Opinions and Perspectives - New Zealand and Abroad

Click here for the questions we asked (PDF, 95kB)

Click here to read their answers.

By Bettina Arndt in The Age, Melbourne, March 15, 2004: The messages from society are clear - so why would anyone want to become a father?

Young women aren't free to choose when to have children because their men aren't interested. Men are too self-absorbed, too career-oriented. That's the latest suggestion to emerge in the debate on fertility, where men are now being scolded for failing to shoulder the collective responsibility of a declining birthrate.

But why should men be interested in fathering children? Confronted with the very strong societal message that children do fine without fathers, ...

www.theage.com.au/ articles/2004/03/14/1079199092576.html

By Dr. Laura Schlessinger in WorldNetDaily.com, March 5, 2004: Women now realize that everything heterosexual, feminine, masculine, motherly, womanly and longed for in a committed relationship has been under viscous attack...

www.worldnetdaily.com/ news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37442

By Adele Horin, in the Sydney Morning Herald, October 2, 2003: Increasing numbers of men in their prime have neither full-time jobs, wives nor children and pose a threat to society, a senior labour market economist says.

Professor Sue Richardson, of the National Institute of Labour Studies at Flinders University, said Australia was re-creating an underclass "of the excluded and the dangerous" not seen since the late 19th century...

www.smh.com.au/ articles/2003/10/01/1064988272235.html

By Julie Szego, in The Age (Melbourne, Australia), August 23, 2003: Fathers who feel society has left them stranded are becoming a potent political force, Julie Szego reports...

www.theage.com.au/ articles/2003/08/22/1061529334872.html

By Cheryl Wetzstein in The Washington Times, 8 January, 2003: Social work literature is biased against heterosexual males, leading to 'unfair and untrue' stereotypes about men and hampering social workers' ability to counsel men, an Alabam professor has concluded after reviewing articles in two social work journals from the last decade.

www.fact.on.ca/news/news0301/wt030108.htm

Fathers Direct, posted 24 March, 2002: Leading experts from around the globe meet today at Christ Church College, Oxford for the first World Summit on Fatherhood. The week-long summit, backed by the United Nations, will be attended by 50 experts from five continents... [This was attended by Warwick Pudney and Harald Breiding-Buss from New Zealand]

www.fathersdirect.com/media/Default.asp ?page=news&sub=0&id=494

By Stephen Baskerville, Howard University, American Political Science Association (APSA): Fatherhood is rapidly becoming the number one social policy issue in America...

www.apsanet.org/imgtest/PoliticsFatherhood-Baskerville.pdf