It is our desire to provide evidence based research, as well as additional information of value, to support your understanding and practice of parenting, birth and family care.

As an entre regarding the importance of fathers, to their children and in the family, the following is most relevant.

How important are fathers in families?

Here are some facts that may surprise you. They are from several US government sources. You may be tempted to think - "This may be the case in America, but people in my country are different." That may be true, but stop for a second to think about what this really means...

According to leading official USA government sources,
children from a fatherless home are:

• 5 times more likely to commit suicide
• 32 times more likely to run away
• 20 times more likely to have behavioural disorders
• 14 times more likely to commit rape
• 9 times more likely to drop out of school
• 10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances
• 9 times more likely to end up in a state operated institution
• 20 times more likely to end up in prison

A better world starts at home... let's get fathers connected to their hearts and to their families!

These statistics come from a collection of agencies, including the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Center for Disease Control, and the National Principals Association.  Source: CTI www.thecoaches.com

Science and the Roots of Love

What Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology Shows Us

Cell biology, brain science and child development studies confirm the findings of transpersonal psychology and sacred teachings of long ago: What we experience at the very beginning of life deeply shapes our health, the way we live, and our life choices. Many problems and chronic conditions we face as teens or adults can, in fact, be traced to faulty patterns in our brain and nervous system, including a distorted sense of self and an inability to trust the world around us. These patterns are physiological and rooted in the experiences we had at conception, during womb life, in birth, and in those first crucial hours afterward.

Our first “home” is the womb, when our mother’s body and psyche are our world. We bathe in the sea of her thoughts, emotions and perceptions. Our umbilical cord tethers us to the mother ship, and we receive the biochemical translation of her consciousness. Not only do we develop from her nutrients and love hormones but also the toxins she takes in, all via that pulsing channel. These are the components from which we compose our tissues and organs, especially our brain.

After birth the face, voice and body language of our mother constitute the mirror in which we see ourself and the window to the world around us. Therefore, how our mother experiences life, how she is treated – with joy and honor or neglect and abuse – profoundly influence how we grow up to treat ourselves, everyone, and everything we encounter.

…From immune system disorders to terrorism, from committing suicide to devising weapons, from child abuse to corruption, and from alcoholism to trashing our planet, we are dealing with an impaired capacity for loving oneself and others…

…For the first time in known history we can collectively address the premise that both peace and war begin in the womb. Our consciousness does not end at the boundaries of our flesh. It lies in, around and beyond our developing brain. Deep inside, we forever hold the memory of our birth, our in-womb life, and even conception.

Nature has endowed women with the monumental task of birthing cultures as well as human beings. More than ever, we know how important it is for society to embrace and empower pregnant mothers, offer them beauty and harmony, so that they are inspired in their endeavor to weave a luminous, caring web of life for their babies, the future citizens of earth.

The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is a fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and science. He who knows it not and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle.     Albert Einstein

By Laura Uplinger and Suzanne Arms

Articles and Research

Men who respond to impending fatherhood by examining their own childhood produce happier children

By Alexandra Frean, social affairs correspondent of The Times, December 2003

The way men respond to the news that they are to become a father for the first time can have a profound effect on the mental well-being of their children, new research has found.

Women who opt for caesarean aren't too posh to push - just SCARED

by FIONA MACRAE -  6th February 2008 Daily Mail

Almost half the women who choose to have a caesarean delivery are not "too posh to push" - they are simply too scared, researchers say. What does this tell us about how we are educating and supporting our families.

What the gender equality duty means for maternity services(...and fathers)

Going it alone (AKA free or Unassisted Birth)

Wednesday May 9, 2007 The Guardian Viv Groskop reports on the growing trend for freebirth.
Why would anyone choose to give birth without a doctor, midwife or even her partner in attendance?
 

To me, giving birth is as personal as having sex," says Sarah, 24, from Essex. "You don't want someone else sitting there watching you." Sarah chose to "freebirth" her first child, now two, at home. Freebirthing involves giving birth alone, without a midwife and often even a partner or friend in attendance - Sarah delivered while her husband was in the next room. "I didn't have any experience of pain," she says, "there was just this really strong sensation that muscles were working. Then the baby's head appeared."

Inviting Fathers In
The Tender Seeds of Attachment in Men - by Trina Strauss

A mother's attachment to her baby often begins long before birth.  By the last trimester many mothers feel like they know their babies, having been enjoying for months their familiar, reassuring movements in the womb.

But what fathers?  What are their experiences during those wondrous nine months?  How does the attachment process begin for them?  Is a father's only option to look on with wonder (and sometimes envy) at the beautiful relationship forming between his once-doting partner and this tiny interloper?  Is it the extent of his calling to act as back-rubber, chauffeur and coach?  Do these "staff support" roles reflect the monumental potential influence fathers have in their family's life?
 

How to have a sensual, drug-free birth The Independent - 20 March 2007

Forget epidurals. Midwives say they can train women to have births that are not only drug-free, but pleasurable - and even orgasmic. Anastasia Stephens reports

For Katrina Caslake, giving birth was not the terrifying, painful ordeal most women experience. Far from it. The midwife, from Wallington, south London, says she found it blissful, even orgasmic. "I found giving birth very sensual," says Caslake, 44, who didn't take painkillers for the birth of either of her sons, Aaron and Tomas, now 18 and 17.

"All my erogenous zones were stimulated. I was making sounds very similar to a sexual climax. And it was a very definite climax. I was doing the most feminine thing a woman can do and it felt fantastic."

Experiences of the First Year as Father Research from Sweden

A view from inside the family - Becoming a father

 info@fatherstobe.org 

01892 890614/0208 742 2956