Family

When I became a parent, someone told me that I would learn to be a child. However, I was determined to be more of an adult than ever and not repeat attitudes that I considered wrong, including those of my parents.

Kayley lies on the floor, throwing a tantrum because she only has pink flashing-heel shoes and she wants a blue pair to match her new jeans. John sits on the floor, happily playing with a few blocks of wood. His dad found them lying in the street, brought them home and sanded them smooth. Yesterday he stacked them up to build a castle....

Raising a child is not easy at all. Raising someone else’s child is even harder. But raising six children who are not your own, giving up your life, sounds crazy to most of us.

For at least one party, sibling estrangement can be more painful than loss through death, writes Fern Schumer Chapman, who was excluded from her brother's life for four decades.

"Children are not a distraction from more important work. They are the most important work.” (Dr John Trainer) Sometimes I pass my grandparents' house, which...

I grew up on an unpaved, quaint side street in Ploiești, Romania. After school or during summer vacations my neighbours, M. and C., and I were an inseparable trio. We were almost always outdoors. If it wasn't too hot or raining, you could find us in one of our backyards.

He is 22 years old and has deep black eyes. He is tall and very confident. Why wouldn’t he be? He is doing satisfactorily in college, works to support himself and makes the most of his free time with his friends.

It all starts with the blue sock—that dreadful sock that the five-year-old firmly and loudly refuses to put on. "But what's wrong with it? Is it too tight?" "No! I don't like it!" "But you can't go without socks, just put this one on." "I DON'T WANT TO!" These infamous words bring the scene to a close in tears. Only the child allows...

When we are isolated with our family, problems that are sometimes easy to ignore become more acute, and the need to receive and offer forgiveness to those around us becomes increasingly evident.

The prelude to a divorce often comprises highly destructive behaviours, which can prevent a couple from keeping their enthusiastic promise of staying together "for better or for worse until death do us part," says American psychologist Dr John Gottman.

If, biologically, a person becomes a parent when their child is born—or, civilly, when they adopt a child—from a practical and even moral point of view, a person only becomes a parent when they master a series of crucial skills.

Every generation of parents loves their children and searches for the best ways to support them and prepare them for a successful start in life. Modern parents, however, often take this effort to extremes, complicating their children’s lives (and their own, just as much) in an attempt to clear a perfectly smooth path for their still-uncertain steps.

To err is human. “The only sure way to avoid making mistakes is to have no ideas”, Albert Einstein said.

As the world went into various lockdowns over the course of last year, people turned to a variety of entertainment forms to cope with...

The factors behind successful ageing have been the subject of research for decades, but the subjective side of ageing still needs to be explored. Because successful ageing is more than an attempt to defy age and its frailties, it is a process in which, in addition to losses, benefits need to be taken into account—not just those delivered by good genetics or a...