Saw this post from a buddy of mine on Facebook and it just made my heart break for him and, mostly, for his girl: I wish I could say that I remember my ex and I having that conversation with our children, where we sat down and together told them the new state of the world, but that’s not quite how it transpired. We talked about how we’d break it to the kids and we…Read More
Something I bumped into this afternoon made me curious, so I dug up some statistics on marriage rates in the last decade and the data’s quite interesting, actually. According to the Centers for Disease Control even as the population of the United States has steadily grown, both the marriage rate and divorce rate have declined. In 2000, there were 281.4 million people in the United States, and 2.3 million marriages. That converts to a rate…Read More
Relationships are hard. I keep telling myself this, but having gone through my divorce almost 7 years ago, it’s easy to forget just how rocky and painful those first few years were. But to ensure that it’s not all glossed over in the mists of time, three of my buddies are going through their own very fresh divorce trauma and it’s bringing up unpleasant memories of my own. One of my friends had to call…Read More
I was reading through a review of the film Sex Tape by my friend Christian when I was startled by the research he cites from NBC’s The Today Show and Melissa Lavigne-Delville about couples and the incidence of (self-reported) cheating on their spouse based on whether they had children or not. Knowing that having children puts an extraordinary stress on relationships, it’s no surprise that married couples with children are twice as likely to cheat on…Read More
I’m not the target audience for Bravo and while I respect its heritage as an “artsy” channel, it’s clear that the daft trend of increasingly unlikely reality shows has hit the channel big time. In fact, the latest reality show that’s poised to be introduced is called Untying the Knot and it looks absolutely awful. The show is hosted by divorce attorney, nope, sorry, “Celebrity Divorce Attorney” Vikki Ziegler, it’s about helping divorcing couples divvy…Read More
As an outspoken advocate for father’s rights and someone who is open about the journey of my separation, divorce and post-divorce life, I have found that many men — and women — who are either facing a divorce or are already in the thick of things come to me for advice and a sympathetic shoulder. I’m always willing to help with whatever insight I can, always hoping for the best and happy to offer a tiny…Read More
After years of post-divorce bouncing back and forth between two households, it’s very interesting to see how each of my children has adapted and learned how to cope with the inevitable disruption in different ways. None have made friends in the local neighborhood, for example, but each has their own strategy too. My oldest, who is 17 and is just a month or two away from being able to drive solo totes school books back…Read More
A friend of mine is going through the stages of a contentious divorce and sent me a copy of the draft parenting plan that he’s sent to his soon-to-be-ex-wife. I read through it and there were two hiccups that struck me, one a bit amusing and the other just a minefield if things are going to remain difficult once they’re divorced. First, the parenting plan proposal says this: Where exactly are the children between 9am…Read More
I attended a talk from the Colorado Office of Suicide Prevention at the Stay At Home Dads Conference in Denver and was shocked by the suicide stats for fathers. I wrote about it a while back – Men and Suicide –but after trying for months, finally got a chance to interview Dr. Rich Mahogany. Hold on, though: Rich is a fake therapist, the creation of the Man Therapy partners, but with its generous dose of…Read More
I’m working on an article for Parents.com about being a single father and have to admit, I’ve been doing this for so many years I kind of forget the initial panic and struggles of those first few months, realizing that I couldn’t tag-team someone else into play if I felt overwhelmed or exhausted or just had no energy. It’s a jarring transition for both parents, I think, though obviously the parent who spends less time…Read More
It’s not really something I expected to be talking about but the topic keeps coming up: what is marriage going to look like in 10, 20, 50 years? I tend to think about things both as they happen and afterwards, mulling on how events transpired, what I could have done differently to change or improve the outcome and how I could have reacted or framed things in a better, more positive or even just more…Read More
A colleague alerted me to a new survey published by Citibank entitled “Today’s Professional Woman Report“, the third time that they, in cooperation with LinkedIn, have surveyed professional women to identify trends and traits. And there are some very interesting trends… What most struck me the most is that according to their results, men are now placing more emphasis on marriage and children than women are in this survey. 79% of men equate “having it…Read More
I was optimistic a few weeks ago when I wrote about my daughter’s new found kitten Kiwi, and how I didn’t even want to meet him because I didn’t really want him to be part of my household, having just said goodbye to my cat of many years, Newton, at the beginning of this year. Yeah. I’m so tough around incredibly cute little creatures. Surprise. I finally met Kiwi and he’s just a lovely little…Read More
I’m at the At-Home Dads Convention here in Denver (darn convenient, being just 30min drive from my house, quite thoughtful of them to plan it here) and the opening speaker is Jarrod Hindman from the Colorado Department of Public Health. His talk is about the men’s suicide prevention Web site called ManTherapy.com and if you haven’t checked it out, you should. Why? Because the statistics about suicide are alarming. In 2012 alone here in the…Read More
As a father’s rights advocate and someone who has been through divorce and now is flying solo raising my kids as a single dad, I end up talking with a lot of men who are going through similar experiences, suddenly finding themselves not just being the father but without the benefit of an often more experienced mom in the picture to help. It’s daunting. We live in a culture that, like most cultures before us,…Read More