Keren Moran and her partner, two mums from New South Wales, couldn't find enough quality books for their young daughter that illustrated families like hers. Some families have really important grandparents, some have twins or multiple kids, some live in big blended families. So she...
Can a career mum have it all? And can we have it without the guilt? Parents At Work CEO Emma Walsh and author Nicolette Rubinsztein chat in a podcast about Nicolette’s book ‘Not Guilty – 7 Strategies for Successful Career Mums’ In this podcast and they share...
A highly sensitive person herself, therapist Heidi Gaspar feels that the trait is a delight. Being highly sensitive certainly has its challenges but a glass-half-full approach lets me respond to opportunities. An Orchid-Dandelion metaphor by two psychologists in 2011 suggests two distinct sensitivity patterns, the more...
Penni Drysdale feels the heat of rejection as her four-year-old son adjusts to the arrival of his brother. He is jumping around like a crazed monkey amid myriad plastic toys that he’s pulled from a box that was out the back of the house. As is...
A little-known form of child abuse - parental alienation - is tearing up Australian families and denying children the love of both their parents. Melbourne dad Stan Korosi hasn’t seen his 18-year-old daughter for 10 years. He went through a difficult divorce and was horrified when his...
A dark gnawing secret replayed on Anne-Maree Brown's mind until motherhood made her call ‘scene’ on her past. For most of my young adult life, I kept a secret. A dark, gnawing secret that loomed large as the adult world approached. I was raped – a...
Unlike other tissue donations, if a woman in Australia needs an egg, or wants to donate one, she is largely left to work it out herself through advertising or searching for an ethnically compatible donor through other means. Accessing an egg donor, or becoming one,...
Kylie Ladd explores the issues that arise for children living with a mentally ill parent. … mental illness does not necessarily reduce one’s capacity to parent well… This morning, my mother didn’t get out of bed. So begins Melina Marchetta’s powerful novel Saving Francesca, in which a 16-year-old...
Margaret Langdon explores stories of families with children conceived through assisted reproductive technologies and the donations of others. About one in six Australians are affected by fertility problems. The techniques available to help these people seeking parenthood are known as assisted reproductive technologies (ART). These technologies involve...
Cathy Watson enters the uncertain world of premature babies and their parents. Barbara A* and her partner left the champagne unopened when their daughter Freya was born at 27 weeks’ gestation. Just as their daughter entered a new world, so too did they – as parents...
