History

HELP FOR DIVORCED MEN AT RISK OF SUICIDE

Australian men are to be targeted by the Government in an attempt to stem the growing number of divorce related suicides.

Community Services Minister Larry Anthony said the Government was funding a $16.5 million series of pilot programs to help men deal with the emotional fallout of separations.

" Separated men have a suicide rate around six times greater than married men and about 12 times greater than separated women." Mr Anthony told a partnerships forum.

"That is why we are specifically targeting men through the coalition government's $516.5 million Men aid Family Relationships initiative."

Mr Anthony said 54 pilot programs running throughout Australia Were helping men manage their relationships with partners, former partners. children and stepchildren. The aim was to help crisis and support organisations develop a more sensitive and responsive approach to male clients.

"It’s all about prevention. If we help men. then we help women." he said. "But more importantly, we help children.

"We want men to be involved in their children's lives because it is important that children experience both fathers and mother as role models."

A DIVORCED friend of around my own age recently took up companionship with a young woman, one so young in fact that my pal only half-jokes that he needs to get written permission from her parents to take her out.

As his teenage son drily observes, it is nice to have someone his own age to talk to.

The situation is fraught, to say the least. The domestic difficulties are limitless in taking someone else’s daughter under your roof while your own son tosses and turns in the room next door.

Even grimmer, the arrangement is bad for the economy since my friend now provides the young woman with all her homeware needs, at a substantial loss to the retail trade, it has to be said.

In other circumstances, she would likely be setting herself up in a flat and scanning the catalogues for furniture and white goods, providing much needed economic stimulus in her own small way.

Though the teenage son is possibly not far away from moving out himself, a tad sooner than he might otherwise have imagined until quite recently.

In his own defence, my friend points out that at the time of his separation he had to go and buy those same items again - bed, fridge and so on - so he feels as though he has already made a double contribution to the retail sector, thank you very much.

Yet, with 40 per cent of Australian marriages now falling by the wayside, the real estate and white goods industries in particular must be very grateful indeed, as are certain lawyers.

From an economic viewpoint, the divorce rate may even usefully help to offset the worrying trend of adult children continuing to live at home with their parents long after they should have gone their separate ways.

In Japan, the terms used to describe the phenomenon are Parasite Children and Kangaroo Parents. Japanese economists complain that Parasite Children are retarding the economy because they do not buy property or durable white goods and have a low birth rate.

In Greece, as another example, two out of three men and two out of five women are still living with their parents by their 29th birthdays. Hopeless.

Interested to see if Australia had similar figures, I went trawling through the Bureau of Statistics. While still looking for something relevant, I came across other interesting bits in the meantime:

Survey companies, retail strategists and advertising agencies pore over such statistics to try to determine where all this is heading.

SOUTH AUSTRALIAN BRANCH OF THE LONE FATHERS ASSOCIATION Inc.

"Children need their Father as much as their Mother"

LFAA National Peak Body

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