The constant feeling of something missing: What it’s like to be a lone twin
All of this trauma was just brushed over, like everything was in those days. I was born in 1948, just after the war, and people were so…
How to help your children use their phones safely
Are there any four words that better capture parenting teens at this point in history than “get off your phone?” Parents often delay getting their child a…
Help! My husband and daughter have started ganging up on me
A worrying new theme has developed in our family and it’s threatening my role of mother and wife. My husband and teenage daughter have joined forces and…
Dear Richard Madeley: ‘How can I tell our son to stop having loud sex in our house?’
Dear Richard, My son came home from university with a lovely girl in tow. As we live near where the two of them work, we invited her…
Parents outsourcing their responsibility harms both children and society
“Male violence against women and girls starts with words.” On the surface, the statement brandished on a placard by Patrick Vieira on Sunday seemed inarguable. “Doesn’t all…
Dear Richard Madeley: ‘I want to cut off my brutish father – but my brother will suffer’
Dear Richard, My father is 76 and now in quite poor health. He’s always been a bully and he made my mother’s life a misery (she died…
Why I regularly talk to my children about death – and so should you
Encouraging my children to talk about and think about death feels like an important thing to teach them, just as communicating with them about war and conflict…
What every parent needs to know about raising girls in Britain today
Everyone working with teenagers around the world has known it for almost a decade now: a generation is unravelling. The pandemic didn’t help. The backdrop of what…
Six things the British can teach Danes about parenting
Our surveys on happiness do not historically suggest a land of contented kids, but the Department for Education’s paper this month on children and young people’s wellbeing…
What clearing out my late parents’ house taught me about my own clutter
Clearing a house after someone has died is a strange experience; combing through their possessions like a benevolent extra in CSI. Everything from the gems in their…
Dear Richard Madeley: ‘My great grandparents were murdered in the Holocaust – how do I tell my kids?’
Dear Richard, I have two children at primary school. The older one has been doing the Second World War as a topic and it’s all been quite…
Dear Richard Madeley: ‘I suspect my mother is having an affair with her colleague’
Dear Richard, For years it’s been a standing joke in our family that one of my mother’s colleagues is in love with her. He and his wife…
What it’s really like to have a baby in your 50s
I was rushing home from nursery pick up, banana peel in hand, when the new Naomi Campbell interview dropped on Monday afternoon. Mothers of all ages have…
What I, as a Rabbi, have in common with my friend Pamela Anderson
She told me her great aspiration for her life was to have a marriage like her parents that had lasted for decades, amid the kind of challenges…
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on Pamela Anderson: ‘We should be wary of underestimating women like her’
She told me her great aspiration for her life was to have a marriage like her parents that had lasted for decades amid the kind of challenges…
Dear Richard Madeley: ‘My father has left us short in his will. Should I confront him?’
Dear Richard, My father remarried when I was 11 and moved to Australia, where he continues to live with his second wife. I am his only child,…
Dear Richard Madeley: ‘My wife has been taking out her annoyance with me on my daughter’
Dear Richard, I live with my second wife and two teenage daughters, one from each of our previous marriages. For some weeks I have noticed my wife…
It’s not so much my son’s football club that I can’t stand – it’s the other parents
I used to roll my eyes at the parents wrapping up warm and trudging onto football fields on rainy winter weekend mornings. But now I am one….
Stop depicting parenthood as the mother of all problems
Who would want to give birth slap bang in the middle of a motherhood culture war? A decreasing number of 20-somethings, for a start. This week we…
Are men like me the reason young women aren’t starting families?
Why are men so afraid of settling down and having children? Part of the answer may lie in the phrase “settling down”. In a world of ever-expanding…
I’ve said no to after school clubs – if my kids get bored, brilliant?
Ssh! Don’t tell the other mums, but I am actively dissuading my kids from after-school clubs. It’s not at all fashionable but I’m actively resisting enrolling my…
How the West stopped having babies
“I currently rent a flat on the top floor of a house owned by a friend,’ says Anneka Sutcliffe, 33, a well-educated professional violinist from Bristol. “I’m…
Cush Jumbo: ‘I love being a mum, but it’s also why I’m not going to have any more children’
Cush wears: dress, £1,095, Cecilie Bahnsen; Shoes, £980, Miu Miu; earrings, £125, Shrimps Born and raised in Lewisham, she trained in the theatre before appearing as DC…
17 board games your children will actually want to play
It’s Bananas 2 or more players; age 6 and over. £23.99 Instructions: bizarrely complicated and may leave you losing the will to live, let alone play Roll…