Vintage comedy - every sperm is sacred

It's Friday and the weekend has nearly landed - time for some vintage comedy from Monty Python's Meaning of Life. If you haven't seen this in a while - turn up the PC speakers (especially if you're are work) and sing along! Here it goes ... a great song for dads - "every sperm is sacred"! :-)

-Stef

DIYFather in the news: Dads4Dads programme awarded funding by Sovereign Sunshine

Great news for our joint parenting eduction programme with Plunket which was specifically put together to get first time dads together to "talk shop" about parenting from a male perspective. We got awarded a grant by Sovereign Sunshine to help with the nationwide expansion of the programme. YAY!

The following story was covered by several publications yesterday. The text below featured in the NZ Herald yesterday:

A training and support group for new fathers has been given a $15,000 hand-out from charity fund-raiser Sovereign Sunshine.

Father's Day Poetry

OK - 5 days to go to Father's Day and here's a little clip from the youtube archives. Def Jam's Shihan on the very topic ...

-Stef

Unattended Children ...

Hmmm ... some bar owners these days are getting very clever about getting their message through to parents.

Sign of the times?

(as seen on Marc Serena's blog http://www.lavueltadelos25.com)

-Stef

A Dad’s Point-of-View - Diversity is a Nine Letter Word

Diversity is a nine-letter word; so is parenting. ShortRib (my wife) and I met a wonderful couple on our recent honeymoon that, at first, we thought and they thought represented the most diversity in a couple any of us knew. In fact, they were written up as just such a phenomenon in a local paper in their hometown. David is a 55-year-old, liberal, white Jewish lawyer, while Farah is a 40-year-old, conservative, black Christian, non-profit worker. Key thing about them; no kids, by their mutual choice. However, they’ve been married 10 years and, on the surface, have one of the best rapports between couples we observed on the entire cruise and safari, where we encountered quite a large mix of couples.

Lazy Dadurday

"What do you guys want for breakfast?" I ask my three pajama-wearing kids flopped sleepily over two couches on a promising Saturday morning. They’re with me every Saturday morning as part of a divorce agreement. We call it "Lazy Dadurday." And lazy it is. We wake up late, then trek to the bookstore, the pet store, the mall, or the pool, and just let it all hang out.

"What is there?" the kids ask absent-mindedly.

My children have faced the same breakfast choices since they were old enough to chew: frozen waffles, cereal, and toast. No more and no less. It's their version of death and taxes. Nonetheless, the sweetly inquisitive response — what is there? — is always the same.

It's as if they'd been replaced overnight with benevolent alien imposters who'd carefully studied everything about us but our breakfast rituals.

The Trouble With Women

Who would have thought that the story of how fathers managed to get into delivery suites is documented in a book called “The Trouble With Women”. The book is the story of NZ’s Parent Centres put together by Mary Dobbie. As a dad who recently had the opportunity to exercise the right to be present during my son’s birth I am grateful for the numerous people who fought bureaucracy and ignorance so that fathers could be present during labour. No doubt this story is replicated the world over with many unsung heroes paving the way. In Wellington where I live, it wasn’t until 1972 that fathers were finally allowed in the delivery suites.

A dad's point of view - am I a selfish parent?

It’s high time I wrote a column that stirs some reaction, creates some controversy, and isn’t so sweet and nice. No gratitude for surviving what should have been a deadly car crash, no treatises on the values of volunteering, or even about the importance of spending more quantity time with your kids. After all, this is a man’s point-of-view, not some touchy-feely new age guru. Look at the magazine rack at your local bookstore. The women’s section is literally full, while the men’s section mostly consists of magazines about cars, motorcycles, or supermen who climb ridiculously high mountains without oxygen. We won’t even talk about daytime television where Oprah and Ellen dominate. I don’t count Dr. Phil, for obvious reasons.

A Dads Point of View - STEPPIN'

The ‘50s ideal of the nuclear family is clearly a thing of the past as most statistics readily confirm. Divorce is rampant and the definition of family is undergoing constant scrutiny and redefinition. For my family, we’ve been dealing with a new Step-Mom, as I just got married, this past December 27 (2008). My new wife might argue that she is going through the greatest adjustment, while my boys and I might argue otherwise. I’ll let you be the judge, but first I want to officially introduce my family members, not by name, but by nickname.

A dad's point of view - lessons of a big brother and mentor

One of the clichés about volunteerism is the fact that you often get more than you give. In my case, it was in ways and means I least expected. I’ve just become a Big Brother, again, to a 7-year-old boy and a Mentor to a 22-year-old young man. As these relationships are new, I don’t yet know what lessons I will learn. But, I know well the lessons I learned the first time around.

I became a Big Brother, long before I was married or a parent. My life, at that time, was pretty heady. In my early 30’s, I had a successful showbiz career in which I was paid way too much for having so much fun, I lived in a lovely home in a chic part of town, had two cars, and no one to worry about other than myself.