Family

Parents have a crucial role in managing their children's digital behaviour, as well as preventing and detecting addiction. Their success depends on their own relationship with digital devices.

Describing the breakup of her marriage after the birth of her children, journalist Nora Ephron writes that a child is a grenade for the couple’s relationship. After the explosion, when the dust settles, “your marriage is different from what it was. Not better, necessarily; not worse, necessarily; but different.” [1].

In a world of rising toxic masculinity, here are some basic foundations we can provide to ensure our sons grow up to be men who make us proud.

You wouldn’t think so, but whether or not children do chores is one predictor of their future happiness and success. 

"But do you actually enjoy playing with the children like that?" a dear friend and experienced mother once asked me. Her question implied that there was a parallel universe in which a good mother might not enjoy playing with her children. It didn't take long before I became familiar with that universe myself.

In the whole array of virtues that a stepparent must possess in order to succeed in raising a well-rounded child whose world has been shattered by the separation of his or her parents, courage is only mentioned in passing. Yet courage is the foundation of a construction that promises to be challenging from the outset, say those who have plunged into the role...

“We all feel stronger if we are part of a tapestry. One thread alone is weak, but, woven into something larger, surrounded by other threads, it is more difficult to unravel,” says family therapist Stefan Walters, summarising the benefits of understanding the history of the family we come from.

A photograph of a father holding his sick little boy is simply an example of parental affection, right? But it can provoke a virulent reaction when it's posted on Facebook and the protagonists are naked under the refreshing spray of water in the shower.

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.

Dependence tends to have negative connotations—we may be addicted to sugar, the internet or gambling. Other times we are dependent on people or relationships, in which case the line between positive and negative is no longer easy to draw.

Early exposure to technology helps children accumulate information quickly, opening up new ways for them to understand the world. At the same time, however, the online environment can put many of its most vulnerable users at risk.

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....

A few years ago, I had the pleasure of meeting a young woman who was good at everything. Although she was only in her early twenties, she was an expert in the kitchen, passionate about cleaning, attentive to the needs of children, had a green thumb, was skilled at raising animals and was able to give an articulate speech in her field of...

Even after the World Health Organization replaced the term social distancing with physical distancing, people are still feeling the effects of social distancing.

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.