Men and Marriage Education/ Father's Rights/ Male Biological Clock - 9/18/06

Mon Sep 18 12:45:30 EDT 2006

- NEW SUBSCRIBER 
- CHILDREN'S RIGHTS COUNCIL'S 20TH ANNIVERSARY CONF, VIRGINIA, NOV 3-5
- MALE BIOLOGICAL CLOCK
- AUTISM RISK RISES WITH AGE OF FATHER
#################################
- NEW SUBSCRIBER 

> At the age of 60 this next January, I've been married twice and am now single
> with a girlfriend of six years. I just finished reading your weekly email for
> the first time, and I sure wish I had had this discipline way back when my
> first wife and I were married. Thanks so very much for your interest in
> helping marriages to work smart. I did so love both my wives, but was a real
> bear when it came to letting either of them make normal daily mistakes. And it
> cost me a lot of heartbreak on both sides, as well as to my three daughters,
> and the daughters are all full-grown and none married or even interested. In
> fact, two of them claim to be homosexual.
>   
> Several years ago, I stumbled upon a website similar to yours that deals with
> fathers and their children. I've been involved in prison ministry for 30 years
> and came to realize that the main reason 99% of the inmates are in prison is
> that they never had a Dad to show them how a grown up man acts and functions.
> I've been sending the fatherhood emails to a small group of inmates for 3
> years or so and found the articles get read so many times by so many of the
> other inmates at the prisons that they literally wear out the pages. Wow! And
> now I have finally found the same type of ministry to people like myself.
> Thank you so much for your love of people like me. Sincerely, Rusty Harden,
> Houston

Thank you for writing and I hope you'll forward some of the Smart Marriages
info to your inmates.  You might also want to start teaching marriage and
relationship education classes in the prisons. The classes have been
overwhelmingly well-received where they've been tried.  It's especially
helpful to offer them to those that are nearing release, but, actually, it's
been found that ALL the prisoners want the classes, even the lifers.  At end
of this email I'll list the recordings of sessions from the Smart Marriages
Conference that share people's experience of teaching in jails and prisons
to help you think about getting started.

I also hope you'll begin right now planning to attend the next Smart
Marriages Conference. You are a "natural born member" and we need people
like you that can teach from your experience, your conviction, and from your
heart.  You can train and be certified in any number of programs at the
conference. http://www.smartmarriages.com/conferencedetails.html

In the meantime, visit the "teach out of the box" programs page and you can
get started before next June - just open the box and start teaching:
http://www.smartmarriages.com/minis.html

For inspiration, listen to a few recordings both of the teach out of the box
training sessions and of the prison-teaching sessions, order at 800-241-7785
- $15 on CD or download for $9.95 on MP#.

> 755-P4
> Doing Time
> Howard Markman, PhD
> It's an absolute no-brainer! Most prisoners are released. Marital stability is
> linked to lower rates of recidivism. Marriage education can greatly help
> returning inmates cope with the transition from prison to their intimate
> relationships.

> 755-509
> Doing Time 
> Howard Markman, PhD, Ron Grant, MDiv, Richard Albertson, Rozario Slack, DMin
> Ex-offenders with successful intimate relationships are less likely to
> re-offend. Learn about three programs teaching marriage skills to inmates and
> how to adapt programs for your community.

Also, you can search the archive of past posts to the list serv and read
about work in the prisons and in communities.  Just plug "prison" into the
search engine at:  http://lists101.his.com/pipermail/smartmarriages/

Another very important suggestion: you've got a partner - take a
marriage/relationship class with her.  Learn as much as you can about the
magic of these classes by experiencing one.  You'll also then be able to
model the behaviors for your daughters.   It's never too late. And, you're
in Houston.  Contact Nancy White 713-961-5243 and find out when the next
PAIRS class is offered.  Perfect class for you.  Or, check the Directory of
Programs at Smart Marriages - many other "brands" from which to choose.

Whatever you do, please stay plugged in.  You're our kind of guy.
- diane  
######################

- CHILDREN'S RIGHTS COUNCIL'S 20TH ANNIVERSARY CONF, VIRGINIA, NOV 3-5

CRC's main focus is on shared parenting based on both "best interests of the
child" and on federal data that shows that states with the highest rates of
joint custody/shared parenting have the lowest divorce rates.

Speakers include: Elizabeth Marquardt ("Between Two Worlds"); Mike and
Harriet McManus, Marriage Savers; and Stanley Posthumus, JD, ("Ending the
Divorce Epidemic: A Social Disease"). See full conference agenda, including
rexamination of the "Best Interests" of children, and additional speakers,
including "Ask Amy" Dickinson, Wally "Famous" Amos on reading aloud to
children, judges, psychologists, Congressmembers, and White House staff, at
www.crckids.org.  14 hrs CE/ Co-sponsor by The Annie E. Casey Foundation.

################################
- MALE BIOLOGICAL CLOCK

The research on aging sperm, published AFTER the Atlanta Smart Marriages
conference, would have fit right in with the Whitehead/Slack keynote:
"Message to Our Sons/Message to Our Daughters", which provided information
on which to base decisions about WHY and WHEN to marry.  - diane

Men Have Biological Clocks Too, Sperm Study Says
John Roach
for National Geographic News
June 6, 2006

Note to men: You've got a biological clock too, and it's ticking.

It's not just women who face decreased reproductive success with age. The
genetic quality of sperm deteriorates as men get older, according to a new
study.

Sperm (shown magnified in photo) may degrade with age, resulting in male
biological clock

Starting in their 20s, men face steadily increasing chances of infertility,
fathering an unsuccessful pregnancy, and passing on to their children a
genetic mutation that causes dwarfism, according to the study.

The finding comes as more and more men are delaying fatherhood. Since 1980
U.S. birth rates have increased up to 40 percent for men aged 35 to 49 and
decreased up to 20 percent for men under the age of 30, according to the
research.

Studies have also shown that it takes longer for older men to conceive.

"We [now] know the probability for certain types of DNA damage goes up with
age, and we can give you a mathematical probability," said Andrew Wyrobek, a
researcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore,
California.

The higher the percentage of a man's sperm that has DNA damage, the less
likely he will be able to successfully father a healthy child, Wyrobek
added.

(See our quick overview of human genetics.)

Wyrobek is a co-lead author of the new study, which appears in today's issue
of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers have long known that female fertility decreases with age. The
longer women delay reproduction, the greater their risk of miscarriage and
giving birth to children with diseases such as Down syndrome.

Female fertility abruptly ends with the onset of menopause.

"Our research suggests that men too have a biological time clock, only it is
different," Brenda Eskenzai, a study co-author at the University of
California, Berkeley's School of Public Health, said in a statement.

For photos, and research links:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/06/060606-sperm-clock.html

-------------------------
- AUTISM RISK RISES WITH AGE OF FATHER
Large Study Finds Strong Correlation

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 5, 2006; Page A01

Children born to fathers of advancing age are at significantly higher risk
of developing autism compared with children born to younger fathers,
according a comprehensive study published yesterday that offers surprising
new insight into one of the most feared disorders of the brain.

The finding comes at a time of great controversy over autism in the United
States, as a recent surge in diagnoses has fueled speculations about various
possible causes of the disorder. For scientists, both the origins of and
potential treatments for the disorder remain a mystery.

With every decade of advancing age starting with men in their teens and
twenties, the new study found, older fathers pose a growing risk to their
children when it comes to autism -- unhappy evidence that the medical risks
associated with late parenthood are not just the province of older mothers,
as much previous research has suggested.

Of special concern is the finding that the risk for autism not only
increases with paternal age but also appears to accelerate.

When fathers are in their thirties, children have about 1 1/2 times the risk
of developing autism of children of fathers in their teens and twenties.
Compared with the offspring of the youngest fathers, children of fathers in
their forties have more than five times the risk of developing autism, and
children of fathers in their fifties have more than nine times the risk.

Read the full article at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/04/AR2006090400
513.html

**************************
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