Baby’s first pet: what pets are best for kids? One of the most rewarding bonds your child can make is with an animal. A pet not only provides warmth and companionship but also teaches life lessons such as responsibility around feeding, cleaning, and walking a pet...

Every parent should be concerned about the well-being of all children, especially those in state care. New Victoria Legal Aid (VLA) data shows that criminal charges are laid against at least two out of every five of their clients placed in residential care within 12 months...

From counterfeit ingredients to misleading labels, the world of food can sometimes be a realm of deception. Food fraud, a concerning issue, involves selling counterfeit or misleading food products to consumers. Surprisingly, even staples like honey can fall victim to this hidden menace. In a marketplace where...

How do men feel when they become fathers? A new podcast about dads, families, and work explores how our policies and organisations could (and should) change to support working fathers and their families. By Daniel Halliday, Dr Melissa Wheeler and Professor Cordelia FineWhen we spoke...

Increasing the rate of paid maternity leave, so it is tied to prior earnings, rather than just increasing the time off work, could lead to better and fairer outcomes for Australian families, reports researcher Esther Mirjam Girsberger It could also help the country by supporting women’s...

Research hints children under 5 can easily confuse dog emotions, Melissa Starling finds. To most of us, a dog showing its teeth is a pretty clear signal of a threat. In 1872, Charles Darwin first suggested animals showed emotions similar to ours in their body language,...

Pharmacologists Tina Hinton, Jessica Pace, and Nial Wheate look at which works best and when? In most cases, pain and fever relief is as simple as a trip to your local supermarket for some paracetamol or ibuprofen. While both are effective at reducing pain, they work in...

Movie classification decisions sometimes differ around the world, reports Children and Media Australia (CMA) In Australia, Barbie has a PG for Mild crude humour, innuendo, coarse language and slapstick violence. The UK, however, has classified it as 12A (which has legal force – children under 12 years...

There are some basic energy-saving tips that anyone who is conscious of their environmental footprint or looking to save money on bills will have heard time and time again. These are not those. We’ve gone down the unbeaten track to gather six surprising energy hacks that...

Education expert John Hattie’s new book draws on more than 130,000 studies to find out. In 2008, I published my book Visible Learning, which aimed to explain what works best to help student learning. At the time, others claimed it was the world’s largest evidence-based study...