How many people does it take to make a baby? If your answer is two, I’m afraid you may well be wrong. The House of Lords, following a ‘vote of conscience’ by its MPs have made Britain the first country to legalise mitochondrial transfer, a controversial IVF procedure which aims to eliminate inherited mitochondrial diseases. … Continued
I was thinking the other day about how we place a value on things. Consider a human being. There are various interesting thought experiments about the human body. In one intricate example,(which can be read here) ,we are asked to consider what the intrinsic value of a human body is. They suggest selling it for … Continued
It seems women are leaving it ever later to have kids. The reasons for this are complex and varied. Based on personal observation I would hazard that the ever increasing childhood/career period for some men coupled with a desire on our parts to wait for the ‘right’ circumstances might have something to do with this. … Continued
I was chatting to a friend the other day about an article they had read in some broadsheet. It concerned the idea of ‘affluent neglect’. She seemed to find the notion rather provocative and controversial. My only response was to ask, ‘why?’ The proposition that wealthy parents are often physically and emotionally unavailable for their … Continued
We hear an awful lot about the problems with young people today. The headlines tend to favour the negative stories such as the ASBOs, underage pregnancies, the increasing frequency of teenage on adult violence and so on, but I have some real sympathy for what children face today. Consider what we now know about the … Continued
You don’t have to be a Rockefeller to help a fella I was digging around in a drawer the other day, when I came across an old article from the Sunday Times. It had the emotive title, ‘Stars’ backing ‘cannot save’ kids’ charity’. It was a small piece about Kids Company, the worthy initiative founded … Continued
I had intended to write an article about the problem with permissive parenting in the context of current trends in Sweden, but I realized, after reading a particularly smug article in the Telegraph that what was being said was equally applicable to this country. There seems to be a general drift happening in Europe towards … Continued
A scene from Honeymoon in Vegas which sees James Caan attempt to replace his dead wife with a look a like Sarah Jessica Parker, started me wondering whether people have a specific ‘type’ or are perhaps narcissistic when it comes to dating. The media (with it’s fixation on celebrity couples) would suggest that some people … Continued
There has been a serious issue highlighted recently by Tristram Hunt, the shadow education secretary, regarding children of primary school age with profound language deficits. Typically a child of four or five will have a vocabulary of approximately 1500 to 2000 words. Some children are arriving at their first school with as little as 30-50 … Continued
Okay, so I’m just going to throw it out there. Boarding school is an abdication of responsibility. I challenge anyone out there to convince me (should they want to) that this is in the best interests of any child? And please don’t say it builds character. This is a peculiarly specious kind of reasoning. After … Continued