Children

As we sat down at the Royal Opera House to watch one of the Royal Ballet’s soloists perform Letter to Tchaikovsky, an announcement began. ‘Tchaikovsky is understood to have been a gay man, who was forced by the conventions of society to marry a woman,’ explained an earnest female voice from off-stage. ‘The music, words and dance describe the pain and guilt he experienced as a closeted queer person… but like many others before and since, the fact that he was queer meant that he had to stay secret about who he really was… It is still illegal to be gay or queer in 69 countries, and queer people continue to

When my youngest son Charlie was seven he was talent-spotted by a QPR scout who saw him playing football in the park and invited to try out for the junior academy. I struggled to take this seriously – he still couldn’t ride a bicycle – but duly turned up at a ‘sports academy’ in Willesden, a secondary school, where the trials were held. To my astonishment, a QPR coach told me Charlie had potential and offered to enrol him in a programme that involved spending two hours every Wednesday evening at this school. This wasn’t the junior academy, but a level below. Charlie was keen and after talking it over

If you are looking for a pointer for the future of the world, the free-diving fisherwomen on the matriarchal, shamanistic South Korean island of Jeju are not an obvious example of where we’re heading. Because the haenyeo are famously unique. And famously hardy. But what is happening to them should concern us all. In simple wetsuits they spend hours in the cold, clear waters, seeking out sea slugs, oysters, conches and abalone. They are fiercely independent – they spearheaded resistance to the Japanese in the 1930s and 1940s. But here’s the thing, as Nari (age 70) tells me in the haenyeo’s coastal mud-room: ‘We are probably the last. We have

The lost boys Sir: The only statement in your powerful leading article (‘Boy trouble’, 17 August) which can be challenged is that ‘the plight of poor white boys is a new burning injustice’. It is certainly not ‘new’. Even 40 years ago when the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) produced policies designed to counter inequality affecting girls, it was obvious that the problem was no less serious for white working-class boys. But the subject was highjacked by those obsessing about girls, with the results described in your article 40 years later. During the hijacking (for which he was not responsible), ILEA’s former leader Sir Ashley Bramall said to me: ‘Perhaps

Labour have become alarmed by the strict, ‘cruel’ approach to discipline in schools and the rise in the number of pupils being excluded. Teachers will need to be more relaxed about ‘bad behaviour’. But though moving the goalposts of acceptable behaviour may reduce the exclusion figures, it is bound to increase the burden of disruptive behaviour on teachers and other pupils. My own experience of teaching tells me that the new guidelines will increase bullying and reduce special needs inclusion, undermine the most disadvantaged families and ultimately increase educational inequality. So why are they doing it? The simplest explanation is just the return to dominance, in the post-Conservative era, of

It’s only when you read the old stories again, to a child maybe, that you become aware of the extent to which the characters still live inside your mind, bobbing about just below the level of consciousness. I still find myself puzzling over the stories collected by the Brothers Grimm, decades after I first read them. How could Little Red Riding Hood have avoided being eaten? (We read the original, merciless version.) What should Hansel and Gretel have done? Any good book leaves its mark, but the characters from the books you loved as a child embed themselves. They inform the way you think as an adult, which is why

Before he became Prime Minister, Keir Starmer admitted he was concerned about what life in Downing Street might be like for his children. It was, he said, the ‘single thing’ that kept him awake at night. What’s notable is that we aren’t even aware of Starmer’s children’s names. They are teenagers but that’s about all we know about them. They were not photographed when Starmer and his wife Victoria entered No. 10, nor have they been seen since. ‘We do try to protect them… we don’t use photos of them in any way,’ Starmer said. There seem to be no pictures in the public domain of Starmer with his children.

I know straight away, from the look on my friend Alice’s face, whether it’s a ‘bad carer’ day. Five years ago Alice had a fall and she can’t now do stairs, so she lives just on the second floor of her maisonette in north London. When I drop round, the carer is usually in the kitchen and Alice in her bedroom/sitting room next door. If it’s a bad carer day, she’ll look towards the kitchen, do a thumbs-down sign, purse her lips and shake her head, then she’ll wriggle her shoulders – hoity toity – to indicate that she feels bossed about. Alice is entirely dependent on the care company

You will have heard, I am sure, of the Conservatives’ recent largesse towards working parents, as their ‘free’ childcare policy has been much publicised. Fifteen hours a week for your kid, from nine months old to the grand age of four. You may not, however, have seen the new rules governing au pairs, which came into effect last month. Our dear, wise governors, while giving with one hand, have taken away with another; they have placed more obstacles in the way of those who need help with looking after their children. They’ve made it even harder to have an au pair. Children, of course, have a tendency to grow past the

It’s 7.02 p.m. and I’m standing outside my house by the bins smoking a fag. Upstairs, I can hear that my six-year-old is awake but I’m choosing to ignore her. How repellent, I hear you murmur. And it is repellent, in many ways. I am a smoker and a mother, hardly the Madonna and child. How can these two realities ever be reconciled? They jam against each other all day long, uncomfortably.  Smoking is bloody great. If you’re a smoker that is. Otherwise it’s just disgusting It’s OK, I tell myself, every single day. I never smoke in front of them. Instead, I smoke when they’re in bed, when the

One parent in our class WhatsApp chat raised a pressing concern: her daughter was coming home every day with a full water bottle. Were other parents faced with the same unsettling discovery? There followed a lengthy discussion of how much water was left in each child’s bottle. Some children, when confronted, testified that they had drunk water during the day and then filled up the bottle at school. Anyone who expects children to enjoy cooked courgette has forgotten what it was like to be a child This was not good enough for the concerned parent. She took the matter to the teacher. ‘I am concerned my daughter is not given

Something strange is happening with teenagers’ mental health. In Britain, the US, Australia and beyond, the same trend can be seen: around the middle of the last decade, the number of young people with anxiety, depression and even suicidal tendancies started to rise sharply. Jonathan Haidt, a psychology professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, noticed a change when students who were brought up with smartphones started to arrive on campus. They were angrier. More fragile. More likely to take offence. Social media, he concluded, was shaping their view that society is in permanent conflict, which in turn led to ideas about microaggressions and competitive victimhood. All this,