Breaking Up is Hard to Do (If Kids are Involved)

There was a Statistics Canada report released this week about marriage breakups. I've taken a few days to even decide whether I wanted to open up this can of worms and blog about it.

I've decided I'm going to, but not to focus so much directly on its main finding: that men are more likely to suffer depression following a marriage breakup than women.

Who can know that? I expect that people, male or female, who are told by their partner that the marriage is over, are the ones most devastated by it. What other conclusion could there be?

Were they assuming that marriage breakups are always by mutual agreement? That there is no dumper and no dumpee? I think there usually is a dumper and dumpee. That's life. Shit happens.

If the study said that more women break up more marriages than men, by my logic, the findings would then stand to reason -- obviously more men, abandoned by their wives, would be depressed.

But the study didn't say that. It just said that men were more likely to be devastated by a marriage breakup than women. So I don't know what to do with that.

What I DO want to talk about here is the devastation I felt when I could no longer see my kids on a daily basis, another part of the study that was minimized in the Canadian Press story I found on the Web.

All it said was that this was a significant and less acknowledge factor for men in a marriage breakup: that aside from the wife and whatever they may feel about her, they miss their kids.

First, let me explain without going into sordid details: My ex ended our marriage. I'm glad now and have been for a long time. I've moved on, except for when it comes to our kids.

I didn't see my daughter bring home her first boyfriend. I wasn't there when she had her first period (I apologize, but I would have wanted to be there for that and to help however I could).

I could not be there to be the male influence I wanted my son to have on a daily basis. What did I miss with both of them? How much don't I know right now that I would have known?

My kids have lived with their mom for seven or so years now. I have my kids every second weekend but I talk to them quite a bit more often than that and see them more often.

They are beautiful young people, my kids.

They've grown a whole bunch since these pictures above were taken. My daughter's just finished her first year university and has my car tonight and will have it tomorrow night.

She is so strong and independent...but she still doesn't escape my wrath at times when she does something goofy.

My son struggles some in school and he needs reality checks from me fairly often and a kick in the butt from time to time, but he's a popular kid with a big heart and lofty goals.

This picture was from about three summers ago. Now my son towers over my daughter (she's barely 5 feet) and he's almost as tall as me.

I've done everything I could to try to stay in their lives and be a dad, and I think things have turned out about as well as they could given the circumstances that their parents are divorced.

It's hard, sometimes, to accept what has happened, still, from the perspective of my kids.

I get shivers sometimes when I hear the term "deadbeat dad" and I know that not all dads from broken marriages are "deadbeats" in that way. I know many are. But not all.

My buddy, Homo Escapeons, is the farthest thing from a Deadbeat Dad you could ever know. My brother in Ottawa, Doug, is the most caring father you could or would ever see.

In my most negative moments, I think of how I'm coughing up huge child support payments to a woman who initiated the end to our marriage and who takes my kids to Disneyland and other places.

On my buck, while I sit in my apartment. All I can do is hope my kids see the longing I have for them to be happy, and to do everything in my power to make that happen.

Just by being a dad, even if not a full-time, live-in dad.

Men more prone to depression after a divorce, study finds
TORONTO (CP) - The stereotype might be that a man relishes trading his wife for a fast car or a younger woman, but a new study finds that men appear to take separation harder than women.

While both men and women whose marriages have dissolved have a higher risk of being depressed than people who remained with their spouses, a Statistics Canada study found that men who had divorced or separated were six times more likely to report an episode of depression compared with men who remained married.

Women who had undergone marital breakups were 3.5 times more likely to have had bouts of depression than their counterparts who were still in relationships.

The survey found that 12 per cent of people who were no longer in a relationship reported a new episode of depression, while just three per cent of those who remained in a relationship had suffered new depression.

Michelle Rotermann, the author of the study, said she was surprised, and also not surprised, by the results.

"On the one hand we know depression in general tends to be more common among women, but there is also a lot of evidence that shows that men have fewer social supports and social support does seem to play a role," she said.

"Perhaps one of the reasons why men are more at risk of experiencing subsequent depression is because one of their main sources of social support is their partner, their spouse, and now she is no longer there," said Rotermann, an analyst at Statistics Canada.

Nineteen per cent of men who were no longer with their spouse found a decline in social support, while only six per cent of men who remained in a relationship found a drop. Among women the proportions were 11 per cent for those no longer in a relationship and five for those who were.

Jenni Tipper, a research associate with the Vanier Institute of the Family in Ottawa, said "typically women are much better at building and maintaining social supports, which isn't often the case for men."

After a breakup, women tended to live in households with an income ranking far below that of their male counterparts. In fact, nearly 30 per cent of recently divorced or separated men actually experienced an improvement in the ranking of their adjusted household income, the study reported.

The study found that 34 per cent of men and three per cent of women were residing with at least one less child after the breakdown of their relationship.

Tipper said the study is a good reminder that the breakdown of a marriage is an extremely challenging transition for everybody involved.

"We sometimes tend to think that it's the woman who bears the brunt of a divorce outcome. And there is no question that women experience higher levels of economic strife," Tipper said.

"What we tend to forget in many instances, for the men in particular, they see children all but removed from their lives, which is a huge impact on your life."

Manitoba's Slithering Snakes

HISS! HISS! BOO!

HISSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!

I can just imagine that being the reaction from Gautami, the ultra-intelligent teacher/poetess/blogger from Delhi, India, to this post on the Narcisse snake pits in Manitoba's Interlake area.


I can't remember how it all came about, but I promised Gautami I'd go up to Narcisse (about 90 minutes from Winnipeg) to take my own pictures and write a post about the pits.

And, well, I still haven't gone, due to work commitments and other matters. And I suspect the snakes have all dispersed by now to the nearby grasslands to consume mice and to mate.

Doh! You might want to include that I put the trip off when I had the opportunity to go...and then I forgot...and then, she reminded me...and then, oh, never mind.

This will simply have to do for the moment, seeing as I am again chained to my work for the next week. Sorry, Gautami. But I still want to see a post from you on cobras and their nemesis, the mongoose.

(*SLITHERS AWAY, HOPING NOT TO BE STEPPED ON BY GAUTAMI*)

The snakes that inhabit Manitoba are called garter snakes. They're a hardy lot and, like every other living creature in the Great White North, they have to find winter shelter to survive.

So what they do every fall is they gather by the hundreds of thousands in what is called the Narcisse snake dens, where they hibernate beneath the frost over the winter.

In the spring, usually in the last part of April and early May, they emerge and go into a mating frenzy. I've been on hand at least twice or three times to see it.

While they're involved in this most copulous of activities, they're oblivious to threats around them.

That means people can visit the pit to watch them, and they do in big numbers -- 35,000 each year.

And this is more or less what they see:

It IS truly an amazing thing and is well worth seeing. It's especially neat for kids, who have a chance to see that all the bugaboos about snakes aren't true.

They're NOT slimy. They're NOT the devil. They're NOT all poisonous. They're an important part of the foodchain. They're very efficient animals that have been this way for millions of years.

When I was a kid, actually seeing a garter snake and then trying to catch it -- and succeeding -- was one of the most spectacular experiences of all, these reptiles are so incredible.

Anyway, Gautami, I DO apologize for not getting out there myself this spring...it was unavoidable. I had plans this weekend to go with my son to see if the snakes were still there.

But that never worked out either...the weather was cool and wet, and my son kept coming up with excuses...like wanting to talk to his latest girlfriend on MSN.

Besides, I highly suspect they've all left the dens, as I said. I realize this isn't the same, but for this year, it will have to suffice. For now, I'm just going to slither back under my rock...

DISTINGUISHED by heart, distinguished by stupidity

I LOVE THIS GUY.

I DETEST THIS GUY THAT THAT GUY IS WITH.

And I agree entirely with President Carter about President Bush, who has harmed America -- and the world -- in the worst possible way. Carter had soul. Bush has no soul.

Jimmy Carter, the former US president, has called George Bush's presidency "the worst in history" while also condemning Tony Blair, the out-going British prime minister, for his close support for Bush's policies.

Carter's comments made in a series of interviews with US and international media which appeared on Saturday.

"I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history," Carter told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in a story that appeared in the newspaper's Saturday editions.

"The overt reversal of America's basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including those of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me."

He also said that Bush has taken a "radical departure from all previous administration policies" with the Iraq war.

"We now have endorsed the concept of pre-emptive war where we go to war with another nation militarily, even though our own security is not directly threatened, if we want to change the regime there or if we fear that some time in the future our security might be endangered."

In a separate interview with the BBC, the British state broadcasting service, Carter also criticised Blair, the British prime minister.

Asked how he would judge Blair's support of Bush, the former president said: "Abominable. Loyal. Blind. Apparently subservient."

"And I think the almost undeviating support by Great Britain for the ill-advised policies of President Bush in Iraq have been a major tragedy for the world."

A major tragedy is right.

And Canada's lapdog prime minister, Stephen Harper, is supporting Bush. I feel a great sense of pride about President Carter. I feel a great sense of humiliation about us.

Women, Shopping and Other Disasters

AS A VETERAN SINGLE DAD, I KNOW ALL ABOUT GROCERY SHOPPING.

And I certainly know, then, about an undisputed, scientifically observed and proven phenomenon.

It's called "Women and their Wanton Disregard for the Rules of the Shopping Cart Superhighway."

Now, before my legions of female readers get all up in arms, or what have you, this behaviour has now been recognized by the World Association of Male Grocery Shoppers.

It has been verified over a period of many years of intense study by the Psychiatrists for Safer Shopping Practices Society. It has been endorsed by every consumer group on the planet.

Women pose a public shopping hazard because they repeatedly stop their shopping carts in the middle of the aisle, blocking other consumers -- mostly males -- from getting past them.

Males are clearly at a disadvantage in such situations because as humans evolved, men were the hunters and women were the gatherers.

Grocery shopping, by and large, is a gathering activity, hitherto not a pastime or activity largely engaged in by men. And studies are showing just how this development is harmful to males.

The typical male simply wants to hunt down his quarry and drag the food back to the cave. Females, on the other hand, tend to be much more selective in their choice of foodstuffs.


This results in frequent stops and incredibly long investigations of each brand or type or price as part of their evolutionary role in gathering only the best produce for their clan to consume.


And over millions of years, human females developed the behaviour -- in a very subtle way -- to attempt to block out other competitors for that same food by simply getting in their way.


In the 21st century, at a time when roughly half of all male-female marriage relationships end in divorce, more males are finding themselves in supermarket aisles, trying to adapt and be gatherers.


For now, sociologists and psychologists say, there's little the male can do except quietly wait for 10 minutes until the female ahead of him realizes that she's not the only shopper in the store.


...And move her shopping cart over to the side so other shoppers -- yes, even us out-of-our-element males -- can get by.


Studies also seem to be indicating that males (read: your's truly) seem to have a penchant for always picking the slowest line at the cashier checkout, but findings are not conclusive as to why.


It's also believed that further research is required to determine why females always forget where they parked outside WalMart or other huge megastores.


And consumer scientists are also anxious to gather further evidence on whether females or males are more responsible for leaving their shopping carts standing in parking stalls.