Category Archives: Parents and parenting

Physical play with fathers may help children control emotions, study finds

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Research suggests father-child play at an early age could benefit children as they get older

Children whose fathers spend time playing with them at a very early age may find it easier to control their behaviour and emotions, which has a beneficial impact as they get older and start school, according to a new study.

Research carried out by Cambridge University’s faculty of education and the LEGO Foundation looked at how mothers and fathers play with children aged 0 to 3 years and how it affects child development.

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‘One in a 50m chance’: woman with two wombs carrying a twin in each

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Kelly Fairhurst found out about uterus condition when she went for 12-week scan

The case of a woman who discovered she had two wombs and was pregnant with a twin in each has been described as “one in 50m” by doctors.

Kelly Fairhurst, 28, only learned she had uterus didelphys, a condition where a woman has two wombs, when she went for her 12-week scan. She was also told she was carrying twins, one in each womb.

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Coronavirus: what changes mean for people shielding in England

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From 6 July, people with underlying health issues will no longer have to avoid all contact with others

With the government relaxing lockdown for those shielding from Covid-19 in England, we explore what this means for the most vulnerable in society.

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The stranded babies of Kyiv and the women who give birth for money

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Lockdown exposed the scale of the commercial baby business in Ukraine, and now women hired for their wombs are speaking out

Some are crying in their cots; others are being cradled or bottle-fed by nannies. These newborns are not in the nursery of a maternity hospital, they are lined up side by side in two large reception rooms of the improbably named Hotel Venice on the outskirts of Kyiv, protected by outer walls and barbed wire. 

They are the children of foreign couples born to Ukrainian surrogate mothers at the Kyiv-based BioTexCom Centre for Human Reproduction, the largest surrogacy clinic in the world. They’re stranded in the hotel because their biological parents have not been able to travel in or out of Ukraine since borders closed in March because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

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‘I feel I’ve come home’: can forest schools help heal refugee children?

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They have a middle-class reputation, but one outdoor school near Nottingham is reconnecting disadvantaged 10-year-olds with nature and a sense of freedom

When Kate Milman was 21, she paused her English degree at the University of East Anglia to join protests against the Newbury bypass. It was 1996, and the road was being carved out through idyllic wooded countryside in Berkshire. She took up residence in a treehouse, in the path of the bulldozers, and lived there for months. It was a revelation. She lived intimately with the catkins, the calling birds, the slow-slow-fast change in the seasons. Despite being in a precarious position as a protester, she felt completely safe and her brain was calmed.

“You know when you go camping and go back to your house, and everything feels wrong? The lighting is harsh and everything seems complicated indoors. It just got under my skin, this feeling – that [living in the woods] is like being at home.”

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Refuges from domestic violence running out of space, MPs hear

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Dame Vera Baird warns select committee Covid-19 lockdown is leading to ‘perfect storm’

Refuges providing sanctuary to victims of domestic violence are running out of space, with many full or effectively closed amid an “epidemic inside this pandemic”, the victims’ commissioner has told MPs.

A “perfect storm” of problems is in danger of overwhelming support services for those trying to escape violent and abusive partners, Dame Vera Baird QC warned members of the House of Commons justice select committee.

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Being locked down with my family is making me panic

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Count your blessings and enjoy the lull this slower pace of life is providing, says Mariella Frostrup

The dilemma I know I should be thinking about the global crisis and what’s happening to those less fortunate, but I can’t get beyond panicking about my own circumstances. I’m stuck at home with four kids, two dogs, a husband whose freelance work is in free fall and my own career is on hold. I’m struggling to deal with being cooped up with young children and I’m also wondering if crimes of passion will receive more lenient sentencing as my husband and I haven’t spent this much time together since our honeymoon! I appreciate you are as new to this as the rest of us, but do you have any words of wisdom?

Mariella replies Not really! Like many of you I know I should be thinking about the bigger picture, but for us mere mortals, who aren’t aspiring to – or ever likely to receive – canonisation, it can be a struggle to see beyond our own noses at the moment.

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Time to cut each other some slack amid lockdown fury | Zoe Williams

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In the coronavirus pandemic, everyone is trying to create new rules by constantly, volubly judging each other. Better to realise we don’t know the pressures others are under

Before we went into lockdown, I was trying to persuade my mother to reduce her contact circle to five. It seems absurd, now that everyone of advanced age and comorbidities has been told to see no one at all, but way back then (three weeks ago), this seemed reasonable. She immediately bartered the number up to six. It was like negotiating with Tony Soprano: there was no way she was coming out of the deal without the upper hand. Then I asked her how she planned to tell the rest of her associates that they weren’t on the list, and she said: “Good heavens, I’m not going to tell them. That would be so rude!”

Then the list was reduced to zero, but mysteriously, one of the original six went round anyway to fix her letterbox. I asked what was the point of fixing her letterbox, when the only important letter she was going to get would be from the government, telling her not to have anyone round, irrespective of whether or not she had a defective letterbox. She said she would prefer to have less advice, and be given a lethal injection. “I wouldn’t mind,” she said, graciously. “I”m not sure whether the main impediment to euthanasia is whether or not you mind,” I observed, extremely calmly and not at all sarcastically.

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‘He didn’t even pretend to let us win’… Growing up with the world’s biggest stars, by their children

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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.

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Late-breaking news: there’s been a pandemic while you were away

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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.

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The longest holiday: parents coping with coronavirus school closures in east Asia

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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.

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My mum only had a few months to live. So we rented a van and took a road trip

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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.

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Wales to ban parents smacking their children from 2022

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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.

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‘She can’t say no’: the Ugandan men demanding to be breastfed

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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.”

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Propaganda and sexism prove powerful contraceptives for Chinese women

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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.

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The family in 2050: artificial wombs, robot carers and the rise of single fathers by choice

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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.

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From the man with a three-week erection to the UK’s last MEPs: what happened next?

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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.

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‘Parenting here means checking the ingredients of teargas’: my return to Hong Kong

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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.

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French couple can keep tilde in son’s name after court battle

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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.

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‘I was an intruder’: what it’s like to be your parents’ least favourite child

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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.

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