Writing a self-help book for men

When I was a teenager, the only self-help books on the shelves were Catholic Truth Society pamphlets such as What Every Boy Should Know and Dale Carnegie’s How to Win friends and Influence People and How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, says my That's Men for You column in today's Irish Times. The column is part of the Irish Times' premium content so I can't reproduce it here. Carnegie’s books, far more fun than Catholic Truth Society pamphlets, had a positive influence on my life and I still sometimes recommend them to counselling clients, the column says.

My own odyssey into self-help authorship began with a request from Veritas to write a book for men and culminates this evening with the launch of Like a Man – a guide to men’s emotional wellbeing.

A major challenge in writing a book like this, I found, is getting the tone of voice right. As I pared down my "just do what I say and you’ll be grand” style, chapter after chapter went to the recycle bin. And when my editor Ruth Garvey tactfully remarked that “I have read books that tend to slip into a slightly condescending tone,” further chapters were trashed.

The last thing that’s needed in a book for men is a condescending tone, not least because men are fed up with being lectured as though they were hapless, hopeless and irresponsible. Traditionally, men have been expected to get on with things without complaining, to go to war without complaining, to do hard and health-damaging work without complaining – and then we are ticked off and lectured for not taking care of ourselves!

Self-help books, if they are to be honest, have to be based on the author’s own faults and mistakes and what he did, should have done or could have done about them. And I am blessed with having had, and still having, many faults from which to learn! If only I had read What Every Boy Should Know before it was too late.....

Mother's little golden boy

"He's his family's pride and joy, his mother's little golden boy." Ah yes, Mister Perfect, the guy we love to hate. Hear all about him in this YouTube video which features a lively performance from what I take to be a happy Ulsterman singing My Perfect Cousin. Thanks to Blogorrah for spotting this one.....

Making fathers of young dads

"There is a false view that young dads are hard to reach," says Jenny Midwinter, coordinator with Leeds Sexual Health Initiatives, quoted in this article in The Guardian. The article is on a scheme in Leeds to help young fathers engage with their children and look after them. "Other services fail to engage young fathers when they attempt to bolt something for them on to existing provision for teenage mums," she says. "Young men won't attend a 'parents' group when it is clearly focused on mothers. The sad thing is that their non-involvement with such services can bolster the stereotype of them not wanting to play any part in their children's lives."

The scheme is called Fact (Fathers and Children Together) and John May, Fact's specialist learning mentor for teenage fatherhood, says: "Most of what we provide has been asked for by the lads themselves." The sessions include workshops on everything from car safety to baby food preparation, provided by outside experts or Fact's attached pair of nursery nurses, says the Guardian article. Then there are trips with their babies to the library; picnics in the park and a visit to see Santa. "Anyone can go to buy a pack of nappies," says May, "but our lads want to be competent dads. The skills they acquire are far more likely to benefit their relationship with their children and, in turn, with the mums, even if they are no longer together as couples. And all at absolutely minimum cost.".....

Fathers: larger than life

The father is an ordinary man, says my That's Men for You column in today's Irish Times. He has the strengths and weaknesses of ordinary men. But unless you have been desperately unlucky your father's strengths will seem quite extraordinary and his weaknesses relatively insignificant or, if not insignificant, forgivable. The column is part of the Irish Times' premium content so I can't reproduce it here.

In a sense, we never stop looking at our fathers through the eyes of the child to whom he is an almost magical figure of great power, the column says. I suppose that's something that we fathers have going for us. We may feel dissatisfied with ourselves or only too aware of our shortcomings but our children, generally, know nothing of this.

The column was partly inspired by this entry in Paul Newton's Newton's Laws blog.....

Election diary: Sinn Fein IRA passé?

Fellow blogger Paul Newton of Newton's Laws takes me to task in his comments on this election diary in which I referred to Sinn Féin/IRA. He reckons that if Ian Paisley can do business with Sinn Féin, maybe it's time to quit calling them by that name.

"You are quite correct that the victims (on both sides) should be acknowledged and remembered and that seeing Sinn Fein in any type of government will stick in the craw of many, but the practical choice is whether to engage or disengage," he writes. "There are many precedents for the engagement with those who have previously been branded terrorists, from Mandela in S.A to the dignity of W.T Cosgrave in handing over to De Valera in 1932."

I used the Sinn Féin/IRA tag to draw attention to Sinn Féin's past which seemed to be absolutely ignored by a Roscommon TV audience who were loud in their praises of Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams. I agree that it would be silly to use this tag all the time but I felt this was a context in which it served a legitimate purpose.

I also agree with him when he says that "not all people who see Sinn Fein as a viable alternative to the 'me fein' political environment we currently live in are or ever were supporters of the IRA," though I am not one of those people.

Sports talk: The emotional language of men?

If men have an emotional language, sports is it, writes Ethan Todras-Whitehill in his Punch for Punch column on the Crucial Minutiae blog. "When men interact, it’s pretty much a given that we’re going to talk about sports...It’s how you deal with a double date when the women are yammering away about underwear trends," he writes. "It’s how... you keep the conversation going with your best friend when you’ve both run out of things to say."

The explanation for this use of sports as an emotional outlet lies in boyhood, he believes, and he quotes the following from Dr William Pollack's book, Real Boys:

"For many boys, sports are a form of intimacy and a way to be honest. By temporarily freeing boys from the Boy Code—especially from the rules that say boys shouldn’t express feelings, show affection or expose their yearning for connection—sports can become one of the most important activities through which our sons, as their genuine selves, can relate closely with girls and other boys." .....

Election diary: Labour routed by, er, dogs

Memo to McDowell et al: If you want to rout Labour Party canvassers simply put a fierce dog at each road entrance and they'll scarper. Works a dream, judging by this entry in Dublin South-Central Labour candidate Eric Byrne's blog. A rottweiler should do the trick.....

Break the cycle of repeated depression

Have you been lucky enough to go through your life so far without suffering a serious depression? asks my That's Men for You column in today's Irish Times. "I do not mean the occasional bouts of the "blues" that we all experience from time to time," it says. "What I mean is the sort of depression that has you on the floor, so that getting out of bed in the morning, eating, dressing and normal day to day activities seem impossible." The column is part of The Irish Times' premium content so I can't reproduce it here.

However, it points out that we are in danger of falling back into depression if we misinterpret one of three symptoms as heralding its return: fatigue, low mood and negative thoughts. Any one of these can and does occur on its own. All three occur together in a major depression. Where a person who has had a major depression later experiences one of them in isolaton (a dip in mood, for instance) he may wrongly assume the depression is back. This may lead him to engage in negative thinking and, perhaps, stay in bed in the mornings which leads to fatigue. This, then, brings back the depression.

The article cautions readers against jumping to the conclusion that the depression is back when a single symptom occurs. Instead, when you experience one of the three symptoms of fatigue, low mood or negative thoughts, be careful to avoid falling into the other two - just get on with what you are doing and allow the symptom to pass.....

Election diary: Guns 'n' Roses: Rabbite-Adams the dream ticket?

Holy shit! Is it Pat Rabbitte and Gerry Adams for a future Irish government? That seems to have been the message from last night's Frank Opinion on RTE 1 with "renowned Washington pollster Dr Frank Luntzt" as they call him. The audience in his Roscommon focus group went positively orgasmic for Gerry and were very excited by Pat. All those Sinn Féin/IRA killings in Northern Ireland seem to count for nothing now. And people thought it was great the way Gerry stood up for the underprivileged. Mind you, the same audience thought we have too many immigrants coming into the country and one woman who boasted that she was an illegal immigrant in Chicago for five years declared that immigrants here shouldn't be supported by the State. Er, actually, Ms Illegal, those East European immigrants are not allowed welfare payments here and what's more they're legal, which puts them a step above yourself.....

Men, eyeliner and sex appeal

To me, there is nothing sexier than a man who can work both eyeliner and a sharp suit in turn, writes Jennifer Gandin Le in this post on the Crucial Minutiae blog. "I love men who are almost changelings, who can walk that delicious line between masculine and feminine with style," sez Jennifer. "Any man who can do this instantly wins my heart and my loins." Eh, alright, gimme that black marker.....

Election diary: scarifying invective on Twenty Major

If you want to enliven your pre-election enjoyment by reading some scarifying invective about Michael McDowell, our beloved Minister for Justice, Equality & Law Reform, check out this post on Twenty Major's award-winning blog. The post is a few days old but what the f**k about it you f*****g c**t as Twenty Major would say, though without the asterisks.....

Election diary: leaders of the gang

Looking at the all-male party leadership line-up for the forthcoming general election campaign I found myself, I don't know why, comparing them to movie gangster stereotypes. Here is what I came up with:

Bertie Ahern: Definitely the Godfather. Too much gravitas and not enough desperation to be Tony Soprano. But old style Godfather, a la Marland Brando, yes. This is a man who knows where the bodies are buried, though he doesn't have to bury them himself any more.

Enda Kenny: The FBI agent, sharp suited and slick haired, consumed by his efforts to topple the Godfather. But no matter how much time he spends in the barber's chair, he will never nail the Boss of Bosses unless, of course, an act of treachery occurs somewhere along the line.

Pat Rabbitte: Definitely strikes me as The Enforcer. This is the guy who is hiding in the back seat ready to pop up and slip the garotte around your neck.

Trevor Sergent: The youthful eagerness of this Dublin Four capo could get him into trouble. May die in a hail of bullets in a motorway toll booth ambush.

Michael McDowell: The Consigliore. Will never be accepted as a member of the family but tolerated by the Godfather and his cronies for his ability to keep them out of trouble, mainly with him.

Gerry Adams: The up and coming pretender from the Old Country. Sinn Fein's background of guns and murder may be a turnoff to many but a turn-on to some. A day may come in the great battle between Gerry and the Godfather when one will have to take the other out - or in.

We are a fortunate electorate indeed to have such a fine body of men to lead us, going forward.....

Signatures sought for Declaration on men's health

The Men's Health Forum in Ireland is asking the public to electronically sign the Vienna Declaration on the health of men and boys in Europe. The Declaration was drawn up at the European Men's Health Forum in Vienna in 2005.

The Declaration is based on, among other things, the recognition that men’s life expectancy is unnecessarily low across Europe. "Death rates from preventable causes at all ages are unacceptably high," it says. "Furthermore, there are significant and avoidable inequalities between countries. Poor health and premature death in men also affect their families and are an unnecessary burden on health services and the wider economy."

It calls on EU governments to take action to improve men's health. The Declaration has been welcomed by the European Commission but the Forum wants concrete action and not just words of welcome. For that reason, it is asking anybody interested to sign the declaration to help to convince both the European Union and member governments that there is support for initiatives to improve the health of men throughout the Community.

If you want to electonically sign the Declaration go to this page.....

Books on your mobile, girls? But it's meant to be a guy thing!

Look, we guys are supposed to be the ones who are into techie things. Hence my dismay at this story from The Guardian which suggests that women are the ones who are likely to take to reading novels on their mobile phones. Where will it end?.....

Getting dumped with class

I once got dumped by a girlfriend at a John O'Connor recital in the Pro-Cathedral in Dublin, says my That's Men for You column in today's Irish Times. I always thought it a pretty classy way to be given the push. She proved her credentials as a music lover by waiting for the last concert in the series before turning to me during a lull in the performance and whispering "I think we ought to stop seeing each other." The column is part of The Irish Times' premium content so I can't reproduce it here.

The column discusses examples of dumping lovers and getting dumped by them, including this beaut from a page on this topic in the Sydney Morning Herald's Mashup blog:

"Have only been married once, and never again! I collected some of my husbands favorite clothes and valuables eg laptop..stero playstation etc and placed them into his brand new porche. I drove the car to musgrave park in brisbane and left the doors open and keys in ignition. I took a photo with my phone and caught a taxi home. I sent the photo via mms the next morning. This included, my txt of 'Dont you hate it when your wife catches you sleeping with her cousin! see you next in court!' xox The car was later found burnt out. It felt great, considering the car meant more to him than i ever did."

Sheer class!

NHS to gender-proof: men's groups to monitor

Men's health campaigners have pledged to monitor how NHS organisations comply with new gender equality legislation, says this story from the BBC. From Friday 6th April, all NHS organisations will begin to be scored on how "gender friendly" they are, the story says. The new Gender Equality Duty requires all public authorities in England, Wales and Scotland to show they are promoting equality for women and men, and eliminating sexual discrimination and harassment.....

Current or former partners kill two women a week in the UK

Roughly two women a week are being killed in the UK by current or former partners, according to this article in The Guardian. This represents 46% of all female homicide victims, as compared with 5% of male victims. The article is on the background to a new British Asian film, Provoked, on the subject of domestic violence.....

Darth Vader was wrong

"Search your feelings.....you know it to be true," says Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back. But he's wrong, says blogger and freelance journalist Ethan Todras-Whitehill in this entry in the Crucial Minutiae blog. For men, he argues, feelings may not be the most accurate guide to what to do next. Ethan's Punch-for-Punch column on masculinity issues appears on the multi-authored blog every Monday.....

Men more likely than women to use cutting to self harm

Cutting is used significantly more often by men than by women as a means of self harm, according to new figures from Ireland's National Registry of Deliberate Self-Harm, says this report in The Irish Medical News. "In terms of method, drug overdose was the commonest method of self-harm involved in 76 per cent of all acts registered in 2005 and self-cutting was the second commonest method of self-harm, used in one-in-five cases, and significantly more often by men (25 per cent) than women (17 per cent)," the IMN report says.

The provisional figure for suicides in 2005 was 431 and the level of youth suicide is currently fifth highest in Europe. Men under 35 years account for 40 per cent of all suicide.

For self-harm figures for earlier years see this report from the National Documentation Centre on Drug Use.

Females can be violent and abusive too, research suggests

The idea that females are far less likely than males to engage in sexual abuse has been questioned in recent piece of research from the United States, says my That's Men for You column in today's Irish Times. This research, along with findings on female domestic violence, suggests that we need to look again at whether we are responding adequately to what really goes on between men and women in society, it says. The column is part of The Irish Times' premium content so I can't reproduce it here.

The research, on which you can find more here on Medical News Today, suggested that boys in one-parent families in Pennsylvania are more likely to be sexually abused by females than by males. The column goes on to refer to Irish, Canadian and US research on domestic violence inflicted on men by women.

The point of all this is not to engage in a woman-bashing exercise but to suggest that professionals working with domestic violence, sexual abuse and other issues really need to open their minds and ears to complaints from men are as well as to those from women. And it notes that Amen, the organisation that works with male victims of domestic abuse in Ireland, complains that less than 1% of all government funding for domestic violence goes to services for male victims, "an indefensible situation given that the government's own research found that 29% of women and 26% of men suffer domestic abuse.".....

Honest, we'll get together soon, son

How many fathers today are deprived of their children's company because of the demands of work and commuting? Glenn Sacks' blog has this song by Harry Chapin (right) about the father who lives to regret putting work before his relationship with his son.....

Are men more faithful than women to their buddies?

Females are far more likely to discard their buddies than guys are, suggests Sydney Morning Herald blogger Sam de Brito in this entry in his All Men Are Liars blog. Writes Sam: "Men will put up with all sorts of crap from friends and even the most horrendous anti-social behaviour can be rationalised with the statement, 'it's alright, he's me mate.'" Women's magazines, however, regularly feature articles on "how to break up with your friend....."

Contact Me

You are welcome to email me at

pomorainATgmailDOTcom

Replace the AT with @ and the DOT with .

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About this blog

This blog contains my newspaper articles and random thoughts, observations and bits of information.

I write a weekly column called That's Men for The Irish Times and most of the columns later appear on the blog.

When I began this blog, I worked as a journalist in Dublin but most of my work now is in teaching and writing about mindfulness.

I also write poetry and a collection of my poems, The Blue Guitar, is published by Salmon. I have a poetry blog called The Blue Guitar.

I am originally from a rural parish called Ladytown in County Kildare. I now live in Dublin with my wife and two children.

If you want to email me, try:

You can get in touch through the contact form at my website, www.padraigomorain.com





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Days of slavery are not over

Two hundred years after the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, has slavery reached our shores with men as its final customers? asks my That's Men for You column in today's Irish Times. The question is prompted by the announcement that Scotland Yard has set up a unit to combat sex slavery in Britain, just half an hour's flight away. The column is part of the Irish Times' premium content so I can't reproduce it here.

In Britain it is believed that about 4,000 women and girls are working as sex slaves, it says. Most have been trafficked into the UK from Eastern Europe, duped into believing that they have been recruited for normal jobs.

This is a men's issue because these women are forced to work in brothels and massage parlours whose customers are men. If you included these women as part of society then you would have to say that society is morally damaged by this trade. I would have thought this was true regardless of one's beliefs concerning women who choose to go into the sex industry.

There's more on this issue in this article from The Guardian.....

Er, I suppose a pre-nup is out of the question?

Prenuptial agreements are likely to become a more frequent feature of Irish family law if the government accepts proposals by a special study group, says this story in the Sunday Business Post. The group is chaired by senior counsel Inge Clissmann and includes senior barristers and solicitors and representatives of the Office of the Attorney General and the Department of Justice. The Sunday Business Post report by Kieron Wood says the study group is expected to recommend that prenuptial agreements should be made legally enforceable, except where that would cause significant injustice. Nearest but not necessarily dearest, eh?.....

Time to let the media into the Family Law Courts

Ireland's Family Court reporter Dr Carol Coulter said yesterday that the input of children is rarely considered by judges in family law cases, and when it is it tends to be only that of teenagers and not smaller children, says this story in the Sunday Independent. Last month, Dr Coulter produced a very useful research report (see this entry) showing that more Irish divorces are settled amicably and without recourse to court battles, than had been thought. Dr Coulter (right) is also The Irish Times Legal Affairs Correspondent.

However, the production of research of this kind is the furthest that the court system has gone towards opening up the Family Law courts to public scrutiny. What research cannot convey is the flavour of court proceedings, whether individual cases are dealt with fairly or unfairly, the attitude of judges towards certain parties and so on. Without this information, we are left in ignorance of perhaps 90 percent of what goes on in the courtroom.

For decades, the media have reported proceedings in the Children's Court. They have done so without publishing details that might tend to identify children appearing before the court. But the media reporting of what goes on in the Children's Court has done much to highlight deficits in the entire juvenile justice system.

It is really past time for the Courts Service to introduce a similar facility into the Family Law courts for media reporting with strict anonymity rules . Otherwise, despite Dr Coulter's excellent work, we are left wondering what really goes on behind those closed doors.....

Europe's massive sex slave trade

Sex slavery, it seems to me, is one of the great neglected issues of our time. In Europe alone, officials estimate that more than 200,000 women and girls are smuggled out of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics each year, the bulk of whom end up working as enslaved prostitutes, according to this extraordinary investigation by journalist Preston Mendenhall on msnbc.com. Young women are tricked into the clutches of traffickers with false promises of jobs, beaten, raped and imprisoned and made to service clients. The centre of the trafficking business is Velesta (right) in Macedonia, a town the story describes as one of the most dangerous places in Europe. But trafficked women end up as far west as Amsterdam and the UK and do they end up in Ireland too? The misery is appalling, the numbers huge and our indifference shocking.....

Prostate research suggest it's time to heal the mind/body split

Research on worries among men who are told they do not have prostate cancer should alert health professionals to a serious need - namely the need to pay attention to the psychological effects of physical illnesses, says my That's Men for You column in today's Irish Times. This is no small matter. Physical ill-health is among the main contributors to suicide among older people. Again, the lesson is that physical ill-health affects body and mind and not the body alone. The column is part of the Irish Times' premium content so I can't reproduce it here.

But the research (there's more on it here at ScienceDaily) shows that men who are given the all-clear following an investigation for possible prostate cancer go on to worry about the possibilities of getting the disease. A similar effect has been reported in women investigated for breast cancer but found to be healthy. The column argues that the health services need to abandon their current mind/body split in treatment. A few counselling sessions or a health education programme could save a lot of worry in the future.

It could also save lives. Physical pain and ill health are among the important reasons for older people to commit suicide. In 2002, the suicide rate among people aged 65 to 74 in Ireland was 11 per 100,000 compared to 16.1 for those aged 15-24. The rate was nearly seven times higher for men than for women (19.7 compared to 3.1).....

Sweet sound of, er, snoring?

Readers' reactions to two recent Irish Times articles which mentioned the perils of sleeping together - including people stealing each other's bedclothes and snoring - brought a new perspective to snoring, a behaviour which is usually characterised as male. The article, in the That's Men for You series (Tuesday, 13th and 20th February, 2007) is part of The Irish Times' premium content so I can't reproduce it here. But two readers remembered men's snoring with affection.

Wrote one reader of her father's snoring: "We children loved the snoring. It was the most comforting sound if you woke up from a nightmare....first the nightmare, then the sudden waking...the silence and the dark and then the blissful sound reverberating through the house. You were safe and sound and put yourself back to sleep to the rhythm of the snores.

"The snoring was must useful during the length of my mis-spent youth in which my father was alive. Sneak in the front door..listen..then when the snoring started take a few steps of the stairs, pause in the snoring, pause on the stairs and so on until you were safely in bed. Mother could never hear anything while father was snoring.

"To this day to me it is one of the most comforting sounds in the world...a lullaby in fact."

Another reader, whose husband was "a terrific snorer" who died in his 40s, recalls how the rhythm of his snoring helped their children to sleep through the night. Now, "the nights are particularly lonely for me & it took me a long time before I could even lie on our bed.The girls find the nights so quiet & still find it hard to settle. How much we miss that warm, safe, comforting noise."

As I said, a new perspective.....

Dig this, kids!

Fathers in the UK are being encouraged to work on allotments (plots of land, such as those on the right near Wimbledon, owned by local authorities and rented to citizens at little or no cost) with their children to improve father/child relationships under a British government policy on parenting. The allotment idea is just one of a number of measures designed to appeal to men as the government promotes paternal engagement with kids, according to this story in The Guardian. "Fathers' involvement is associated with children's better educational outcomes, school attendance, behaviour, higher educational expectations and better social and emotional outcomes," education secretary, Alan Johnson said when launching the policy. See earlier post on this policy here....

Postnuptials are the latest fashion

Want to be at the cutting edge in your marriage? If so, you need a postnuptial agreement, says my That's Men for You column in today's Irish Times. Forget the prenup - the postnuptial agreement is already coming down the tracks at us from California as an indispensable accessory, especially if you are in your second marriage. The article is part of The Irish Times' premium content so I can't reproduce it here. The postnuptial contract is made after you marry and when all is still rosy in the garden. In the contract, the couple work out issues concerning assets and child custody should they break up. May sound daft but may also have some merits in the case of second marriages where the couple wants to protect the rights of the children of the first marriage. Disadvantage? You might get kicked out of bed for suggesting a postnup as happened to the husband of Eva Longoria's (above right) character in Desperate Housewives. Read more in this article on the California Family Law Blog.....

Dads not mums treat girls differently

At least some of the explanations for differences in behaviour between boys and girls lie in the fact that they are treated differently by their parents. And according to this report in the British Psychology Society Research Digest it's the dads and not the mums who treat girls differently to boys.....

Lying low

Just Like A Man is lying low until next Monday 12th March (things to do) but there's a good discussion going on about this entry if you want to get involved in the meantime.....

In Spain, green woman joins green man on pedestrian lights

The wimmin continue their inexorable advance. Green female figures now alternate with male figures on pedestrian lights in the Spanish municipality of Fuenlabrada, south of Madrid, according to this story on News24.com. Mind you, some German pedestrian lights have had female figures (right) since 2004, according to this Wikipedia entry....

Things a man should never do

Checking your BlackBerry in bed is top of this list of 19 things a man should never do, in Men's Health (USA). Next come asking for a kiss and wearing low-rise jeans.....

'False positives' in prostate tests bring subsequent worries

Men who get a "false-positive" prostate cancer result -- an abnormal screening result followed by a biopsy showing no evidence of cancer -- appear more likely to worry about their subsequent risk of cancer and report more problems with sexual function compared to men with normal screening results, according to a University of Iowa study reported in this article on ScienceDaily.....

From Gold Digger to Toxic Wife

The Toxic Wife is "the woman who gives up work as soon as she marries, ostensibly to create a stable home environment for any children that might come along, but who then employs large numbers of staff to do all the domestic work she promised to undertake, leaving her with little to do all day except shop, lunch, luxuriate," explains Tara Winter Wilson in this article in the Daily Telegraph. They used to be called Gold Diggers but I guess Toxic Wife is more in line with the spirit of the age.....

Almost half UK children rarely see separated father

Almost half of all children from separated families in a UK survey did not see their father once last year, according to this story in The Guardian. The disturbing finding is included in a report on measures planned by the British government to encourage fathers to get more involved with their children. My first reaction on seeing this story was, "Oh no, here we go preaching at fathers again". That reaction lasted until I got to the mention of the lack of contact between many children and their separated fathers. The government is planning the introduction of courses to encourage "disengaged fathers" to play a bigger role in their children's upbringing.

Irishmen still hold top jobs though more women are qualified, says OECD

Some 12pc of Irish working men are likely to be in the position of manager, compared to 9pc or less for women, though more women employees (25 per cent) are likely to have professional qualifications than men (15 per cent), says this story in the Irish Independent on a new report from the OECD. See also these earlier entries Is the future female? and Swedish women to overtake men.....

Guys: why hide from Karen?

Speaking to students at a seminar on stress at the Law School attached to the Law Society in Dublin last night, I was struck by the absence of men in the attendance. The student body is made up of roughly equal proportions of men and women but the attendance was over 90 per cent female. That men experience stress at least as much as women is obvious but we still seem less willing to come out of the woodwork and say so. Anyway, we had a valuable evening with Karen Ward (right), a holistic therapist who runs the Rhiannon Clinic in Dublin and who is also a presenter on RTE's Health Squad who spoke on nutrition and exercise; with Brother Richard Hendrick, a Capuchin Friar working in Dublin in the areas of youth ministry, meditation and holistic health; and myself on mindfulness and the pressures we impose on ourselves through unrealistic expectations. So expect the next wave of female lawyers to be more chilled out than their male colleagues.....

More Irish divorces, separations settled amicably than expected, report finds

Ninety per cent of divorces and judicial separations in Ireland are settled without a court battle, according to a report, Family Law Matters (download here) by Dr Carol Coulter (right) for the Courts Service. The finding is more positive than had been expected. In almost all cases, whether agreed or contested, custody of children is awarded jointly, with the care of the children usually going to the mother. Dr Coulter is also Legal Affairs Correspondent of The Irish Times.....

Teens gain from contact with out-of-home Dads

Teenages whose parents don't live together are less likely to get into trouble with the law if their fathers stay involved with them, according to this story on Medical News Today.....

Gay? What's the big deal?

It didn't bother David's dad, Rod; nor Sam's mum, Debbie, says this story in The Guardian. But many young gay people still find themselves cut off from their families after they come out....

Viagra without prescription in Manchester but is it worth it?

Viagra is now available without prescription from Boots outlets in Manchester, according to this story from Malehealth. But in addition to a consultation with their pharmacist, "your blood pressure and cholesterol levels will be measured and you’ll have to fill in a questionnaire to ensure you don't have any health conditions that would make the drug dangerous," it says. "Oh yes, and you’ll need to be aged 30 to 64." And for a repeat prescription you'll have to talk to a BUPA doctor. Sounds like it would be less embarrassing and cheaper to just go to your GP in the first place.....

World's oldest man never married

The world's oldest man, 115-year-old Hryhory Nestor who lives in Ukraine, attributes his longevity to the fact that he never married, according to this story in The Guardian. "I liked my freedom. I would spend my time with one girl and then another. And then I would go off somewhere with the guys," he told Reuters.....

Finally! An explanation for that contrary streak

Why do we so readily oppose our spouses' wishes? asks this story on PsychCentral. The answer is "Reactance." It appears we're programmed to oppose the wishes of our nearest and dearest to preserve our autonomy, even when it's bad for us. The story is couched in terms which suggest reactance is mainly a male trait but I totally disagree - if that' s not too reactive of me.....

Want to make 'em sweet? Sweat!

Men's sweat can elevate women's hormones and improve their mood and physical and mental arousal, according to a study in the Journal of Neuroscience, reported in this story on irishhealth.com. Gee, why wash?.....

Dads influence daughters' eating behaviours

Fathers who worry excessively about their own weight or body shape could spark eating disorders in their daughters according to this report on irishhealth.com. Dads' criticisms of their daughters' weight or bodyshape can also lead to unhealthy eating behaviours in their children.....

Failed sterilisation leads to €350,000 claim

A man and his estranged wife are seeking €350,000 from the Coombe Hospital in Dublin to meet the cost of raising two children born following a sterilisation procedure, according to this story in the Irish Independent. Bridget and Daniel Byrne already had five children when she had the procedure....

Lies on dating websites? Surely not!

If you're seeking a partner through a dating website, be aware that the person you're interested in could be shorter and heavier than her profile suggests - but, then, so could you. Researchers at Cornell University found that 52.6 per cent of men in a study lied about their height on a dating website. Of the women, 39 per cent lied about height. Women were more likely than men to lie about their weight: 64.1 per cent as against 60.5 per cent. Most people of both genders were honest about their age. Almost a quarter, 24.3 per cent of men lied as did 13.1 per cent of women. Read more here in this story on psychcentral.com.....

Men and self harm

Both men and women self-harm though it is assumed that women are more likely to do so. On the other hand, women may just be more willing to tell their doctor about it so we don't really know how the genders stack up in this regard. Self-harm involves cutting, burning and other such activities. In all probability people self-harm because the pain they inflict on themselves blocks their emotional pain. iselfharm is a blog by an Irishman who says he began self-harming as a seven year old boy. He maintained the blog for about a year and a half but, though he has stopped adding new material, it's still useful to anybody affected by self harm.....

Gender equality coming to the NHS

From April 2007, Britain's National Health Service and organisations funded by it will be legally required to actively promote equality between men and women.

The requirement is based on the poorer health records of men than of women. Among other actions, NHS organisations will have to ensure that women and men make greater use of services that their sex had previously under-used according to this Men's Health Forum (England and Wales) guide to the new requirement.

MHF president Dr Ian Banks gives this example in an article on the MHF website: "Until the age of around 50 years men use general practice services half as much as do women. 'Not such a bad idea' I hear from hard pressed GPs across the country but the upshot is there are twice as many hospital admissions from men after this watershed age.".....

Vista - a guy thing?

Reading on Wired the other day about the underwhelmed response to the launch of Vista, the successor to Windows XP, I wondered if it's exclusively men who read this sort of stuff. How many women will you see staring lovingly at the compute magazines in Easons? Not many - in fact, hardly any, ever. My conversations with women on this topic suggest that to the female of the species a computer is something you use to do specific things like work, buy airline tickets or communicate with friends. But the computer itself carries no allure whatsoever for them. Men, on the other hand, look at a computer and see a world of possibilities - it's a sort of magic box. Which leads me to wonder if a world in which the woman's view predominated would need one new operating system after another and ever more gigabytes of RAM? Or would we be happily working away on, say, Windows 98? And would we be one iota worse off? Probably not. Having said all that, can I just point out to all the guys reading this that you can see screenshots of all Windows operating systems from Windows 1.0 here. Drool, but don't let the gals see you doing it or, well, they'll snigger.....

Gay adoption exists in the Republic, sort of.....

As the row between churches and government in the UK over gay adoption flares up, what's the position in the Republic? According to Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Seamus Brennan TD, only married couples and individuals can adopt in Ireland. The Minister was speaking on RTE's Questions and Answers last night. I have certainly heard anecdotal evidence that gay couples have managed to "adopt" under these provisions. I have put the word "adopt" in quotation marks because apparently the child in these cases is adopted by just one member of the couple. If they break up, then the other member, it would appear, has no rights in relation to the child. I expect it will be left to the courts to sort this one out in some future constitutional case. In Britain, church adoption agencies will be denied the right to discriminate against gay couples from the end of next year. Expect a very big row between churches and government right up to the deadline. Meanwhile, in that bastion of liberalism, Northern Ireland, discrimination against gays in relation to adoption is already outlawed.....

Prostate test urged for all men over 50

All men over 50 should have an annual blood test to detect prostate cancer, according to this report (premium content) by Fiona Gartland in The Irish Times.

And despite its imperfections, the Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) blood test plays an important role in detecting prostate cancer, particularly in symptom-free men, a seminar was told by Sonya Bowen, a specialist prostate cancer information nurse with the Irish Cancer Society. And if the condition is detected early enough, the recovery rate is nearly 100 per cent, the seminar, "Talking about prostate health can save men's lives", heard. The seminar was hosted by Fine Gael MEP Gay Mitchell, who lost his father, two brothers and a sister to cancer.

Women sent to the back

Rules that forbid public contact between men and women have led to demands from ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel that female bus passengers sit at the back - and some bus companies have given in, according to this report on haaretz.com. Six women have now asked the High Court of Justice to instruct the Transportation Ministry to study whether there's a need for "segregated" buses and, if so, to limit their number and label them so that women can choose not to use them. So the boys can travel around in splended isolation!.....

Celebrity Big Brother: sensitive men, tough women

As Celebrity Big Brother trundles along in all its dubious weirdness, it's noticeable that some traditional stereotypes are absent from the programme. Certainly the most sensitive person on the set is a man, Jermaine (right) and the other men seem far closer to the sensitive than to the tough end of the scale. All the tough guys on the programme are women - Jade (who is undergoing bullying by media since her eviction), Jo and Shilpa for example. This Celebrity Big Brother has been mighty unattractive but at least it's challenging stereotypes.....

Just who are women trying to impress?

Do women make themselves thinner than men want them to be - just to impress other women? Do women dress to impress men or their sharp-eyed sisters? John Tierney sparked off a lively debate on this topic in his TierneyLab blog on NYTimes.com.....

Babies in suits

A suited man throwing a tantrum in an airport convinced Sam de Brito, author of the All Men Are Liars blog that some men stay stuck in the baby stage. More here.....

Survivor guilt hits male workers

Men who survive a workplace redundancy programme are almost as stressed as those who lose their jobs, according to this report on BBC News. The effect is far less pronounced in women.....

Dutch men walk tallest

Dutch men now average six feet one—seven inches taller than in van Gogh’s day—and the women five feet eight, making the people of the Netherlands the tallest in the world, according to this article in TheNew Yorker.....

Obesity and weight gain tied to prostate cancer death

Excess weight may not raise a man's risk of developing prostate cancer, but it may make him more likely to die of the disease, says this story on the excellent Prostate Cancer Society (UK) website.....

Men taking their wive's names

The old tradition of a wife taking her husband's surname is dying, replaced by each partner keeping his or her own name or both adopting a double-barrelled name. But husbands who take their wives' surnames are still relatively uncommon. In the USA, only six states make it as easy for a man to take his wife's name as for her to take his, according to this column by Denise Noe on Men's News Daily and they don't include trendy California.....

Male domestic abuse victims less likely to report

Male victims of domestic abuse are less likely to complain out of fear of losing their children, according to this article on baltimoresun.com.....

Killer wants to father baby

A murderer serving life in prison in the UK is again appealing to be allowed to father a child by artificial insemination, according to this story from BBC News.....

Is the future female?

Most of the dentists, vets, pharmacists, doctors, designers, teachers, and lawyers of the future in Ireland will be female, according to this story in the Irish Independent. The story echoes an earlier report from Sweden suggesting that within a couple of decades more women than men will be in top jobs there.....

The culture of permanent boyhood

Behavior once characterized by a pubescent seventh-grader has been established as the gold standard of manhood, writes columnist John Bambenek in this post on BC Culture.....

Homer Simpson Fitness Regime

If you want to stay fit while watching TV try these exercises from the BBC Sport website...

Would you marry me again? Not necessarily!

Most women in a recent poll in the United States said they were not sure they would marry their partner if they had the choice all over again, according to this report in the New York Post.....

Swedish women to overtake men

Swedish men are less intelligent, lonelier and fatter than their female counterparts, a new study claims, says this report in The Local, an English-language Swedish website. "In twenty years men's dominance will be broken and women will have more power in society. There will be more female CEO's and the wage gap will favour women," researcher Ingemar Gens told magazine Att:ention, says the report.....

'Excess work was damaging my health'

Working excessively long hours puts a strain on relationships between couples who become snappy and irritable with each other - and often the extra hours at work achieve little, according to this story from the BBC...

Cooperative and competitive conversations don't mix well

Cooperative conversations are quite different from competitive ones. Many people - men probably more than women - don't get this distinction, writes David Sanders in this posting at couplesupport.com...

The joy of mess

Is untidiness primarily a male characteristic? I suspect it might be, though women are by no means immune. Anyway, if you're a messy person you can get some emotional backup from this article in the New York Times on a new movement extolling the virtues of mess: Saying Yes to Mess

Angry Harry

This picture is from Angry Harry's website which chronicles what angers Harry in the gender wars.

Woman loses frozen embryos case, will appeal

A High Court ruling in Ireland in November that frozen embryos do not have the same constitutional right to life as those carried in the womb, will be appealed to the Supreme Court. The decision means the woman who took the case cannot have the embryos, held in a fertility clinic, implanted in her against the wishes of her separated husband. (See Who owns frozen embryos following separation? below for background).

Who owns frozen embryos following separation?

The question of who owns frozen embryos after a couple breaks up is about to be raised in the High Court in Dublin according to this story in The Sunday Times.

While together, the married couple had three frozen embryos stored in the Sims fertility clinic in Rathgar, Dublin. Now the couple has separated but the wife wants the embryos, produced during IVF treatment, implanted in her womb. The husband has refused.

The story echoes that of Natalie Evans and Howard Johnston which resulted in a European Court of Human Rights ruling last week. See this story in The Guardian for the details.Evans had her ovaries removed in 2001 because of pre-cancerous tumours. Since then she and her partner thave separated. She wants to have the embryos implanted in her womb as this provides her with her only chance of having a child. But Johnston has withdrawn his permission and the court has ruled that she cannot proceed without his consent.Explaining his position, Johnston told the Guardian: "Any child that may have resulted from this treatment, I would have been the father of that child but [would] have had nothing to do with its upbringing."I would have a child somewhere with no way of knowing how it was brought up. The way I look at it was that I have the right to start a family if and when I want to."

When a similar case arose in the United States a few years ago the judge ruled that if the frozen embryos represented a person's sole chance of ever becoming a parent then there could be an exception to the rule that consent on both sides was required, according to Dr Gillian Lockwood chairwoman of the British fertility Society ethics committee, quoted in this roundup of expert views in The Guardian.

In that same article, psychologist Oliver James appears to have confirmed Howard Johnston's fears: "I don't see that this child would have anything to do with him, apart from physically resembling him....I think he may have a mistaken belief in how much genetics play [a part] in determining who we are."Almost everybody who looks at the plight of Natalie Evans has sympathy for her and wishes that Howard Johnston would take a more sympathetic view. But how far should the ability to dispense with the consent of a partner go?"What is she fighting for, exactly?" asked Madeleine Bunting and Catherine Bennett in The Guardian."

The right of all women to use embryos created by assisted conception against the wishes of the estranged biological father? If so, it is a right that would, in fairness, have to be extended to similarly implacable would-be fathers, hoping to take spare embryos created with their own estranged partners and have them implanted - disregarding any lack of consent - in their new women partners, or in surrogates, then raised without the participation of the biological mother. No one, if they considered the interests of children created on this basis, could endorse that particular change in the law."

According to the Sunday Times the Irish case differs from the British one because the Republic of Ireland has a constitution which guarantees the right to life of the unborn child. The decision of the High Court which no doubt will end up in the Supreme Court will therefore be a landmark one.

Last year the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction (members) (report) recommended that the donation of sperm ova and embryos should be allowed in the Republic. It suggested that embryos outside the womb should have no constitutional and legal protection. Children born through surrogacy should be presumed to be the children of the couple who commissioned the treatment in the first place. Naturally, the government has done nothing about this. It is likely that in this area as in other tricky issues concerning reproduction in the past (contraception for instance) the making of law will be left largely to the courts.

And aside from the ethical issues involved there are others: if a woman is allowed to use the embryos donated by her former husband will the resulting child have inheritance rights vis-a-vis her former husband? Will it be possible to pursue the former husband for child support payments?

Gravely ill have better quality of life than senior managers

According to a story by Gabrelle Monaghan in The Irish Times (premium content) senior managers in foreign companies in Ireland have a poorer quality of life than people living with terminal illnesses!

The cause? The increasing demands from their foreign bosses, instant communication and emails according Ciar¿n O'Boyle, professor of psychology at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin who examined 23 senior managers and 110 newly appointed managers.

He analysed their stress with a measure the college pioneered to examine the quality of life of hospital patients."For senior managers, the quality of life was lower than any group of patients we looked at, including those who are terminally ill and those with motor-neuron disease," Prof O'Boyle said."Newly appointed managers had a lower quality of life than patients with osteo-arthritis and peptic ulcers."

The research comes as Ireland observes Work/Life Balance Day, a Government initiative supported by State agencies that's aimed at encouraging companies to communicate or improve their work-life balance policies for staff. The managers examined for the study "work for global organisations and are so busy responding to demands - they're money rich and time poor", the professor said. "Technology such as Blackberries and e-mail has really allowed the urgency of demands to get the upper hand."If a company's parent is based on the west coast of the US, it creates a whole time-lag problem and a need for availability. There is the increasing sense that people are expected to be available 24/7."

Men and women differ in their reactions to stress

According to this report on intelihealth.com American men are more likely than women to react to stress through sleep disturbance, anger or irritation. Women are more likely to feel nervous, to cry or to feel fatigue. Significant numbers of people react to stress by smoking or over-eating. This is because when stressed we seek comfort rather than what is good for us, according to Rajita Sinha, director of the Research Program on Stress, Addiction and Psychopathology at Yale University School of Medicine.

Sexes respond differently to heart attack symptoms

Irishmen are seven times more likely than Irish women to drive themselves to hospital while having a heart attack, according to according to a report in The Irish Times (premium content) by its Medical Correspondent, Dr Muiris Houston, on new research.The study also found that it took women five times as long as men to go to an emergency department after their symptoms first started.

Researchers from the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Trinity College Dublin looked at 890 patients admitted to six Dublin teaching hospitals with a confirmed heart attack.Some 50 per cent of people experiencing a heart attack will die before they reach hospital with the survival of the remaining half dependant on seeking medical help quickly, researchers found.The research, published in the Journal of Advanced Nursing, found it took women an average of 14 hours to get to hospital after the initial symptoms of a heart attack began, compared with just 2.8 hours for men.

Those who referred themselves to hospital experienced the shortest delays; patients referred by their GPs took on average five hours to get to hospital compared with 1.7 hours for those who self-referred.Patients with private medical insurance experienced shorter delays in getting to hospital. It took this group 1.7 hours to reach a casualty department while those with medical cards had an average delay of 2.4 hours.

Some 7 per cent of men and 1 per cent of women drove themselves to hospital, despite having chest pain or other serious symptoms. Many said they were too embarrassed to go in an ambulance or that ambulances should be used for more urgent cases.

Author Dr Sharon O'Donnell said: "Driving during a heart attack is obviously extremely dangerous for both the driver and the general public."People who drove themselves to hospital said they did it because it was the quickest way to get to the hospital, they felt well enough to make the journey, and they would have pulled over if necessary."However, she noted that many patients felt they were close to collapse when they arrived in the casualty department.

Commenting on the longer times it took women to get to hospital compared with men, Dr O'Donnell said a previous paper by the same researchers found that women with heart attacks waited longer than men to be admitted and treated."This means that women not only took longer to be treated, they also took considerably longer to get there in the first place. Prompt treatment is essential in heart attacks and these delays mean that women are more likely to suffer complications."

Asked why this might be, she said: "Women do not see themselves as heart attack victims. While men typically get sudden chest pain radiating down the left arm, women may get symptoms such as nausea, fatigue and shortness of breath."Dr O'Donnell said the overall message from the research was "no matter what your gender, if you suspect you are having a heart attack, take an aspirin and an ambulance".

Domestic abuse affects almost one fifth of men, research suggests

Almost one third of people attending a doctors' practice in Galway, Ireland, have experienced domestic violence, with almost 20 per cent of men affected by abuse in the home, new research has shown, writes Dr Muiris Houston, Medical Correspondent of The Irish Times (premium content). The study also found a high rate of domestic abuse among pregnant women. Six per cent of patients currently suffer abuse.

Dr Caitriona Waters, a GP registrar with the Galway General Practitioner Training Scheme, surveyed 200 patients at a Galway city practice last August.

Overall, some 31.5 per cent of the men and women had experienced domestic violence in the past, while 6 per cent of patients reported they were current victims of abuse, Dr Houston reports. Of the 18 pregnant women studied, three were experiencing domestic violence at the time.The study, which is the first to assess the prevalence of domestic violence among men in a general practice setting in the Republic, found that one in five men had a history of abuse in the home. Some 39 per cent of women who responded had experienced domestic violence in the past.

"I was particularly interested in looking at male victims of domestic violence when I undertook this research," Dr Waters said."The figure of 18.2 per cent may be an underestimate. There are probably more men out there experiencing domestic abuse, but it is difficult for them to volunteer this information. In addition, males do not attend GPs as frequently as female patients."

Of those who have experienced domestic abuse in the past, 68 per cent said they had been psychologically or emotionally abused. Verbal and physical abuse each occurred in more than half of cases.Some 28 per cent had experienced social abuse, in which the victim is dominated or criticised in public. Almost one in five victims had been sexually abused, while 13 per cent had suffered economic abuse in which access to money and the freedom to spend was controlled by the abuser.

Just 20 per cent of those who had experienced abuse in the past had disclosed the fact to a GP, although three in four had told someone close to them of their predicament.Among the reasons for not disclosing domestic violence to medical professionals were fears of the consequences for their children as well as a sense of shame and embarrassment.

Commenting on Dr Water's study, Prof Tom O'Dowd, professor of primary care and public health at Trinity College Dublin and co-author of a 2002 study that found a 40 per cent prevalence of domestic violence among women in the Republic, said: "This is an important study. It is sad but unsurprising that pregnant women are so highly represented."The figure for male domestic violence is a little lower than that emerging from research currently under way in our own practice."

Achilles Heel - gone but still worth reading

Achilles Heel was a radical men's magazine published in the UK in the 1980s and 1990s. You can still read many of its articles here and they're well worth a look if you're interested in men's issues.

Social worker helps father win custody battle

Social workers generally get a bad press from fathers' organisations but in an Irish Times (premium content) article (Dads doing it themselves) by Kitty Holland on 6th December, a father credits a social worker with the fact that he was able to keep his children.

David Donlea, a 37 year old Corkman, had been urged by his family and even by the Gardaí (police, called to the house during arguments) to leave his wife. But he was unwilling to leave his children, a boy and twin girls, and in the end it was she who left.

She brought the twins with her and refused him access. But his daughters asked to see him and a social worker visited him to ask him to do so. At the visit to his children, overseen by the social worker, he broke down in tears and so did his daughters. The social worker helped him to apply for custody of the children and he won.

The number of lone-parent families in the Republic increased from 129,116 in 1996 to 153,863 in 2002, Holland reports. Of these, 20,834 were headed by a man in 1996 and 23,499 in 2002.

Getting Inside Men's Health - Report

The report, Getting Inside Men's Health was launched on 1st December. It is the culmination of a three year research study on men's health, funded by the Health Promotion Unit, Department of Health and Children, and carried out in the South Eastern Health Board.

Key findings:
- Men tend not to be health conscious or proactive about their health For many Irish men, it appears that health has simply never been on their agenda. Sadly, it may be on foot of a `wake-up call' such as a health crisis, that they become conscious or proactive about their health. This is compounded by young men's sense of invincibility.

- Men's knowledge of fundamental health issues remains poor. Less than half of men surveyed knew what the function of the prostate gland was, while over a third were not aware of some of common prostate cancer symptoms.

- Three out of four men aged 18-29 were not aware that young men were at highest risk of developing testicular cancer.

- There is an overall lack of a preventative health ethos among Irish men Just one in five drinkers reported monitoring their own alcohol consumption.

- Three out of four men aged 50 and over reported never having had a Digital Rectal Examination (prostate cancer check).

- Just one in seven men aged 18-29 reported practicing Testicular Self Examinations monthly.

- Men go to their GPs reluctantly. Over half of men surveyed expressed varying degrees of reluctance to attend their GP, with women playing a key role in prompting `reluctant attenders' to go.

- Men are very often afraid to seek help. Many men expressed fear or anxiety about going to the doctor, with fear appearing under many guises. - silence, denial, procrastination, fatalism, the notion of a self-healing ability. It also appears that the fear and uncertainty of `what might be wrong' may pose a bigger threat to men's health, than the reality of ill-health itself.

- For many men, there appears to be a sliding scale of acceptability in terms of how they cope with different illnesses. The continued stigma that is perceived to be associated with depression for example, appears to prompt some men to `self-medicate' with alcohol, and/or to resort to violent behaviour, rather than to seek help.

- A `drinking culture' is endemic in Irish society. The `drinking man' continues to be upheld with considerable honour even by his more abstemious male peers. Half of those consuming over 50 units per week (i.e. over twice the recommended maximum limit), considered themselves to be `moderate' drinkers, while nine out of ten `weekly' binge drinkers similarly considered themselves to be `light' or `moderate' drinkers.

- Alcohol advertising poses a real challenge to men's health, in that it connects alcohol use with connotations of sexual prowess, and the achievement of optimum performance in sport.

- There was strong evidence that risk-taking behaviour is seen as an integral part of defining ones masculinity, and of `being a man'. The issue of male violence for example was found to be an obligatory way of defining and sustaining allegiance to male peer groups.

- Three out of four men surveyed reported adopting strategies of `avoidance' or `silence' in the way that they managed themselves through an emotional or mental health issue.

- Men associated an increased health consciousness with becoming a father. For example, two-thirds of all fathers reported taking fewer risks with their health on becoming a father.

The quantitative research study was carried out across the five counties in the South East. 570 men were selected randomly. The report was commissioned to inform the development of a national policy for men's health in Ireland.

Sporty women drink men under the table

People who play sports are likely to drink more than other people - and the trend is "particularly evident" among women taking part in team sports, according to a report by Eithne Donnellan in The Irish Times (premium content) on 1st December 2004.

But research by the Economic and Social Research Institute found that young men who play soccer, hurling, rugby and football also drink more than the general population.

The ESRI report, Sports Participation and Health Among Adults in Ireland, said: "This is a troubling finding since high levels of alcohol consumption are known to be related to higher levels of mental illness and depression, but also to other social and relational problems, as well as higher risks of particular cancers and stroke."More than 3,000 adults across the State were interviewed in the research commissioned by the Irish Sports Council.