We have forgotten just how deep a cultural revolution Christianity wrought. In fact, we forget about it precisely because of how deep it was: There are many ideas that we simply take for granted as natural and obvious, when in fact they didn’t exist until the arrival of Christianity changed things completely. Take, for instance, Read more
You are Jewish; your husband, a lapsed Catholic. Neither of you believes, much, in God, although occasionally you like to meditate and you both would go hiking more if you could. You’ve had those moments — who hasn’t? — on mountaintops or in art museums or even in prayer when you’ve felt that overwhelming sense Read more
The more speaking engagements I do, the more convinced I am of the important role parents play in their teenagers sexual education…in fact, every part of their lives. As a parent of teenagers myself, I feel ‘in the thick’ of it every day; the emotions of their stage of life, the joy and pain, the Read more
Having your child bullied at school is one of the greatest fears of parents – and research shows this fear is well founded. School bullying has been described as the single most important threat to the mental health of children and adolescents. Well-controlled studies show that being bullied in primary school increases the risk of serious mental health problems into adolescence and ongoing depression leading Read more
I’m a solo, surrogate parent to a now 9 month old baby girl, 30 hours a week. Her parents have both returned back to the workforce, so I’ve been hired to go into the family home, and look after Molly four days a week. She’s cute, it has to be said. Like, super cute. Especially Read more
A new study published in the February 2015 issue of the British Journal of Education, Society, and Behavioural Science appears to be the largest yet on the matter of same-sex households and children’s emotional outcomes. It analyzed 512 children of same-sex parents, drawn from a pool of over 207,000 respondents who participated in the (US) Read more
My mum had superhuman powers when I was a kid. When I was about eight, a friend and I would play spies on our council estate. We’d use the poorly designed walkways as our lookout posts, and the labyrinth of corridors were the motorways for our high-speed chases. The fun we were having was obviously Read more
A 19 year old employee of one of the banks in Apia is the latest of the rising statistics of suicide cases. Police reports say the young man booked a room at a hotel at Fugalei on the 21 October 2014. The number of suicides in Samoa has been decreasing in recent years. However, according Read more
Parents are one of the most influential factors when talking about bullying – in that they are the most likely to be able to prevent it. The way parents model appropriate interactions and communication to their children (for example, resolve disagreements, be assertive when appropriate) will impact on how their children interact with others – Read more
The best way to describe how I felt when I first became a mother is invisible. I went from going to meetings, lectures and libraries, where people would show interest in me and my work, to being stuck in our apartment with round the clock feedings and baby care. I didn’t see many people, and, Read more