NZ Herald 14 May 2018
Family First Comment: Good! And for good reason…
www.porninquiry.nz

Investing in the pornography industry is the biggest worry for KiwiSaver members concerned about where their money is going – ranking ahead of weapons, gambling and tobacco, according to Consumer New Zealand research.

Consumer’s annual KiwiSaver survey asked people where they stand on certain industries and whether they knew if their KiwiSaver fund was invested in them.

While 77 per cent of those surveyed were concerned about their fund investing in the pornography industry, nearly two-thirds (64 per cent) said they had no idea if their fund did invest money in it.

Weapons (73%), gambling (70%) and tobacco (69%) were the next three largest areas of concern but people were similarly unsure as to whether their fund invested in these industries.

In 2016 a raft of KiwiSaver providers pulled out of investments in weapons makers including cluster bombs, landmines and nuclear weapons as well as tobacco after the New Zealand Herald and Radio New Zealand revealed the industry had millions of dollars invested in the controversial investments.
READ MORE: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/personal-finance/news/article.cfm?c_id=12&objectid=12050904

Radio NZ News 14 May 2018
Instigating paid-partner leave after childbirth would be a “concrete step” in addressing the gender pay gap, the government has been told.

Official data shows on average women earn between 9 percent and 16 percent less than men in this country, and the gap is even wider for women with children.

Only about 1 percent of people taking up the government’s paid parental-leave are fathers.

University of Auckland economics lecturer Ryan Greenaway-McGrevy said because of the wage gap there was an economic incentive for women to do the childcaring.

He said this incentive, plus societal attitudes towards gender roles, were blocking men who might be best choice in the couple to take up the role.

“And it’s important to recognise that early childhood really matters in terms of outcomes later in life,” Mr Greenaway-McGrevy said.

“So having the best person in that role is better for the child, I’m sure the father will find it rewarding as well, and also society as a whole.”

Mr Greenaway-McGrevy said excluding any group was an inefficient way to run a company, and the same goes for families.

Listen to Insight’s documentary about stay-at-home fathers

Paid partner leave a concrete step in closing gender pay gap – academic

If the government was serious about closing the the gender pay gap – incentivising more men into the caregiver role – then it needed to start paying partners to take two weeks off work paid when a baby was born, an expert said.

Victoria University senior law lecturer Amanda Reilly wants the government to introduce a separate, ring-fenced entitlement for partners set, to start with, at minimum wage.

Currently two weeks unpaid leave is available.

She said studies showed that in families where men were more involved in caregiving it had a positive correlation with increased women’s earning.

“There’s a lot of conversation coming from this government about the need to address the gender pay gap.

“But this is actually a concrete step that could be taken to signal commitment towards that.”

Ms Reilly said if Australia and other countries could afford to have this policy then New Zealand could too.

“Yes it would cost money but … we have to decide how much do we value caregiving and families.”

It was a matter of fundamental fairness and keeping gender equity moving forward, she said.

And with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s partner Clarke Gayford taking on the primary caregiver role, Ms Reilly said maybe she could be the one to push for the entitlement.

Massey University political science professor Grant Duncan said New Zealand should look to the Swedish model where a range of measures have increased the number of men taking on the primary caregiver role.

Fathers in Sweden claim 27.9 percent of the total childcare leave, more than 10 times the New Zealand number.

The paid-parental leave rules change next month to 22-weeks after Parliament voted last year to incrementally increase the entitlement to 26 weeks by 2020.
READ MORE: https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/357296/paid-partner-leave-would-help-close-gender-pay-gap-expert

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MercatorNet 11 May 2018
In a report to Family First New Zealand published today, leading American family scholar and father of five, Glenn Stanton, writes about the distinct and vital contribution of the mother to a child’s wellbeing. Drawing on common experience and the findings of contemporary research, Stanton reminds us about Why Mothers Matter. The following is an excerpt from the report, published here with the permission of Family First NZ.

The mother’s orientation towards the child
Good mothers and fathers are both certainly very physical with their children. However, mothers are physical in different ways to fathers – ways which stem from their basic nature as women.

From moment one, what is it that you, as a mother, will do with your child? Take any cultural or gender stereotypes you might have and put them aside to think about this in the larger human experience across cultures and time. Is there a common answer? Yes, there is – and it has nothing to do with any particular cultural gender caricature that feminist studies professors will warn you about. It has everything to do with the essence of every good mother.

As soon as a child emerges from the womb, the overwhelming first inclination and physical activity of the mother is to take the crying, quivering newborn close to her and put it to her breast for comfort and sustenance. No mother need to be taught that this should be done. That desire flows from her as strong as any emotion or force she has ever experienced. Everything within her needs to hold and comfort her child. Her body itself, and not just her emotions, is reacting to her baby’s cry. A mother’s brain viscerally and physically responds at this moment.

In one interesting experiment conducted in Italy, men and women were placed in a brain-scan machine. The researchers played two different sounds intermittently, with periods of silence in between. One sound was just white noise, the other was an infant’s hungry cry. The subjects were not informed beforehand that the sounds would be played, so that anticipation would not be a factor. Their brains were observed for internal responses – neural firings – to these sounds. During periods of silence and when white noise was played, the brain responses of males or females were identical. But, as the researchers explained, “the brain activity of women and men differed considerably” when they both heard the cries of a baby.

The men showed no significant response. But women did, regardless of whether they were mothers or not. The female brain sends signals throughout the body when it hears a baby crying for food and comfort. It’s natural. In fact, these scholars reported something else that’s natural. When the father seems oblivious or indifferent to your baby’s cries, it’s not because he is selfish or uncaring. It’s that his brain is actually wired that way. The Italian researchers explain, “In functional terms, this finding suggests that, whereas the female brain during hunger cries interrupts on-going mind-wandering, the male brain continues in self-reflection” even if he is reflecting on nothing in particular. In other words, dad’s brain can remain unaffected by his child’s cry.

It is a remarkable and frustrating quirk of nature — but it’s not his fault. Having said that, fathers must learn to be attentive and respond more quickly to the child’s cries.

Mum’s body does not just respond to the baby’s cry. Science also shows us that something significant happens in the deepest interiors of the bodies of both mother and child during the intimacy of nursing. It is not just the functioning of the breast and delivery of nutrition to the baby. Mothers who have more skin-to-skin interaction with their child – including breast feeding – are shown in longitudinal, control-group studies to experience reduced postpartum depression and overall psychological stress, increased uterine health, protection against Type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease, and improved menstruation.

In short, the mother’s orientation is unmistakably toward the child. This is hardwired and hard-driven. Others who seek to interrupt it will often do so at their own peril.

A new father is certainly interested in the child itself, but he is also very interested in his child in relation to the rest of world. More so than the mother. This is an important distinction. Dad is more likely to celebrate the child with the rest of his community as a badge of honour and excitement. Curiously, he considers the newborn as his accomplishment even though he felt no pain or broke no sweat! This is why fathers have long passed out cigars to their friends. It’s about his relationship as a new father to the larger community, and a celebration of the event of the arrival of his new child.
https://www.mercatornet.com/mobile/view/motherhood-is-not-a-gender-stereotype-its-science

Why mothers matter
SunLive 13 May 2018
“Mum’s femininity not only gave birth to and nourished her children, but helps them develop into the unique, healthy and influential human beings society requires.