Deep thoughts and philosophical arguments.
Becoming a parent awakens a whole cluster of instincts, feelings and thoughts. A dark and scary part of our psyche, inherited from ancestors long past and dormant until parenthood, wakes within us. We find ourselves tasked with a single overriding mission: our child must survive. We discover that becoming a parent means being haunted by […]
I think every parent gets lost in a maze of guilt sometimes. I certainly do. The list of shoulds, of not enoughs, of weaknesses, of mistakes, traps you at every turn. Stuck in the maze of parenting guilt, it seems like the only way out is to be more, to be better, to be perfect, […]
As long as I’ve had any degree of political awareness I’ve dreamt of a better world – a world free of sexism, racism and ableism, a world where no one goes hungry, a world where we’ve learnt to co-exist with the environment, a world where knowledge is valued. But I had to make my own […]
Not only do professionals, researchers and the media persist in describing particular baby behaviours as more or less ‘independent’; but they also encourage parents to think that the ‘independent’ behaviours are superior. Parents are encouraged to waste precious time and energy making their baby ‘independent’. So the baby who suckles to sleep sucking his thumb […]
Many parents are concerned about the effects of spoiling their child; concerned that too many toys, too much fun, too much received too easily, will result in a child who is materialistic, focused on instant gratification and selfish. To prevent this kind of spoiling, parents may measure out toys and activities carefully lest they give […]
I love Christmas. I love Christmas trees covered in baubles, houses bedecked with lights, Christmas carols, shortbread, snow globes, Christmas movies, tiny trains driving in circles past tiny houses… But it is more than that. I love marking the end of a year with such joy, spending time with my family and reconnecting with friends. […]
Here’s another phrase that drives me up the wall, especially when it comes out of the mouth of a fellow health professional, “Well, she has to learn to do it eventually”. This phrase, and the attitude behind it, frustrates me so much because I feel that it drives many parents to expend much valuable time […]
We have a cultural obsession with the bliss of bonding that I think can be very unhelpful. We set new parents up to expect that their first months with their newborn baby will be euphoric. But not only that, we prime them to believe that the moments of rapture are the vital, essential moments in […]
The relationship between parent and child is unique for many reasons and one of those reasons is that the relationship fundamentally involves a power imbalance. The power dynamic between parent and child is, of course, natural and necessary. Yet, it is still incredible to ponder the sheer degree of power that parents have over their […]
It is easy, as a parent, to become dazzled and then disappointed by grand plans, to feel guilty about our supposed lack of achievements or depressed about long days in which nothing much seemed to happen. We live in a culture that celebrates the big, the grand, the fancy, the over the top, the larger […]