I am a sook. Yes, it is now out in the open. Everyone knows now! I rarely go a week without crying. Tears are an occupational health hazard if your mission is to turn the tide of fatherlessness. I am crying for others or crying for myself or maybe a bit of both. Sometimes it is hard to know. Did I say that tears are good for your health? Well, it ...

Manhood is a wonderful creation, as is womanhood. The masculine is magnificent as much as the feminine is fabulous. Men and women are gloriously different. It is only those who are obsessed with the ideology of gender androgyny who refuse to accept the facts. Dr John Gray, the author of Men are From Mars – Women are from Venus has sold over 50 million copies of this revolutionary book. It became ...

You may remember that I recently told the story of Gallipoli VC awardee Captain Shout in a special edition of Dads4Kids about the upcoming Train the Trainer Summit. Imagine my surprise on having dinner with Mark Jeffery, one of the Dads4Kids Board Members, the night before ANZAC Day, that his wife Rochelle told me that her grandfather had been awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross in Vietnam. I almost fell off my ...

We are in the middle of celebrating Easter.  Our children think that Easter is all about chocolate eggs and rabbits, but of course it is really about something far deeper and stronger.  Good Friday is called ‘good’ because it celebrates the death of Jesus Christ on a cruel cross, and Easter Sunday is a celebration of his resurrection.  Many people think of Jesus as effeminate, or as Larry Norman said, ‘a ...

At Gallipoli on the morning of 9th August 1915, with a small party of soldiers, Aussie Dad and soldier Alfred Shout  charged down trenches strongly occupied by the enemy and personally threw four bombs among them, killing eight and routing the remainder. In the afternoon of the same day, from the position gained in the morning, he captured a further length of trench under similar conditions and continued personally to bomb ...

Kevin Bailey is one of those guys you would never forget if you had the chance to meet him face to face. Like most people who have served in the Armed Forces, he carries himself well in a positive and self-assured manner and yet in a uniquely Aussie way, is very laid back. Kevin has an infectious sense of humour, a quick wit which he doesn’t’ mind using and a razor ...

‘Equality for Men’ is a new book by Glen Poole, fatherhood campaigner from Great Britain. Glen Poole worked very closely with Matt O’Connor of Fathers4Justice. More than any other group in the world, Fathers4Justice put issues surrounding single fathers, unjust family law courts and fatherless children on the worldwide map. Who can forget Jason Hatch climbing the walls of Buckingham Palace with his banner, ‘Super Dads of Fathers 4 Justice’? Billions ...

In a few days time we celebrate the beginning of a new year. Taylor Swift’s words are true, “This is a new year. A new beginning and things will change”. However, the older you get the harder it is to change, but if you are a father, you have to keep on changing, for the better, all the time. It is great to see a younger generation getting interested in fatherhood. ...

One of the joys of being in the men’s movement is meeting people on the journey. The men’s movement is filled with poets, artists, musicians and ratbags of which I am chief. My friend Noel Giblett is one of those many poetic minstrels and for the purpose of this newsletter, I am calling him ‘the musical man’. Before I tell you about Noel and his latest album, Surrender, let me tell ...

One of the ways International Men’s Day was celebrated, on Tuesday 19 November 2013, was by holding a Men and Fathers’ Strategic Roundtable at Parliament House, Canberra. Thirty-three delegates from many parts of the men and fathers’ movement actively participated. Three of the delegates were indigenous, seven were women and a few others came as observers. During the lunch break, Carolyn Managh from M&C Saatchi released The Modern [Aussie] Man White ...

It is International Men’s Day on Tuesday 19 November. See the promo video and for a laugh check out this funny video put together a few years ago. Celebrate this day in whatever way you can. The theme this year is “Keeping Men and Boys Safe” and the five challenges are: Tackling male suicide Keeping men and boys safe to allow them to become tomorrow’s role models End tolerance of violence towards ...

Earlier this year, I was contacted by Stuart Barlo from Lismore. He asked if I would come and speak at the inaugural district Lismore Man Day Conference. Stuart has been receiving our weekly Dads4Kids newsletter to encourage dads for almost ten years. He has been reading the jokes for all that time, and still gets a laugh, which I think is good news. I was humbled by the invitation, so after ...

Men are leaders. They will either lead goodly or badly. For almost 40 years men have been demonised by radical feminists and a compliant media because the radical feminists have rightly observed that almost all of the world’s problems have come from inerrant men. Look at the long list of dictators responsible for the deaths of 153 million people in the 20th Century. All of them (top 36) are men. Mao ...

The subbie was a weathered man in his late 50s with big, calloused hands and knobbly knees. His offsider was a skinny, tearaway kid with wraparound sunglasses and a hotted-up Holden. Watching them work at our house over a few weeks was an instructive experience. They were obviously on good terms with one another, and occasionally there was even a bit of leg-pulling. But there was no doubt about who was ...