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t’s the favourite of little girls the world over, associated with femininity, springtime and romance. Yet scientists this have announced that the colour pink does not actually exist. Well it does, but only in our minds. The trouble lies in the fact pink is a combination of red and violet, two colours, which – if [...]

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A mother and child have been taken to hospital after a fire in a second floor flat in Newport. Fire crews were called to the Old Barn estate in St Julians after the fire broke out at about 18:20 GMT on Thursday. The mother and child suffered from the effects of smoke and were taken [...]

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A white-skinned Indian couple are set to enter the record books along with their offspring, after becoming the world’s biggest albino family. The ten members of the Pullan family, headed by Rosetauri, 50, and his wife Mani, 45, all have the extremely pale skin and near-white hair of albinos. But despite years of prejudice and [...]

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London faces an “exodus” of young families as property prices force hundreds of thousands of people out of the capital, research suggests today. Campaigners warned that London’s housing crisis risked robbing a generation of the chance to call the city home and urged the incoming mayor to use new powers to tackle it. A survey [...]

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When, back in the election-victory afterglow of 2010, George Osborne announced he was cutting all child benefit for higher tax earners, it seemed like a neat trick, whereby you help cut the deficit and can claim “we’re all in it together” at the same time. Back then, the 2013 date for implementing the changes seemed [...]

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Councils which get more mothers breastfeeding and improve parenting skills are to get extra funds under a new government trial. The councils in the scheme will have to improve outcomes for children through services offered by their children’s centres. Their performances will be measured against a range of central government targets. Children’s Minister Sarah Teather [...]

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Working parents are relying on schools to teach children about morals because they are too busy to do it themselves, a teachers’ leader claimed yesterday. Andy Waters, chairman of the Society of Heads, said schools were increasingly required to act as ‘moral arbiters for children’s upbringing’. He said ‘beleaguered’ working parents depended on schools to [...]

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Stella McCartney, daughter of Paul, pal of Gwynnie and award-winning fashion designer should, by rights, be lost among the starry orbs after which she is named. But absolute proof that she is not came recently in a simple statement about her childcare: “I have a nanny but I find that word jarring. I tell her: [...]

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A Conservative government should put the well-being of the family at the heart of its policies. People want to be able to make a good life for themselves and their loved ones without fearing that the government of the day will do anything to inhibit or undermine them in this ambition. Three policies currently causing [...]

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Overzealous officials are sending inspectors to interrogate parents who produce more waste and are even rifling through bins to check families are recycling as much as they can. The checks have been condemned as an invasion of privacy and a waste of taxpayers’ money. Desperate to meet Scottish Government targets for a landfill reduction of [...]

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Despite attempts by a conservative American mothers’ group to have it pulled from sale, the new Archie comic, which features a gay marriage, has just sold out. Tracing the adventures of the teenagers Archie, Betty and Veronica in the small town of Riverdale, the Archie storyline has been running for 70 years and is one [...]

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Married couples, families and pensioners are among the happiest people in the country, according to David Cameron’s campaign to measure the nation’s well-being. It found that being married leads to higher levels of satisfaction with life, sense of purpose and general happiness than any other relationship or lifestyle. Having children also pushes up the well-being [...]

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The Church of England has offered an “unreserved apology” for historic cases of child abuse by some members of its clergy. Officials said it was a matter of “great sorrow and deep regret” and they recognised the harm caused to the victims. The apology coincided with the publication of another critical report detailing how convicted [...]

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The numbers were against them, but a New Jersey mother and daughter beat the one-in-two-million odds of both being born on February 29. They today celebrate their 28th and fourth birthdays – or their eighth and first leap year birthdays – as the four-yearly oddity once again rolls around. Michelle Birnbaum and daughter Rose fluked [...]

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A mother pregnant with her tenth child has demanded a bigger council house in the countryside, despite raking in almost £30,000 a year in state handouts. Iona Heaton, 43, said her four-bedroom home in Blackburn is too small for her enormous family and complained that the property is cold, damp and festering with mould. The [...]

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What is all this fuss about families being “forced” to live together, with three generations in one house, because many of us can no longer afford to live separately? Reports last week, based on research from Ancestry.co.uk, refer to a return to Victorian times, but why use the term “forced”? What’s so terrible about grandparents? [...]

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An ex-soldier and his pregnant girlfriend are living in his car after being evicted from their home when he had his benefits cut. Darren King, 27, lost his privately rented home in Colchester, Essex when he told the authorities he had taken a temporary job. The former Territorial Army soldier quit when his first wife [...]

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A woman with both male and female sex organs lived as a man for over 40 years because her parents didn’t tell her she was born a hermaphrodite for two decades. Caroline Kinsey has lived almost all her life as a man as her parents hid her intersex medical condition from her until she was [...]

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Now we have settled into a pretty good routine with the new baby and it’s true what they say – it really is a lot easier second time round. When Georgia was a newborn, we exhausted ourselves in our efforts to be perfect parents. When she woke in the night, Cam and I would take it [...]

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Thousands of young families are trapped in their first homes because they cannot afford to move up the housing ladder. Two-thirds of those who are looking for a bigger home have been unable to make the move they want for at least 12 months, research shows. A combination of factors, including a lack of affordable [...]

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Two disparate families have been brought together by a message in a bottle which made an astonishing 2,000-mile journey across the Atlantic. Aidan Curtis stumbled across the note, which travelled across the ocean inside a plastic drinks bottle, on a beach in Taunton Sands, north Devon, as he walked his dog. The 36-year-old took it [...]

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Poor families in England are being ‘priced out’ of keeping their homes warm, putting their health and well-being at risk, a report by children’s charity Barnardo’s claimed today. Cold homes: Barnardo’s urged the Government to require landlords to make their properties energy-efficient to tackle fuel poverty by the root Households with the bottom 10 per [...]

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They’ve been keeping children happy for years and are a godsend for many parents when trying to keep their little ones quiet. But it would seem it is not just youngsters who appreciate the soothing benefits of the teddy bear – it still occupies a special place in the hearts of many grown-ups too. Research [...]

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A lorry driver used his vehicle as a weapon in an ‘appalling’ road rage attack on a couple who were driving their sick baby to hospital. Michael Constantine, 26, from Glossop, Derbyshire, rammed the driver’s side door of the Mark Creacall’s car as he and his partner took their son for treatment. The impact of [...]

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Traditionally, it was the parents of the bride who worried about planning their daughter’s big day. Now it is the children who are being asked to organise their parents’ wedding, in a BBC “reality” show. In Marrying Mum & Dad, children as young as seven will be allowed to spend up to £10,000 on each [...]

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‘We’re all middle-class now,” said John Prescott in 1997, halfway through his rise from working-class ship’s steward, to middle-class thug, to peer of the realm. And yet Prescott, for once, failed to get to the subtle heart of a complex issue. While there might appear to be fewer aristocrats around these days, there’s still lower-middle, [...]

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Six Romanian family members targeted sleeping commuters in a bout of late-night pickpocketing, a court heard today. They swept through trains stealing mobile phones and cash from dozens of exhausted or tipsy victims, jurors were told. Many victims were making their way home after a night out, travelling on trains between Charing Cross and Gravesend, [...]

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A mother who battled cancer for two years died just hours after watching her beloved daughter become a bride. Linda Stace clung on to life and watched her oldest child Jamie-Lee and Harry Hopwood become happily married. The couple planned to marry later this year, but moved the wedding forward and arranged it in just [...]

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More than one in four youngsters in the UK are growing up in families facing multiple challenges such as parental depression and financial hardship, according to new research. Some 28% of families faced two or more of 10 risk factors seen as harmful to children’s development, the study from the Institute of Education, University of [...]

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Years ago, before I had kids of my own, I’d occasionally be entrusted with the care of my niece. My sister-in-law would invariably return home to find me and Rhiannon, her daughter, hopped up on butter icing, having failed to eat anything even vaguely containing a nutrient, and the kitchen approximating a Jackson Pollock reject [...]

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A few years ago I found a small, cold, barefoot child on Hampstead Heath early on a Sunday morning. It was a forlorn sight, as he picked his way across the gravel path, and other dogwalkers turned to look at him because it was so unusual to see such a small child alone. I decided [...]

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In London, this figure rises to 35 per cent of households. Among young couples in Britain, the proportion is 38 per cent. Nearly one in three parents think their home is too small, according to the study of 2,000 adults by property website FindaProperty.com. Research also found that of the million people in Britain who [...]

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Finding a new man to take home for the holidays proved surprisingly easy for Lily Li. He had to be reliable, taciturn – and available for a few hundred yuan. “I was not looking for some perfect guy to marry. Just someone tall – my parents like tall guys a lot – honest and not [...]

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Large families are once again in the spotlight as the £26,000 annual benefits cap proposed by work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith would hit them the hardest. Tim Leuning explains on Comment is free: “The worst hit, of course, are large families in the south-east, where rents are higher. Even in Tolworth, described by [...]

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The study published by the Children’s Society following interviews with 30,000 under-16s claims those who have deeply negative feelings about their lives are at higher risk of bullying, depression and eating disorders. It says those who suffer instability, moving from one family member to another, are twice as likely to be unhappy although household structure [...]

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Five years ago, Charles and Iona Cole led a gilded life that most people could only dream of. Home was a £2.25 million Devon manor house set in 214 acres, with his and hers luxury cars on the sweeping driveway, not to mention the portfolio of 84 buy-to-let properties they owned in Yorkshire. With their [...]

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Scientists have found a way to predict how long someone will live – by measuring their genes as a baby. Life expectancy is written into our DNA and is there to be seen from the day we are born. It all depends on the length of the telomeres, which are described as ‘acting like the [...]

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Scores of workless families with ten or more children are living on state benefits worth more than £60,000 a year. Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act show that there are 190 families with at least ten under-18s where one or both of the parents gets an out-of-work benefit. These families are eligible for [...]

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My daughter and her husband row much more than in the past, often in front of me. Their fights are usually kicked off by my son-in-law being bossy or lazy (‘When’s dinner going to be ready?’ or similar) and if I get involved he tells me it’s none of my business. But she’s my daughter [...]

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We are on our annual end-of-year journey west, to visit friends and, in many respects, to disappoint them. “Look at their faces,” I say as we emerge from the car at our second stop. “They’ve forgotten we have two dogs.” “We’ve had a dreadful journey,” my wife says. This is true; it ended with my wife [...]

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A girl who married her 50-year-old biker lover in a secret civil ceremony has celebrated five years of marriage. Kayley Simock, now 23, was just 17 years old when she wed twice-divorced Philip Nash in 2007, a year after meeting him at a religious service where she was playing the guitar. The pair, who have [...]

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The family of an aspiring teenage actor stabbed to death by a gang outside his school said today they would pray that his killers “can be reformed”.

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The rail network will remain at a halt in most of the country today, bringing the prospect of widespread travel chaos.

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Brailsfords buy in snow machine to guarantee a dusting of the white stuff

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Family life takes on a whole new meaning for Noel and Sue Radford, who have 15 children. Three are pre-schoolers in nappies, seven are at primary school, three are at secondary school and two go out to work.. Photographs by

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More than £300million worth of historic child maintenance debts is to be written off, in a new move by ministers.

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Fellow inmates found out I was gay, says student who skipped trial to see West End show

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US Girl Scout leaders have resigned in protest after a seven-year-old boy, who lives as a girl, was allowed to join a troop.

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David Cameron is preparing new curbs on “unscrupulous” companies and shops that expose children to sexualised advertisements and exploit “pester power” to sell goods.

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Cape Town, South Africa, and one of our finest actors, Christopher Eccleston, has just finished a day’s filming on his latest project.

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