Feminists were told to feminise their boys in the name of equality. Many failed. Yeap, boys are boys.
You pretty much know that if you have one. They are different from girls.

Funny that!

Here is a site I found where the real men are pushing back the gay men and girlie men. Boys raised by homosexuals will turn out gay in 70% of cases but boys raised by heterosexual families still have a good chance of growing up masculine.

Trying to raise a real man in today’s world may be harder than splitting an atom. Everyday our kids are bombarded with images and messages of the most unmanly things imaginable. Magazines are full of sexually ambiguous models dressed in feminine clothes in homo-erotic poses. There’s a new book out every month about how you don’t need a man in the house to raise a man. TV shows typically are full of metro-sexual, gay, and otherwise wimpy male characters, and nearly every Hollywood movie that comes out has at least one homosexual character. Almost every dad in the movies or on TV is either a miserable lout or a complete buffoon. At school your kids are subjected to all sorts of programs designed to promote unmanly lifestyles. Real men have disappeared from history books and have been replaced with politically correct figures. Any boy reading magazines, attending public school, and watching TV or movies would assume that half of the men in the world are gay, and the other half are metro-sexual or girlie men. That’s why your job as a father is as tough as it’s even been. It’s you against the world.

Let’s be clear about a dad’s role in raising a child. It takes a man and a woman to raise a real man. A boy needs a mother to nurture him, and take care of him. He also needs the influence of a strong, masculine male figure in his life. These influences balance each other out. If you’re missing either influence, you tend to get less than optimal results.

You will enjoy the rest of the article.

Real Men Mag

RAISING A REAL MAN IN A METRO-SEXUAL WORLD

“10,000 march against violent crime”. “Mayor wants gangs crushed by army”. “75 percent of children bullied at school”. “Toddler in Starship Hospital with critical head injuries”. These recent newspaper headlines highlight the deep-seated social crisis New Zealand is facing.

It is the ugly side of our country: children being brutilised and killed by adults who should be protecting them; escalating levels of bullying in schools; hordes of disorderly youths causing mayhem on the streets; gangs in control of a lucrative drug trade that has infiltrated deep into communities all around the country. These are problems that are now so serious they cannot be ignored.

The reality is that increasing violence is destroying lives on a daily basis. Hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money is being spent on mopping up the damage with massive human resources needed for front-line crisis work. Endless minds are engaged in devising strategies to deal with the problems, but while many well-meaning people come up with many well-meaning ‘solutions’, few – if any – are prepared to deal with the real root cause of this social crisis.

The fact is that endless studies show that virtually every major social pathology we face can be linked back to the breakdown of the family: violent crime, drugs and alcohol abuse, truancy, unwed pregnancy, suicide, psychological disorders – these all correlate more strongly to the absence of a biological married father in the home than with any other single factor.

The majority of prisoners, juvenile detention inmates, high school dropouts, pregnant teenagers, adolescent murderers, and rapists come from fatherless homes. The connection between single-parent households and crime is so strong that controlling for this factor erases the relationship between race and crime as well as between low income and crime.1

New Zealand’s Principal Youth Court Judge, Andrew Becroft, recently released figures from a study of youth crime that confirms that the majority of serious youth offenders – a staggering 82 percent - have lost contact with their father: only 12 percent of the offenders who came through the court were living with both parents, 28 percent were living with one parent (usually their mother) and 60 percent were not living with either their mother or their father.2

That is clearly not to say that every child being raised without a dad ends up in trouble, or that every child raised by a married couple does well, but on the balance of probability, children raised without their natural father, will face greater difficulties in life, than children brought up with their dad to love, guide and protect them.

Fathers play a vital role in bringing up their children. From the rough and tumble play with toddlers, to the crucial task of setting boundaries, enforcing discipline and challenging children to accept responsibilities and become more independent, a father’s influence is crucial. It is especially the case in the socialisation of teenagers, where a father will provide a role model of what men are supposed to be like on the job, in the home, with women, and with children.

Judge Becroft has described the deep-seated need that boys have for a father figure in this way: “14, 15, and 16 year-old boys seek out role models like ‘heat seeking missiles’. It’s either the leader of the Mongrel Mob or it’s a sports coach or it’s Dad. But an overwhelming majority of boys who I see in the Youth Court have lost contact with their father. …What I’m saying is that I’m dealing in the Youth Court with boys for whom their Dad is simply not there, never has been, gone, vanished and disappeared”.

It is this collapse of fatherhood that is at the heart of New Zealand’s social crisis. There are now hundreds of thousands of New Zealand children growing up in fatherless homes. Too many live in crime-ridden neighborhoods where violence is the norm, where alcohol and drug abuse are commonplace, and where disaffected dropouts roam the streets instead of being meaningfully engaged in school.

According to Judge Becroft an astonishing 80 percent of teenage offenders who go through the youth court have drug or alcohol problems and a staggering 70 percent aren’t enrolled in any form of education!3

This crisis is of the government’s own making. While the seeds of family disintegration were sown by the Labour Government in the seventies - with policies designed to progress the feminists’ agenda of independence for women - successive National governments allowed the situation to get worse.

At the core of the problem is the Domestic Purposes Benefit. Labour introduced the DPB in order to provide unhappy mothers with an alternative to a husband. The DPB gave an unconditional state guaranteed welfare benefit to any woman who wanted to raise a child on her own. Over the years the DPB has become a way of life for hundreds of thousands of women and their children. Many of these are now caught up in a cycle of intergenerational welfare dependency to become part of New Zealand’s growing dysfunctional underclass.

This week’s NZCPR Guest Commentator is renowned author and commentator Sir Bob Jones. In his opinion piece Homo Degeratus, Bob describes - in his forthright way - how a “welfare-sated under-class … is now thriving in New Zealand; slobbering, tattooed, illiterate, pig-ignorant, prolific breeding, drug-infested, alcoholic, welfare dependent, murdering and robbing, barbaric filth and it is all traceable solely to welfare excess and the DPB in particular. I for one have had enough. Disproportionately Maori, their existence is a disgrace, not to Maoridom but to the human race”.

Bob echoes the despair of many New Zealanders when he states: “I sense and personally feel, a widespread sense of hopelessness about the current state of affairs. The solution lies with our politicians but what odds on a set of political circumstances which would throw up another Douglas to embark on a radical social reform as Roger did on the economic front?

He explains, “Ironically, when I write that the solution lies with politicians I could just as easily say that the problem stems from them. Primarily motivated by the pursuit of power, once in office the record shows that politicians driving modus operandi is not to rock the boat”. To read Homo Degeratus, click the sidebar link>>>

Bob is right, of course. It is difficult to find any political will to reform the welfare system in general and the DPB in particular - even though the politicians are well aware that children are the major victims of a system that is supposed to protect them.

No other country has a benefit payment that is as unconstrained as New Zealand’s Domestic Purposes Benefit. As Bob Jones mentions in his article, when the US realised the damage to children – and society - that was being caused by their equivalent of the DPB, President Clinton abolished it. He replaced it with a system that prioritised getting mothers off benefits and back into the workforce. Independence from the state was seen as the key goal. And in spite of a plethora of dire predictions about the consequences, the results have been very positive for all concerned.

New Zealand desperately needs politicians with the courage to do what is right for the country and replace the DPB with a system of temporary support based on work - similar to that found in many other developed countries. Hardship payments should be available for deserted or mistreated spouses, and the parents of teenagers should realise that the responsibility for supporting their teenager to have children of their own, will largely fall on their shoulders.

Most importantly, it should be signalled loud and clear that it is simply no longer acceptable to bear children if they are not going to be properly raised and supported. Children need a mother and a father who will love, nurture and support them, if they are to have the best opportunity at leading a successful and fulfilling life. That means encouraging marriage, since, despite its intrinsic faults, marriage still remains the bedrock institution of civil society providing the glue that binds mothers and fathers together for the common purpose of raising their children well.

Of course, much more needs to be done to support those parents with children who are presently running amuck: special schools with live-in facilities to give these children the routines and boundaries that they will be missing in their home-life may have a place. More than anything, the priority must be to connect these children with the education system, because no matter how bad a child’s home-life may be, an education can provide a life-line to a better future.

There is also much that needs to be done to fight the growing crime and violence within our society – but that is another subject for another day.

While none of this is simple, what we categorically know is that if we carry on as we have in the past, we will end up with a future that is far more violent and problematic that the one we face today. Doing nothing is not an option.

New Zealand urgently needs political leadership in the area of welfare reform. The DPB needs to be replaced as a priority and fatherhood needs to be restored. It is time the political parties stepped up to this challenge.

Political research

Dangerous sex as state enters bedroom

Janet Albrechtsen
April 30, 2008

IF you are a man, sex got a whole lot more dangerous. Consider this scenario.
A woman meets a man in a bar or at a party. She likes the man. He likes the woman. She may not normally be a sex on the first night kind of girl. But they have a number of drinks. Fuelled by alcohol, they put aside their inhibitions. The woman goes home with the man. She says yes to sex. In the morning, the man makes it clear it was a one-night stand. The woman is deeply offended and regrets her drunken decision. She claims rape. Under new rape laws introduced in NSW this year, that man is likely to be convicted as a rapist. He is likely to go to prison.

Rape reform in NSW means that post-coital regrets can now be refashioned into rape claims that send innocent men to prison. That’s why Gold Coast Titans footballer Anthony Laffranchi is a fortunate man. He walked free from a rape charge last week after the prosecution failed to establish lack of consent. He and his then Wests Tigers NRL teammates met a woman at the Sapphire Club in Kings Cross in September 2006 and continued to party at a teammate’s apartment. The footballer said he had consensual sex. The woman, who was “significantly affected” by alcohol, claimed she was raped. Had Laffranchi met the woman after January this year, he would probably be a convicted rapist facing a long stint in prison.

Let us be clear. Rape is wrong. It is a crime that calls for imprisonment. It can destroy a victim’s life. But let us be clear about something else. Wrongful claims of rape are made. And they can destroy a man’s life. No one knows whether a rape occurred that night when Laffranchi had sex with the woman. But under the old laws of rape, the defendant’s actual state of mind was critical. If the accused had an honest belief that sex was consensual, the rape charge failed. And when the evidence became a simple contest between “he said, she said”, a reasonable doubt would lead to an acquittal. Criminal law says that is as it should be; we are talking about a serious crime and imprisonment.

Not anymore. Now the rules have changed. Now, in a contest between he said it was consensual and she said it was rape, a jury may be forced to convict the man of rape without any further corroborating evidence.

The new laws say that if a woman is “substantially affected” by alcohol, she may lack the capacity to consent to sex even if she says “yes” to sex. More disturbing, even if a man honestly believes consent was given, his state of mind is now irrelevant. Now, the man is effectively deemed to have knowledge of lack of consent if there are no reasonable grounds for believing consent was given. And it gets worse. When asked to determine whether the man had no reasonable grounds for believing the woman gave consent, the jury must ignore the fact that the man was drunk.

In other words, the fact that the woman who says “yes” to sex is drunk is highly relevant: it may vitiate her consent. But the man’s intoxication must be ignored when working out whether he had “reasonable grounds” for believing consent was given. It is a curious law that says alcohol only affects the cognitive abilities of women.

These new rape laws degrade women. They treat them as helpless victims, stripping them of the power to make decisions about sex after consuming alcohol. Down a few too many Bacardi Breezers, and the law says you are no longer responsible for your actions. Is this really the message we want to send to young women?

And for men, it’s even more serious. As the President of the NSW Bar Association, Anna Katzmann SC, has pointed out, these new laws mean that the intoxicated man will be treated just like “the true rapist, the aggressor who inflicts himself on his victim, knowing they do not consent”. There is no gradation of penalties.

Why is this happening? Lawyers point to the perfect storm. The intoxicated man is trapped between a strident but misguided feminist agenda and the law and order lobby driven by perceptions that rape conviction rates are too low.

In reality, the low conviction rates reflect nothing more than the reasonable doubt that arises when, absent other evidence about an alleged crime in private, a woman claims rape and a man claims sex was consensual.

Stephen Odgers, a senior Sydney silk who chairs the Criminal Law Committee of the Bar Association, told The Australian that, while we all want a civilised world where people treat each other with mutual respect in all walks of life, including sexual interactions, the new rape laws are a “very blunt and brutal instrument” to educate and civilise us about sexual relations. He fears that the new rape laws, in effect, can be used to criminalise those who merely treat others with disrespect after a night of sex. “And people will end up going to jail for long periods as a result.” That is why his committee, made up of almost equal numbers of prosecutors and defence lawyers opposed the reforms.

So how does a man navigate the consent nightmare? Bring a witness into the bedroom? Perhaps bring along a lawyer to guide him through every stage of consensual sex from foreplay to orgasm to ensure that the final, breathless and drunken “yes, yes, yes” is genuine consent? Similar rape reforms in South Australia led independent MP Ann Bressington to suggest earlier this month that perhaps “parliament could devise a sex contract which men could carry around in their pocket, next to their condoms”. Bressington is concerned that otherwise sensible rape reform has gone too far, leaving “very little room for a decent defence of a man who has been falsely accused”.

False accusations are helped along, says Heather MacDonald in the winter edition of City Journal, by feminist victimology and rape industrialists intent on redefining drunken sex where a bloke wants to get inside a girl’s knickers in terms of the classic case of domination rape by power-hungry men.

If you are a man, you are entitled to be frightened by the new order. While society is still committed to a 1960s model of sexual liberation, encouraging men and women to explore their sexual desires, the state is also entering the bedroom trying to educate us about appropriate sexual conduct. Unfortunately, we may discover that civility cannot be legislated by criminal sanction without innocent men going to prison.

janeta@bigpond.net.au

A Family Court judge is alarmed at drug P’s impact on families. Reference Sunday Star Times 24th February 2008.

Couples are increasingly citing use of the drug methamphetamine or “P” as a reason for seeking protection orders, divorce and sole custody of children.

Family Court judges have told the Sunday Star-Times that allegations of P use in such cases were prevalent and rising.

Two judges said that a quarter of current applications for protection orders under the Domestic Violence Act involved the perpetrator of violence using P.

Problem areas included New Plymouth, Wanganui, West Auckland, Hawke’s Bay, Palmerston North and Wellington.

Principal Family Court judge Peter Boshier said the trend was a “huge concern”. “[This] is particularly ominous because it’s such a hard drug to conquer in terms of rehabilitation… Where meth is involved it produces such volatility that [judges] don’t want to put children at risk, whereas some other forms of drugs and alcohol don’t necessarily have the same alarming consequences.”

Out of 66,500 cases dealt with by the 45 Family Court judges last year, 4351 involved protection orders and 21,391 were applications for care of children.

Several family lawyers said they had noticed an increase in the number of P-related family break-ups over the past five years, including affluent families who seemed to “have it all”. In most cases, both parents had tried P socially but one had become addicted.

In one case, an Auckland couple in their early 30s started using P recreationally at a cost of $500-$800 a week. He gave up but she got addicted, which caused arguments and led to their break-up. She took their four-year-old child and lived transiently with friends, and started a relationship with a P dealer, which became violent. The woman’s neighbours and family became concerned at her dishevelled appearance and and reported her to Child, Youth and Family.

In another case, an Auckland woman in her late 20s, who was separated and shared custody of her two-year-old, developed a P habit. Her ex-husband found out and sought sole custody. At the same time, staff at the child’s crèche notified CYF over the woman’s appearance. She failed a drug test and lost custody of her child.

Boshier said judges usually granted protection where P use was alleged or proven in many cases grandparents stepped in to care for children.

“I do not want to suggest there’s anything wrong with grandparents bringing up children, but as a society we have a norm of the parents…”

Many judges direct parents accused of having a P habit to take a hair follicle test, which detects the drug months after it is taken. ESR carries out an average of three hair tests a week for Child Youth and Family, most for custody cases.

Boshier said alcohol was still regarded as the number one drug in protection orders, and cannabis was also often present.

Every day children are torn as their parents split up. New initiatives to involve them in relationship counselling could begin to ease that pain.

Jill Goldson, an Auckland Family Court counsellor who was involving children in separation counselling for a research project funded by the NZ Families Commission, has spoken out about the problems children are facing through separation. Goldson’s research involved 26 children and 34 adults. It gave families opportunities to not just listen to each other but ‘hear’ each other and work toward their own solutions.

“Parents in conflict are in crisis; it’s difficult in that state to attend fully to the children they both love,” Goldson says. “And their children fear creating more distress, so they hold on to their worries and the trouble compounds. If children’s views are sought, they need to see them used, otherwise they can end up feeling betrayed. Mostly children want to be heard within their families.”

Lucy’s dilemma threatened her life.

She was 13 when she had to choose between living with dad in Auckland or with mum in Rotorua. For 12 years Lucy* had lived happily enough between their two homes.

But her life began to spiral out of control when her mother made plans to move cities to live with her new partner. Lucy also hated the arguments between her parents. “I thought I would be happier if I lost weight.” Eating was one thing she could control and pretty soon anorexia had mastery over her. “I would not eat all day and try not to eat dinner. Then I didn’t eat at all one day, and didn’t the next either, until I was really sick and had no energy. I couldn’t do anything.”

Desperate for help, Lucy’s parents approached Jill Goldson.

Goldson says that offering two counselling intervention sessions eased communication and reduced conflict in every case.

The government provides six hours of tax-funded counselling for couples considering separating, but there is no legal provision for children to be involved. This is an anomaly, given the requirement under the Care of Children Act to listen to children’s views.

The 6 hours of counselling has been a positive step to helping parents resolve immediate problems but as many of us know it can takes years to get it right. And by then most of our children are damaged in some way not just through Parental Alienation Syndrome but through having to keep the peace with both parents.

The truth is that many single parents who have been involved in the 6 hour free counselling are still failing to come to a decent compromise where both parents are happy and the share and care of the children works out for the best. There are still child support issues, there is still the bickering in how one parent does something that the other parent doesn’t like. The end result is that the children don’t know which way to turn because they love both their parents and they want to please both the parents. They are in many cases where disputes still occur whether small bickering over being late to pick a child up to financial problems both parents can face having to provide 2 families separately instead of one family together.

The research findings are being included in a submission to the Family Matters Bill. Chief Family Court judge Peter Boshier is advocating “therapeutic counselling to help children through the difficult time of separation”.

Following Goldson’s research and international evidence which says children adjust better to parents separating if they are involved in decisions about their future, Boshier says: “A child’s own views should be central to ensuring the result is workable and acceptable to the children themselves.”

Goldson says people used to think children didn’t need counselling because they benefited from the “trickle down” effect of parents attending counselling. In many cases this does not happen.

James, 48, father of two young boys, agrees. “The Family Court says they are there for the children - they are not. There was nothing there for the children.”

He says the focus was always on “patching up” his relationship with wife Millie, never on how they could both be part of the children’s lives, although separated.

“I have been to seven counsellors, I don’t know how many psychologists and even a psychiatrist. I’m not a rapist; I’m not a paedophile. I love my children and I have fought for five years to be with them. There was no reason for me to be alienated, apart from the bitterness between me and my wife.”

Distressed by the impact their conflict was having on the boys, James moved to Tauranga and had minimal contact with his children.

Today, between jobs, he is able to share in his sons’ care. He says Goldson was “strong-minded, always asking, `What about the children? How are Dylan and Ryan coping?”‘

In fact, Dylan, eight, (James’s son) was suffering serious anxiety. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t concentrate, and had difficulty stringing words together. When Goldson asked him what was one of his main worries he immediately said he didn’t know what colour to paint his bedroom. Blue was his mum’s colour, green his dad’s, how could he keep them both happy? For him the task was impossible.

“This `double bind’… is typical for children with parents in conflict. They are damned if they do, damned if they don’t,” says Goldson. “They want to love two people who seem to hate each other and it leaves children feeling disturbed.”

Dylan’s mother Millie says knowing how her children were feeling shifted her focus from the “hurt and fractiousness” of the past to “what is happening now and in the future.

“You can see where the children are struggling. It gives you a reason not to argue with each other because you can see the pain drops down into your kids’ lives.”

For the children, the success of this intervention is being heard by both parents, and hearing their mum and dad are committed to their well-being. This process also reduces parental conflict.

Millie and James’s point-scoring relationship had them at loggerheads all the time, but Millie says Dylan’s relief was palpable when, for the first time, his parents agreed: We said “Mummy and daddy both like blue and green.”‘

“Mummy and daddy have agreed that this is how we do things,” Dylan tells his little brother.

“Parents almost always try to protect children from adult problems,” says Goldson. “But at the same time, they are going through one of the biggest crises in their lives. It is very hard to know how to talk to children when you are in grief and confusion yourself. It can be difficult to realise children want to be involved in discussions with their parents, but including them can help so much.”

Eight-year-old Aria travelled the world with her dancing parents and the company was her extended family. When her parents separated, her world collapsed.

“I feel like I’m in a dark room in my head and I’m all alone,” she told her mother, Jasmine.

But Jasmine says she felt out of her depth and had no idea how to respond. Aria’s dad Dave also felt helpless: “I didn’t know how much she was holding in.”

Jasmine wanted Aria to talk to a counsellor but Dave did not.

“Kids need simple loving,” he said. “I don’t like people mucking around with them.”

But Goldson reassured them: “It’s not separation that traumatises children they can deal with their parents going in different directions but they cannot cope with animosity.”

For Aria, being able to tell someone how she was feeling made a big difference. She liked Goldson being “beside” her and not a member of the family.

“It wasn’t a secret. I was allowed to say what was happening for me and how awful it felt.”

It worked for teenage Lucy too.

“It was nerve-wracking spilling out my life story to someone I didn’t know. It was hard”, she saiys. She was scared about her parents hearing her whole truth. “I knew there were things they weren’t going to agree on and wondered how they were going to react”.

The eating disorder was a wake-up call for everybody, says her mother Liz. If we hadn’t listened to Lucy that last time, I don’t know where she would be today. For the first time Geoff and I were speaking with a united voice.

But the last word comes from Dylan. Excited to see Goldson when the Sunday Star-Times met him, he answered all the questions patiently before saying: “But Jill, now I have a new problem. Smoking. Cigarettes. Mummy and daddy are smoking and I don’t like it. Can you tell them that?”

……. as Judge Boshier (head Judge of the FC) tries to make us believe is a question I raised on another site that helps fathers through this difficult time. Here is an agreed comment back from fathers who work with cases.

My personal experience is that - here in Hawkes Bay - changes for the better are happening. Just recently for example, we (UoF - no lawyer) put together an application for a Without Notice Parenting Order and it was granted. I have to say that a couple of years ago, this would never have happened. We have also been far more successful in recent times achieving shared care.

It is important to note that Hawkes Bay is an area organised and the ‘Father’s Coalition’ and ‘Union of Fathers’ have protested outside the FC in numbers and were part of a documentary on TV.

While I do have to give the local Judge credit for making an effort, there are still far too many problems and we are a very long way indeed from “have things balanced out”.

Here are some of the more obvious FC problems:

Fathers accused of whatever have to prove that the allegations are wrong. In contrast, my impression is that if a father accuses the mother (even if he has all the evidence), at best the court completely ignores the allegations and at worst treats it as him trying “to make her feel bad about herself” (i.e. he is using [a form of] violence).

I have yet to see a case where a person is charged and convicted for perjury for knowingly making false allegations in affidavits or in the court

Court staff are generally unhelpful in providing information regarding FC procedures to self litigants (perhaps this is a training issue)

It still appears that the FC makes sure that lawyers and psychologists make a lot of money (”in the best interest of the children - as long as it fills our pockets”).

Cases still drag out far too long.

There is still a reluctance by the FC to come down heavy handed on people breaching orders.

Much larger are problems with current legislation and practices affecting cases which go through the FC:

Read the rest of this entry »

As if break-up or divorce processes aren’t painful enough, now you’ve got to take in the news that your ex is dating - or even getting remarried.

Whether you despise, love or are just friends with your ex, seeing them with someone else hurts, especially if you recently broke-up. But you are strong enough to handle it - here’s how:

Let yourself vent your feelings. Let it all out: the anger, the frustration, and perhaps even some rebel behaviour. Give yourself an hour or a week (but no more - you don’t want to wallow) to cry, think evil thoughts about your ex’s new mate, or eat away. It’s gonna feel good!

Lean on your support network. Call upon your close friends now to stick by your side. Friends with whom you can be irrational, sob or curse up a storm, and simply call to have some fun - well, they are just essential at this time. Don’t be shy about letting them know you really need their support.
Read the rest of this entry »

Jaqui Barrett was 31 and close to death when she first tried to get help. It was 1984 and the mum of 2 saw her life as one giant mess. But jaqui found it hard to get help back then because counselling wasn’t widely available and what was on offer was not what she needed. “It was a terrible situation. I actually felt worse - I felt I couldn’t even be depressed properly”, she says. She eventually found people who would listen and became a counsellor herself.

Things have changed greatly for people who need to reach out for help since then. Now we have counselling services available for all sorts of tough times in our lives and people who have been through these times themselves and come out the other end are offering their service to help others walk through similar times. There’s now a range of professionals available to help with all sorts of problems.

And it is not just women who are counsellors because many men are stepping up to help other males and in the last 2 - 3 years there has been a big increase in men coming to counselling.

Home and family, a not-for-profit community service has put forward a Counselling Awareness week which has just gone. Yesterday was the last day as it was from June 11th. They say, “it is better to talk”.

Home and family’s aim is to strengthen New Zealand families. They offer professional counselling to adults, children and teenagers.

Groups include:

1. New start program for migrant women.
2. Parenting through Seperation.
3. Chinese solo Mother’s Parenting Group.
4. Anger without aggro programme
5. Creating respectful girl’s programme.
6. Talking it through children’s programme.

There is no set price - clients are asked to make a donation they can afford.

homeandfamily.org.nz

Central Office and Mt Eden Counselling Centre
344 Mt Eden Road, Mt Eden
Tel 09 630 8961
Fax 09 630 8487
info@homeandfamily.org.nz

North Shore Counselling Centre
52 Diana Drive, Glenfield
Tel 09 441 2433
Fax 09 441 2431
northshore@homeandfamily.org.nz

Many single parents are not aware of all that is available to them for support in New Zealand. Birthright was established in 1955. It’s a national organisation, with sixteen (16) member societies throughout New Zealand, which work to support, strengthen and advocate for one-parent families.

What do they do?
Each Member society provides a range of services appropriate to their locality. These may include:

Counselling and social work
Recycled clothing and household goods
Workshops for parents on relevant subjects e.g. parenting skills, confidence building, goal setting, life skills and home management programmes
Budgeting assistance
Referrals to recognized agencies for specific problems e.g. grief, child abuse, behaviour problems
Ongoing support groups for parents
Self-esteem programmes for children
Some financial support when available with school requirements and holiday camps
Tertiary Scholarships for children and retraining grants for single parents

Auckland Single Parents Trust offers similar to birthright although we do not have the funding available to us yet and we are not qualified counsellors. We are a network of single parents although we can direct you to other organisations who offer counselling, anger management programmes for both men and women and budgeting assistance. Also, it is not unusual to share recycled clothing or household items amongst friends.

Birthright has not been going in Auckland for some time although it seems it may be starting up again. Many single parents have used their services over the years and I think having a place to go for financial assistance and for clothing and household items is of value especially when you are setting yourself up all over again. The other services they provide can also be very helpful. An advocate for the single parent in situations with CYFS, IRD, WINZ and many other areas of your life is a bonus to have on your side.

I have listed the Birthright contacts under Links for those outside the Auckland area and look forward to Birthright starting up again in the Auckland area.

Auckland Single Parents Trust has been given free tickets for adults and children to this event by the Rotary Club of Newmarket.

Family entertainment par excellence, ‘Circus Quirkus’ is a truly unique show of local and international performers steeped in the traditional circus disciplines of clowning, juggling, balancing, contortion and acrobatics combined with large doses of comedy. Judging by the laughter and delighted reactions of the audiences ‘Circus Quirkus’ really lifts the spirits of all family members. All the artists are performing to the highest degree of skill, delivering incredible feats and guaranteed entertainment.

There are two shows to choose from.

Time: 2pm
Date: Saturday 24th May or Sunday 25th May
Venue: ASB Stadium, Kohimarama Rd, Auckland

We have limited numbers of tickets so please let us know if you would like tickets and how many so we can get them out to you ASAP.

julie@singleparents.org.nz

new members welcome