Children

It’s about this time of year – the darkest days of winter – when we traditionally get those newspaper articles lamenting the amount we consume over Christmas and how it’s all grossly commercial, which is bad because some kids go hungry; followed by the Thought for the Day piece about how we should all embrace poverty, which is what the Christian message is really about, rather than stuffing our fat faces and spending loads of money we don’t have. But to me what’s special about Christmas is that my children really enjoy being given presents, including the ones from Fr Christmas, now a sort of grandfather-god of consumerism. They’re still

The head-teacher of a primary school in East Sussex has written to parents asking them not to swear in front of their children, although reading between the lines I think swearing at them might be ok. Maybe if your kid is at this particular school you could ring up and clarify the matter. Anyway, according to research children hear their parents use six naughty words over the course of a week. I hope it means six different naughty words over the course of a week, rather than just six occasions in which the parents swore, because otherwise I’m seriously buggered. It’s just lucky that our daughter goes to bed before

Like most foreigners who move to Britain, I was struck when I first arrived by how much people worry about which school their children go to. Even couples who don’t have kids seem to fret about where to send them. But now, working in the field of education reform, it makes sense to me. The disparity between a bad state school and a good one is huge, which in turn produces an enormous difference to the life chances of children attending them. It’s linked to money. To get into the good state schools here, you need to afford to live next to them. And if you live in a sink

The first sign that something was wrong with Ludo was when he complained of a tummy ache. This was after school and hardly a rare occurrence so I didn’t think anything of it. The following morning, he still had a tummy ache. Not a good enough reason to miss school in my opinion, but Caroline thought otherwise. Before I left for a meeting I told him to eat some toast. ‘You’re probably just hungry,’ I said. By lunchtime the pain had become localised on the lower left-hand side of his stomach and Caroline decided to Google his symptoms. It sounded like it could be appendicitis so she took him to

Every September teachers up and down the land welcome new classes of children. Each child they see in front of them is visibly unique and will present them with different challenges as the year progresses. Some will learn easily and well while others will find learning new skills difficult and need additional support. Some, especially the youngest ones, will need the adults in the classroom to help them with reading and numbers, others with concentrating and sitting still, and still others with making friends. Particularly vulnerable children may need help in all of these areas. Children differ and it is important therefore that schools provide equal but different opportunities for

I’m not sure where I stand on the tax-breaks for married couples, announced with great hoo-ha by the government and derided by the opposition. On the one hand, as a god-fearing authoritarian bigot, I approve of people who choose to live as Jesus Christ himself wished us to. On the other hand, I do not think that marriage per se is the answer to the social problems occasioned by broken families (which are almost infinite). The problem is people having children too quickly, when they are either married or otherwise, and without thinking through the consequences. Or perhaps being too stupid to think through the consequences. The hassle of getting

Should people who comment under YouTube videos be deciding the fate of our country? That’s the frightening scenario proposed by Ed Miliband, who wants to give 16-year-olds the vote because, as he put it, it will make them ‘part of our democracy’. Or, in other words, the electorate’s opinion is no more important than a child’s. There is nothing progressive about allowing children to vote, any more than it is progressive to allow kids to sit on juries or take out mortgages. These things all involve the ability to make judgments, which is not sufficiently developed in adolescence. Voting isn’t just a right that makes you feel ‘part of democracy’;

The ONS have published its list of popular names, and so it’s time for that annual ritual of debating whether Mohammed, if you include all eight spellings, is really the most popular name in Britain. It depends; if you include spelling variations in a name, do you also include diminutives, in which case Oliver and Ollie, and Henry and Harry, outnumber all Mo’s. But then diminutives are sort of separate names where variations are not, Isabella, Lisa and Jack all having started as diminutives, now surely names in their own right. Why on earth does this pedantry pop up? Whether you think Mohammed tops the list says a lot about

Blimey, George Osborne has got something right! Astonishing scenes. Suppose the government thought it a good idea for us to eat more bananas and, recognising that bananas have become extremely expensive, offered those of us struggling to afford bananas a modest subsidy to make it easier to purchase bananas. We might reasonably object to this on the grounds that the government should not be in the business of subsidising bananas but it would be strange if those people with no desire to purchase bananas complained that the problem with the banana-subsidy is that it does not cover the purchase of apples. That, essentially, seems to be the complaint from “stay-at-home”

I was delighted to hear that the Duchess of Cambridge had a healthy baby boy. The build-up to the royal birth during the last week has been phenomenal. Even my tiny ‘Contented Little Baby’ office has been affected by the birth of our future king — our email inbox is getting fuller by the day with inquiries from interested mothers about how I think the royal baby should be brought up — so much so that we have had to allocate a file called ‘Baby Cambridge’! The majority of emails ask what advice I would give the Duchess to help her through the early weeks of motherhood. The truth is

The most sweeping censorship is always the most objectionable. In principle, however, there is nothing wrong with David Cameron’s sweeping proposal that the customers of internet service providers must prove that they are 18 or over before they can watch online pornography. The rule for liberal democracies is (or ought to be) that consenting adults are free to watch, read and listen to what they want. It stops child pornography – because by definition children are not consenting adults – and it could stop children accessing pornographic sites. Children are no more able to give informed consent to watching pornography than they are to appearing in it – if ‘appear’

A few years ago, I got the shock of my life when a girl I was sitting next to at a 21st birthday party asked me if I was a dad. ‘Are you asking if I have children?’ I said. ‘No, I’m asking if you’re the father of one of the guests.’ I almost fell off my chair. Until that moment, I had no idea that young people see me as middle-aged. I was 45 at the time so it shouldn’t have come as a shock, but I like to think I’ve inherited my father’s youthful appearance. Indeed, until that moment I was still pitching travel editors with the ‘amusing’

Should the government subsidise married couples? Arguing about whether births outside wedlock lead to worse childhood outcomes, or whether broken homes and such outcomes both stem from some third factor, really depends on one’s worldview and which studies one chooses to ignore. My own suspicion, based on the wisdom of the ages and what I read in the Daily Mail, is that social and personal problems are likely to be more prevalent on average among those who have children out of wedlock, which makes proving the case for marriage hard. In addition, the actual absence of a father on average makes a difference. But how could this be proved except

When did it become a tradition to organise expensive birthday treats for your children? I don’t want to sound like a character in Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen sketch, but when I was a boy the most I could hope for on my birthday was a quick game of football with my dad in Highgate Woods. It would have been completely unthinkable for my parents to actually organise a party for me, complete with an entertainer. Nowadays, any celebration that costs less than £200 is considered child cruelty. And before anyone tells me to ‘check my privilege’, I don’t think this phenomenon is confined to the well off. On the contrary,