I am 30 years old and I don't know if or when I'm going to have children. And yet, people still feel the need to ask. "When will you finally start?" they say, or, even more infuriatingly, "What is your timeline ..read more

The dead zoo is an easy sell for kids. Any other cultural institutions might take a bit of wrangling to convince them it’s worth getting off the sofa for, but not the dead zoo. The first trick is to never call it by its real name — the Natural History Museum — because that has the deal-killing words ‘history’ and ‘museum’ in it and they will think you are trying to trick them into learning something. No, call it by its unofficial moniker, because that has all you need to know — like a zoo, it’s full of animals, but they are all dead, and therefore much cooler, in every sense ..read more

Most parents would admit to having no clue what they were doing when they first had their children, but I felt particularly out of my depth given that my mother had died eight months before I got pregnant with our first child in 2016 ..read more

From the obligatory tiny, newborn finger wrapped around the new mother’s hand, the perfectly posed family photos, to the “bounce back” body transformation – the pressure on millennial new mums to present a picture-perfect postpartum period is nothing short of overwhelming ..read more

It has come to my attention that my kids see me as a soft touch. I had my suspicions, as it was I they would ask for treats or for permission to do something very irritating like rollerskate around inside the house. They know that there is a distinct possibility that I will say yes, while my wife will lean towards a no. No to treats, no to rollerskates indoors, no to whatever thing I have just said yes to. This leads to all sorts of robust debates between she and I — don’t I care about our kids’ health, don’t I care about our lovely floors ..read more

“I don’t remember her leaving, I don’t remember anything around that time, other than seeing my dad sat on the floor crying,” Rachaele Hambleton says. She is describing the period in her life when her parents’ marriage ended; she was four, and her mother moved to the other side of the country ..read more

The most recent monthly homelessness report from the government showed that over 3,400 children are homeless. With the ending of the eviction ban this week, all the news reports suggest that we can expect an increase in homelessness over the next few months, as landlords move out of the private rental market, with tenants becoming homeless because of the lack of other available rental accommodation ..read more

It has come to my attention that my kids see me as a soft touch. I had my suspicions, as it was I they would ask for treats or for permission to do something very irritating like rollerskate around inside the house. They know that there is a distinct possibility that I will say yes, while my wife will lean towards a no. No to treats, no to rollerskates indoors, no to whatever thing I have just said yes to. This leads to all sorts of robust debates between she and I — don’t I care about our kids’ health, don’t I care about our lovely floors ..read more

Firstborns have it all. They like to complain that they had to break through numerous glass ceilings and be the ones who improved the lot of those who followed. Even though they were the first to get caught with a naggin or lowered the age of mobile phone ownership by a couple of years, they also generally get the best of everything. Beyond the fact they don’t have to endure hand-me-down clothes and toys, theirs is the most joyous arrival, their first steps are treated like those of Neil Armstrong on the surface of the moon, and their first day at creche or school evokes scenes akin to the end ..read more

Why are we hurtling blindly into a situation where we give children and teenagers the tools to do real harm to themselves? Under pressure from our kids, we are letting them have access to smartphones and social media at younger and younger ages, despite the research evidence pointing to the real dangers that social media in particular poses ..read more