Social

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?

"Loneliness irritates me like a broken nail," says a line in a Romanian poem. The truth is, loneliness stings, pulls apart, and resembles the coffee dregs left at the bottom of the pot in which joy and love once brewed. Although the fear of loneliness is natural, we can choose to see solitude as something more than a "flowering wilderness" and embrace it...

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.

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

The possibility of completely rewriting the rules by which we organise our lives has always captured people's imagination. However, such a reorganisation has materialised, at best, in the pages of a philosophical book and has remained, for the most part, a utopia. But there are exceptions, of course.

Where there's fear, there's shame, says a Romanian proverb. What the proverb doesn't say (and what many of us don't know) is that the folds of shame hide a multitude of emotional problems and dysfunctional relationships that are passed down from one generation to the next.

In 2020, depression became the second leading cause of global morbidity and it is projected to be the first in 2030,[1] according to a forecast by the World Health Organization (WHO). 

Responsible, achievement-oriented and highly principled – this is what a brief portrait of a perfectionist child looks like, explaining why, up to a certain point, this is the kind of child most parents dream of.

If you're unhappy in your relationship, do you think that formalising it with a marriage certificate will finally bring you happiness? The ever-increasing divorce rate is no coincidence, and experts emphasise the importance of taking a realistic approach to marriage.

Next to family and health, friends are among the top reasons that make us happy. But what if we are solitary, recluse or shy?

On the morning of the 15 November 2016, I awoke in a hospital bed, with no memory of how I got there. My favourite pyjamas had been torn from my body, and I lay in a hospital gown, a piercing pain in my head, impaling my brain. I was barely able to think and incapable of speech. I was scared, though this was...

You must run. You only have a few days, perhaps only minutes, to pack all the things you can take with you. You don’t know whether you’ll arrive at a safer place, or whether anyone will welcome you, or whether you’ll ever return home.

I believe that the illusion of free time seen as a different world, separated from everyday active life, must be replaced by the image of proactive free time– just like a day of work that satisfies us.

“The words of the mouth are deep waters, but the fountain of wisdom is a rushing stream” (Proverbs 18:4).

Seeing a team care for remote villages in the Solomon Islands showed me how small donations can make a real big difference.