Fatherhood

I didn’t get enough time with my father. However, I know I am incredibly fortunate to have as much as I did.

ABC TV recently announced they were making a documentary about him (airing tonight, February 23 at 8pm). It would cover his early years, his business life and what has happened since he died. I wasn’t the least bit interested in the extra coverage of the family post his death, and I hope there is very little of me in it.

However, I recognise that the producers wanted to study the impact of his life - which of course didn’t stop when his heart did. So I agreed I agreed to participate. I am doing this because I believe that the best way for me to honour my father is to help others understand him. So, with greatest respect to my father, (Michael) Robert Hamilton Holmes a Court, 1937-1990, I share some of the things he taught me.

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  • S. Bell says:

    12:32pm | 06/03/12

    Your comment: commenting on The Weekend Australian Magazine Article & on Peter rather than his father. So often we remember to give those without money in life a pat on the back for effort, attitude and achievements. I think Peter Holmes a Court may need a compliment for his apparent… Read more »

  • Robert Smissen of country SA says:

    10:00pm | 23/02/12

    TChong, glad to see that you are still full of charm & warmth,to me it sounds like you are jealous. Read more »

 

Holding a foreign affairs portfolio in the Federal Government means you travel… a lot. And with a young family this carries with it certain domestic challenges.


So a social contract has developed between me and my family to resolve the situation. Be it out of compensation or guilt, provided I return bearing gifts then everything is OK.

My wife Rachel is the easiest piece of the puzzle. I pass through Duty Free often which simply means cosmetics. Her favourite is nail polish which lives in the refrigerator. After a year of travelling the inside door of the fridge now has a line-up of tomato sauce, milk and a bank of Chanel.

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  • stephen says:

    01:23pm | 26/12/11

    Actually, talking about iPods, my 16gb nano was pinched 2 weeks ago, and ringing Apple, you’d think that they would be able to determine whether, if another person had tried to access this iPod - considering that it had a distinctive serial number - with another email address .... one… Read more »

  • stephen says:

    12:44pm | 24/12/11

    And that’s the best reason iPhones, iPads and the like are only toys. Read more »

 

There are 17 strangers in a training room. Over the course of eight hours, they’re repeatedly divided up by gender to brainstorm. At one point, the trainer makes a joke about turning testicles into a purse. It gets a laugh.

Lesson #1 Read a mean bedtime story. Photo: Herald Sun

This is a parenting class I attended recently. Eight couples with nothing in common except their pregnancy and an assumption that it’s apparently OK to joke about castration. 

Over at news.com.au, we’ve been looking at male identity in a post-GFC jobs market and a post-post-feminist household.  We have found traditional “male” jobs in decline and what one expert called a “sex-segregated workforce” taking its toll on Aussie men.

We have also found an increasing number of men seeking help through mental health services and therapy sessions. But in a way, that’s the good news – at least men are finally prepared to talk.

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  • Debbie says:

    09:02pm | 07/11/11

    Actually I do believe you don;t really grow into a real woman with all the various aspects of that until you do have children. There is a whole part of yourself you do not access and do not even know exists until you have kids. Read more »

  • jim morris says:

    07:18am | 05/11/11

    Feminism has been sistermatically degrading everything maculine for 30+ years but some time soon when they suddenly need men the reality of what they have done will become apparent. Read more »

 

It hasn’t been a good week for disaffected fathers. Most weeks aren’t. Since Mick Fox disrupted half of Sydney to protest his custodial battle, we’ve seen the shocking case of Paul Rogers, who fatally gassed himself and his daughter Kyla, while the awful case of Ramazan Acar goes through the courts. Read the gruesome details if you dare.

His point got across, even if traffic couldn't

As we all know, custodial battles over children are the common thread in these and many similar cases. But why do men snap? At what point does frustration boil over into mass scale public nuisance… or even to murder?

Let’s take a small picture view and a big picture view. The small picture, with a focus on the ass that is family law, comes from Barry Williams, president of the Lone Fathers Association. The wide view comes from social analyst Richard Eckersley, who regularly measures Australia’s pulse through a thing called the Wellbeing Index.

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  • Luke says:

    09:58pm | 30/05/11

    You do not know what you are talking about. Your comments are so offensive to someone who is in this disgusting system Read more »

  • John Findlay says:

    02:36pm | 30/05/11

    Said to perfection, this is what I and many others are going through. It’s the elephant in the room that is ignored until it steps on your toes. Support Mick Fox, KIDS FIRST ! Read more »

 

Recently in South Australia, the local reproductive medicine outfit had, for want of a better term, a “sperm drive’‘.

Every sperm donor has a unique genetic print. But should kids have a right to track them down? Image: Eric Lobbecke

The campaign, conceived on the cheap, pleaded with Aussie blokes not to “waste’’ their sperm.

It was wildly successful. The number of sperm donors in SA jumped 100 per cent. From two to four.

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  • Rudy says:

    02:12pm | 30/03/12

    I have read a few of the posts and would like to try and answer some of the misconceptions, if you’ll pardon the pun, about sperm donation. I donated many years ago now. There was no limit of five births in those days as I’ve read in some of your… Read more »

  • Liz says:

    05:48pm | 09/02/11

    Providing genetic material doesn’t make you a real father or mother. While a sense of where you come from genetically is important to some and the ability to access that information can be vital at times personally, if you donated sperm anonymously then your right to remain anonymous should be… Read more »

 

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