Article here. Excerpt:

'Fathers of America, you may consider yourselves indispensable, but a new survey says you're only worth about one-third as much as mom around the house.

In fact, you are not even keeping up with inflation.

Insurance news and data website Insure.com released its annual Father's Day Index on Monday, an attempt to calculate the value in wage terms of the work a father typically does around the house.

The value this year was some $20,248, about $1,000 less than the inflation-adjusted value of 10 years ago.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'From the loving, engaged portrayals of fathers featured in recent popular movies like “The Descendants,” “Moneyball” and “A Better Life” — all three performances were nominated for Academy Awards — one might conclude American dads are culturally valued.

Look again. The mothers in these films are comatose, divorced or dead. It’s no coincidence. From Atticus Finch to today, there’s an unspoken Hollywood rule that fathers can’t shine too brightly in the face of active mothering. Dads are more likely to be accorded respect when they are “coping” — in effect, when they are surrogate mothers.

Sadly, it is not only in Hollywood where fathers get the short end of the stick. The culture reflects a painful and pervasive social reality: For all we talk about the value of fathers, we have been devaluing and discarding them for decades.

We must first diagnose this cancer. Then we must systematically work to cure it.

Article here. It shows up in a UK paper but it's about US trends. Excerpt:

'Not too long ago, a father who chose to stay at home with kids while his wife went back to work after childbirth was something of an anomaly, opening the doors on countless Mr Mom jokes, but nowadays, a growing numbers of dads wear the moniker as a badge of honor.

Nationwide, the number of stay-at-home fathers - while still relatively small - has more than doubled in the past decade. There were only about 81,000 Mr Moms in 2001, or about 1.6 per cent of all stay-at-home parents.

By last year, the number had climbed to 176,000, or 3.4 per cent of stay-at-home fathers, according to U.S. Census data.'

Article here. Wonder if there's one for moms, too? Excerpt:

'The federal government Web site www.fatherhood.gov offers a wide range of “tips” and resources for teaching men how to be a father, including “father-child” videos on healthy eating, teeth brushing and hand washing.

The taxpayer-funded website, launched during the Clinton administration, is a project of the National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse, which is a part of Health and Human Services’ Office of Family Assistance. The site links to the videos on the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences’ Psychiatric Research Institute’s Web site.'

Article here. Excerpt:

Article here. Excerpt:

'Here's a great Father's Day thought: Men and boys need help. They've become more self-destructive, more apathetic about success and more violent. Fewer are moving on to higher education, and boys and men alike are being outperformed in school by girls and women.

On this day, Fathers Day, the culture continues to redefine masculinity, but struggles to know what it means to be a "real" man. Meanwhile, the bashing of the traditional male role continues without surcease.

A case in point: CBS' Sunday Morning on Sunday celebrated Fathers Day by asking in its lead piece: "As gender roles change, are men out of step?" It's a scatter-shot piece, badly in need of focusing by a skilled editor, and it never really answers the question. Yet not a single defender of traditional role of men and fathers appeared to suggest why boys and men have gone off the rails. Instead, there is the demeaning reference to "out-date He-Man ideas."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Boys from white working-class families are growing up with no hope of a decent education or career because of an ‘anti-school culture’, the head of Ofsted warned last night.

Sir Michael Wilshaw says generations of children in deprived areas are doomed to underachieve, thanks to an erosion of traditional community values and parents failing to set boundaries.

The chief inspector of schools said white boys from poor families were worst affected and achieved the worst results aged 16 at school.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'FORT WORTH, Texas – The parents of a third-grade boy have sued two Texas school employees, alleging that they forced their son to strip and shower in front of them because he "smelled badly, was dirty and had bad hygiene."

The eight-year-old was singled out last November and taken to the nurse's office at Peaster Elementary School where he was forced to remove his clothes, the suit alleges, the Courthouse News Service reported.

The two school officials then "began violently washing his body with a washcloth, scrubbing him over a large portion of his body, stuck cotton balls in his ears, all while ridiculing and harassing him about being 'dirty,'" the complaint claims.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'The Supreme Court of Canada heard arguments Thursday on whether victims of domestic abuse can hire a hit man to kill their partners, a controversial issue which tests the limits of the defence of duress.

The case involves a Nova Scotia woman, Nicole Doucet, who tried to hire an undercover RCMP officer to kill her husband Michael Ryan.

The high school teacher was arrested in March 2008 and charged with counselling to commit murder.

She was acquitted of the charge two years later after the Nova Scotia Supreme Court accepted her argument that she thought she had no other way out of an abusive 15-year marriage to a man who repeatedly threatened her and her daughter.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Men and chivalry come together but guess with women talking a lot of economic independence, it's making them forget their basic etiquettes.

Article here. Excerpt:

'Mike Espinoza's life has become a stereotype. Like divorced fathers across the country, the Apache Junction flooring installer crams a life with his sons into every other weekend and a few weeks in the summer.

He's furious about it and is trying to change it.

And while he hasn't yet won more time with his own children, he has given Arizona fathers a better chance at equal parenting time. In the process, he's become a role model to his 8- and 10-year-old sons.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'"Gender politics are alive and well in this country, let there be no doubt," said Dean Jennifer Delahunty, who laid it all out in a 2006 opinion piece in The New York Times exposing the widening gap in achievement.

"There's a kind of anti-intellectualism of young men that really bothers me," Delahunty said, "that it's not cool to be smart. That it's not cool to be engaged. That it's not cool to do your homework. That bothers me.

"Not only do they not enroll in college at the same rate as women, they don't graduate from college at the same rate. They don't retain at the same rate."

The numbers don't lie: Male college enrollment has been sliding for more than four decades - and it's expected to just get worse.
...
"Boys think that academic disengagement is a sign of masculinity," said Kimmel. "The less you can do in school, the less connected you are, the less interested you are, the more manly you are."'

Article here. Excerpt:

'NEW YORK -- When my mind gets stuck on everything that is wrong with feminism, it brings out the 19th century poet in me: Let me count the ways. Most of all, feminism is pretty much a nice girl who really, really wants so badly to be liked by everybody -- ladies who lunch, men who hate women, all the morons who demand choice and don't understand responsibility -- that it has become the easy lay of social movements. I am going to smack the next idiot who tells me that raising her children full time -- by which she really means going to Jivamukti classes and pedicure appointments while the nanny babysits -- is her feminist choice. Who can possibly take feminism seriously when it allows everything, as long as women choose it? The whole point to begin with was that women were losing their minds pushing mops and strollers all day without a room or a salary of their own.

It's always a holiday here at MANN that brings mixed emotions. Many of our readers don't get to see their own kids much or at all, or are estranged from them, or something else. Still, it's a day to say "Thank you, dads," and MANN says it with gusto.

THANK-YOU, DADS!!

Whatever this day means to you or how you experience it, we hope it is as good as it can be for you.

Article here. Excerpt:

'(The Root) -- Timed for Father's Day weekend, on Friday the White House Domestic Policy Council issued a new report detailing the Obama administration's various initiatives to encourage fatherhood and healthy families.