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The bond between sisters Luan Moreton, Kim Jones and Jemma Dennis could not be any stronger. Losing their 32-year-old mother, Rita, to breast cancer in 1986, when they were 12, seven and four, they share an exceptional closeness. What they didn’t know until five years ago, however, is that they share something else too; something [...]

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A mother who claims she does not remember abandoning her two young sons at a gas station said her son later told her ‘Mommy you lost me’. Sarah Hatfield disappeared for 12 hours after leaving her children aged two and four in her van in Colorado along with her car keys, purse and mobile on [...]

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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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Being annoyed by Gwyneth Paltrow is the very definition of pointlessness – like railing against the existence of death, or buying anti-cellulite cream. Yet at times it’s impossible to resist. The multi-millionaire film star usually doles out impractical lifestyle advice through her website, Goop. But this week she gave an interview to the fashion magazine [...]

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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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This is the touching moment a young daughter tenderly cuts her cancer-stricken mother’s hair to prepare her for chemotherapy. In the intimate video Lola Etchells, 6, is also shown shaving the head of her mother Sarah, 44, who was diagnosed with breast cancer last September. Intimate: Lola carefully clips her mother Sarah’s hair The footage [...]

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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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Miss Paltrow, who won an Oscar for her role in Shakespeare in Love, said she cooks for her husband, Coldplay star Chris Martin, and bathes their children, Apple, 7, and Moses, 5. She rises at 7am and works on her website and cookery books while her children are at school, before preparing dinner for her [...]

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Squeezed into a four-bedroom council house in Guernsey lives a woman branded the UK’s most prolific single mother. Joanne Watson, 40, has 14 children, ranging in age from three to 22 and survives largely on state benefits after the breakdown of her marriage in 2010. Once celebrated in endless articles in the press for her [...]

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These three sisters look a picture of health – but they have had to take drastic action to stay that way. Luan Moreton, Kim Jones and Jemma Dennis lost their mother to breast cancer when she was only 32, and tests revealed that they had inherited the same faulty gene. They decided to have preventive [...]

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A girl of five whose pregnant mother was mugged by two teenage thugs told a judge in a handwritten note that she  saw one of them ‘hit the baby in her tummy’. The girl added that she hoped that Nathaniel Moffett and Thaberi Francis ‘don’t hurt any more people’. The pair assaulted the youngster’s mother [...]

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What makes an entrepreneur? BBC Arabic’s Marwa Amer and Tom Santorelli spoke to Yasmine El-Mehairy about setting up an Egyptian website designed specifically for mothers. When Yasmine El-Mehairy looked online for pregnancy advice for her sister-in-law in 2010, she was bombarded with conflicting opinions and what she thought were old wives’ tales. She identified a [...]

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Even if the arch feminist Germaine Greer did once dismiss Cherie Blair as a mere “concubine”, women’s rights have always been close to the heart of the former prime minister’s wife. Now, however, Mrs Blair, who runs a foundation for women, says it is a “myth” that members of her sex can ever have it [...]

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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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A woman jumped to her death from a cliff top because she feared she was developing the dementia she had seen take a grip of her late mother. Unable to face becoming a burden on her family, Judith Iles, 60, wrote a suicide note to her husband and son which read: ‘So sorry – I’m [...]

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Peering at the two blue lines on the pregnancy test, Debbie Hughes reached for her reading glasses to check that her eyes weren’t deceiving her. Fast approaching her 53rd birthday, she thought she was too old to conceive naturally and, besides, she was on the Pill. It was impossible, she thought, her stomach ‘lurching with [...]

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Experts say that a mum who nurtures and cares for her kids can set them up in good health right, even if they’ve grown up in grinding poverty. Research has already proven that kids who grow up in poor areas are more likely to suffer from chronic illness in adulthood, but US researchers were puzzled [...]

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As a toddler, my son Henry used to sleep in a nightie, after I gave up on trying to wrestle him into pyjamas. Later, he took to calling himself Stephanie, Jean, Olive or, most frequently, Miss Argentina. His favourite game was wearing his elder sisters’ sequin party dresses while running his imaginary boutique ‘Slinx’ or [...]

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Ms Franklin’s 37-year old son Simon Ellis was a passenger in a car that crashed into a wall in Great Wenham, near Ipswich, on June 26, 1992, when he was just 18. He lost the use of his arms and legs, suffered brain damage and two skull fractures. Doctors said he would never talk again. [...]

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A mother wanted on counterfeiting charges has been accused of leaving her five-year-old son alone in a hotel room so she could gamble. Xiao Xu Wu was charged on Wednesday with risk of injury to a minor after her son called 911 and said he was left alone at a Mohegan Sun Casino in New [...]

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What is the most provocative headline you can think of? The Wall Street Journal came close in January last year when it ran a book extract under the banner: “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior.” Oh dear God. The only women who should call themselves mother superior are nuns. The extract was by Amy Chua, a [...]

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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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The Prime Minister was forced to deny pranging his children’s nanny Gita Lama’s car after offering to reverse park it for her at Downing Street on Tuesday. Mr Cameron had just returned from a morning run with his trainer, Matt Roberts, when he noticed Mrs Lama, 32, struggle to squeeze her newly bought Honda Jazz [...]

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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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With a size six figure and 36DD chest, this petite blonde thought she would have no trouble getting into a nightclub. But 28-year-old Lisa Woodman has been banned from every hotspot in her home town – after being told she is too old to wear skimpy outfits. The furious mother-of-four was barred from three venues [...]

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Bread-winning wives who earn more than their stay-at-home husbands are crippled by guilt about ‘abandoning’ their children, research reveals today. About 1.4million families in Britain rely on a high-earning woman whose husband or boyfriend is raising their children full-time, or works part-time. In this dramatic reversal of the traditional family set-up, four in ten mothers [...]

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Whether it’s Victoria Beckham (back to a skinny size 6 just weeks after giving birth to baby Harper), model Miranda Kerr (rarely seen out of tiny leather shorts, with baby on hip) or even presenter Myleene Klass (back in a teeny bikini), it seems not a week goes by without a celebrity pinging back into [...]

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When an elegant French mother confided her embarrassment about the time it had taken to get her son to sleep through the night, Pamela Druckerman was all ears. With a six-month-old who woke several times in the small hours, she assumed it would be comforting to share the nightmare. Until, that is, she found out [...]

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There’s nothing new about a celebrity mother heading to the tattoo parlour to celebrate the birth of a child. From Angelina Jolie to Victoria Beckham, the indelible mark of inked artwork goes-hand-in-hand with many an A-list baby in Hollywood. But the trend is fast-spreading, and mothers across America are opting to symbolise their children’s lives [...]

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Rula Lenska reckons grandmothers should be given maternity leave. “My daughter, Lara, is a paediatric nurse, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t going to need me after she gives birth,” the actress tells me. Rula has just finished touring in a production of Calendar Girls and says, with the birth imminent, she isn’t taking on [...]

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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 Taiwanese woman, sold to a family as a slave at the age of seven, has just been reunited with the mother that sent her away. Going by the fake name ‘Isabel’ for fear that her former owners may track her down, the domestic slave spent around 20 years in squalid conditions, dreaming of the [...]

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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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In the small hilly Indian state of Meghalaya, a matrilineal system operates with property names and wealth passing from mother to daughter rather than father to son – but some men are campaigning for change….. ……. “If you want to know how much the Khasis favour women just take a trip to the labour ward [...]

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Tiger Moms, as made famous by Amy Chua’s infamous book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, may have it all wrong. Fiercely pushy Chinese mothers, whose parenting style heaps pressure onto their young ones to succeed both academically and in pastimes, may in fact contribute to low self-esteem and high levels of depression. Professor Desiree [...]

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Undeterred by the tepid reviews that Sophie Dahl received for her television cookery series, her fellow model Donna Air tells me about her own culinary ambitions. “I can’t cook like chefs like Heston [Blumenthal], but I love food, so I’d like to work more in the field,” says Air, who has a daughter, Freya, eight, [...]

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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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Jenny Genge was 34 when she made the decision to have a hysterectomy. For nearly two decades she’d suffered the agony of endometriosis and, after trying everything from hormone therapy to laser surgery, this dramatic solution was all that was left to her. ‘I’d had years of terrible pain,’ says Jenny, an administrator from Minehead, [...]

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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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A mother who has just given birth to twins – bringing her number of children to 11 – refuses to claim benefits despite the size of her family. Tania Sullivan, from Hoo, Kent, gave birth to twins Elizabeth and Anna in October. Amazingly, the 37-year-old only gave up work as a recruitment consultant after the [...]

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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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For the first time, a moms-only catwalk show, featuring fashion styles targeted at busy mothers and modelled by moms, will be included in the New York Fashion Week line-up. Strut: The Fashionable Mom Show will, according to WWD, give women inspiration when it comes to wearing outfits that are not simply kid-friendly but can be [...]

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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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Anyone who remembers Pulling, the fabulous and fabulously filthy comedy that Sharon Horgan co-wrote and starred in (and which was criminally not recommissioned by some eeeediot at the BBC), might be surprised by this. How to be a Good Mother with Sharon Horgan (Channel 4)? Really? Isn’t that a bit like How to be Sober [...]

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A pregnant security worker who tried to steal a television during rioting in Croydon was spared jail today. Laura Foley, 22, admitted taking the flatscreen TV from outside a branch of Argos shortly after helping a terrified mother and baby escape the mob. Judge Roger Chapple at Inner London crown court said the offence was [...]

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A mother has told how her daughter was left unconscious after a hospital issued medicine that was incorrectly labelled. Three-year-old Ruby Plummer was diagnosed with epilepsy last March, a condition which affects the brain and causes seizures. The youngster was prescribed buccal midazolam, a muscle relaxant which is rubbed into the gums and used to [...]

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