Children
Why I took my eight-year-old son wine-tasting
My eight-year-old son’s eyes widened when I unwrapped a Christmas present I got from my parents: a bottle of cherry…
No, the internet is not bad for your child
The forces arranged in favour of banning social media for under-16s are powerful and wide-ranging. The unlikely alliance includes the…
The march of lazy children’s books
There’s a myth that lots of us fall for/ ‘Kids’ books are so easy to write’/ And you can see…
Keep children out of politics
In Citizens, his account of the French Revolution, Simon Schama wrote how the Jacobins recruited children into ‘relentless displays of…
Labour has done more damage to our country than the Luftwaffe
I still hang out with the same two lovable crackheads I sat beside on the first day of primary school.…
The parents gaming special educational needs
As a foster carer and adopter, I’ve spent more mornings than I care to count coaxing my 13-year-old daughter into…
French parents do it better
I arrived in Paris as an au pair in 2022. I was in my early twenties and armed only with…
Who will stand up for motherhood?
Scientists at the Oregon Health and Science University have created the beginnings of a baby using not human eggs, but…
How to raise a patriot
‘Good news for patriots,’ said one of our most celebrated national newspapers this week: ‘Your numbers are likely to swell.’…
A gallery that refuses to dumb-down
The DNA of Dulwich Picture Gallery is aspirational, in the sincerest sense. Opening in 1817 when private collections were still…
The painful truth about foster care
The foster care system in this country is collapsing. There are roughly 80,000 children who’ve been removed from violent or…
Phone-addicted yummy mummies are neglecting their children
As a foster carer and an adopter, I know what neglect looks like. I’ve looked after children who didn’t know…
The tragic decline of children’s literature
The other day, leafing through T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, which enchanted me as a child, I was…
The cult of safetyism harms us all
Last month, the government announced that 16-year-olds would be able to vote at the next general election. If these new…
The real reason birth rates are falling
Last week the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) released its State of World Population report. According to the Guardian: ‘Millions…
My hunt for the perfect ‘mum van’
I spent my childhood being ferried around in my mom’s minivan, a hunter green Ford Windstar. Compared with most family…
Middle-class parents are creating a new breed of brat
I recently reconnected with an old friend; I went to his house and met his children for the first time.…
Are you too middle-class to adopt?
Too many books? Yes, we had too many books. That’s what our social worker told us when we were being…
The truth about surrogate babies
I was a twin when I was born, but this was in the days before decent scans and proper neonatal…
The child-free influencers waging war on motherhood
At around five weeks into my pregnancy my phone found out about it, and from that point on I was…
Our family is growing – and our dog is bound to be unimpressed
I am now well into my second pregnancy. Having conceived through IVF the first time, we were fortunate to have…
How real is your ADHD?
Why does everyone suddenly seem to have ADHD? It’s a question that many of us working in mental health have…
What I learned at Santa School
Whenever my son’s primary school ring up, they have, very sensibly, a calming form of words: ‘It’s the school here…
The nuclear family? We blew it up years ago
Now that John Lewis has produced a Christmas ad that celebrates family, starring white people as humans, all sorts of…
Don’t ambush parents with activism
As we sat down at the Royal Opera House to watch one of the Royal Ballet’s soloists perform Letter to Tchaikovsky,…
