There is something really exciting about the Christmas – New Year period. It marks the start of a New Year and a whole host of opportunities for you and your family. New Year’s Day signals a chance for you to break with the past and start afresh. This is a day to be finished with discouragement from any past failure as a father and husband and move on to higher ground. ...

Christmas is a great time of the year for our families and particularly for our children. I remember as a ten year old boy, the year seemed to last forever before Christmas arrived. The lead up to Christmas went excruciatingly slow. Psychologists acknowledge that time does go quicker as you age. For me, the big marker of the year was Christmas, not New Year’s Day. Everything revolved around Christmas. John Lennon ...

Australia is the best country in the world. I know that Alison and I are biased, but we say that every time we come home from an overseas trip, and it gets truer every time. We had an exciting journey as we met with family and fatherhood leaders in the USA, Europe and Asia. I have visited nineteen countries as an adult, and eight more as a child. Nothing has given ...

Don’t go lookin’ through that old camphor box, woman You know those old things only make you cry When you dream upon that little bunny rug It makes me think that life has passed you by There are days when you wish the world would stop, woman But then you know some wounds would never heal But when I browse the early pages of the children It’s then I know exactly ...

It’s always an interesting thing, gauging how much people engage with an issue or an idea. Sometimes you’d think that one thing would be wildly popular and it flops, other times you think it’s an absolute stinker, yet it grabs people’s attention and becomes a runaway success. This is especially true on the internet, a place where pictures of cats seem to rate higher than stories about real life heroes much ...

It’s interesting the things that come to mind when you’re busy with life. Recently I was looking after my four children at home (the eldest is almost seven, the youngest is not yet two) and I had to break up an argument. It was your typical “he said, she said, he did, she did” sort of affair, and ended up with son number two apologising to his sister with all the ...

It’s here! International Men’s Day is the 19th of November this year, and it’s a day when men across the world are encouraged to speak up about issues that affect men. There’s no shortage of topics to discuss; from lower life expectancy and a higher suicide rate than women, to unfair treatment in separation and divorce proceedings in court. But the even bigger questions are… What is a man? How do ...

As I was putting together the Newsletter this week and trying to work out what to talk about in Warwick’s absence, lo and behold an article shows up about the town of Warwick in Southern Queensland, where they’ll be holding a breakfast later this month to talk about men’s health and fatherhood. It must be fated that we look at the issue of men’s health, especially in the lead up to ...

Someone asked me what I personally thought the highlight was for the World Congress of Families IX (WCF9), Salt Lake City, Utah. My answer is simple. Meeting people who are passionate for building the best future for our children. Our children do best when raised by a married mother and father. Thousands of studies show this to be the case. To quote Rebecca O’Neill from Civitas. “The weight of evidence indicates ...

Guest blog by Kevin Bailey We all want to be a great example to our children. No new father ever sets out to deliberately lead their child astray but sometimes our weaknesses get in the way of our aspirations. If we are to be any use to our children we have to learn to pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off and begin again with a renewed purpose to be the ...

William Shakespeare, speaking about marital love between a man and a woman, said “Love is a many splendored thing.” He is regarded as the best poet and playwright of all recorded history. William Shakespeare lived in the 1500s but scientists are just finding out today that he knew what he was talking about.   The key to staying in love with your wife is embracing the complexity that the challenge of ...

Running the recent Dads4Kids Instagram Photo Competition has been one of the most rewarding and emotional experiences of my life. Probably most of the photos were taken while dads spent time with their children. However many of the shots were taken in order to enter the competition – precisely the point of the exercise. The really good news is that we believe this competition has reached over 100,000 people with its ...

People, especially the media, are happy to talk about problems. Bad news sells! But very few people, especially the media, are happy to talk about the answers to domestic violence. Miranda Devine went to the heart of the problem in an article recently called Demonising Men Won’t Stop Domestic Violence: It is a grim portent that Malcolm Turnbull’s first policy announcement as Prime Minister was a $100 million gimmick blaming domestic ...

I can fondly remember the fun times I had with my Dad when I was a boy. My brother and I would wrestle Dad on the lounge room floor. The punishment, if either of us got caught, was being in the hands of the proverbial Tickle Monster. Tickling was horrific but joyful torture at the hands of Daddy – the Tickle Monster, but little did we know at the time, that ...

The mission of Dads4Kids is to improve the well-being of children by increasing the proportion of children growing up with involved, responsible, committed and loving fathers. You might well ask the question, “How do we do this?” This is a question the team at Dads4Kids asks themselves every day. Simply put, we have to inspire more love in the fathers we connect with. Again you ask, “How do you inspire fathers ...

The week from the 13 – 19 September is Marriage Week. This is a week that we can all get excited about because marriage and fatherhood are two sides of the same coin. Alison and I have always been passionate about having a good marriage and supporting and encouraging marriages everywhere. Our motivation, on my part, comes from the pain I experienced from growing up in a divided home: when Mum ...

Here we are, another Father’s Day, another year, and a big thanks to Sonora Louise Smart (1842 – 1919) from the USA, who was the founder of Father’s Day. Mother’s Day was formally initiated in 1908 by Anna Jarvis in the USA. Two years later Sonora, a devout women of faith, began to advocate for Father’s Day. In June 2010 in an address to the Spokane Christian Ministers’ Association, Sonora Louise ...

Inspiration comes when you least expect it. I went to visit my videographer is his studio to talk about various video projects, including the YouTube videos from the Voice 4 Kids Summit held at Parliament House, Canberra a few weeks ago. Sam introduced me to a young surfer name Adam. Adam said, “You’re not Warwick Marsh, the guy who is the founder of Dads4Kids and runs those crazy good ads on ...

Some time ago I had the privilege of organising a meeting with Pru Goward who was the then Equal Opportunity and Discrimination Commissioner based at the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission in Sydney. It was an informal, round-table discussion over coffee where several men’s and father’s groups shared their dreams, frustrations and positive suggestions for the future. Pru also shared eloquently on the frustrations women feel in a male dominated ...

John Mayer’s music took the world by storm. Seven Grammy Awards out of a total of 19 nominations is surely  some kind of recommendation. The fact that the Beatles won 8 Grammy Awards and Simon Garfunkel won 7 gives some grounds for comparison. I must confess to being a bit biased for two reasons. Firstly, I am a ‘Blues aficionado’ and John Mayer is a really good Blues guitarist, and secondly ...