Magazine: Parenting School Years Magazine
Issue: February, 2009
Pages: 94 - 100.
Article URL: http://www.parenting.com/article/Mom/Relationships/Mad-at-Dad

Author: Martha Brockenbrough
Authors web site: http://www.marthabee.com/

I received my issue of Parenting Magazine today and was I mad over the article “Mad about Dad.” Check the web site (above) to see a picture of a smiling dad on a dart board. After several “misses” (holes in the picture) the final shot lands right in the middle of his forehead.

The picture in the magazine was so big it covered not just one page, it overflowed onto the second. Other photos in the magazine article included:
Husband and wife on a boat with devil horns, beard and tail sketched over the man.
Voodoo doll with pins stuck all over including one stuck in his juggler vein, another stuck in his forehead, another in his heart, etc.

I don’t need to get into the content of the article. The photos were enough.

Newsletter here. Alerts:

Action Alert: Tell Nationally-Syndicated Talk Show Host Neal Boortz That Dads Aren’t Deadbeats

Massachusetts Action Alert--We Need Activists to Attend MA. Democratic Party Platform Hearings

Article here. Excerpt:

'In 1690's New England was gripped by the Witch Hunt Hysteria which destroyed the lives of countless innocent people and their families solely by the false testimony of their accusers and the misconduct of their prosecutors.

Today, over 300 years later, a new insidious Rape Hysteria grips a small community in Maine's Bar Harbor region, and again, countless lives are being ruined solely by false testimony of their accusers and the misconduct of their prosecutors.

Numerous men have been arrested and jailed in Ellsworth Maine, often solely because of someone's accusations. Some of the accused men spend many months in jail until they are finally tried on the flimsiest or even fabricated evidence. Virtually every man who is accused gets arrested, charged, and has his life publicly ruined.

The accusers are sometimes young, mentally or emotionally impaired, girlfriends, occasional sex partners, and even wives in bitter custody battles with their husbands.

Story here. Excerpt:

'After spending a decade behind bars, a former Camp Pendleton Marine is now a free man because a military appeals court ruled that “a muddled, hearsay-based case” caused his spousal-rape conviction.

But anyone who thinks Brian Foster is bitter would be wrong. As Foster left the prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., on Feb. 20, he picked up his sergeant stripes and spoke candidly with his superiors.

“I told (them) I was happy to be back in the Marine Corps and that I'll go anywhere and do anything the Marine Corps wants me to,” Foster, 35, said during a phone interview yesterday from Belton, Mo. “I said I love my country and I love the Marine Corps and that unfortunately, these things happen in a free country.”'

Article here. Excerpt:

'When Toronto lawyer Brian Ludmer speaks about the suffering caused by parental alienation, the words come from his head and his heart.

He's seen the devastation of a mother's orchestrated campaign to make her children hate their father, or how a dad can use a 4-year-old as a weapon against his mother in the ugly aftermath of divorce.

Ludmer is, by training, a corporate lawyer. But he's being "swamped" by desperate parents looking for help reconnecting with their children. "Experts in this field will tell you that they've never met a lawyer who understands this the way that I do," says Ludmer.

That's because he's also lived it.

"Parental alienation is a plague. It's rampant out there," says Ludmer, 48, who declined to talk about his own case for fear of upsetting his children. "This stuff has been going on for a hundred years. It's just that now it has a name."'

Interview here. CNN's Lou Dobbs gave a ringing endorsement of Indoctrinate U on last night's show. Saying the film was "terrific" Dobbs added, "I can't recommend it highly enough." He closed by recommending that viewers "get this documentary. It's extraordinary."

Article here. Excerpt:

'At least 3 percent of District residents have HIV or AIDS, a total that far surpasses the 1 percent threshold that constitutes a "generalized and severe" epidemic, according to a report scheduled to be released by health officials tomorrow.
...
"Our rates are higher than West Africa," said Shannon L. Hader, director of the District's HIV/AIDS Administration, who once led the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's work in Zimbabwe. "They're on par with Uganda and some parts of Kenya."
...
...Black men, with an infection rate of nearly 7 percent, carry the weight of the disease, according to the report, which also underscores that the District's HIV and AIDS population is aging. Almost 1 in 10 residents between the ages of 40 and 49 has the virus.'

Wonder if, like in San Mateo County, the free HIV testing and other services bound to emerge after this report will also only allow women and girls through the door.

In introducing H.R. 739, the SAFE ("Security and Financial Empowerment"), Representatives Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) and Ted Poe (R-TX), claim the law is needed to combat workplace discrimination against victims of domestic violence. A 1998 General Accounting Office study, however, casts doubt on whether workplace discrimination is really a problem. The GAO reported, "we cannot conclude that being a victim of domestic violence changes the likelihood that a woman will work."

Furthermore, section 303 of the bill says: "An employer shall not fail to hire, refuse to hire, discharge, or harass" a person who claims to be a victim of partner abuse. Thus, the SAFE Act would require employers to provide lifetime job security to alleged victims of abuse. According to an analysis released by RADAR today, the employment entitlement will cost companies $28.8 billion a year. See our analysis here (.pdf file).

Article here. Excerpt:

'In 1991, the prestigious, but goofy, American Association of University Women (AAUW) made a startling declaration: ‘Most girls emerge from adolescence with a poor self image.’ Researchers, all female, informed the body politic that the primary culprit here was the public school system in America. No one seemed to notice that at the time this assertion was loosed upon us that 85% of all public school teachers were women.

Story here. Excerpt:

'LAWRENCE - Police arrested a Lawrence woman early yesterday and charged her with stabbing her ex-boyfriend and his sister.

Rosemary Nieves, 24, of 125 Jackson St., was charged with two counts of assault by means of a dangerous weapon.
...
Nieves said Edwin Rodriguez walked to the porch and kicked in her bedroom window after she told him it was not a good time to remove things from the apartment.

At that point, Nieves said, she grabbed her car keys and opened up a two-and-a-half-inch metal folding knife and stabbed Edwin several times in the forearm, Officer Todd Allard wrote in his report.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'“Alarming percentages of moms are angry at dads on a regular basis.“ “Hell hath no fury like a mommy scorned.“ “Moms are angry about dad’s role.“

These are some of the headlines which greeted Parenting Magazine’s new “Mad at Dad” survey which found that 31% of mothers get “little or no help” with childcare and 46% of mothers “get irate with their husbands once a week or more.” The New York Times called the survey “disturbing,” while a Washington Post columnist announced that mothers are “literally killing themselves.”

Mothers who are dissatisfied might want to examine their own behavior as well as that of their husbands. Studies reported in the Journal of Family Psychology in June, 2008 and the Journal of Marriage and the Family in 1999 show that mothers are generally the gatekeepers of fathers’ involvement with their kids. If she criticizes or insists that any way that isn’t her way is wrong, dad will often withdraw. But if she stands aside and lets him parent, he usually does.

Article here. Excerpt:

'San Mateo County will host an HIV awareness health fair today in Redwood City offering local women and girls free private risk-reduction counseling and HIV tests with near-immediate results.
...
According to the county, a quarter of all new HIV infections occur in women. More than 80 percent are black women or Hispanic women. AIDS is now the leading cause of death for black women between 25 and 34 years old, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

In addition to counseling and testing, the event will also include information on domestic violence and drug prevention. A photo exhibit, "I am," will be on display at the event, profiling county residents affected by HIV and AIDS.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Most attempted suicides at the falls, Gromosiak found, are young men between the ages of 20 and 40.

Of all attempted suicides, 71 per cent are men. Twenty per cent of suicides occur at the Horseshoe Falls.

On the American side, several suicide prevention measures have been implemented near the falls.

Several emergency suicide hotline phones are installed at Niagara Falls, N. Y. State Park.

The phones are linked directly to the county's Suicide Prevention Service.

There are no such phones on the Canadian side, but that doesn't mean they might not appear in the future.

"It's a good idea and it is something we can consider," Kane said.'

Story here. Excerpt:

'When we as a society think of divorce recovery, we tend to think of women as being the more vulnerable gender needing the most help getting through the divorce. While women may be more sensitive to some things, men, too, can be knocked down by an emotional blow of divorce.

Care for women struggling with divorce has been covered thus far in the series, but what about men? Do they need the same kind of help that women do, if at all? Are men as much the victim in the emotional destruction as are the women?
...
“The reality is that suicide rates are up to 10 times higher in men who are separated or divorced compared with those who are still in a relationship. Men who don’t commit suicide are often depressed, but they cover up the depression by quickly remarrying to fill the void,” Kamaria said. “These men also tend to overwork, drink or gamble too much and since 67 percent of second and 74 percent of third marriages end in divorce, remarriage is not a solution.”

Story here. Excerpt:

'A Melbourne woman who shot dead her husband and lied about it for seven years, has been sentenced to five years in jail.
...
Margaret Uttley killed her husband Stephen Uttley on their Tarneit farm nine years ago, when he came home drunk late at night wielding a gun, and threatened to shoot her.

The court heard they struggled, and she accidentally shot him in the head.

The court heard she burnt his body and lied about the killing for seven years.

But she pleaded guilty to manslaughter earlier this month in the opening stages of her trial for murder.

She will serve a non-parole period of two years.'