Category Archives: Family

Giving birth seemed to spell disaster for my mental health. Were my anxieties unfounded?

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I feared isolation, sleep deprivation and an end to the activities that had been keeping me well. I never expected to be filled with such love and wonder

I hadn’t expected to have a baby. But when I turned out to be wrong about that, I found myself expecting the whole thing to be a disaster. It wasn’t just that people tend to be rather negative about what early parenthood entails, focusing on the sleepless nights and endless nappy changes. It was also because I had a mental illness that I thought would make it impossible for me to cope at all, let alone enjoy motherhood. Neither had I expected to be giving birth in the middle of a pandemic, in which I would be cut off from much of my support network.

In the three years since I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, as a result of a serious trauma in my personal life, I had spent a great deal of time trying to work out how to manage my illness. I planned my weeks around activities that research told me would help mend my mind a little. I knew that cold-water swimming, for instance, appears to help us control the fight-or-flight instinct that often goes so awry in mental illness. I knew that running could encourage the body to produce chemicals that lift the mood. I had discovered that birdwatching and looking for wild flowers were much more effective for me than mindfulness apps, with their calls to sit in silence in a room. I had just written a book about the healing power of outdoor pursuits and was starting to feel mildly in control of my life.

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Experience: I fell in love in an Uber

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I jumped in the cab to find a tall handsome stranger sitting in the back

It was a beautiful spring day in Manhattan in May 2016. The air was crisp and the skies were blue, so I decided to walk across town to meet a friend for lunch. I had gone only a few blocks when what felt like a tornado hit: my light coat was no match for the heavy rain; my hair blew in 10 directions, and garbage hit me in the face. I tried to hail a cab, but there weren’t any. Uber prices were surging, so I decided to take a punt on an UberPool (you could end up travelling with a stranger, but there’s a discount). I hoped nobody would get in to join me on the short trip.

The cab pulled around the corner immediately. I jumped in to find a tall, handsome stranger sitting in the back. My heart started to race. I casually glanced in his direction before smoothly sitting down beside him (or so I thought; if you ask him about it now, he says I straight up stared at him).

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Silent night: ‘In our family carols are a ritual celebration – this year the music stopped’

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For Sian Prior, 2020 feels like the year the carols nearly died. But perhaps there are new ways to keep the song alive

The purists would say I shouldn’t sing Christmas carols. Heathens have no right to be warbling about mangers, angels and holy nights. Strictly speaking, those tunes belong to the faithful, not to atheists like me. But on Christmas Day you will usually find me hovering beside the piano, waiting impatiently for the carolling to begin.

My mother will play the accompaniment, my sister will sing the melody, I’ll find a harmony and my brother will take the bassline. We four non-believers will regale the rest of the family with We Three Kings and none of us will care what the purists think.

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My older brother makes me feel stupid and I can’t laugh it off

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It might be worth looking at why it’s so easy for him to make you feel like an idiot, says Annalisa Barbieri

I am a 40-year-old woman who has been talked down to and patronised by my older brother my entire life. He often speaks to me as though he assumes I don’t understand simple things, and when I try to communicate to him that I do understand, he doesn’t seem to listen. I looked up to him when I was a child, so there’s this loud voice inside my head that says: “He’s speaking to you like you are an idiot, therefore you must be an idiot,” and my self-confidence is dented more every time.

This makes no sense because I have a good life. But I’m forever beating myself up. He seems to have the power to make me feel worthless.

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This year, for the first time, I won’t go home for Christmas. Will my family ties loosen for good?

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Flying visits to Northern Ireland kept me connected. FaceTime, Zoom and my niece’s drawings arriving by post are no substitute

I have never missed Christmas at home, though I have lived elsewhere for more than 20 years. This year, I will break that run. The festive travel window means that I could fly back to Northern Ireland from London. But my father is elderly and our neighbourhood on the border has been relatively untouched by Covid-19 until recently, so it doesn’t feel the safest plan. Instead, I’ll be in London. It will mark a year since I’ve been home; the longest I’ve ever been away.

With a flight time of under an hour, on a ticket often cheaper than a night out, I normally go home many times a year. It means I never have to miss a big night out; if it’s an emergency, I can be back in a matter of hours. Being home often feels crucial to my sense of self.

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‘Women feel they have no option but to give birth alone’: the rise of freebirthing

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As Covid infections rose, hospital felt like an increasingly dangerous place to have a baby. But is labouring without midwives or doctors the answer?

On the morning of 3 May, Victoria Johnson prepared to give birth at her home in the Highlands. One by one, her three children came downstairs to where she was labouring in a birthing pool surrounded by fairy lights, the curtains tightly shut against the outside world.

Suddenly, she felt an urge to get out of the pool. “I stood up and it felt as if the weight of the universe crashed from my head to my toes.” Her waters broke – “all over the carpet, which wasn’t ideal” – and the baby started to crown. “Everyone was there, including both grandmothers on video call,” she says. “Once the baby was out, my eight-year-old son came over and said, ‘I’m so proud of you.’ And that was everything.”

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Climate ‘apocalypse’ fears stopping people having children – study

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Survey of 600 people finds some parents regret having offspring for same reason

People worried about the climate crisis are deciding not to have children because of fears that their offspring would have to struggle through a climate apocalypse, according to the first academic study of the issue.

The researchers surveyed 600 people aged 27 to 45 who were already factoring climate concerns into their reproductive choices and found 96% were very or extremely concerned about the wellbeing of their potential future children in a climate-changed world. One 27-year-old woman said: “I feel like I can’t in good conscience bring a child into this world and force them to try and survive what may be apocalyptic conditions.”

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The only thing most of us will be wearing this party season is slightly smarter pyjamas | Grace Dent

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‘I’ve given up trying to control anything now,’ I announced last Tuesday while breakfasting on a packet of jelly babies

Food has lost much of its meaning for me. Well, its meanings, to be more accurate. A typical late autumn of eating has its rhythms: shortly after decorative gourd season and past toffee apple weekend (both cancelled due to lurgy), many of us move seamlessly into pre-Christmas hoarding and restraint mode. The hoarding begins with a casually snaffled box of stollen slices or a little bag of Lindt chocolate Christmas tree decorations, chucked into the shopping basket “just to get things started”. Then a shufti around Marks & Spencer’s food hall, where the displays of shortbread in commemorative tin boxes (those nice ones your mother used for her sewing kit) always bring a sense of minor panic that holidays are comin’ and I am unprepared. Begin the lists, open the iCal, commence the slightly terse intra-family emails. Panic!

I do not have a yuletide shopping delivery slot. That dodgy shelf in my chiller will not survive a fortnight of festive season fridge Jenga, and a better woman than me would have made her own figgy pudding by now. But, as I say, the hoarding won’t happen this year. The big Dent jamboree is cancelled. And the restraint – which runs in parallel from about now to late December – is off, too. About now, I generally have in the diary at least two festive gatherings where I envision myself slinking in wearing some frock that will require me to be a bit hungry for at least 22 days and say things like, “No, I love running five miles pre-dawn dodging flashers – it centres me”, and, “Toast is too filling and carby. I’m so happy with this bircher muesli.” The only thing most of us will be wearing this party season is slightly smarter pyjamas.

Life is quite bizarre now that the usual run-up to New Year has been steam-rollered. How empty does late November feel without a low, bubbling, passive-aggressive email chain between siblings about how much room a nut roast takes up in an oven? I feel oddly bereft without any invites to a mock-Bavarian Christmas market where I can drink £8 glasses of glühwein and eat a reheated wurst on the waltzer while listening to David Guetta. This week I noticed the first of the “What to do with Christmas day leftovers” tips and tricks in the papers. The notion of having so many visitors that you might be caught with a glut of food already seems oddly archaic.

Buying, planning and hoping for things to run like clockwork is a mug’s game. The rules are that there are no rules. “I’ve given up trying to control anything now,” I announced last Tuesday while breakfasting on a packet of jelly babies. I think it was Tuesday. It may have been Thursday. The Gregorian calendar feels so meaningless these days. Anyway, each baby was so chunkily delicious, and their pudgy little lightly frosted bellies slid so soothingly down my throat, that they felt momentarily like love and order. This one lemon, yum yum. This one raspberry, schlurp. I rarely ate sweets before the pandemic, but now, in the blur of news about possible vaccines, permanent restaurant closures and the millions of wonderful hospitality workers who will no doubt need to retrain in cyber, they’re the only thing that piques my attention some days.

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Christmas and Covid: is mixing households a good idea?

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The UK says three households can get together for festivities. Four Britons react – with relief, caution and despair

The UK government’s announcement to allow three households to meet together over five days at Christmas has attracted differing opinions. Many people fear that relaxing lockdown poses too great a risk to life, others are pleased they can see their family after being apart so long. One in four, according to a poll last weekend, would probably treat Christmas as they do normally, despite any restrictions.

The Guardian spoke to four people about their response to the news.

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How we stay together: ‘There is no magic cookbook of relationships’

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Suzanne Harris and Tom McAtee may not agree on politics – but the pair’s pragmatism and ability to talk things out has kept them together for over three decades

Names: Suzanne Harris and Tom McAtee
Years together: 34
Occupations: social worker and HR consultant

When the going gets tough, Suzanne and Tom get into the garden. “In the times where we’ve not had much money, or there’ve been difficulties with work or jobs changing, we’ve gardened,” Suzanne says. “It’s a good way of releasing tension, of working together, planning and being creative.” Tom nods: “Gardening allowed us to be together, to be able to share that tense period together in a joint physical activity.”

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Photographer Catherine Panebianco: ‘These are my family pictures, but they’re every family’s story’

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Her father’s Christmas Day tradition of showing his old slides to the family inspired Panebianco’s award-winning series, which connects tender memories to the present

When US photographer Catherine Panebianco was a child, her family moved around North America a lot: by the time she entered high school she had had maybe 10 different homes – “in Pennsylvania, Georgia, a couple places in California, two places in New York…”. One constant, though, was a set of photographic slides. Her father, Glenn, a metallurgical engineer, had taken the pictures when he was a young man in Toronto during the 1950s and 60s. On Christmas Day each year, wherever they were, Glenn would lug out a hulking, prewar metal projector and set up an old slide screen. The family would then gather round, the children in pyjamas with a bag of popcorn, and listen to stories they had heard “a bazillion times”.

I wanted my hand to be in there… it links the series and I wanted my past and present to be physically linked

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Pandemic could lead to profound shift in parenting roles, say experts

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Men are spending more time with their children and businesses are seeing economic benefits of flexible working

The year 2020 has been transformative for how society sees fatherhood, and could produce the most profound shift in caring responsibilities since the second world war, according to researchers, business leaders and campaigners.

Research has shown that while women bore the brunt of extra childcare during the initial coronavirus lockdown and are being disproportionately impacted by the economic fallout, there has been also a huge surge in the number of hours men are spending with their children.

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Colette: former French Resistance member confronts fascism and family trauma after 75 years

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On the anniversary of the start of the Nuremberg trials, 90-year-old Colette Marin-Catherine confronts her past by visiting the Nazi concentration camp in Germany where her brother was killed. As a young girl, she had been a member of the French resistance and had always refused to set foot in Germany. That changes when a young history student named Lucie enters her life. Prepared to reopen old wounds and revisit the terrors of that time, Marin-Catherine offers important lessons

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‘I’ll never be the same again’: facing family trauma in a Nazi concentration camp

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Filmmaker Anthony Giacchino and producer Alice Doyard explain how a young history student persuaded Colette, 90, to visit the German concentration camp where her brother died

The new Guardian documentary, Colette, follows the remarkable story of a former member of the French resistance, as she travels to Germany for the first time to the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp where her brother died 75 years ago. Persuaded to go on the journey by history student Lucie, 17, the pair support one another through an emotional journey into the past. “When I cross into Germany I’ll never be the same again,” says Colette, 90.

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Religious intolerance is ‘bigger cause of prejudice than race’, says report

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Attitudes to faith said to drive negative perceptions more than ethnicity or nationality

Religion is the “final frontier” of personal prejudice, with attitudes to faith driving negative perceptions more than ethnicity or nationality, a report to be published tomorrow will say.

How We Get Along, a two-year study of diversity by the Woolf Institute, is due to conclude that most people are tolerant of those from different ethnic or national backgrounds, but many have negative attitudes based on religion.

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How we met: ‘He was in a shell suit and trainers – I asked him to go back and change‘

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Linda and Ian Whitehouse met on holiday on the Greek island of Lefkada in 1990. They live in a village near Hull, Yorkshire, with their cat

In the summer of 1990, Ian Whitehouse was coming out of a bad relationship. “I decided to look for a last minute holiday,” he says. “I saw an offer for a trip to Lefkada in Greece, departing from Gatwick, so I drove down from Hull.”

Linda was also newly single and looking forward to the same holiday. “I was living in London and had booked nine months before,” she says.

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My father-in-law criticises my parenting. How do I deal with that?

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I wonder if, far from disliking you, he actually quite likes and admires you, says Annalisa Barbieri. He clearly wants your attention

My husband’s parents live nearby and have been a great support since my son was born last year (my family live abroad). They regularly help out with childcare and, despite a few minor differences of opinion, we trust them and are grateful we can rely on them when we need a helping hand.

But my father-in-law has become very critical of me. He regularly makes hurtful comments, always aimed at me, even when it’s something involving my husband. Often the comments get laughed off by other people or just ignored. I tend not to respond to them – I clam up when I’m hurt or embarrassed.

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I grew up not knowing my African heritage. But now I feel a calling | Florence Boafe

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From Black Panther to Black Lives Matter, I’ve felt a new sense of identity and pride, that I will pass on to my children

Growing up, I envied those who understood their mother’s native language. Speaking it was admirable, but the very act of comprehension was a beautiful thing to witness. From afar it seemed like a love language, something intimate and secretive spoken between families – it suggested a bond, a closeness that seemed impenetrable.

As a child, it didn’t necessarily bother me that I was unable to understand my family’s mother tongue (my parents are Nigerian, and the language they used in our household was robustly and loudly Yoruba). I was too busy navigating all the complexities of being an adolescent to really notice that my parents actively chose to only speak English to their five children. It’s also fair to say that when I was growing up in the late 1980s and early 90s, I had no friends of a similar background to me – most were from the Caribbean. Certainly, Africa wasn’t deemed a cool destination, so that part of myself was mostly folded away.

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Another day not at the office: will working from home be 2020’s most radical change?

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During lockdown millions started WFH – and most of us don’t want to go back. In just a few months the landscape of work, family and city life has altered dramatically - but are all the changes positive?

There’s a man sitting at the first-floor window of the house that lies on the other side of my back fence. It’s early August, the weather is sweltering, and his window is wide open. He’s talking on a hands-free phone, laughing in that ingratiating manner that suggests a large payday is at stake. He speaks in a fashionable sales patter that sounds similar to real conversation, but crucially isn’t, and he’s practically broadcasting his pitch to the neighbourhood. WTF? I want to shout, but I already know the answer: WFH.

With the exception of Covid-19 itself, working from home has been the big story of 2020. I’ve been home-based for more than 20 years and for most of that time, before my neighbour began advertising his WFH status, I was a local exception, left to my own devices in tranquil isolation. No one was much interested in the emotional dynamics of my daily work regime. But since the lockdown emptied the nation’s offices, it’s become a national topic of conversation.

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