Children

The true cost of school closures – an interview with the children's commissioner

30 January 2021 9:00 am

Anne Longfield, the Children’s Commissioner, on why schools must reopen

What has happened to parenting?

28 December 2020 6:00 pm

During a recent webinar with British MPs, I learned that parents in Bradford were up in arms because their children…

We must stop treating juvenile offenders as lost causes

12 December 2020 9:00 am

Juvenile offenders need safety, care and a proper education

What lockdown means for families with disabled children

7 November 2020 9:00 am

What lockdown means for families with disabled children

Who first committed ‘cultural appropriation’?

5 September 2020 9:00 am

Culture clashes The pop star Adele was accused of ‘cultural appropriation’ for adopting a Jamaican hairstyle for the online Notting…

Children who died of Covid-19 were already seriously ill, new study shows

28 August 2020 10:33 pm

It has been clear from the start of the Covid-19 crisis – from Wuhan’s experience, before cases were confirmed in…

What explains the rising number of children with gender issues?

15 August 2020 12:22 am

I have recently read a fascinating new paper, via a Mail on Sunday report, about the growing number of children…

Letters: Why is the problem of working-class white boys not considered worth solving?

25 July 2020 9:00 am

Left-behind boys Sir: Christopher Snowdon’s perceptive and informative article (‘The lost boys’, 18 July) reflects perfectly my own experiences in…

The lost boys: the white working class is being left behind

18 July 2020 9:00 am

Britain’s forgotten demographic

The best recordings of Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges

6 June 2020 9:00 am

‘I don’t want to do my work. I want to go for a walk. I want to eat all the…

The world of make-believe is stranger than we realise

28 March 2020 9:00 am

Last summer, in the bc era, I took my then three-year-old to a new group play session: ‘Lottie’s Magic Box.’…

If you want children to love reading, don’t tell them what to read

7 March 2020 9:00 am

If you want children to love reading, don’t tell them what to read

It’s possible to talk to children about politics without leading them in one direction

7 December 2019 9:00 am

My six-year-old son announced, from the back of the car, that he was backing Boris Johnson. My wife, who’s voting…

Children’s literature has become horribly right-on

2 November 2019 9:00 am

There was a spat the other week about a children’s book, Equal to Everything: Judge Brenda and the Supreme Court,…

Extinction Rebellion proves Aristotle was right about the follies of youth

12 October 2019 9:00 am

Extinction Rebellion is blocking the streets again, foolishly demanding the impossible on a very important issue. But what does one…

Why do we keep pretending that children are wiser than adults?

12 October 2019 9:00 am

We’ve begun to behave as if young people are special; more virtuous and wiser than adults. It’s wrong and it’s…

At last, the TV-hogging space invaders have returned to university

5 October 2019 9:00 am

‘Hands up which other university parents are bloody glad to have got rid of their lumpen, food-gobbling, space-invading kids…’ When…

Leo Jemison (Miles), Elen Willmer (Flora) and Sophie Bevan (Governess) in The Turn of the Screw at Garsington Opera

Deft, elegant and genuinely chilling: Garsington’s Turn of the Screw reviewed

13 July 2019 9:00 am

Think of the children in opera. Not knowing sopranos and mezzos, pigtailed and pinafored or tightly trousered-up to look child-like,…

Did the makers of When I Grow Up have no qualms turning a small boy into a hate figure?

4 May 2019 9:00 am

Channel 4’s When I Grow Up had an important lesson for middle-class white males everywhere: you’re never too young to…

My wife has gone back to work – and I’ve turned into a SADDO

24 November 2018 9:00 am

When I proposed to Caroline back in 2000, she was a trainee solicitor and I was a freelance journalist. In…

‘He strikes me dumb with admiration.’ Van Gogh on Howard Pyle’s pirate illustrations

The facts – and fiction – of piracy

17 November 2018 9:00 am

Avast there, scurvy dogs! For a nation founded on piracy (the privateer Sir Francis Drake swelled the exchequer by raiding…

Of course the young like socialism – they’re taught to

29 September 2018 9:00 am

It beggars belief that Jeremy Corbyn can, with a straight face, announce that capitalism has failed and we’d all be…

It’s not transphobic to question transgenderism

15 September 2018 9:00 am

This column is not in my interest. But then, not for the first time. I cannot count the conversations conducted…

Let’s go fly a kite...

The highs – and lows – of learning to fly a kite

25 August 2018 9:00 am

I’ve flown only three kites in my life. My stepfather bought me the first. I remember seeing him from a…

Children are everywhere – and they’re spoiling everything

28 July 2018 9:00 am

There was a time when middle-class liberals used to complain that the English were a nation of child haters. They…