Category Archives: Family

Parent trap: why the cult of the perfect mother has to end

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Worldwide, mothers are overworked, underpaid, often lonely and made to feel guilty about everything from epidurals to bottle feeding. Fixing this is the unfinished work of feminism

It’s the middle of a dark, November night, and I’m about to have my first baby. But instead of the joyful experience I’d hoped for, I am being rushed into the operating theatre to have an emergency caesarean under general anaesthetic. I have a dangerous complication and my son’s life is at risk. Four hours earlier, I’d been sent home by a midwife who told me I couldn’t stay in hospital and have an epidural because labour wasn’t properly “established”.

It’s a week later and I’m back home with my son who, thankfully, made it. But I’m struggling. If someone asks me how I am, in a kindly voice, my voice cracks. I’m spending a lot of time sitting on the bed in a milk-stained dressing gown. In a few days, my partner will go back to work.

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Hankering for a hug? Here’s a guide to post-lockdown greetings

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If you’re not ready to hug your neighbour, how about a safer elbow rub, air kiss or cruise tap?

Are you hankering for a hug, or horrified at the prospect of physical closeness? From Monday, people in England will officially be allowed to touch each other again. After a year of fist bumps, elbow rubs and hails across garden walls, it feels like a symbolic step back towards normality.

Yet with the spread of new variants, increasing coronavirus cases in some parts of the country, and much of the population still not fully vaccinated, some may be questioning whether they actually want to hug their neighbours, or shake hands with strangers again. Besides, there are so many other forms of social greeting to choose from now, from Boris bumps to spoon hugs. So which one should you choose?

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How we stay together: ‘You’ve got to either take space or give space’

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Metaphorically and literally, Clive and Mary have spent their almost four decades together learning to speak each other’s language

Names: Clive Smallman and Mary Haropoulou
Years together: 38
Occupations: academics

Clive Smallman and Mary Harapoulou were polar opposites when they first got together, they say. He was an agnostic Englishman while she was religious and Greek. Now, after almost 40 years together, while many differences remain, some things have shifted. Mary recalls the Greek proverb about adding a drop of water to wine. “It means that you dilute the feelings a little,” she explains. “You don’t harass, [demanding] ‘I want to do this or that’. You find the common ground.”

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Italy’s birthrate is falling. Can the storks help?

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Last year, the population of Europe’s fourth biggest economy dropped by the equivalent of a city the size of Florence. Yet the northern hamlets of Val d’Ultimo have found ways to buck the trend

Read more: As the global family shrinks, migrants and the planet benefit

As if having a baby wasn’t expensive enough, fathers of newborns in the mountain hamlets that make up Italy’s Val d’Ultimo have an additional cost.

In a revival of an ancient myth that white storks deliver babies, carved wooden storks carrying a newborn child in a sling are a common feature outside homes in the valley.

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‘Stop the Breast Pest’: MP’s ‘horror’ at being photographed while breastfeeding

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Stella Creasy launches campaign to change law after a boy took pictures of her feeding her baby on a train

An MP has described her “horror” after she was photographed while breastfeeding on public transport, as she and a fellow MP launch a campaign to criminalise the taking of such pictures.

Stella Creasy, the Labour MP for Walthamstow, said she was breastfeeding her then four-month-old on a overground train near Highbury and Islington in north London when she noticed a teenage boy laughing and taking pictures.

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Practically perfect? How a new kind of nanny novel nails parents’ angst and anger

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Class, race, politics and power are at the heart of modern nanny novels that explore the complex relationship between working mothers and the women they pay to look after their children

There’s a line at the opening of Kiley Reid’s hit debut, Such a Fun Age, that encapsulates the drama at the heart of the recent spate of nanny novels. Emira, a young black woman dressed for a night out, is stopped by a security guard in an upscale supermarket with Briar, the white child she looks after. It’s late, the guard wants to know where Briar’s parents are. He won’t let Emira leave with her. “But she’s my child right now,” she tells the guard. “I’m her sitter. I’m technically her nanny …”

Emira isn’t strictly a nanny. She doesn’t get the perks of a full-time job – health insurance, holidays. Later, she reflects that, “more than the racial bias, the night at Market Depot came back to her with a nauseating surge and a resounding declaration that hissed, You don’t have a real job.” But in many ways, Briar is her child. Emira is the one who spends time with Briar, who understands her. Alix, a blogger and influencer, relies on her daughter’s nanny completely, but she is also desperate to befriend “the quiet, thoughtful person she paid to love [Briar]”. In pursuing a friendship with Emira at the expense of her own children, Alix only succeeds in putting further distance between them. As Emira reflects, Briar is “this awesome, serious child who loves information and answers, and how could her own mother not appreciate the shit out of this?”

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Julia Donaldson: ‘I worry some children will be unable to sing’

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The bestselling author of the Gruffalo is concerned about the limits coronavirus has placed on the lives of her young fans

Children are not, says Julia Donaldson with a smile, going to write to her directly about the pandemic. Her assistant has just delivered a fresh pile of post, and the author shuffles through a stack of opened letters to make the point: “Children aren’t going to write, ‘Oh dear I feel so lonely or overcrowded’ – they are just writing their usual, ‘There were four kittens called mitten, litten, nitten and kitten.’ They are so sweet, some of the things they write.”

If, as well as her permanent affection for the nation’s children, there is mild exasperation at being asked to act as their spokesperson as they emerge from another lockdown, it can be forgiven: as the creator of such beloved characters as the Gruffalo, Tiddler and Zog, the former children’s laureate, actor and singer-songwriter has long been expected to help her readers think, rhyme and imagine for themselves.

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Why parents are choosing to rent their kids’ clothes

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The secondhand clothing market is growing fast – and not just for adults. Meet the parents changing the way we’ll dress our children in the future

Erick Bouwer’s baby son Joshua was, to use a technical term, a whopper: 4.5kg, or almost 10lb in old money. “That was a big guy indeed, he’s 11 years old now and he still is,” says Bouwer, on the line from Amsterdam. Bouwer and his wife had nested assiduously before Joshua’s arrival, supplemented with presents from friends and family, but arriving home from hospital, they realised that none of the onesies and cute cardigans would fit their new arrival. Bouwer laughs, “We were, like, ‘OK, we’ve got a bunch of clothes here, but I hope we’ve still got the receipts.’”

A decade on, Bouwer’s “personal frustration” became a business, Circos. All parents know there is a relentless churn with children’s clothes, especially when your kids are growing fast: leggings are worn once and come back with holes in both knees; jackets fit snugly for a month before having to be retired. Bouwer, then a pricing strategy consultant, dug deeper. He found that, on average, parents use 280 items of clothing for their child before his or her second birthday. Items are typically worn for around two or three months. After that, only 15% of clothing is donated or recycled. Most of the remainder ends up in landfill.

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The city my grandfather used to call home no longer exists – except in our minds

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After his death, I wanted to know more about his life, and the city that made him and very nearly killed him

Every Hanukkah through my childhood, if I was visiting my grandparents’ Liverpool home, my Grandpa Oskar told me the exact same story. With a pickle on his side plate – my grandma serving up his favourite dinner of latkes, vusht (smoked sausage) and eggs – he’d recount the night during this very Jewish festival in 1937 that his family – our family – fled for their lives from the Nazis.

The preparations for their escape might have been secretly in motion for weeks, but the first he knew of the plan was as it was happening: he arrived home from school to be told he and his brother were going on a trip that very December night. They’d be travelling with their mum; their father – my great-grandpa – would meet them on their journey. It was only later that he’d learn their destination was England, a new permanent home for our family, now refugees.

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Home Office sued by asylum seeker over baby’s death

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Woman claims asylum housing staff ignored pleas for help when she was in pain while 35 weeks pregnant

A woman whose baby died is suing the Home Office for negligence over claims that staff at her asylum accommodation refused to call an ambulance when she was pregnant and bleeding.

The woman, who has asked to be named Adna, sought asylum in the UK in January 2020 after fleeing Angola. She was seven months pregnant when she was brought by police to Brigstock House asylum-support accommodation in Croydon.

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UK south-Asian diaspora despairs as India joins Covid red list

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With travel from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh banned, some UK families are stuck abroad, while others cannot visit frail relatives

For the past 17 months, Saurav Dutt has had to watch from afar as relatives were lost to Covid, ancestral homes were damaged by a typhoon, and the mental toll of isolation, grief and illness led elders to question their very existence.

He had flights booked for May, but with cases soaring and India on the UK’s travel red list from 23 April, that is no longer an option. “It’s a very worrying time,” Dutt said. “You would think there are a million ways to help from over here, but we’re handcuffed. To deal with these things we need to be there.”

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A little girl climbing the tree of life: Luis Tato’s best photograph

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‘She climbed to the top unaided, to collect leaves for her family’s dinner. The tastiest ones are usually higher up’

The vast Zinder region in Niger, west Africa, is the most populated part of the country. Its people live mostly in traditional villages, their lives relatively unchanged for decades. Yet they are now being profoundly affected by climate change. I was there in 2019, working on stories about the crisis, reforestation and resilience projects. Most of the region’s inhabitants make their living through cattle. Global warming isn’t just causing droughts that affect crops and cause food shortages – it also means the cattle can’t graze. So people are being forced to travel ever further to find water and food for themselves and their livestock. This creates conflicts over land and access to water.

This girl, who was 10 or 11, lived in the village of Malawama. She is at the top of a massive baobab tree, collecting leaves for the family dinner – the tastiest are usually higher up. Baobab leaves are a popular meal in the region. They’re similar to spinach and eaten as a side dish or added to soups and stews. I saw her from a distance and the image quickly caught my eye. I was surprised to see her climbing this huge tree unaided, but she moved so confidently that I soon stopped worrying. She was completely used to it – as most local people are.

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Laura Dockrill on parenting, paranoia and postpartum psychosis: ‘I thought I’d been hijacked by a devil’

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A month after the birth of her son, the writer, poet and illustrator was on suicide watch in a psychiatric ward, experiencing severe delusions. Now her podcast is raising awareness of a condition that affects one in a thousand new mothers

Laura Dockrill told herself she was the worst case the psychiatric hospital had ever seen, and was untreatable. But that was only one of her delusions. Dockrill thought her father-in-law had hypnotised her. She would stalk the hospital corridors, feeling “like this badass”, as if she were a trained assassin. The reality was painfully different, but in Dockrill’s words it comes coloured with a comic touch.

“I was frumpy, quiet, wore my sister’s cupcake socks and a pink T-shirt with breast milk blooming over my boobs,” she says, smiling, her neon pink lipstick beaming through my laptop screen. There were times when she was on to her partner’s devious “plan” to take their newborn baby away from her, but would act like some kind of femme fatale, convinced he couldn’t resist her dangerous sexiness. He would play along – Dockrill’s psychiatrist had advised him not to try to reason with her – while gently reminding her that she would get better.

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A wistful yearning for home and family | Brief letters

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Nesrine Malik’s columns | Ex-leaders compared | Love for Guardian letters | A mother’s place

Your columnist Nesrine Malik writes (11 April) that the pandemic has made her reflect wistfully on the bargain she made when she left Sudan to find success far from home. Nesrine’s columns, expressing subtle thoughts with admirable lucidity, have been something I’ve looked forward to reading all during lockdown. Perhaps we in her adopted country are not the audience she most longs for, but her eloquence has surely touched many readers.
Susan Tomes
Edinburgh

• It’s been suggested that there’s little to distinguish between the main parties. But what former leaders do with their time may be instructive: David Cameron’s delayed self-justification for his use of networks to lobby for a company (Report, 12 April) should be weighed against Gordon Brown’s call for the G7 to develop a vaccination plan for the poorest countries (Opinion, 12 April).
Les Bright
Exeter

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From Naked Attraction to Love Is Blind: The couples who found lasting love on wild TV dating shows

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These series rely on gimmicks - whether contestants are required to take off all their clothes or get married at first sight. But romance can flourish regardless

After a half-century of dating shows, the genre has grown increasingly outlandish. Naked dating, marrying complete strangers, secret cameras – it can’t be long before singletons are blasted into space in one of Elon Musk’s rockets to find love. But behind all the gimmicks, do any of these shows lead to long-lasting love? We spoke to four couples.

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My brother used to bully me. Now, when I hear from him, I panic

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It’s OK not to take his call, says Annalisa Barbieri. You are not responsible for his happiness

I am 22 and my brother is 24. I am married with a child; he is single. We grew up in a rocky family situation and were removed from our parents’ care and placed in a children’s home when I was five and he was seven. I don’t remember much before that, but he bullied me a lot growing up. For a while now I’ve been dealing with anxiety related to him – every time I see his name pop up over text, I freak out. I hate it when he calls or visits and I feel drained afterwards. He doesn’t deal with rejection well, so I feel I have to take the call. Deep down he’s a good guy who has issues, but I really want to figure out why I have this anxiety with him; I don’t have this issue with anyone else. I can’t afford therapy but I’m trying my best to work this out.

It sounds as if you and your brother are dealing with trauma connected with your childhood. “Freaking out” when you see someone or their name pops up on a phone is a sign of this, and bullying is a trauma, quite aside from everything else you both suffered as children.

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A cartoon before first communion: Susan Kandel’s best photograph

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‘Left to her own devices, she’d be in a T-shirt and out in the dirt. But she’s been told to be good, stand still and not mess up her dress’

This photo was easy because this is my niece, who’s getting ready for her first communion. Her normal state was to be very active, never stationary for more than a minute. Left to her own devices, she’d be wearing a T-shirt and probably out there in the dirt. What I see in this picture is that she’s been told to be good, stand still and not mess up her dress.

It was 1987 and the family lived in Stoughton, Massachusetts. It’s a blue-collar area, not particularly fancy. There were always kids playing outside, which you didn’t see so much in more prosperous neighbourhoods. There was a lot of excitement. First communion is a very big deal. The rationale is that the girls are becoming brides of Christ, so their outfits are like a wedding dress, and the boys wear white suits, white shirts, white ties. They’re seven years old, considered old enough to have a notion of sin. My niece must have just turned 40 now.

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‘An escape from dark times’: how ancient history podcasts bring comfort and clarity

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I started listening to tales of yore in 2019, when long drives with my infant son became essential. They soothed him to sleep – and transported me to a different world

Fans of Paul Cooper’s podcast Fall of Civilizations will know that it usually begins in a particular way. A traveller, often far from home, encounters a ruin that hints at a vast and forgotten story of the past.

Hiding from bandits in the desert, the Italian nobleman Pietro della Valle takes shelter in the shadow of the crumbling Ziggurat of Ur. Clambering through the rubble of a once magnificent site of Roman Britain, an unknown poet of the eighth or ninth century writes an elegy to the broken “work of giants”.

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My mum loves me, but doesn’t really know me | Dear Mariella

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You’re frustrated about this, and you have the right to confront your mother with these emotional challenges, but to what purpose, wonders Mariella Frostrup

The dilemma I am a 50-year-old gay man. When I was young I was cast in the role of the “good” child – my mother’s antidote to my rebellious siblings. I behaved well, did fine at school and sought my mother’s approval and love. As a result I hid my sexuality. I was left in no doubt from her that being gay was “dirty”. She frequently told me I should not go to her if I had any worries as she would not be able to cope if all her children had problems. I came out to her when I was 19. She sought to control the narrative, requesting that I didn’t tell anyone until she felt the time was right. Relieved, as she told me she still loved me, I complied.

I don’t know if my mother’s love for me was conditional, because I didn’t test it. I recognise that she worked extremely hard with four young children and a husband setting up a business. I am still bound up in many of the same patterns of behaviour as when I was a child. She just wants to hear I am happy, but doesn’t if I am not. I smile, regardless of how I am actually feeling. So she doesn’t really know me and loves a vision of me that isn’t who I am. I wonder if I have the right, at this stage in our lives, to change a relationship that she appears content with?

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Experience: I carried a twin in each of my wombs

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The medical staff had never seen anything like it. They told us the chances were one in 50 million

The day I gave birth, there were 24 people in the room, most of them fascinated medical students. At 10.11am they watched as my daughter, Bonnie, came into the world, and five minutes later they saw Watson emerge, from my other womb.

The twins were not our first children. Our eldest daughter, Agyness, was born two months early, in 2015, but doctors said early labour was “one of those things”. When I became pregnant with Margot, born six weeks early, in 2017, scans revealed a bicornuate uterus, which means it’s heart-shaped. But no one spotted the second one.

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