The sons and daughters of John Wayne, John Lennon, Caitlyn Jenner and others tell us what it was like to grow up with a world-famous dad
A lot of the happy memories of my father are from the late 1960s at Kenwood, the old Tudor house we had in Surrey, when I was a little boy. Without knowing it, I probably saw some of the greatest musicians in the world come and go through that house.
Continue reading...A full-scale disaster unfolded as we switched our phones back on after nine days of Colombian beaches and jungles
You can learn a lot about yourself in times of crisis, but you learn a hell of a lot more about the person you weather said crisis with. Best to strap in and bite your tongue. A lifetime of three weeks ago, my clever, rational other half and I went on a holiday to Colombia. He’s a man who rarely travels without a first aid kit, gaffer tape and a multi-tool thing allegedly essential for “survival”. I rarely travel without what he assumes are decadent luxuries – basic toiletries, to the rest of us – and three more books than I could possibly read. It’s a delightful match.
For eight or so days, we adventured on the country’s Caribbean coastline, trekked the jungle and landed on remote beaches far away from phone signal. It’s fair to say we were late to the memo. Turning our phones on after a self-imposed period of isolation was like watching a disaster film unfold. First, on a six-inch screen squinting at ticker tapes of rolling news. Then in full-blown Technicolor as Cartagena went into lockdown, with face masks being dealt out on street corners and a strict curfew enforced by police.
Continue reading...In a bid to stem spread of the virus, schools in Hong Kong, China and Japan have been shut for weeks
“It’s been a long holiday,” laughs Hong Kong insurance worker and mother, Sarah Wong.
Wong and her two daughters, Chloe and Greeta, are at a co-working space in Jordan, Kowloon. Chloe has set her desk up like home, with an iPad, her own lamp, and an aromatherapy diffuser. The girls, aged 12 and eight, are listening to online lessons from their school which has been closed because of the coronavirus.
Continue reading...We’d been incredibly close when I was a child. Then, in 1994 she went away and never came back. Now here we were, taking to the road with no real plan after her cancer diagnosis
I had been sitting in the cafeteria of a hospital in Perth, Australia, for seven hours waiting for the phone to ring.
Seven hours of drained coffee cups, watching families cry and cling to each other, wondering if they were tears of grief or relief, seven hours of slowly feeling the panic rise up through my body.
Continue reading...Bill passes despite concerns it is ‘stepping into the private lives of families’
A move to ban parents from smacking children has been approved by the Welsh assembly and is expected to come into force in 2022 following a £2m awareness campaign.
Supporters said it was a historic day for Wales and would stop mothers and fathers using physical violence as punishment, but opponents argued it could criminalise loving parents.
Continue reading...A study is looking into the coercive practice in Uganda, amid calls for the government to address the issue
Jane’s* husband likes breast milk. “He says he likes the taste of it, and that it helps him in terms of his health. He feels good afterwards,” said the 20-year-old from Uganda, who has a six-month-old baby.
Jane said her husband started asking for her milk the night she came home from the hospital after giving birth. “He said it was to help me with the milk flow. I felt it was OK.”
Continue reading...China’s push for more births fails to convince a generation of only-children
China’s government has been trying to manage a public U-turn on one of its biggest, longest running and most powerful policy and propaganda campaigns for several years now, urging a generation of only-children – born under its one-child policy – that they should have more babies themselves.
But the posters, public information campaigns and official exhortations appear to have had almost no discernible effect. Beijing on Friday reported its lowest birthrate since the founding of Communist China over seven decades ago.
Continue reading...Technology and economics could radically change our understanding of the family in years to come – and deepen inherited privilege
In 2004, when the year 2020 sounded futuristic, the Guardian predicted it would by now be “very hard” to talk about a “typical family”. Domestic units would be formed in myriad ways and “children living with both their biological parents in the same household” would be in the minority.
This hasn’t quite panned out. In the UK today, 84% of babies are born to parents who are married, in a civil partnership or co-habiting, although the statistics don’t reveal all the real-life complexities (many of the parents will be starting second families, for instance). In 2019, 61% of families with dependent children have married or civil-partnered parents (the children may not be biologically related to both). In the US, fewer than half of children are living with two biological parents who are in their first marriage.
Continue reading...Plus, an update on the trans man who gave birth, the woman deported to Grenada, and more
Last March, Margaret Simons wrote about the abandoned children of British sex tourists in the Philippines. Brigette Sicat, now 12, was unable to go to school because of ill health, and was living in a leaky shack with a dirt floor and no toilet. Today, thanks partly to the generosity of Guardian readers, Brigette and her family live in decent accommodation, she is a regular attendee at school and her grades are outstanding. The turnaround has been even more dramatic for twins Melanie and Madeline delos Santos – now 19. Reading of Madeline’s ambition to be an architect, a reader is supporting her through university in Angeles City. Human rights law firms in Britain, Griffin Law and Dawson Cornwell, are in the process of confirming the twins’ right to British citizenship; they are also exploring the use of DNA technology to help other children establish parentage, and their rights to child support. Simons and photographer, Dave Tacon plan to visit the children again next May. Their report won a Foreign Press Award last month for best travel and tourism story of the year.
In April, Simon Hattenstone interviewed Freddy McConnell about his quest to conceive and carry his own baby. The film of McConnell’s story, Seahorse, was screened widely. In September, the high court ruled that McConnell cannot be registered as his son’s father. He is appealing the decision and the hearing is expected next year. His young son is thriving.
Continue reading...Emma-Lee Moss, who makes music as Emmy the Great, on life, new motherhood and her divided birthplace
It feels as if the entire world’s press is there, standing on the pavement outside the Foreign Correspondents’ Club. They’re in Hong Kong to cover the protests, but tonight, the Friday before National Day, they’re off duty. From the bottom of the hill, the bars of Lan Kwai Fong thrum reliably. There is an uneasy peace in the air, as though we all know that, three days from now, the long-running citywide demonstrations will reach a violent new apex.
I’ve walked this route hundreds of times, and been a parade of different selves. I’ve been a teenager trying to score 7-11 beer on the spot where Chungking Express was filmed. I’ve been a visiting writer ordering drinks at the FCC bar. But now I am the mother and primary carer of a nine-month-old, and my time out has been negotiated. Quite frankly, I am dazzled by the world after 7pm. As I shuffle past the media crowd, I feel a pull, a yearning. In another life, I’d be there with them. When I moved back to Hong Kong in 2018, it was in search of stories about the strange, convoluted city I was born in.
Continue reading...The row over Fañch or Fanch was settled after the parents’ two-year tussle with officials
A two-year French legal battle over an orthographic squiggle has ended in victory for a couple granted the right to write their infant son’s Breton first name as Fañch instead of Fanch.
The country’s highest court for criminal and civil cases threw out an appeal bid by the authorities of Rennes, the capital of the north-western Brittany region, against an earlier ruling in favour of the family of Fañch Bernard.
Continue reading...Many mothers and fathers admit to having a preferred child – and experts say that being a sidelined sibling can cause serious problems
Diya says she was never in any doubt her mother had a favourite child – and that it was not her. Now, with three young children of her own, the 27-year-old thinks it is because she looks like her father, who left when she and her sister were very young.
“I remember my dad coming to my defence once when I was about 12, telling my mum that she couldn’t choose to love one daughter more than the other. That was the last time my mum let him in the house,” she says.
Continue reading...Bill is Emmanuel Macron’s biggest social reform since he was elected in 2017
France has taken a step towards allowing lesbian and single women to conceive children with medical help, setting the stage for a clash with the country’s religious conservatives.
To loud applause, France’s lower house of parliament approved a draft bioethics law in a move that has already sparked outrage from opponents, including some in President Emmanuel Macron’s own centrist party.
Continue reading...Infant mortality rate higher in babies exposed to pollutants such as sulphur dioxide
Babies living in areas with high levels of air pollution have a greater risk of death than those surrounded by cleaner air, a study has found.
It is not the first study to investigate the link between air pollution and infant mortality , but thestudydrew particular focus on different pollutants and its analysis at different points in babies’ lives.
Continue reading...Ola Salem discusses the divorce case of Princess Haya, who fled to London. Why do royal women keep trying to escape the emirate? Plus John Marsden on the growing trend of toxic parenting
Over the summer, Princess Haya, the estranged wife of the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, asked an English court for a forced marriage protection order relating to their children and a non-molestation order after the breakdown of their marriage.
The Guardian reporter Haroon Siddique describes the court scene to Rachel Humphreys, while the journalist Ola Salem discusses previous attempts by two other princesses to flee the Dubai royal family, and looks at why this case is so significant for women in the emirate.
A recent report found parents are happier when their children leave home – but why wait? Four experts share their tips on putting the fun back into family, at every age
Could we go down in history as the generation that forgot to enjoy our kids? It’s a shocking indictment, but the evidence is mounting: recent research found that parents become happier when their children have left home, while another study earlier this year found that working mothers with two children are 40% more stressed than anyone else. Meanwhile, Australian academics report that the pressures on parents mount after a second child, and that there are accompanying deteriorations in parents’ mental health.
And, as a two-year-old could probably tell you, stressed-out, unhappy parents raise stressed-out, unhappy offspring. The UK’s annual Good Childhood report, out last month, found there are more unhappy youngsters now than at any point in the past decade.
Continue reading...What pushes someone to cut all ties with their mother or father?
As a child, Laura craved unconditional love. But instead of cuddles and family outings, her lasting memories are of bitter rows. “My mum never wanted children,” she says. “She told me that the only reason she didn’t get an abortion was she found out about the pregnancy too late.” Laura’s dad left when she was very young, which she thinks made her mother resentful. “She had to stay and be the responsible mum, which she hated. On one occasion my grandparents took me away and I remember thinking: this is what family should be like.”
The relationship dissolved completely when Laura was a teenager. “Mum’s first love was always men, and when I was 15 she moved to Africa for a boyfriend without telling me.” It’s something she found impossible to forgive, especially as there has never been an explanation or apology. “She has contacted me since but always asks for money. That’s why I made the decision to cut all ties with her.”
Continue reading...When I was 30, in 2011, I had an abortion. I was living in Berlin, a city known, since the fall of the Wall, for championing freedom. Or at least it was until attention turned to my womb. Born in France in the 1980s, and brought up on the internet, the Erasmus European studies programme and love without borders, I was under the happy illusion that everything relating to women’s bodies – from abortion to assisted reproduction – was covered by rights secured after long, hard struggles.
Related: Brexit effect forces women to go to Netherlands for abortions
Continue reading...After our daughter’s death I was overwhelmed by pain and anxiety. Microdosing home-grown mushrooms helped me cope
It was spring when my wife’s waters broke, three months early. We rushed to hospital, terrified. If our daughter arrived now, she might not survive. If she did, she would probably be plagued by lifelong health problems. Jo spent the next four days in hospital, while we prayed labour wouldn’t begin. But the night after we returned home, Jo’s contractions started and we raced back to hospital. Straight away, a foetal monitor was placed on her tummy. The brisk heartbeat we had been following so closely in the previous days was gone. Our daughter had died.
The train of our life was shunted on to a parallel track. We could see the train we were meant to be on pulling away, passing the milestones – the due date, introducing the baby to our family, the first smiles. But ahead of us now lay despair, guilt, a funeral, photos of our precious girl that some family members could barely bring themselves to look at, and support groups where every story would be more heart-rending than the last. There is no right way to deal with losing a baby, but I would call my coping strategy unusual: I became obsessed with growing magic mushrooms.
Continue reading...Could an ‘outrageously heterosexual’ father handle his eldest child coming out at 16?
Sam Khalaf and his son Riyadh used to call themselves the two musketeers. When Riyadh was growing up in Bray, south of Dublin, they were inseparable. Like twins or best friends, they say. So the Iraqi-born, Irish citizen remembers keenly the moment when he realised his eldest child had drifted from him.
“We used to go everywhere together,” 54-year-old Sam recalls. “Every weekend we’d go to a tropical fish shop and pick out which koi carp to go into our pond. The first time Riyadh didn’t come with me, he was about 15. And the lad who worked there said: ‘Where’s your mate?’ I said, ‘He’s grown up now, he’s out with his friends.’ It was a shock to the system.”
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