Parent Pages new website

Gone are the days when shorthand like LOL and BRB were the most likely acronyms to spark confusion. Mommy message boards, the chatrooms found on a range of parenting websites, have attracted a new style of abbreviated language that is jam-packed with far more complicated acronyms. In an attempt to simplify phrases like ‘nursing at [...]

Read the full story

An American woman has given birth to 15 babies however only four of the children are her own. Meredith Olafson, a 47-year-old woman from North Dakota, has acted as a surrogate mother for the past 13 years, producing 11 children for other parents. According to Jay, her husband, the super surrogate is driven by the [...]

Read the full story

Colombian authorities have been frustrated in their attempts to file criminal charges against the young father of a baby born to a 10-year-old ethnic Wayuu girl. The Wayuu people have their own justice system and rarely co-operate with agents of the Colombian state in such matters, Maria Gladys Pabon, chief prosecutor in Riohacha, the regional [...]

Read the full story

A soldier has died from injuries suffered in an explosion in Afghanistan more than two months ago. Corporal Jack Stanley, 26, who joined The Queen’s Royal Hussars in 2003, was on patrol on February 3 when he was hit by the blast from an improvised explosive device (IED). He was brought back to the UK [...]

Read the full story

Yes, it’s hard to be childless when you desperately want to be a mother, and Bibi Lynch’s article (Mothers, stop moaning!, Family, 31 March) is one long howl of pain. I find it hard to be sympathetic to her, though, because her tone is threatening – what does telling mums we don’t know we’re born [...]

Read the full story

A 67-year-old grandfather who survived 12 heart attacks assumed his child-bearing days were over. But Malcolm Lawrence is now the delighted father of a baby girl after his wife Ann-Marie, 31, had IVF on the NHS. Malcolm had been told by doctors to avoid any strenuous activity because of his heart problems, dodgy back and [...]

Read the full story

Laura Christopherson, 20, vowed to take part in the race when her mother, Susie, was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and a tumour the size of an orange was found in her chest cavity. But six weeks into a backpacking trip around Australia she was horrifically injured when a Greyhound bus crashed in a remote area [...]

Read the full story

A former teacher who launched a lawsuit against the Catholic school that fired her after she became pregnant by artificial insemination has been given the go ahead to take the case to trial. Christa Dias, 32, was fired by the Archdiocese of Cincinnati in 2010 after she told them she was five-and-a-half-months pregnant and needed [...]

Read the full story

Poor parenting and family breakdown is fuelling a rise in violent bad behaviour in UK schools, a survey says. A third of teachers polled for the Association of Teachers and Lecturers said they had dealt with violence like pushing, punching or kicking this year. ATL head Mary Bousted said some pupils had a “total disregard” [...]

Read the full story

For many of us, getting a good night’s sleep is a measure of our wellbeing. Getting an early night is frequently held up as a cause for celebration, while burning the candle at both ends is for some a sure-fire route to coming a-cropper.

Read the full story

The man even cleared the mother’s £3,000 credit card bill as part of £48,700 he lavished on his “daughter” and her mother – all at the expense of his own, genuine family, which developed in the years after the relationship ended. He had to work long hours to make ends meet only to be told [...]

Read the full story

A mother-of-six is demanding an NHS weight loss operation, despite admitting she has spent her life binging on junk food. Sara Agintas, tips the scales at a hefty 33 stone, but insists tax payers should fork out for the £14,000 operation because she’s now too fat to work and can’t fit on a plane seat [...]

Read the full story

A new television show titled Mama’s Boys of the Bronx tells the story of how growing up means never having to leave your mother. The lives of five employed Italian-American men in their thirties who are unapologetically proud they still live at home are chronicled in the new eight-part TLC series. Having their rooms cleaned, [...]

Read the full story

he has long been admired as a strong, single woman who raised a young family on her own. But now Diane Keaton has admitted that she would have preferred to have had a man by her side after all. The Annie Hall actress said she loves being a mother but the ‘best possible scenario’ would [...]

Read the full story

Ten years after the toppling of the Taliban government was accompanied by Western promises of a new era of women’s rights, the justice system remained “stacked against them at every stage”, it found. Virtually all teenage girls held in prison are accused of immorality, either extramarital sex or running away, and around half of adult [...]

Read the full story

Thusha Kamaleswaran was caught in the crossfire of a tit-for-tat gang turf war as she danced in the aisles of her uncle’s newsagent in south London. She was paralysed from the waist down. Nathaniel Grant, 21, Kazeem Kolawole, 19, and Anthony McCalla, 20, were convicted of attempted murder and causing grievous bodily harm with intent [...]

Read the full story

When Kay Tate arrives at her son’s school each afternoon she’s just another mother waiting at the playground gates. But when her son Lewis rushes outside to meet her he knows he has to be careful – because at 3ft tall he is only nine inches shorter than she is. ‘He’s very active but he [...]

Read the full story

Is it acceptable for a grown woman to wear her mother’s clothes? That is this week’s fashion question. Well, it’s quite French in a cute, maman/bébé le matchy-matchy kind of way. In the end, though, it depends on your mother. My mother is no Carole Middleton. And therefore sharing a royal blue Reiss dress with [...]

Read the full story

I was 38 and desperate to have children, so I joined a dating agency and met a man in the same position. I felt that I could live with him, although there was no sexual attraction. After a year, I was about to end the relationship when I became pregnant and we married. Our child [...]

Read the full story

Women may soon be able to forgo the menopause after scientists hailed a major breakthrough in the success of transplanted ovaries. It comes after the cases of three ladies who all conceived naturally and gave birth to seven babies after receiving ovary transplants. Medical experts believe the technology could be as significant as the pill [...]

Read the full story

When Julie Nevin put her only son to bed in late December 2010, he was seven months old. The next time she was allowed to perform that simple act, Reilly was a 16-month-old toddler. She and her husband David lost nine months of their little boy’s life after social services took him away over a [...]

Read the full story

Lax parenting and a celebrity-driven culture of instant gratification is forcing schools to act as “surrogate parents” for many pupils, the Chief Inspector of Schools has said. Sir Michael Wilshaw said many teachers were being asked to “make up for much wider failings within families” to ensure that their students knuckled down to academic work. [...]

Read the full story

Schools have become ‘surrogate’ families to pupils due to bad parenting and the damaging influence of celebrity culture, the head of Ofsted warned yesterday. Sir Michael Wilshaw, chief inspector of schools, said teachers are being forced to step into the ‘vacuum’ and set good examples ‘where few exist at home’. Schools are having to ‘make [...]

Read the full story

The dilemma My funny, clever husband is chaotic in all aspects of his life. This is way beyond leaving towels on the floor – he’s also forgetful and unreliable. I’m the major wage earner, but his work dominates our conversation as he often drops the ball: he’s changed job six times in seven years, which [...]

Read the full story

She is the former west London housewife who has revolutionised the genre of erotic fiction with her bestselling trilogy of novels, Fifty Shades of Grey, whose combination of romantic storytelling and themes of bondage and domination are so steamy they have been dubbed “mommy porn”. Now EL James is set to conquer Hollywood after securing [...]

Read the full story

Until recently my husband and I shared bringing up our children pretty equally. But increasingly he is out in the evenings at work events, or working late in the office and at weekends, and I have to pick up the slack at home, while also doing my own job (I’m a doctor). I know he [...]

Read the full story

A mother is facing jail after leaving her baby home alone which she partied for five days and nights. Neighbours of the 20-year-old woman heard the baby girl’s screams and alerted police officers who broke into her filthy house. They found the 16-month-old starving in her cot, her nappy and clothes had not been changed [...]

Read the full story

The sheen may be coming off clothing retailer Boden as customers have taken to the internet to brand it “smug” and “too expensive”. The brand has been accused of being out of touch, with fashion insiders saying people are no longer able to afford its products and are bored with it. Boden, which has dressed [...]

Read the full story

Every weekday morning I drive to a building surrounded by razor wire. It has bomb-proof windows, security guards posted next to its tall, iron gates, and sturdy fences that ring the perimeters. Access to anyone is by entry phone — or by convincing the guards you have a right to enter. So do I work [...]

Read the full story

Every weekday morning I drive to a building surrounded by razor wire. It has bomb-proof windows, security guards posted next to its tall, iron gates, and sturdy fences that ring the perimeters. Access to anyone is by entry phone — or by convincing the guards you have a right to enter. So do I work [...]

Read the full story

You say there’s a problem getting women into technology? The real problem might be the men. In the past few days, the tech industry – more specifically the chunk of it located over on the US west coast – has hardly covered itself in glory. First there was the example of Sqoot, which earlier this [...]

Read the full story

Susan Dhliwayo claims she pulled her car over recently to pick up a group of male hitchhikers and they refused to get in, because they feared they were going to be raped. “Now, men fear women. They said: ‘we can’t go with you because we don’t trust you’,” 19-year-old Miss Dhliwayo recounted. Local media have [...]

Read the full story

It was the beginning of a dream life together for proud parents Paul and Isabel Mason and their beautiful newborn triplets. Tragically the dream was to last for little more than a week. Just eight days after she gave birth, Mrs Mason collapsed and died from a rare and undetected heart condition possibly triggered by [...]

Read the full story

Hazel Nicolson approached what she thought was the onset of menopause not with dread, but a sense of optimism. Having raised two children, she was all too familiar with the relentless, often unappreciated drudgery of motherhood. With her reproductive system winding down, she was looking forward to a long-awaited opportunity to relax. So it came [...]

Read the full story

Two friends who lost their mothers to cancer are to walk from London to Brighton in 24 hours. Rafal Bauer, 33, and Emil Rydberg, 24, are raising money for cancer charities by offering to “sell” each of the 100,000 steps they will take on the 100 kilometre walk for £1. But the walk also has [...]

Read the full story

Two mothers arranged a fight via Facebook and brawled outside a school after dropping off their children, a court heard yesterday. Joanna McVey, 25, and Lorraine Couper, 30, fought near Dunblane Primary School after the online dispute. Couper warned McVey that she should bring an AK47 assault rifle with her for the fight. Yesterday, Stirling [...]

Read the full story

A woman tried to murder a five-year-old boy by dragging him into the path of a train, a court heard. Radhika Sharma, 35, jumped onto the tracks in front of horrified commuters at a busy London station while holding him, the jury was told. The terrified driver slammed on the brakes but could not stop [...]

Read the full story

Parents of children with autism are hit hardest in the pocket. David Mandell of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and colleagues analysed the income of 261 families with an autistic child, 2921 families caring for children with non-autistic conditions and 64,349 families with healthy children. On average, mothers of children with autism earn 35 per [...]

Read the full story

David Cameron’s rare comments about his wife come after the couple spent last week in Washington visiting US President Barack Obama. The Camerons were the guests of honour at the biggest party ever hosted by the President, with film star George Clooney and Vogue editor Anna Wintour among the other party-goers. During the visit, Mrs [...]

Read the full story

Lucy Wright admits she tried to smuggle almost 14lb (6.32kg) of cocaine out of Buenos Aires, and later skipped bail to avoid being put on trial in South America. After she returned to England she was arrested and the Home Secretary, Theresa May, approved her extradition to Argentina, where she faced up to 16 years [...]

Read the full story

TV presenter Anna Ryder Richardson will be prosecuted on health and safety charges after a toddler and his mother were crushed by a tree at her zoo. Mum Emma Davies-Hughes, 28, and her son Gruff, three, were on a family day trip to the former I’m a Celebrity contestant wildlife park when the accident happened. [...]

Read the full story

Families are having their dreams of moving home shattered by banks who are penalising new mums. Money Mail can reveal how banks and building societies are imposing tough rules that limit how much families with recently born children can borrow. Banks fear mothers on maternity leave won’t return to work and so are refusing to [...]

Read the full story

The “honeytrap killing” of teenager Shakilus Townsend is the subject of a powerful new documentary drama on the BBC. John Boyega — star of British movie Attack The Block — plays Shakilus in My Murder, which also features real-life testimony from the 16-year-old victim’s mother. Nicola Dyer tells of the trust her son had for [...]

Read the full story

The deep blue £139 Reiss dress, with a wide black belt, was bought by the Duchess some time ago, a royal aide said, and is identical to one worn by her mother Carole at Royal Ascot in 2010. The Duchess, who has worn a succession of outfits bought in the sales in recent weeks, is [...]

Read the full story

A mother bidding to become the fattest woman in the world has become engaged to marry a chef. Susanne Eman, 33, revealed her controversial dream of reaching a target weight of over 115 stone last year – to become the biggest human ever. Now the mother-of-two, who currently weighs more than 54 stone, plans to [...]

Read the full story

I’m scared. I’m scared because I am just about scraping by at the minute, and the government is going to bring in changes meaning I’m not going to be able to provide for my children any more. I know the government says that for mums like me, payments will be protected, but what happens when [...]

Read the full story

The mother of a teenage thug who killed a pensioner in last summer’s riots tried to cover it up by destroying his clothes, a court heard yesterday. Lavinia Desuze is alleged to have shredded the distinctive T-shirt her 16-year-old son Darrell was wearing when he attacked 68-year-old Richard Mannington Bowes. Mr Bowes was trying to [...]

Read the full story

If you want a job doing properly, do it yourself, goes the old adage. And for millions of women across the UK, this familiar saying has an unwelcome ring of truth. A new study has revealed that women spend three hours a week redoing chores they consider their partner hasn’t done properly. Inadequate? Women complain [...]

Read the full story

A mother-of-one is considering having her right hand amputated and replaced with a prosthetic, after watching an inspiring TV documentary. Nicola Wilding, 35, lost the use of her right hand and arm after she was involved in a car crash 12 years ago. She says she has since struggled with everyday tasks and hit upon [...]

Read the full story

When a father gets a divorce and moves out, no one says he is worse than Hitler. That’s what happened to me. I was getting death threats. I was human garbage. Barbara Walters herself asked me what it was like for my children to know their mother didn’t love them or want them. Here’s what [...]

Read the full story