Irish case may force ruling on unmarried fathers' rights

An unmarried father is to take a case to the High Court in an attempt to have his two-year-old twin sons returned to him in Ireland from England, says this story by Ronan McGreevy in today's Irish Times. They were taken by their mother to Manchester from the couple's home in January.

A leading family law expert said last night that the case had the potential to be "hugely significant" in forcing the Irish courts to make a ruling on the rights of unmarried fathers.

When the father took a case to a court in England seeking the return of the children, Mrs Justice Mary Hogg said it was not appropriate for her to make a ruling on returning the children to Ireland.

The custody of the children was a matter for the Irish courts, she said.

The man, know as Mr G, with the support of the Unmarried Fathers of Ireland group, is now seeking an urgent High Court hearing in Ireland to determine if he has the right to custody of the children. He said he would take the case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg if that right was not vindicated in the High Court.

Unmarried Fathers of Ireland spokesman Donnacha Murphy said they would look for a High Court date by the end of this week and the case had the potential to become a landmark judgment. "The facts of this case would appear to constitute an ideal case for the consideration of discrimination within Irish family law legislation," he said.

Self immolation on the rise among Afghan women

An increasing number of young Afghan women decide that suicide is their only way of escaping violence and forced marriages, according to this item on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour. Self-immolation – setting fire to oneself – is the most common method. Human rights organisations say that the number of reported cases have doubled in some parts of Afghanistan over the past year. The main causes of this disturbing phenomenon are domestic violence and forced child marriages (picture of 11 year old child bride, above right, with 55 year old groom. New York Times magazine).

According to this statement from medica mondiale, self-immolation is very frequently employed by young women and girls as a way of escaping violence in their families – even if this means death. Media mondiale is an NGO advocating for the rights of women who have suffered sexual violence in conflict situations. The statement says that:

• Suicide occurs in all provinces, amongst both men and women (hanging, shooting, drowning in wells or rivers, taking rat poison or tablets, poisoning etc.).
• Self-immolation is the most common method in the province, with especially frequent occurrences in the west in the Herat area.
• Self-immolation is particularly frequent among women and girls in the 10-40 age group, although men also self-immolate.
• Decisive factors amongst women and girls include profound psychological and physical violence (beatings, psychological torture, etc.) over extended periods of time, the still widespread custom of families exchanging girls as brides, for example in order to obtain money or goods, or to “pay off” debts or crimes, marriages of couples without their consent etc.
  
• All these practices, which are rooted in archaic traditions and increasingly go hand-in-hand with rising levels of general poverty since the end of the war, are manifestations of the use of violence against the women and girls concerned and determine how they live their lives.
• 85 per cent of the women who die as a result of their burns die because they are not taken to hospital, or are taken there too late, or because the hospitals have neither the medicines they need, nor skilled specialist healthcare staff.
• An extreme social taboo surrounds self-immolation and it is kept quiet as much as possible, in order to spare the family of the victim from the “shame”. For survivors that means social isolation and exclusion.
  

UK family courts not like Guantánamo says magistrate

Family law courts in Ireland and Britain are often accused of treating fathers unjustly. Because their proceedings are not open to the media, the validity of these accusations is hard to assess. In a letter in today`s Guardian, a magistrate, Tim Ottevanger, defends the family court system against charges from Trevor Jones of Parents Against Injustice, in a previous letter. Jones had claimed that these courts comprised a `secret court system more reminiscent of Guantánamo Bay than Britain`. Jones was commenting on an announcement by the then justice secretary, Lord Falconer, that plans to open the family law courts to the media were being dropped partly because children were overwhelmingly against the idea.

`Magistrates in the family court system frequently agonise over the decisions they make, knowing the implications of their orders for the future welfare of the children,` writes Ottevanger. `Magistrates, as well as judges, have to base their decisions on the evidence before them. They do not claim infallibility, hence the need for a robust appeals system. Likening the system they operate within to a prison camp of questionable legality is cheap and insulting.`

Here in Ireland there is also questioning of the operation of the courts in relation, especially, to access to children following separation or divorce. To bring about some small degree of openness, the Courts Service has appointed Dr Carol Coulter (on leave of absence from The Irish Times) to produce research on what happens in family cases. Her first report showed a high level of agreement between separating parents on issues such as access to children. Fathers` advocates claim men are coerced into these agreements by the expectation that they will get a raw deal in court.

My own feeling is that Carol Coulter is nobody`s fool, has a strong sense of justice and is highly unlikely to be party to a whitewash of the family courts system (she has publicly stated that judges in family law cases rarely consider the input of children) - so I am inclined to take an optimistic view of her findings.

The argument can only be settled, and justice advanced, by allowing the media to report these cases on condition that the parties` anonymity is respected as has been the case for years in the Children`s Court.....

Sob, I can't pull the trigger - are non-violent women part of a male plot?

When the Western was in its heyday, one of its more clichéd scenes was the one in which a woman aimed her rifle at the big, strong male hero, warning him to back off. As she threatened to blow him away, we all knew that within the next thirty seconds the hero would edge forward until he could gently take the gun out of her weak, feminine, unprotesting hands. The message was simple: if you want shooting done, better get a man to do it because women are inherently incapable of that sort of thing.

Today I still feel a little shock of disbelief when I read about violent female teens, or girl gangs or women who are violent and abusive towards men or children. I guess that shock of disbelief explains why the murder of a man by the women who have become known as Ireland's scissors sisters transfixed the nation during their trial - had they been men the trial would have lacked a certain startle-value.

Yet the sanitising of women, of which the Western provides just one example, I suspect was in the service of keeping women 'in their place'. Their 'place' was in the home raising babies or, perhaps, doing 'women's work' such as nursing for which they could be underpaid because they were, after all, women doing it out of the goodness of their little hearts. Needless to say, these gentle creatures couldn't be expected to run countries or companies or even sales departments.

So in a perverse way the stories of violent women that we now hear more and more frequently serve to rebalance our view of reality in a way which sees women just as capable of taking on aggressive roles as men.

You know what? Every time I saw that scene in the Western I prayed for the woman to pull the trigger. Is there some female director out there who will make my dream come true?

My father takes a vacation

When Martin Johnson's mother died, his father disappeared for a month to cycle in Ireland, leaving his family in Sweden. Thereafter, he disappeared from time to time. He has since moved to New Zealand, without his family. My father takes a vacation is a Documentary on One programme from RTÉ Radio One in which Martin Johnson makes the same Irish journey in an attempt to understand his father. Read more here or listen to/download the programme here.....

Violent teens - male and female - make violent partners

Adolescents who are violent during their teenage years are significantly more likely than other young adults to be violent towards their partners later on, says this report in Medical News Today on a new University of Washington study.

In the study, nearly twice as many women as men said they perpetrated domestic violence in the past year including kicking, biting or punching their partner, threatening to hit or throw something at their partner, and pushing, grabbing or shoving their partner.

While there is growing recognition that women as well as men perpetrate domestic violence, (see Domestic abuse affects almost one fifth of men, research suggests) the proportion in this study is startlingly high and I must say I would like to see a closer examination of it. It's also worrying given reports of increasing violence by 'girl gangs' whose members will later, in some cases, bring their violence into their homes.

However, the study underlines the importance of working with violent teenagers, male and female, to encourage them to change their behaviour and not just to wait for them to grow out of it.....

Men's mental health discussion on BBC Radio 4

Seventy five per cent of suicides in the UK are by men, and it’s thought that they are just as susceptible to depression as women, but are far less likely to be diagnosed, according to this item on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour. In fact almost two thirds of male prisoners now on remand have mental health problems. Rufus May, clinical psychologist with Bradford District Care Trust's assertive outreach team, Mark Micale author of “The Male Malady" and Dr Ian Banks, from the Men’s Health Forum discuss the issue.....

Teenage girls believe they must slim to attract the boys

The vast majority of Irish teenage girls believe it is important to be slim to attract the attention of boys and achieve more self-confidence, a new study has found, writes Alison Healy in this story in The Irish Times.

The study of 400 girls, aged between 14 and 16, found that 80 per cent believed they needed to be thin to attract the opposite sex, the story says. Almost three quarters of the girls surveyed said they were unhappy with their body shape.

The research was conducted throughout the State by University of Ulster doctoral student Elaine Mooney. She found that 46 per cent of girls saw themselves as being fat when in fact they were not overweight. Ms Mooney, a home economics lecturer at St Angela's College, Sligo, outlined her findings at a University of Ulster conference on consumer science research at Jordanstown, Co Antrim, yesterday.

She said that attracting the opposite sex was a recurrent theme in the research. "Boys featured highly and they really believe that if you want to get a boy you must look thin. They believe it is all based on appearance first and then personality."

Quiklink: Men and divorce; do we try harder?

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Barrister jailed despite pleas from ex-wife for Child Support Agency to leave him alone

Britain's Child Support Agency has long been a source of stories about its pig-headedness. The latest is its insistence on jailing barrister Michael Cox  for refusing to pay the CSA £365 a month as an absent parent. Trouble is, Cox isn't an absent parent: his children live with him half their time. His ex-wife, who also works, says she could not hold down a job unless the children spent as much time with him as they do. She has asked the CSA to push off and leave them alone. But the CSA will not be moved. Cox - who is legal advisor to Fathers 4 Justice - must go to jail for 42 days which means, of course, that his ex-wife will have to find some other way to get the children minded so she can keep her job. It's all in this story in The Guardian (you have to work your way down to the middle of the story for this bit). Oh, the CSA is being wound up because it's not very good at what it does. Surprise, surprise.....

The world's most perfectly developed man - without steroids

Maybe I read the wrong magazines but the days of the Charles Atlas (right, with female admirers) ads promising that "you too can have a body like mine" seem to be over, says my That's Men for You Column in today's Irish Times.

Now, I do not want a visit from the heirs of “the World's Most Perfectly Developed Man” as he called himself so I had better say right now that the Charles Atlas company is alive and well on the Internet.

Throughout much of the twentieth century, Charles Atlas promised that if you bought and faithfully followed his mail-order course you would no longer have to suffer the ignominy of being “a 97-pound weakling”. Instead, you could develop yourself into a muscular man able to defend his honour and that of his adoring girlfriend.

This is really only matters because the Charles Atlas ads provided many young men with an image of how they ought to look - and to look like a 97-pound weakling was bad.

Although the Charles Atlas physique was marketed as a means of impressing your girlfriend. I suspect it had more to do with impressing other men in the same way that women dress to impress other women on the basis that men wouldn't really notice if they were wearing a sack.

In Ireland, when Charles Atlas was in his heyday, men were less concerned with their body image than they are now. Today the concern with body image is growing. There are gyms and we can afford to go to them.

Becoming a one-man self-admiration society in the gym is one thing. More worryingly, increasing numbers of young men take steroids to build up their muscle mass. In doing so they increase their chances of developing heart disease later on, of developing a psychological dependency and of suffering depression when withdrawing from them.

Frankly, I would rather get sand kicked in my face - the ultimate fate of the 97-pound weakling according to Charles Atlas.

Even absent dads boost learning, adjustment and caring in kids - if they're involved

I wrote this for the Evening Herald, published 15th June 2007: Would you like to see more children growing up to be industrious, better educated and less likely to get in trouble with the law?

A report out this week from Barnardos suggests that one way to do this is to encourage fathers to be more involved with their children.

If that sounds blindingly obvious, just take a moment to look at some of the benefits outlined by Barnardos when launching the report on its “Da” project:

- Children are more likely to do well in primary school when their father shows kindness, care and warmth towards them at an early stage.

- Children are more likely to learn when their father shows a keen interest in learning.

- Children are more likely to be productive, industrious and caring members of society if their father takes an active interest in them.

- Children are less likely to end up in the criminal justice system when they have had regular contact with their father before the age of 11.

Living as we do in the age of the expert when everything must be made complicated, it’s heartening to see that such impressive benefits can flow from ordinary human warmth and involvement.

But bringing about this level of involvement by fathers is not necessarily a simple matter.

According to Barnardos’ “Da” project leader, Finola Halligan, most fathers want to be more involved in their children’s lives but family break-down, work demands and other obstacles stand in their way.

And Barnardos’ Francis Chance added that “too often fathers are invisible when state, community and voluntary services work with families.”

Barnardos’ findings, based on a project in Ballyfermot, are supported by research elsewhere. Recent research in the UK, for instance, found that children whose separated fathers stay involved with them are less likely to get into trouble than those whose fathers are uninvolved.

The growth in marriage breakdown and therefore in the number of one parent families makes it all the more important that obstacles to a father's involvement with his children should be tackled.

Recent census figures show that fewer than one in five households in Dublin city are now made up of the traditional family of husband, wife and children. Indeed, the number of traditional households actually declined in the main cities between 2002 2006.

One person households, on the other hand, continue to increase and more than 17% of these were made up of a separated, divorced person or married person living alone.

We must also take into account the number of cases in which the parents of a child have never lived together. In such cases, the risk of poor involvement by the father is probably higher than in that of separated, previously married parents.

Given that access to children can become the subject of legal battles, surely it is also time to allow the media to report proceedings in the family courts without identifying the participants? A recent report by Ireland's court reporter, Dr Carol Coulter, found that most issues of access to the children are settled amicably and without a court appearance. But some separated fathers responded that this is because men feel they will get a raw deal from the court and that they have no option but to settle on the steps, perhaps for less access than they really want. The way to settle the argument is to allow the media into the family courts.

But the overall message from this week’s Barnardos report is that such old-fashioned human qualities as love, caring and warmth really do make a difference to children and to the adults they become.

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Quiklink: Barnardos' 'Da Project' highlights important role of fathers in childrens' lives

Quiklink: When rape is not rape

When rape is not rape on the impact of being accused of rape in conversation without a trial, on Sam de Brito's All Men Are Liars blog.

Quiklink: Husbands of Queens

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Quiklink: It's the last stop for Metro Man

It's the last stop for Metro Man says Deirdre Reynolds in The Irish Independent.

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Dublin's Gay Pride Parade teaches blogger a lesson

Watching the Gay Pride Parade in Dublin yesterday I learned something about myself and something about gay people.

I had gone into town to get my Mont Blanc fountain pen repaired when I was stopped in my tracks by Gay Pride. The last time I went into town to get something repaired was Last year when I was stopped in my tracks by the aftermath of a Republican riot. Like most Irish people I will pick Gay Pride over those green gobshites any day.

Anyway, the Gay Pride parade had its usual quota of the flamboyant, the colourful and the outrageous. But 90 per cent of the participants looked like such ordinary, rainy-day people that I found myself thinking "They're not gay - they're only here for a laugh."

So I learned I had a prejudice whereby I expected gay people to be startlingly camp and that some part of my mind thinks that if you are "ordinary" you can't be gay.

What I learned about gay people is that 90 per cent of them are as far removed from the camp scene as are heterosexuals.

Does the camp scene suit heterosexual society by portraying gay people as odd and marginalised? Is it we straights who are most entertained by camp-ness? And how many gay people grind their teeth in frustration when they see the feather boas, the fake tans and the blonde wigs on the television news?

Posts with comments

Dad drowns daughters in bath, then kills himself

No one took away fathers' rights: they gave them away says Sarah Carey

Quiklink: Barnardos’ ‘Da Project’ highlights important role of fathers in children’s lives

Angry wife drove car over husband after mobile phone message

Groups for separated fathers in Ireland growing

From Irish mammy to yummy mummy

Like A Man: The blurb

Making fathers of young dads

Fathers: Larger than life

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

Men, eye-liner and sex appeal

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

Quiklink: Why men skip doctor visits

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New women doctors outnumber men in the UK

Newly-qualified women doctors outnumber their male counterparts by almost three to two, a survey suggests, says this story on the BBC.

The British Medical (BMA) found that 58% of doctors who graduated in 2006 were female compared with 51% in 1995.

The poll of 435 doctors suggests one in five female doctors anticipate working part-time for most of their career. The figure for men was one in 25.
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Is the future female?

Dad drowns daughters in bath, then kills himself

The murder of children in a marital dispute seems to be primarily a male activity, I wrote in the original version of this post. However, if you check the comments, below, you will see that I may have been wrong and that parental murder of children may be at least a 50/50 male/female activity. The post was based on this story in the Irish Independent about a father in New Jersey but originally from Ireland who drowned his two small daughters and then hanged himself. His marriage had broken down two months earlier and the children had been visiting him. I have never been able to dredge up an iota of sympathy for men or women who behave like this. How dare they assume they have a right to exercise the power of life and death over their children? These people get Church funerals with kind words spoken by clergy - frankly I believe they should be denied any rites of any kind.

More important is the question of what sort of thinking leads people - men or women - to behave in this way? And what can be done about it? Any ideas anyone?

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

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Two thirds of men and one third of women don't report domestic abuse says UK report

Sixty two per cent of those men and 34 per cent of those women who have been victims of domestic abuse have never told anyone, says a new report from the British Medical Association, according to this story in The Guardian. As a result, the full extent of domestic abuse cannot be known, the report says. More than 350,000 people in England and Wales alone are reported to suffer it.

Partner abuse is common and it happens as frequently in same-sex relationships as in heterosexual ones, the report says.

Around 750,000 children each year witness domestic abuse, the report says. Around 30% of abuse begins when a woman in a relationship is pregnant.

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Domestic abuse affects almost one fifth of men, research suggests

Quiklink: Transparency in the family courts

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Unfair treatment: the killer in the workplace

Human beings have a fundamental need to be treated fairly. Now, a piece of research conducted among thousands of civil servants in London for more than a decade suggests that unfair treatment in the workplace can actually kill, says my That's Men for You column in today's Irish Times.

The research among British civil servants was conducted by a team led by Dr Roberto De Vogli at University College London. The numbers and the time scale for the research are impressive: more than 8,000 civil servants in London were studied over an average period of eleven years.

The researchers found that those who said they had been treated unfairly were 50% more likely than their colleagues to say that their physical or mental health was poor.

More alarmingly, they were 55% more likely to have had a heart attack or symptoms of heart disease.

According to the report on this research in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, other studies have found that where an employing organisation insists on fair treatment of its workforce, the likelihood of heart disease actually falls.

Fairness you might say saves lives; unfairness can kill. Perhaps it can do worse than kill: there is reason to believe that hypertension, as measured by high blood pressure, can contribute to the risk of developing Alzheimer’s Disease.

There's more on the research in this story on the website of the Men's Health Forum for England and Wales.....

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No one took away fathers' rights: they gave them away says Sarah Carey

Fathers aren’t valued because so many women were left holding the baby they discovered they could get along without them, wrote Sarah Carey in a recent Sunday Times column reproduced here on her GUBU blog.

"..... I resent the notion that marauding feminists stormed the Dail and the Courts and stole rights from men," she wrote. "No one took away fathers rights: they gave them away. They ran off and came back to discover themselves surplus to requirements."

To see responses to her column, also published in the Sunday Times, click on the comments tag below (thanks mctavish).....

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A quarter of UK children must cope with parents' separation or divorce

Of the twelve million children in the UK, around three million are having to cope with their parents’ separation or divorce. In an open letter to The Times, several charities and child care experts have said that not enough is being done to assist with the emotional fallout on children of divorce and are calling on the Government to establish a departmental approach to best support families. In this programme on BBC Radio Four's Woman's Hour, Ritula Shah discusses the subject with Jade - a teenager whose parents divorced when she was 2 - Duncan Fisher - from Fathers Direct - and child and adult therapist Valerie Sinason.....

Irishmen have a lot to learn about contraception and safe sex

Irishmen still have a lot of learn about contraception and safe sex, according to a new report, Men, Sexuality and Crisis Pregnancy: A study of Men’s Experience from the Crisis Pregnancy Agency (download page here).

Professor Harry Ferguson and Fergus Hogan, authors of the report, interviewed 45 men on their sexual histories, knowledge of sex and how they acquired it, contraception, sexual practices and pregnancy services. The researchers specifically recruited men who had experienced an unplanned pregnancy –30 men in the sample of 45. Nineteen of these men experienced a crisis pregnancy.

The research found a general lack of knowledge of women's menstrual cycle and a belief that the “withdrawal” method is an acceptable method of contraception, even though the men had doubts about the level of protection it provided against pregnancy.

There were also instances where men felt pressured to have sex before they understood their capacity to make a woman pregnant.

The term “safe sex” meant different things to different men. For some men it meant preventing pregnancy, for some it meant penetrative sex without ejaculation, for others it meant preventing sexually transmitted infections. In fact, there was very little awareness of STIs in this sample in general.

In addition, some men reported that they did not use condoms because they were embarrassed to buy them, they interrupted sexual pleasure, they were under the influence of alcohol, they thought that condoms could not be trusted, they were in the habit of relying on emergency contraception, or they deferred the responsibility for contraceptive decisions to the woman.

Although 30 men in the report had experienced an unplanned pregnancy, 11 of the men, primarily from disadvantaged backgrounds, welcomed the pregnancy, seeing an opportunity to find a meaningful role for themselves as fathers.

Nineteen of the men in the report had experienced a crisis pregnancy. In the ten cases where the pregnancy went to full-term, the authors found that the defining characteristics of these situations were; the man had some kind of vision of himself as a father, he was willing to state his wishes and feelings in relation to the pregnancy and he showed willingness to have a flexible approach to creating a family. Other defining characteristics were the couple's belief that their parents and extended family would support them as a couple, and the capacity of the couple to adopt a flexible definition of family, which is not linked to marriage or cohabitation. For example, the couple may decide not to live together, but the man would still have an active role as a father.

Crisis Pregnancy Counselling is available free of charge to women and men at over 30 locations around the country. To access the services, freetext list to 50444 or visit www.positiveoptions.ie

Authors of the report are: Harry Ferguson, Professor of Social Work at the University of the West of England, Bristol and Fergus Hogan, Course Leader in Applied Social Studies and Academic Co-ordinator of the Centre for Social and Family Research, Waterford Institute of Technology.

While the Agency has concentrated on general access and knowledge of counselling services, it says it will now work towards increasing awareness among men that crisis pregnancy counselling services are available to them, free of charge, to talk in confidence about their experience. Kerry Counselling Service have been funded, on a pilot basis, to offer a free support group for men experiencing crisis pregnancy. Funding has also been allocated to the Teen Parent Support Programme in Co. Louth to increase the awareness and engagement of men during crisis pregnancy and in parenting their child.....

Male identity: sober householder or rowdy drunk but that was 400 years ago

Four hundred years ago to be a man in English society was to have the economic means to support a family and the temperament to govern your own passions as well as the behaviour of wife, children and servants, according to Alexandra Shepard in her book Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press). But during the period 1560 to 1640, the proportion of men who could attain this level of economic independence declined. For others, "the world of drink, gaming and roistering condemned by the conduct books represented an alternative model of manhood, always attractive to some," writes Professor Bernard Capp in this review on the website of the Institute of Historical Research.....

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Quiklink: Men suffer from phantom pregnancy

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For Father's Day how about giving Dad a vacation?

That's the question posed in a press statement from US organisation Take Back Your Time.

Father's Day falls right before the Summer Solstice, when school is out and the vacation season used to begin, it says. But this year, only 14% of Americans will take two weeks off. More than half won't even take a week. 55% of Americans plan on using what vacation days they have to extend the weekend here and there. A quarter of Americans get no paid leave.

"A desk clerk in a hotel where I was staying a few weeks ago told me her employer had canceled her vacation for the seventh year in a row," says Take Back Your Time's national coordinator John de Graaf. "She was almost crying when she told me."

"I used to remember when I was a kid and the family took two week camping trips to the national parks," adds board member Joe Robinson. "Long weekends don't cut it. Studies show people need two weeks or more off for vacations to improve their health, family bonding or productivity."

A new study by Rebecca Ray and John Schmitt of the Center for Economics and Policy Research (www.cepr.org/) calls the United States the "No Vacation Nation.," pointing out that all other industrial countries mandate paid vacations, with the minimum paid time off in Europe being four weeks.

Fathers want more time for their families, according to several new studies. 38% say they'd even sacrifice income to get it. With workplace stress and burnout already costing the United States more than $300 billion a year, Take Back Your Time says "enough is enough." The organization is calling on Congress to pass legislation providing 3 weeks of paid vacation to all Americans.

"Fathers need it. Mothers need it. Our health needs it. And evidence from many companies shows that it will even improve our productivity," says Executive Director Lisa Stuebing. "Father's Day should be more than an excuse to sell cards and clothes. Let's give Dad and the whole family a real present--the right to a vacation."

Horrible, horrible. Don't let this happen in Ireland, guys.....

Quiklink: Daddies' girls choose men just like their fathers

Daddies' girls choose men just like their fathers says Science Daily.

Quiklink: Dating violence and sexual assault associated with suicide attempts among urban teens

Dating violence and sexual assault associated with suicide attempts among urban teens says this report on male and female teen suicide attempts in Science Daily.

Quiklink: Fathers have great impact on their children's lives, even when not at home

Fathers have great impact on their children's lives, even when not at home says Science Daily.

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A philosophical look at slutness Joyanna Adams on how sexually active women are called 'sluts' while their male counterparts are 'studs' in Mens News Daily.

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Barnardos’ ‘Da Project’ Highlights Important Role of Fathers in Children’s Lives press release and other documents on the Barnardos website.

Quiklink: Male depression is linked to poor sibling relations

Male depression is linked to poor sibling relations article on new study in the New York Times.

Quiklink: Maternity services urged to include fathers

Maternity services urged to include fathers story on call from Fathers Direct in The Guardian.

Quiklink: Men neglecting long term health symptoms

Men neglecting long term health symptoms on men staying away from the doctor out of fear or embarrassment on Men's Health Forum England & Wales.

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Men: we're not stupid, promise Sam de Brito on the portrayal of men as idiots on All Men Are Liars.

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Sit up straight - how complicated is that?

Sometimes I wonder how we came to complicate mental health to the point where some people see a doctor's prescription as the way to treat a touch of the blues. Of course, there are levels of depression, anxiety and distress which require skilled professional intervention. But there are also lots of simple things we can do for ourselves, at no cost, to improve our mood.

My Irish Times column That's Men for You this week deals with how we affect our mood by our physical demeanour. It refers to one study (link is to a pdf file) in which participants were asked to adopt the facial expressions linked with happiness anger and sadness. When they were tested later, those who had assumed facial expressions consistent with happiness were happier than they had been at the start, those who had assumed an angry look were angrier than at the start and so on. Even the sort of memories. Interestingly, when asked to recall events from their lives, those who had practised looking angry were more likely to recall “angry” memories and so on.

In another experiment, reported on the British Psychological Society's Research Digest blog, men who sat up straight for three minutes did better in a subsequent maths test than men who slouched! Curiously, the sitting-up-straight effect didn't work for women - females who slouched did better than females who sat up straight.

The idea that our physical demeanour affects our mood can be traced back at least as far as the great American psychologist William James and probably farther. Indeed, Buddhist psychology suggests that our moods are the result of certain conditions - so if, say, you walk confidently you have created one of the conditions that can lead to a feeling of confidence.

Try it, see what happens.....

Men's Health Week - are we men feckless and indulgent?

It's Men's Health Week in Ireland and in the UK and, as always, the statistics make grim reading and make you wonder if we men are feckless, self-indulgent creatures with little regard for our health. After all smoking, drinking, obesity and sitting around on your ass when you could be getting some aerobic exercise are among the reasons for poor health in men relative to women. According to the Men's Health Forum in Ireland, men's health suffers from risk-taking, leaving it too late to go to the doctor and a reluctance to take care of ourself once diagnosed or to use such support services as exist.

Fair enough - but I suspect our poor attitude to health is also an outcome of the historical expectation that men will do dirty and dangerous work and that they will get themselves blown to pieces in war if their nation demands it. If that's where we came from you can hardly expect us to run to the doctor with every ache and pain.

And as the Forum put it in a recent press release: "Health services have been slow to recognise the particular issues affecting men in relation to long-term health conditions. The lack of 'make-friendly' primary care services can delay diagnosis and inhibit men’s use of ongoing care and support services. Pharmacy services are not yet sufficiently engaged with men to provide advice and information about self-care. Published health information is rarely designed to appeal to the male reader."

So it's not just carelessness on the part of men: our history brought us to this point and both we and our health services need to get up to speed on this life or death issue.....

UK's National Men's Health Week starts today

One in three people in the UK is currently living with a long-term medical condition and a significant proportion of this number will be men, says this statement from the Men's Health Forum for England and Wales which has organised National Men's Health Week 2007, starting today.. However, men are increasingly unlikely to visit a doctor or engage with other health services and health promotion campaigns often fail to take account of the need for ‘gender-sensitivity’ in reaching male audiences.....

Tubridy show on men's emotions and relationships

Ryan Tubridy (right) interviewed me on his RTE Radio One show about the Like A Man book and men's emotions and relationships in general. I argued that Breakfast Roll Man, to use Pat Rabbitte's phrase, is increasingly interested in psychology, emotions and relationships, especially his relationship with Latté Lady, to use a phrase of my own. You can listen to the interview or download it from here....

Unfair treatment can kill, says British researh

People who feel unfairly treated are at a greater risk of a heart attack and in worse overall physical and mental health, according to research from the UK and Finland, says this story on the website of the Men's Health Forum for England and Wales.

This was a major study - researchers followed 8,298 London-based civil servants for an average of 11 years – and after adjustments were made for age, sex and other factors, people who reported higher levels of unfair treatment:

• were 55% more likely to have a heart attack or to have developed heart disease/chest pain during the follow-up period.
• 46% more likely to report poor physical health and
• 54% more likely to have poor mental health.....

Men's summer school in Castlebar

The annual Men’s Development Network summer school will take place in Castlebar, Co Mayo, from June 13-15 next. This year's event is named for John O’Rourke, chairman of the Men's Development Network who died last year. The organisers say the Summer School offers "the opportunity to find support for yourself and to offer it to other men. Explore honestly and in safety, the events shaping your life and find space to look towards your future." There's more on the summer school here at activelink.ie.....

Men in cardigans - a step too far?

Has the man who puts on a cardigan passed a momentous milestone in his life? ask my That's Men for You column in today's Irish Times. Is he indicating that he is no longer for the wars and that, so to speak, “home is the sailor from the sea, the hunter from the hill”? Is it time for a good snooze, a mug of hot chocolate and early to bed? The column is part of the Irish Times' premium content so I can't reproduce it here.

In the UK, sales of cardigans have increased tenfold in some leading retailers in the past year, it says. Even David Beckham has taken to wearing a cardigan occasionally. There again, David Beckham has been known to wear his wife's hairband, her knickers and a sari so perhaps he is not the most reliable guide to what's coming next for today's man.

I learnt all this from listening to an item on Woman's Hour on BBC Radio Four. And, yes, I fully realise that this means I should probably be wearing a cardigan myself. But I have resisted and I hope to continue to resist any involvement with this garment.

What are the health implications of the cardigan? I suppose you could argue that the cardigan wearer could reduce his stress levels by fiddling by playing with his buttons, like worry beads. And I don’t suppose the cardigan wearer will want to go boy racing, taking drugs (except those prescribed by his doctor) or drinking cider at midnight on the canal bank. All that is to the good. But is it enough to justify the risk of hurtling down the slippery slope towards socks with sandals and handkerchiefs on heads?

I think not.....

Fears of suspicion deter some men from working with kids

Troubled children are being deprived of male mentors because many men are afraid their good intentions might be misinterpreted, two charities have warned, says this story in The Guardian. The charities commissioned a survey which found that 13% of men who don't volunteer with children said it was because of fears they might be perceived as a possible paedophile.....

Do only one thing for me: live life - a daughter's plea to a depressed dad

When Sarah Griffin was nine years old, she began a diary to help her cope with her dad's severe depression. It gives an unflinching account of how the entire family lived with the spectre of his illness, and then his death. She has now told her story, with diary extracts, in Sarah's Diary published by Virgin. You can read some extracts in this article by Sarah Griffin in The Guardian.....

Tradional Irish family household in decline as cohabiting increases, census shows

Fewer than one in five households in Dublin City are now made up of the traditional family of husband, wife and children, a new report from the Central Statistics Office reveals. (Download the report here).

The information is contained in Census 2006 Volume 3 - Household Composition, Family Units and Fertility, which gives further detailed results of the census conducted on 23 April 2006.

The report shows that there were 477,705 households composed of the traditional family in the State in 2006, an increase of only 3.3 per cent since 2002. The number of these traditional households declined in all the main cities between 2002 and 2006.

The report also reveals that there was a continued increase in the number of one-person households – up 51,877 or 18.7 per cent since 2002. One-person households, which accounted for 22.4 per cent of all households in the State in 2006, were the predominant household type in all five cities.

Nearly 56 per cent of one-person households were occupied by single (never-married) persons; a further 26.7 per cent by widowed persons; 14.4 per cent by separated (including divorced) persons and 3 per cent by those describing their marital status as married. Persons aged 65 years and over were the occupants of 36.8 per cent of the one-person households in 2006 – down from 41.0 per cent in 2002.

The total number of cohabiting couples was 121,800 in 2006 up from 77,600 in 2002 – by far the fastest growing type of family unit. Cohabiting couples represented 11.6 per cent of all family units in 2006 compared with 8.4 per cent in 2002. Almost two thirds of them were couples without children.

Overall the number of “children” living with one or both parents increased by 1.1 per cent from 1,470,800 in 2002 to 1,486,431 in 2006. However, the number of “children” in their twenties living with their parents actually fell from 304,353 to 280,065 over the same period, while “children” in their thirties still living at home also fell from 70,707 to 65,693.

Males continue to account for nearly two-thirds of persons in their thirties living with their parents.

French women like the light touch

A good-looking man approached 120 women in a French night club over a period of three weeks, and asked them to dance, says this report in the British Psychological Society Research Digest blog. It was in the name of science – the man was an assistant to the psychologist Nicolas Guegen. Remarkably, of the 60 women who he touched lightly on the arm, 65 per cent agreed to a dance, compared with just 43 per cent of the 60 women who he asked without making any physical contact.

A second study involved three male research assistants approaching 240 women in the street and asking them for their phone numbers, the report says. Among those 120 women who the researchers touched lightly on the arm, 19 per cent agreed to share their number, compared with 10 per cent of the women with whom no physical contact was made.

Hmmm, I wouldn't try this everywhere folks - depending on local cultural norms, the bed you wind up in just might be in a hospital or a cell.....

Boys growing up in a world without men

Increasingly, boys are growing up with almost no male influence in their lives, says this article by Steward Drakers in The Guardian. Some fathers are absent but others who are technically present are so little involved that they may as well be absent, he suggests. "At the sharp end, the rock face, there is hardly a man in sight. In their early years, up to puberty, authority is exercised on young men exclusively by women - shop assistants, teachers, health visitors, social workers and, of course, sisters and mothers," he writes.

And where are the men, he asks? "They are strutting their suited stuff in the corridors, the clinics, the consulting rooms; they are handing out prescriptions, devising initiatives, formulating policies," he declares.....

Men suffer more than women in marriage breakup, research suggests

Who suffers most when marriages break up, men or women? asks my That's Men for You column in today's Irish Times. Recently published, long-term Canadian research suggests that when it comes to depression it is men who are most affected. This may be because men are more likely than women to lose their social supports when their marriages end. The article is part of the Irish Times' premium content so I can't reproduce it here.

The research is derived from Canada's capital National Population Health Survey which tracked more than 7000 people between 1994 and 2005. It showed that those men whose relationships had been ended by divorce or separation by the end of the period were six times more likely to have experienced depression than those who were still married. By contrast, divorced or separated women were 3.5 times more likely to have been depressed than those who were still married. There is more on the research here on PsychCentral.....

Angry wife drove car over husband after mobile phone message

Hell hath no fury department:A jealous housewife ran down her husband with a car after a row over another woman, says this story from the Irish Independent. The woman, who pleaded guilty to causing serious harm to her husband on August 14, 2006 and to drunken driving and dangerous driving, was given a two-year suspended sentence at Waterford Circuit Court.

The court heard that the couple had just reunited after a separation of several months.

The incident was triggered off when the "other woman" played back a voicemail message in which the husband claimed he was "mad" about her.

The defendant left the pub in Dungarvan where the message was played on a mobile phone and drove to where her son was fishing with her husband. She drove the vehicle at him twice, leaving him with a fractured elbow, cracked ribs and his left ear detached from the side of his head.

Following surgery, the husband made a good recovery. The couple had a turbulent relationship and a barring order was obtained against the husband due to violence in the home.

The husband told the court that he did not want to see his wife locked up for what she did to him, the Independent story says.

A walk in the park boosts self esteem

I don't suppose you'd be impressed if you went to your GP because you felt a bit down in yourself and you were told to go take a walk in the park, says my That's Men For You column in today's Irish Times. But research published in the UK last week suggests that a walk in the park may be just what we all need. The column is part of the Irish Times premium content so I can't reproduce it here.

The mental health organisation, Mind decided to examine the mental health benefits of what it calls "green" exercise, it says. The results were quite astonishing. The term "green exercise" refers to taking a walk in a country park, gardening and such activities.

A total of 108 people involved in green exercise activities with local Mind groups were surveyed. A remarkable proportion, 94 per cent, said their mental health had benefited. They reported feeling better about themselves and having a sense of achievement, having greater self-esteem and greater motivation.

You can download a copy of the Mind report here....

Election Diary: Fathers Rights-Responsibililty Party runs eight candidates

The Fathers Rights-Responsibility Party is running eight candidates in this week's general election despite being refused registration as a political party. Says party chairman Liam Ó Gógáin:

"The FRP has managed to put Father’s issues and Men’s Health on the agenda as Political issue in this Thursday’s election . The next government is likely to either a hung Dáil or an unstable coalition, and there will probably be another general election in a year or two. There are also Local elections and EU elections coming up. The FRP will grow into these elections."

A list of the party's candidates is here.....

Using mindfulness to cope effectively with stress, panic attacks and anxiety

Like A Man - a guide to men's emotional wellbeing (Edited extract): Mindfulness is a valuable tool which you can use to deal with anxiety, panic attacks, stress and other symptoms.

When you are mindful you are aware of what is going on in reality in the present moment. So, you might be aware of traffic, rain, another person’s voice or your own breathing. A key aspect of mindfulness is that you don't get lost in a conversation in your head. Every time your mind wanders off into a mental conversation, just return to awareness of the present moment, without criticising yourself. That last point is important: while you are being mindful, you withhold your judgement as to whether this or that is good or bad. So instead of condemning the traffic or the rain or approving of the sunshine or the blue sky, you just notice them.

Mindfulness helps you to avoid falling into old patterns of reacting. It helps you to see new possibilities. It puts you in touch with your own experience. Here is an exercise you can do to get yourself into mindfulness mode:

From time to time, notice your breathing.

Notice whether you are taking a long breath or a short breath.

Notice the little pause at the end of each breath.

Notice that the air is cooler entering your nostrils than leaving.

Notice your posture.

Notice the length of your spine.

Notice your feet against the floor or the ground.

Notice your clothes touching your body.

Notice the sounds around you and far way from you without getting involved with them.

Every time you drift into thinking, just return to noticing your body.

This exercise need only take a minute or so to do but if you use it every day it can have a profound effect on your life experience.....

Edited extract from Panic Attacks: Reclaiming your life in Padraig O'Morain's book Like A Man - A guide to men's emotional well-being (Veritas, 2007).

Groups for separated fathers in Ireland growing

More and more groups for separated fathers are setting up in Ireland, judging by the forum section of dads-house. It lists groups in Dublin, Longford, Waterford, Donegal, Mayo, Limerick, Listowel, Portlaoise and Kilkenny. The website boasts an endorsement from Bob Geldof saying "I fully support the dads-house campaign to get equal rights for Fathers." The following comment which McDavitt has just left on an earlier post provides an idea of some of the frustrations experienced by fathers involved in the campaign for equal rights:

"I consented to the custody of our children being granted solely to my wife. However, I was unaware of this as it was negotiated between my wife's solicitor and my own without my knowledge. A complaint I made to the Law Society about this behaviour resulted in my receiving a refund of €3,500. However, I still do not have joint custody of our children which results in constant discrimination by State institutions such as the HSE and the school our children attend. I was effectively removed as a parent to our children but the official record shows that I "consented" to this.

Fathers don't matter. Children are seen as the property of mothers, single or married, whereas fathers have no rights. Fathers might believe that they have rights but, on separation, suddenly discover that they are expendable. Fine Gael propose to introduce paid paternity leave but the reporting of the family policy ignored this in both the Irish Independent and the irish times."

It's clear from his comment that €3,500 doesn't even begin to make up to this man for having his rights ignored by his own solicitor.....

Ireland: Open door for sex traffickers?

Does Ireland provide an open door and a relatively safe haven for sex traffickers? The question is prompted by Ruadhán Mac Cormaic's feature Hidden world of the sex traffickers in yesterday's Irish Times. The article tells the stories of three women tricked into coming to Ireland for jobs that never existed.

Two were "put to work" as prostitutes straight away. That they were distressed and, in one case, crying, did nothing to deter most of the men who used them and some appear to have been attracted by their distress. One was freed when the Gardaí raided the apartment in which she and other women were made to work. Another was enabled to escape when a potential client, upset at her distress, got in touch with Anton McCabe, president of the Meath branch of the Siptu trade union. McCabe - a man I'd certainly like to buy a pint for - helped her to get out of the area and she now lives in another part of the country.

The third woman was used as slave labour for a man, his wife and their children. When the man began to rape her she finally managed to approach a compatriot on the street, was put in touch with a community worker and escaped.

Ireland is unique among EU states in having no law against trafficking. Last month Ireland signed the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings but that is only the first step on what could be a very long road indeed if the political will to do something about this problem is lacking.

Mac Cormaic points out that the Department of Justice had said it aimed to publish a Bill on trafficking by the end of last year, but this did not happen. Also, a promised provision for victims' rights in the Immigration, Residence and protection Bill 2007 was absent when the Bill was published.

Meanwhile Ruhama, which works with women involved in prostitution, says it knows of more than 200 foreign women who have been trafficked into Ireland in the past seven years.

Ruadhán Mac Cormaic is one of the youngest and best journalists in the country. His article is part of his Changing Places project which won the 2007 Douglas Gageby Fellowship. Previous articles in the series can be read here and hopefully this article will be available on the website soon.....

Girls primp, guys indulge

Women seem generally good at pseudo self-care (primping and plucking) but generally unaccustomed to doing what their body craves (slowing down, saying “no”, creating room for spontaneity, sex, sleep.), writes Courtney E Love in her Composing a Life column on the Crucial Minutiae blog. Men, on the other hand, seem better at this, she says. "It’s not that guys are great at taking care of themselves when they’re sick or eating healthy or going to the doctor–all of which I think of as “appropriate” self-care (girls are good at these cause we’re always worried about being appropriate), but they seem more in tune with the cravings and less guilty about indulging them," she adds. She's wondering what life would be like "if I did exactly what I felt like doing instead of what I thought I should be doing more of the time?" Heck, give it a go and let us know, Courtney. Courtney, by the way, is the author of the book Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body.....

Time for an emotional education for young men

How much, I wonder, does the lack of an emotional education contribute to depression among young men? asks my That's Men for You column in today's Irish Times.

By an emotional education I mean an education in, among other things, how to cope with the emotional pain that accompanies the major disappointments we all experience from time to time in life. The column is part of the Irish Times premium content so I can't reproduce it here.

Young women get a sort of rudimentary emotional education from each other since they talk more freely about feelings and relationship problems, the column says.

With young men less willing to discuss their feelings with each other, they may be at sea when it comes to knowing how to handle emotional turmoil. Is this why so many young men use alcohol like an emotional anaesthetic?

Alcohol and drugs don't go on working indefinitely. It's when these props stop working that young men are in real trouble.

Is there a place in the education system for a determined effort to provide an emotional education for young men and young women? Mightn't it pay off in reducing damage to young minds and bodies?

If we want to improve the emotional health of young men and, indeed, young women, then perhaps we need, as a society, to do more educating and less preaching.....

Like A Man: Only four left in Amazon

The Amazon UK website says it's got only four copies of Like A Man - a guide to men's emotional well-being, by yours truly, left in stock. But more copies are on the way, it promises. That's definitely the sort of thing an author likes to hear within two weeks of the launch. Anyway, you can always get it online from Veritas (cheapest option in the Euro zone) as well as Amazon UK.....

Most issues remain unresolved in long-term relationships

Like A Man - a guide to men's emotional well-being (edited extract): Most of the issues couples fight over in long-term relationships remain unresolved, according to research in the United States by John Gottman and his wife Julie Gottman. The Gottmans are leading figures in the area of relationship enhancement and breakdown. In their research, they came up with the surprising finding that even in successful, long-term relationships most of the issues on which the couple disagree remain unresolved.

What this suggests is that to demand that another person change completely is a waste of time and a source of aggravation. A partner whose attitude is ‘my way or the highway’ condemns the couple to fight after fruitless fight, a situation which may destroy the relationship.

What really matters about conflict in the long-term relationship, the Gottmans suggest, is the way it is handled. Rows cannot be avoided - but rows that drag on and on, followed by weeks of silence are damaging and draining. The ability to get over rows quickly, and without waiting for one person or the other to surrender unconditionally, is a key skill in developing successful long-term relationships.

Edited extract from Long-term Relationships: Lessons from the battlefield in Padraig O'Morain's book Like A Man - A guide to men's emotional well-being (Veritas, 2007).

From Irish mammy to yummy mummy

Is the Irish mammy in danger of being driven into oblivion by the yummy mummy? asks my That's Men for You column in today's Irish Times. And would it be an entirely bad thing if she was? The column is part of the Irish Times premium content so I can't reproduce it here.

However, it goes on to point out that no other woman can ever live up to the Irish mammy's devotion to her son and this is made clear to any woman who has the temerity to become his wife - sometimes sonny boy continues to visit his mammy for his dinner on a daily basis as his wife sits at home and grinds her teeth.

The column recalls that years ago, Gay Byrne read out a letter on his radio show from a wife complaining that her husband's mammy still made guggie for him every day. Guggie is made by boiling an egg, chopping it up in a cup and mixing it with butter while still hot. It's food for a child - but this chap was so attached to his guggie that he still went to the mammy for it!

Nowadays the Irish mammy is in danger of being replaced by the yummy mummy flying around the place in her SUV and nibbling a carrot for lunch. The yummy mummy, the column suggests, is most unlikely to drag herself out of the gym to make a nice cup of guggie for her son before he goes home to his inadequate wife.

In other words, the Irish mammy has fallen victim to an increasingly self-centred and materialistic society in which women expect to be able to give up minding their sons after they get married.

Perhaps it is all for the best, though. You will not see a yummy mummy producing a cholesterol-drenched full Irish breakfast for her darling boy. Nor will you see her insisting that he sit down on the sofa and have a nice rest – when he could be out having a healthy jog.

The column was partly inspired by blogger Paige Harrison's (she of blankpaige) comments on this earlier post.

I should add that in one email response to my Irish Times article a female, possibly a yummy mummy, says: "Padraig, you are forgetting that most children are fat or obese as Mummy has not got the time to do much with the kids, juggling a job and family to keep a mortgage paid. There is little evidence of youths out jogging!"

Hmmm, could this mean that inside every yummy mummy there is an Irish mammy waiting to get out?.....

Imams won't play with women priests

From the You Couldn't Make It Up department: A soccer game between Muslim imams and Christian priests at the end of an Oslo conference to promote interfaith dialogue was canceled on Saturday because the teams could not agree on whether women priests should take part, says this story on MSNBC. Church of Norway spokesman Olav Fykse Tveit said the imams refused to play against a mixed-gender team of priests because it would have gone against their beliefs in involving close physical contact with strange women. The church decided to drop its female players, and the priests' team captain walked out in protest.....

Election diary: Stamp duty and Bertiegate ok, but what about decent public services?

Stamp duty and Bertiegate are important in themselves but once again we have a general election campaign in which the needs of those who do not have money (or friends to give them a dig-out) or power go unregarded. In last Saturday's Irish Times Magazine, (Irish Times premium content) Róisín Ingle (right) illustrated this well when she wrote about how politicians at election time will sort out everything from urgent passport applications to, believe it or not, getting the pedestrian light settings changed so that the green man will stay on for longer! But Irish style clientelism is a poor substitute for good public services and she made the point very starkly when she wrote: "I was thinking about this when a young friend with cystic fibrosis texted to say she was on a trolley in A&E. But what does she expect? It's election time and our political representatives are busy playing God with little green men."....

Like A Man: The blurb

We live in challenging times when men need to be skillful in addressing the emotional issues which arise in their own lives and in their relationships with the people they love and the people with whom they work.

Like a Man - A Guide to Men's Emotional Wellbeing, by counsellor and men's columnist Padraig O'Morain, combines insights from Western and Eastern psychology to help men sharpen their emotional skills.

Emotional wellbeing is not only about change - it is also about acceptance. This book draws on Western insights which promote change and on Eastern insights which emphasise the value of acceptance and effort.

The author's column That’s Men For You appears weekly in The Irish Times and has built a loyal readership made up of men and of the women in their lives.

Topics in the book include building better relationships at home and at work; using mindfulness and other techniques to handle anxiety, stress and panic attacks; battling the blues; the hidden beliefs that drive us; dealing with workplace bullies and other difficult people; getting through marriage breakup; and taking care of your physical health.

If you’re a man, buy this book for yourself. If you’re a woman, buy it for the man in your life.

You can buy the book online from Veritas (cheapest option in the Euro zone) or from Amazon UK....