, because she would also be connected with all those other liberated women for whom the liberty promised by feminism, the freedom to have it all, brought nothing but misery, varying degrees of poverty and disappointment that the liberty of having it all means that such women have to do it all — by themselves, and that work that one must do by oneself, with no one to help or take over, is slavery, not freedom, not only everlasting and wearying but just simply too much for one woman all by herself.

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