Family

The relationship between a parent and their child is one of the most significant in their lives, with its primary role being education.

Fathers are an important part of their children’s lives. Good dads can provide stability, protection and love in a child’s life.

How do parents influence their children's marriages?

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

I never cease to marvel at those who help, in an organized manner, troubled children, abandoned elderly or victims of violence. However, the general need for such heroic saviours reveals the failure of the social group that is apt to address these situations: the family.

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.

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

While the debate over the “ideal age” for fatherhood may go on endlessly, one fact is clear: the average age at which men in modern society become fathers has steadily increased in recent decades. Behind the polished statistics lie moving personal stories about what it means to embrace fatherhood at an age when youth is little more than a distant memory.

In an ideal world, everything would be simple: you, as the father or mother, tell your child, the apple of your eye, to do something and, being perfectly obedient and submissive, they do as they’re told. However, we don’t know if such a world would really be ideal. Nevertheless, for many parents, this resembles a paradise to which they would love to escape...

We love stories, and Hollywood knows how to dramatise them. However, we should not lose sight of the fact that Hollywood is first and foremost an industry driven by ratings and profits. Children are more vulnerable and more likely than adults to pick up identity models from the film world.

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.

It is said that it takes a village to raise a child. It's folk wisdom acknowledging that the development of a person requires the contribution of the whole community. What value does the community add, especially when the community in question is the scientific one?

Behind the prelude to a divorce are four major destructive behaviours which can prevent the couple from keeping their enthusiastic promise of staying together ...for better or for worse, till death us do part.

Family conflict? The fact that not only milk and honey flow within our families, and conflicts crop up more often than we would like, is not new to anyone. Experience teaches us that people who share a roof as well as a last name clash in their opinions or behaviours in direct proportion to the number of hours they spend together.

Both specialist research and common experience tell us how complicated it is when children reach adolescence. Dr Bryan Craig helps us to understand the reasons for this and how to turn the crisis into an opportunity for growth.