Hey readers, Happy New Year. I hope you all had a lovely Christmas! Phew, thank God the buying frenzy is over. Of course I’m kidding, but there is an element of this, a tightrope we traverse between drowning our little ones in toys and incalculating in them the value of family. If you’re lucky you … Continued
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
I came across an old Facebook post on my timeline the other day, one of those viral thingamajigs. It was basically an image of an anonymous letter received by an Australian first time mother, Jade Ruthven (presumably written by ‘friends’ within her face book community), attacking her for her constant baby posts. I include it … Continued
Borderline Personality Disorder: What a parent can learn from a therapist’s experience. I was lucky enough to attend a really fascinating workshop on this personality disorder recently and I realised that as a therapist the insights gained were incredibly useful in themselves but I also realised that there was a lot of learning for mothers … 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