Social

Until that point in our marriage, my wife and I had shared a car. She worked in the city, close to public transport and wherever we went, we went together. And she preferred me to drive. When we had our daughter, the situation didn’t change much. Covid-19 made it hard to go anywhere and we found our four-door sedan big enough to tackle...

Growing up, a fixture of my childhood was the iconic Aussie summer. I spent many of my early years either indoors with the air conditioning turned up full-blast, or swimming in our local watering hole. The scorching sun was a constant, with days of humid weather on the east coast or dry, oven-like temperatures in the west.

There was a time when the word parenting would cause me to either roll my eyes or shrug. It was a time when seven hours of sleep a night, instead of at least eight, had the destabilizing potential of a hurricane, a time when the clear voices of children in the park would compel me to grab a book and read under my...

For a long time, menopause has been a taboo subject. However, in recent decades, two things have changed simultaneously: women have started talking openly about their experiences, and companies have spotted an opportunity.

We often do it without even thinking. Labelling our children as shy, cheeky, fussy or even smart. In the right context, calling our children these things is innocent enough. It even helps explain certain types of behaviour. 

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.

Over the last few decades, the picture of family life has undergone dramatic changes. The pervasiveness and normalization of divorce are just two of these changes.

"Marriage: a book of which the first chapter is written in poetry and the remaining chapters written in prose." (Beverley Nichols)

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...

I spoke very little in my early years and my mother says that my silence scared her. She never knew what was going through my mind. She was afraid I was hiding something.

"If I cut off your arm, will your husband take you again?" "My husband loves me very much." So he started cutting. "There was no alternative."

Let’s begin with the introvert or extrovert question. We tend to be one or the other—or at least lean toward one or the other. Being either is not a problem, but it does impact how we handle life. Extroverts are likely to say that introverts are too quiet and introverts that extroverts are too noisy.

Studies indicate that most people experience at least one traumatic event in their lifetime, whether physical or psychological.

The importance of humour, including in the workplace, is often undervalued, as a series of studies suggest.

Mainstream culture has tried to airbrush guilt out of everyday life. It’s the ultimate social faux pas, it seems, to make someone feel guilty—How dare you judge me! Or maybe it’s the penultimate faux pas, because what’s even worse than making someone feel guilty inside is to shame them in front of others.