Resilience

With Special Guests:

• Maggie Dent and
• Michael Woods.

As always, Dads On The Air is covering a lot of ground this week. We begin by talking to author Maggie Dent about her new book, Real Kids in an Unreal World: Building Resilience and Self Esteem in Today’s Children. Then we talk with Michael Woods, Senior Lecturer with the Men’s Health Information and Resource Centre at the University of Western Sydney, on the controversy surrounding White Ribbon Day. Many critics are now expressing concern over the social consequences of the repeated linking of men with violence in taxpayer-funded public campaigns and the inflamed misuse of statistics to bolster an ideological position which paints men as violent patriarchs. We’ll also be taking a look at the demise of the Federal Magistrates Service in Australia, created in a sense as a counterbalance to the Family Court. While many questions remain over the failure of reactionary elements within family law to embrace shared parenting, the Magistgrates Service was generally seen as faster, fairer and less expensive.

We speak with Habib about his new book My Story - The Tale of a Terrorist Who Wasn’t, his experiences in Guantánamo, and how he has managed to adjust back to his life as an Australian father and husband.

We also present Maggie Hamilton’s inspirational keynote address from the MAN National Conference in Fremantle titled Capturing the public imagination: securing a better future for our men and boys.

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Rites of Passage

Dr Arne Rubenstein

With Special Guests:

• Arne Rubenstein and
• Ruedi Oswald.

At the Men’s Advisory Network’s Second National Conference back in August, in Fremantle, we recorded Dr Arne Rubenstein’s inspiring keynote address titled Creating contemporary Rites of Passage and the Pathways to Manhood Program. Dr Rubenstein is the co-founder and CEO of the Pathways Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that runs the national award winning Pathways to Manhood Program in schools and communities around Australia. This program for teenage boys and their fathers is a contemporary Rite of Passage that aims to inspire the boys to have a vision and reach their potential.

Ruedi Oswald, is a licensed Swiss social worker who is going to give us an insight into what happens to separated fathers in Switzerland, and how easily they can be separated from their children once one parent is allotted sole custody by the legal system. We’re going to try and find out what differences there are in the way that separation and divorce are dealt with by the Swiss Family Justice System compared to what happens in the rest of the western democracies. While his wife, who is a doctor, lives in the family home and he hasn’t seen his 3 kids for 10 years, he is forced to live out of the back of a converted van. Ruedi is looking for support and can be reached at swiss.socialwork@web.de.

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What Lies in the Hearts of Men

With Special Guests:

• John Simpson
• Sue Price
• Warwick Marsh
• Greg Andresen
• Robert Gordon.

This week we covered a great deal of territory, from a fascinating interview with the creative director of a powerful new movie Men’s Group, to International Men’s Day to the debate which has erupted over the potential jailing of men who dare to get a DNA sample of their children without the mother’s permission.

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