Social Market Foundation suggests measures including better childcare provision to increase birthrate Britain is facing a “baby shortage” that could lead to “long-term economic stagnation”, a thinktank has said.The Social Market Foundation (SMF) said t…
Food, faith and family: how we feed our son his rich mixed heritage
My parents are Bangladeshi Muslims. My husband is an Ashkenazi Jew. And our baby son? He’ll eat chicken soup and chicken curry…Even before my son was born, I used to imagine all the things I would feed my future children. They would come home from scho…
A tussle at nursery leaves our boy tearful…
But sadly for his dad, there’s only one person he wants to tell‘I want to talk to Mummy,’ my son bawled, as I picked him up from nursery.‘What’s the matter, pet?’ I replied, but he insisted this info was for her and her alone. My son experiences a rang…
New measures on freezing eggs leave women in the cold | Eva Wiseman
Why the government’s latest egg-freezing extension is cold comfort for womenThis morning, for the second time this week, I heard the phrase “drops off a cliff” during a discussion about fertility. The second time this week. Through my life, of course, …
Vick Hope: ‘At Cambridge, I came through like Nigella just because I could make noodles’
The Radio 1 presenter on student food, fighting with her brothers over fish eyes and her mum’s lockdown Nigerian food Zoom classesMy mum did Zoom masterclasses for the family in the pandemic. I hadn’t cooked Nigerian food before, ever. She’d send us th…
‘Now I know love is real!’ The people who gave up on romance – then found it in lockdown
Dating apps can be difficult and daunting at the best of times, and many users give up on them entirely. But for some the pandemic was a chance to reassess their priorities, and they were able to forge a much deeper connectionWhen the country first wen…
I left a dream job to be closer to my autistic twin
The pandemic has forced many of us to rethink our lives, not least of which is how we work. For me, it meant returning homeTen days before our birthday, I drove my 2005 blue Nissan Sentra over the Verrazano Bridge and let the tears roll out. He didn’t …
Vulnerable children are victims of Tory policy | Letters
The lack of help for troubled young people fills me with despair. Not much has changed since the 1980s, says Steven WalkerAnother story about the lack of help for troubled children (Sharp rise in acute medical beds occupied by children with nowhere els…
‘There is so much bad behaviour everywhere’: how to raise a good child in a terrible world
Amid Trump, #MeToo and rising hate crime, science writer Melinda Wenner Moyer decided it was time to learn how to stop her kids becoming ‘assholes’. Her research became an unusual, much-needed parenting bookWhen Melinda Wenner Moyer looked around in th…
My kids are at war over how often to wash. The only thing they agree on? I’m disgusting
This summer, a mighty row on cleanliness broke out online, after Ashton Kutcher said he washed his crotch and armpits daily ‘and nothing else ever’. These arguments have now, inevitably, reached my bathroomIt was the last full day of a summer holiday t…