Parent Pages new website

It was a day like any other. I got back from work, called out my wife’s name, Kim, and waited for my little boy, Jobe, then two, to come running up to me as usual. Nothing happened; the house was silent. The washing was still on the line, so I assumed they’d popped out. Day turned [...]

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Singles who long for children without the obligation of romantic involvement can now search for their perfect ‘co-parenting’ match online, thanks to a new website. Launched last week, Modamily calls itself: ‘The first online community to facilitate introductions between responsible, like-minded adults committed to co-parenting a child.’ So far the New-York based service that caters [...]

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Even now, I can still remember the exact spot in my bedroom where my mother was standing as she announced she was divorcing my father. My parents had been due to emigrate to Australia for a ‘fresh start’ after years of affairs, separations and recriminations. I was ten so I still believed in ‘happily-ever-afters’. I [...]

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Fathers will get improved contact with their children following divorce, amid plans to rewrite the law governing custody disputes. A ministerial working group will decide how to amend the Children’s Act 1989 and might include in it a “presumption of shared parenting”. The changes are part of an overhaul in family law that is described [...]

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New rules will be “much clearer that it is vital for children to have an ongoing relationship with both parents”, the Department for Education said. However ministers looked set to disappoint fathers’ rights campaigners by ruling out any legal guarantee of equal access. A review led by former mandarin David Norgrove last year rejected the [...]

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A mother eyed me curiously at my sons’ school fair, where I was manning the kitchen, baking baguettes and heating up soup. ‘You’re a real Beta Male, aren’t you?’ she said. For a moment, I thought I’d misheard her. ‘You mean a Better Male?’ I asked. ‘No,’ she replied. ‘A Beta Male, as in, not [...]

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A disabled pensioner has been kicked out of his family home by his 25-year-old daughter after getting his blind lover, 22, pregnant. Retired lorry driver Edward Taylor, 65, was told to leave the bungalow he shared with his daughter, Kelly, after beginning his love affair with young girlfriend Emma Gough. The unlikely sweethearts are now [...]

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When his son Daniel was given just months to live without a lifesaving transplant, devoted father David made a brave decision. His son was suffering from a rare liver condition and it was unlikely that surgeons would find a donor liver in time. So he decided to step forward and risk his life to donate [...]

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Parents who set up their own businesses would be in line for a £900-a-year tax break under plans for this year’s Budget being considered by George Osborne. The Chancellor is looking at extending childcare vouchers, which help 700,000 working parents save on the cost of a childminder or nursery, to self-employed mothers and fathers. The [...]

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The children have left home, the house is too big, the nesting years are over. What happens next? Do you set off together and roam the world, buy into a retirement development, or help the young get a foot on the ladder? The older generation own most of the property equity in this country, giving [...]

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Well flay me senseless with birch twigs in a banya if I’m not (yet again) out of synch with the real world. To join the list of all the other things I, rather unfairly, haven’t got – energy, toned upper forearms, a completed tax return – I must now add a househusband. Over the past [...]

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Housekeeping and exercise are both chores that, though essential, can be tedious to carry out on a regular basis. But one man believes he has found a solution that is both time-effective and fun: combining the two to create a cleaning regime that doubles as a workout. Steve Markovich, 57, from Crescent Springs, Kentucky, has [...]

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I’ve spotted them at the school gates, looking dazed and slightly dishevelled as they hand over packed lunches and field trip slips. Traces of glue stick to their fingers from a late night spent building a pyramid out of cereal packets for a class project. The stay-at-home dads used to be a rare sight but [...]

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The number of househusbands has tripled over the past 15 years, new figures have revealed. Last year, 62,000 men were classed as ‘economically inactive’ while their partners go out to work, compared to just 21,000 in 1996. This follows on from a recent survey which also found that there are 1.4million men across the UK [...]

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A father whose son drowned in rough seas off Anglesey has praised the “unstinting bravery” of the friend who died trying to save him. Lewis Darroch, from Valley, dived into the water at Cable Bay on 24 August last year when Callum Mackay, also 22, from Llanfairpwll, got into trouble. Mr Darroch was forced to [...]

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A pedestrian killed on a road in Cumbria died saving his disabled son’s life, his family has said. George Tyson was walking with his son on the A5087 at Conishead Bardsea on Sunday when they were hit by a car. The 61-year-old, of Ulverston, died at the scene. His son, Garry, was injured, but not [...]

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Every so often a new parenting book triggers the sort of conflicting passions most recently associated with the Arab Spring. Pamela Druckerman’s French Children Don’t Throw Food, is just such an incendiary work. We mothers are a notoriously touchy lot at the best of times, so when another woman dares to suggest there might be [...]

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I get a text from Aidan’s school saying that he’s been unable to hand in his history homework because the battery on his laptop is dead. Can I, as soon as possible, replace it, the teacher asks. I text Aidan – this is all very 21st-century – and ask him if he made up the [...]

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I can still hear my sister’s voice, shaking with suppressed emotion, as she told me that our 82-year-old father had died of the pneumonia he’d contracted a few days earlier. Mixed emotions crowded into my thoughts as I listened to her tear-filled voice down the phone: shock, of course, even though his death was half [...]

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I’m not sure it’s possible to be anything but naive when moving abroad. Nevertheless, when after 18 months in the Netherlands we moved to France for my husband’s work as a marine engineer (me, Scottish; husband, Kiwi; children, indeterminate), we thought we were pretty sussed at this living-overseas business. In my head, I figured we [...]

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A father is setting up a dance school for boys after being inspired by his ballet-loving son. Tim Stirrup is applying to open a free school, which he says could become the first state-funded dance school in the country. He took action after seeing friends of his son David, 13, giving up the hobby when [...]

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The two most-feared questions are ‘Why is the moon sometimes out in the day?’ and ‘Why is the sky blue?’ – but 65 per cent of parents are puzzled by scientific questions from their children. Just under a quarter – 24 per cent of a survey of 2,000 parents – admit to being frustrated and [...]

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New research has linked fathers’ weights to their childrens’ – finding that an obese man is more likely to have obese children. The Australian study, published in the International Journal of Obesity, looked at the weights of eight- and nine-year-old children from two-parent families where one parent was obese. The report found that ‘having an [...]

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A wife who cared for her dying husband has revealed that the experience made her mentally ‘crash’ – essentially driving her to the brink of madness. Speaking to ABC News, Catherine Graves, 45, described the trauma of caring for her husband, who had brain cancer, and explained that the lack of support she felt as [...]

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A boy of ten trapped up to his waist in thick mud was rescued after his quick-thinking dad used a tip he learnt from Bear Grylls. Schoolboy Harry Brooks plunged waist-deep into the quagmire in freezing conditions after running in to help his younger brother find a lost shoe. Harry had been walking with his [...]

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I’m not sure how old I was when I was first instructed that boys don’t cry – at a guess, maybe six or seven. Once it began, it came at me from all angles: family, teachers, friends, the myriad voices of media and culture. Like pretty much all boys, I learned that tears and sobs [...]

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It’s been suggested women and children were not given priority for lifeboats when the Costa Concordia capsized. But are there rules governing who leaves a sinking ship first? It’s a famous moment in the Titanic story. “Women and children first!” went the cry as the liner listed ever more precariously. It’s too early to know [...]

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Taxpayers are forking out thousands of pounds a year on DNA paternity tests after mothers seeking maintenance wrongly identified the father of their child. Last year, around £100,000 went on tests which turned out to be the wrong man because the mother has slept with so many men that she has no idea who the [...]

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The great tragedy of modern parenting is that we’ve forgotten its history – and mothers are paying the price. Contrary to popular belief, the superdad who takes on a serious share of childcare and housework is not a new invention. Before the industrial revolution – a mere couple of hundred years ago – most men [...]

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Jean Gross, the outgoing ‘communication champion’ for children, said parents should be advised by text to switch the television off, if they had it on all day, and reminded to speak to their babies. She raised the idea in her last report on how to improve the speaking, reading and writing skills of children. Gross [...]

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Talking to other fathers at a kid’s party is awkward. I go to pick up Ed from a friend’s birthday bash. The party bags are still being distributed and the other dads and I mill around the kitchen waiting to whisk our offspring away. I don’t know why, but I always feel like an outsider [...]

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My father is turning 90 soon, and, though he is sprightly for his age, I worry that time is running out for him. He fell out with my brother more than 50 years ago, and they rarely meet. It upsets me and I’d like to find a way for them to be reconciled before it’s [...]

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It’s a question some new mothers and fathers may secretly wonder about, but when asked who her favourite parent is this adorable baby showed little hesitation. The video of Australian Mick Tippett quizzing his young daughter Maddie is one that many fathers can probably relate to. During the hilarious video Mick repeatedly asks one-year-old Maddie [...]

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Job hunters seeking work at 100 of Britain’s biggest firms may be asked to avoid listing their school on application forms under rules to end the influence of the old boy network. The blue chip companies – which  employ two million staff – have signed up to a voluntary code under which application forms will [...]

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An IT worker who feared he might never have children after being paralysed from the waist down in a rugby accident is celebrating the birth of his daughter. John Power, 34, was just 18-years-old when he broke his neck during a heavy tackle whilst playing his first professional rugby match. The 6’3” sportsman, who was [...]

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Sherlock’s Benedict Cumberbatch, at the age of 35, regrets not yet being a father. Here four male writers talk about their own urge – or otherwise – to procreate. Richard Godwin Age: 30 Children: 0 When playing Sherlock Holmes, Benedict Cumberbatch is like a shaken-up Bollinger bottle of emotion. When he steps out of costume, [...]

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When I flew back home to New Zealand last October I expected – or perhaps hoped – that my father John would already be dead. He had been diagnosed 11 years previously with a cancer that had spread outside the  prostate. But after an operation, he defied the odds and had enjoyed remarkably good health [...]

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He was there in spirit, but sadly not in person. Stephen Hawking missed his own 70th birthday party yesterday at Cambridge University on doctor’s advice – he was recovering at home from an infection that had put him in hospital for a few days last week. continues …  ”My mother realised something was wrong and [...]

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Groom-to-be Christopher Dixon went on the mother of all benders just days before his wedding – taking his baby daughter along to the celebration. But the party went sour when he LOST her on the way home and was so hungover he didn’t realise his mistake for nine hours. And when the 17-month-old was found [...]

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My new boyfriend is away on holiday, and strangely, I rather miss him. I say strange, as I don’t normally miss boyfriends. Usually I breathe a sigh of relief that I get to spend a week or two not having to be nice, or clear time for them in my diary, or share the bathroom in the [...]

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Stuart Lawrence idolised his older brother Stephen. He thought him the ‘coolest thing in the world’. There was his charisma, good looks, his clothes, the effortless way he excelled on the sports field and in the classroom. And as older brothers should, Stephen always looked out for Stuart, protecting him, for instance, when he felt [...]

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Sleepless nights are the bane of every new parent’s life. But one weary father has not only helped stop them – he’s making £60,000 a year in the process. Matthew Nifield, 33, invented a phone app to send his twin daughters to sleep after he found certain sounds made them nod off. Land of nod: [...]

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When Gaby Hinsliff resigned as political editor of The Observer in 2009 many at the newspaper were very surprised. Of course she had a toddler at home and a working husband but couldn’t she stagger on regardless like everyone else? Yes, she explained in her swansong article, she could. But she didn’t want to. Leaving [...]

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A doting dad lost an nine stone in just six months after being shamed into dieting when he became too fat to play with his young daughter. Morbidly-obese Chris Willis, 47, tipped the scales at 27st 7lbs following a lifetime of fry-ups, takeaways and pork pies. The painter and decorator had to take long pauses [...]

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A Vietnam veteran has met his 47-year-old son – that he was never even sure he had – for the first time thanks to the internet.

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‘We both realised at the same time what had happened … I felt physically sick’

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Teenagers often dread the moment when their embarrassing parents do something mortifying in front of their friends, messing up their closely-cultivated too-cool-for-school image.

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It’s hard to ban tattoos if you’ve got one yourself – especially one with homoerotic heritage

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Father makes heartbreaking YouTube video in desperate bid to track down his runaway teenage daughter

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‘New Fathers 4 Justice’ campaigners say they wanted to deliver ‘seasonal message from all alienated fathers’

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