EDITOR’S PICKS

Why it’s now harder to pay off a home loan than it used to be?
So you think it’s the right time to dive in and buy a home, writes Peter Martin. I can’t tell you you’re wrong. I can tell you it would have been better to do it before prices began soaring, and that if they keep soaring...
Editor
10 June, 2021
In Other Words…euphemisms
Ruth Wajnryb reflects on the usage of euphemisms. When my son was little, I took him to the Boston Children’s Museum. The impact of one experiential display stayed with me long after the event. It was a group picture and the task was to count...
Editor
10 June, 2021
The bare facts: the nature of nudity in the home
A daughter’s probing questions cause Karen Baumgart to ponder the nature of nudity in the home. It began with an all-too-tactile query from our two-year-old daughter: “What’s that?” she chirped merrily, making a grab for that part of my husband as he emerged from the...
Editor
10 June, 2021
Tweens
There used to be five stages of human development writes Klay Lamprell: baby, toddler, child, teenager and adult. But over the past 20 years or so, in Western societies, a new stage has evolved: the tween. The tween stage exists in the spectrum between child...
Editor
10 June, 2021
Tweens to teens: new books for parents
Some wonderful books have been released recently for parents, step-parents and carers on how to support and help their kids develop into happy and healthy adults. These books cover many of the topics you might need to be confident supporting today’s ‘Generation Alpha’ to flourish....
Editor
10 June, 2021
Agony Aunt
Hellen Morgan-Harris ponders how children might figure in her life. I wonder how on earth I am to explain to the angelic eight-year-old face peering at me that her uncle is wearing swimmers to bed because we have been warned that she might jump into...
Editor
10 June, 2021

Celebrating Mothers

Agony Aunt
Hellen Morgan-Harris ponders how children might figure in her life. I wonder how on earth I am to explain to the angelic eight-year-old face peering at me that her uncle is wearing swimmers to bed because we have been warned that she might jump into...
Editor
10 June, 2021
Family Fears
Patricia Lee learns to take nothing for granted as the midwife called for the emergency obstetrician. As I slumped onto the delivery bed, panting and sweating after another contraction, I knew something was wrong. After spending the entire day in labour and pushing for hours,...
Editor
26 May, 2021
New books for Parents
Why First-Borns Rule the World and Later-borns want to change it by Michael Grose, published by Penguin Life, p/b RRP$34.99 (pub. June 1, 2021) Originally published as Why First-Borns Rule the World and Last-borns want to change it, 2003 this is fully revised and republished...
Editor
26 May, 2021
Baby eats huntsman
Lara Cain Gray recounts a hairy moment involving her son. My 10-month-old son ate a spider. Let’s not sugar-coat it (although I’m sure that it’s a delicacy somewhere) – it was frightening and revolting in equal measure. We’d had a typically hectic morning trying to...
Editor
26 May, 2021