Family

Is it possible, as single parents, to instil in our children a love for God and for the church?

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.

A common source of jokes and stories with subtext, the relationship between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law appears to be characterised by particular sensitivities.

Yelling at children—especially younger kids—appears to be effective. They stop whatever they’re doing (or not meant to be doing) and start obeying you.

“When grandparents enter the door, discipline flies out the window,” poet Ogden Nash once said, encapsulating one of the most common sources of intergenerational conflict—the role grandparents play in the upbringing of their grandchildren.

Adults who choose not to have children are often portrayed as selfish people, so preoccupied with their own lives that the prospect of the sacrifices that raising a child would entail seems repulsive to them. Is this view fair or is it just an unfair judgement?

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.

All COVID-19 statistics lead to the same conclusion: the young ones, our children, are at the lowest risk of getting ill or dying from the virus. That’s comforting. But the pandemic does pose a certain danger to them.

Being a parent means, among other things, engaging in agonising negotiations to keep the supermarket aisles relatively quiet and the shopping trolley from overflowing with sweets. Some are successfully concluded. Others, a real failure. Although we are very adept at recognising a spoiled child on the street, we have a much harder time spotting the signs in our own children. After all, what...

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.

I used to think I was a patient person. Then I became a dad.

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.

No matter how much we avoid it, the day will come when our parents will not be able to get by without us, just as we would not have been able to grow up without them.

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.

Denisa Selagea has lost many things so far, from keys and phones to patience and opportunities. She has also lost sight of many words that needed to be said. So, this time, she thought she would stitch them onto paper before they got lost, to be read before it’s too late.