Want a jolt to your health after a couple heart attacks and a stroke? Have a baby: it's what worked for seventy-year-old Aussie Kevin King.
Of course, it might not hurt that his wife is only 31. He met her while going walkabout after being told by his doctor he had but three years left to live — a prognosis since withdrawn. With baby Pierre one-year-old, King spends his days as a stay-at-home-play-at-home-dad while wifey goes off to earn her keep.
Good on ya Kev!
If you happened to be thinking about a tie as the father's day gift most likely to make dad feel that moms get a much better day, think again. Thanks to the United Stated Department of Health and Human Services, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (DHHS/AHRQ), you can send pops an ecard telling him to go to the doctor. Alternatively, you can sit down for a short film festival to take a look at the public service announcements that share the punchline of dad dying soon because he didn't get to the doctor.
It may be well intentioned. However, encouraging dad with ecards and videos (can you work less hard to find a gift?) to go to the doctor for the checkup — where he'll most likely hear bad news — will most likely leave him wishing for that tie he never wanted in previous years ... in case he wants to hang himself.
A day to cry for a father and a son (and to pray if you believe in that power or perhaps send some cash if you have it).
Reggie Thomas Jr., 8, is in a Chicago homeless shelter beloved by staff but waiting on his father's recovery from a stroke. Senior, a single dad dedicated to his son, lost his job, apartment and now his health. As he told the Tribune's Dawn Turner Trice: "I want my son to learn that whatever he goes through, God has his back and he shouldn't give up," he told me. "He's looking forward to me being able to play and talk and laugh with him again, and just be the father he wants and needs me to be."
As are we all.
Men have trouble keeping off the weight during pregnancy. That, according to the British pollsters, is despite not actually being pregnant themselves.
Potential pounds don't scare everyone. Father-of-seven Mel Gibson "loves being a father" enough to take up with and impregnate a girlfriend despite his to-date strict Catholic beliefs. It is, however, apparently frightening enough that a father might leave the woman with his child in prison. Dallas Maverick star Dirk Nowitzki seems afraid enough of weight gain and other issues to have actually fled the country while his child-to-be lolls about behind bars.
What's a man to do? One solution currently suggested (via The Baby Formula) is to have the father-to-be not be a father:
We don't recommend this.
Some days it seems that all one has to do to write a book (and get it published and get it positive attention) is to start by thinking about your father. Or, more exactly, how your father influences your life.
Steve McKee went looking into his father's heart when his own heart betrayed him. It is genetics — his father died of a heart attack when he was 16 &mash; and the battle against that takes readers into his head via the memoir of what his father's life and death have meant for him in "My Father's Heart."
And from the fiction side of the aisle we have the story of a girl's hunt for her father. Unwed but pregnant Wilhemina Upton decides to discover the secret of her father as a psychological nesting tack in preparation for the birth of her child. What she finds, what Lauren Groff reveals in her first novel, "Monsters of Templeton," is how the lost relationship of father and daughter (and some surrealistic touches) define a daughter and then a grandchild.
First there was news that older could be worser, health wise [Earlier: Biological Clock]. Now a study emerges that fathering younger — as a teen — might lead to more baby health issues.
So, it is with trepidation that WD reports what seems a very positive and healthy story of a father and son planning a joint Boston Marathon (Apr. 21) inspired by concerns for their own health and dedicated to running and raising money for the hospital that faced up to the brain aneurism that threatened the son's life ten years ago.
Naturally, health and marathons bring to mind Team Hoyt, a Massachusetts institution. Dick and son Rick have competed in more than 900 races — father pushing quadriplegic son — and 25 times on Patriots Day in the Boston Marathon. They missed 2007; no word yet on 2008.
If you need a reason not to father, there are plenty. And the experts keep the health threats coming. There has been prostate cancer [Earlier: Men's Pain], depression [Ealier: Dads Drown in Down] and now, babies make dads fat.
But, if you love kids and want them to do well in life, you can either run a day care center or have some of your own ... or like Connecticuter Bob Scheidel — father of Matt, 11 and Brian, 7 — you can do both.
