If boys want to wear dresses, parents should back them. But that's not the...
The Internet has spoken. A news story from Germany has led to a man by the name of Nils Pickert being granted the epithet "Dad Of The Year". The reason? He wears a dress. Details are sparse, but they...
View ArticleDogs should be licensed and taxed
I was on the beach in Devon, watching my children play in the sand. The weather was glorious, and the scene was picture postcard perfect. Then a dog bounded across the beach, squatted to urinate and...
View ArticleLeave gifted children alone
When I saw a video on the BBC website entitled “Girl, seven, stuns experts with opera”, I couldn’t help but click on it. The story was as you’d expect: Alma Deutscher, we are told, from Dorking in...
View ArticleBreast milk doll leaves a sour taste
I know a chap, now a fine pillar of the community, who, as a nipper, invented an endlessly entertaining game with his best friend. They built an extraordinary contraption that had all their classmates...
View ArticleDid you know bereaved parents may only get three days off work to grieve?...
Lucy Herd remembers the birth of her son, Jack, in December 2008, as being “magical”. She had endured five miscarriages, and the arrival of her baby filled her with “joy and excitement”. Tragically,...
View ArticleObama's use of wide-eyed children to promote his gun-control proposals shows...
There was something nauseating about the way Barack Obama surrounded himself with children as he unveiled his gun control plans. It looked like emotional blackmail. "Look these innocent babes in the...
View ArticleCan Syria’s children ever forget?
From Wednesday's Daily Telegraph Benedict Brogan meets refugees who have fled the horrors of civil war for the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon When the soldiers raid a house, they demand all mobile phones and...
View ArticleToddlers on skimmed milk? This shows how neurotic we are about fat
Interesting to read today that two-year-olds whose parents give them skimmed or very low fat milk were found to be more likely to be fat than those fed whole milk. You'd have thought that, if your...
View ArticleIf Labour can't show restraint today, it will say more about them than it...
This morning the Today Programme reported that today’s special parliamentary session in honour of Margaret Thatcher will be a "difficult one" for Ed Miliband. The gist of its correspondent’s comments...
View ArticleWorking class babies need talking to
Last month, the Bloomberg Philanthropies' Mayor's Challenge – an annual American competition to find the boldest "local solutions to national problems" – awarded its $5 million "grand prize" to a...
View ArticleIf you love them, don't smack them
My colleague, Cristina Odone, wrote last week in defence of smacking. Citing a new study, she argued that corporal punishment could be justified, so long as the general context is loving. Now, I'm not...
View ArticleThe smoking snoopers will make mothers-to-be very very cross
One of the hopes I had of the Coalition was that they'd end Labour's heavy-handed approach to governing. Like so many other hopes, this one too has been dashed. The latest example is a proposed...
View ArticleIf our pornographic culture doesn't change, any anti-porn message we send to...
Mark Slater, a head of The Leys in Cambridge, caused a stir this week after he said that he's open to the idea of allowing a porn star to chat to pupils as part of their sex education. He argued that...
View ArticleAdvice for only children: invent a sibling so you can pass for normal in...
Some guy with about a million children has written a report, saying that Only Children – those without siblings – are weird losers who get fat while holding down dead-end jobs (if they're lucky). I...
View ArticleWomen: your country needs your baby – not you
A new poster for this generation of women would have Lord Kitchener pointing an accusing finger above the caption, "Your country needs your baby, not you". The message women are getting, here as in...
View ArticleThirty two million reasons why children should start school at the age of two
Baroness Sally Morgan's suggestion that children should start their formal education at the age of two has been met with predictable howls of outrage from all the usual suspects. Dr Rowan Williams,...
View ArticleYou’re only as good as your last generous outing, Auntie
Do you remember the maiden aunt? Spiky and bitter, she’d visit at Christmas, sourly commenting on Mother’s turkey and the children’s manners. You’d approach her warily, sensing nerves as tightly wound...
View ArticleWhen is it OK to drop the F-bomb in front of your kids?
"When Granny gets annoyed, she says 'fiddle'," my six-year-old daughter remarked the other day. "And when Mummy gets annoyed, she says 'rats'." "What about when Daddy gets annoyed?" said my wife,...
View ArticleOur daughters can become whatever they want
More than 200 girls queued outside Hammersmith Town Hall last Friday morning. Aged 10 and 11, they were to sit an entrance exam for one of the best local state secondaries. In the bitter cold, I...
View ArticleLie, and lie again: a parents’ guide to a child’s happiness at Christmas
Kids, if you’re reading your Mum and Dad’s newspaper, Father Christmas is definitely real. Nothing to worry about there. Now put the paper down! Go and play outside. Build a snowman or something. Now,...
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