Parenting and families
Childhood and adolescence
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At what point does the Santa myth become a harmful deception?
Exactly when and how children discover they’ve been duped makes an important difference to the revelatory experience
by Shayla Love
Fairness and equality
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Teaching self-confidence can backfire and perpetuate inequality
It’s true that self-confidence is beneficial, but the way in which it’s often taught is misguided and can be harmful
by Eddie Brummelman & Kelly Ziemer
Parenting and families
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I’m childfree by choice. Should I feel guilty about ending my line?
My uterus is not my ancestors’ vessel for future progeny. What’s the impact of my choice on my family’s genetic lineage?
by Starre Vartan
Stories and literature
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Forget ‘Little Women’. How did girls learn to be grown women?
How might 19th-century novels for adolescent girls help us find healthier models of what it means to grow up female today?
by Julie Pfeiffer
Poetry
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A conversation with my spider Maman and Louise Bourgeois
Woman made of braided steel, monster I call Maman: why am I so scared of you? An imagined conversation with Louise Bourgeois
by Pascale Petit
Nature and the environment
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Grey whales taught me how to mother, how to endure, how to live
When I was in crisis, grey whales taught me how to mother and how to endure, till I could find my own paths through change
by Doreen Cunningham
Photography
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Victorian hidden mothers and the continued erasure of mothering
Why do Victorian ‘hidden mother’ photographs shock us? We’re still expected to hide the work of mothering from public view
by Andrea Kaston Tange
Personality
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Childhood shyness can be advantageous – don’t pathologise it
Given their cautious vigilance, shy children are more likely to detect social threats and anticipate how events will unfold
by Raha Hassan & Kristie Poole
Parenting and families
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Why parenting books are not really written for the parents
Parenting books are not really for parents but for the people writing them, and speak more to their own lives than our own
by Olga Mecking
Gender
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Talk of toxic masculinity puts the blame in all the wrong places
Toxic masculinity discourse harms vulnerable boys and men and distracts society from the true sources of gender inequity
by Heidi Matthews
Parenting and families
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Finns start life safe and sound with a baby box from the government
In Finland, mothers can choose a cash benefit or a baby box – 95 per cent choose the baby box, a richly emotional object
by Tanja Vahtikari
Parenting and families
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It should be OK for parents to express regret about having children
Regret is common to all humans. So it’s no surprise that some parents regret having children: it shouldn’t be a taboo topic
by Jenna Abetz & Julia Moore