Modern women are expected to juggle work, homelife and motherhood, mostly by themselves.
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The pressure on new mums can be overwhelming, but culturally they are expected to go it alone.
Bored meeting.
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High fees and independence make consultancy a popular option for professionals with families.
We need to actively build a mother culture grounded in safety and acceptance.
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An environment rife with shame is a fertile breeding ground for conflict: pitting mother against mother.
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Having a baby in prison can be traumatic, so how can this issue be solved?
More than 7% of Western women choose not to have children.
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Women who publicly state their desire never to be mothers in the traditional sense challenge the idea that woman and mother are synonymous.
Don’t worry about being the perfect mom.
Mom and kids via www.shutterstock.com.
The quest to be a ‘perfect’ mother versus a ‘good’ mother may actually harm a mother’s parenting.
Bundles of joy.
Family via www.shutterstock.com.
Fall in love, have a baby, watch your happiness and satisfaction plummet. Psychology researchers know the transition to parenthood can be rough on relationships.
Delivering life lessons.
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Mothering Sunday comes just once a year, but mum’s help build the landscape of politics all year long.
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Some countries make it easier than others for women to have a family and keep on working.
Women in Kenya face issues of beatings, polygamy and being forgotten after bearing children.
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African women have had to explain themselves to a world that does not seem to understand them.
Nobody’s perfect – not you, and not your kids. And that’s OK.
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Feeling guilty and out of your depth as a parent? You’re not alone – and there are ways to turn the guilt you’re feeling into positive changes for your family.
Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1 (commonly known as Whistler’s Mother), by James McNeill Whistler (1871).
Wikimedia Commons
The famous portrait, usually resident in France, is on a rare tour in the US. From looking at it, one might assume its subject had a tranquil, even monotonous, life. But one would be wrong.
Life is naturally sunny for the ‘happy mother’ of social mythology, which makes it doubly difficult for mums when they are miserable.
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Women are supposed to be happy about motherhood – if they’re not their parenting is open to question. We have seen a ‘Parenting Hate’ backlash against this, but what’s needed most is better social support.
Moms are in a position to either encourage or discourage help from their spouses.
'Diaper' via www.shuttertock.com
Moms don’t have to be designated worriers.
It’s none of our business what Elton John and David Furnish’s kids’ birth certificates say.
EPA/Daniel Hambury
There’s nothing to start a debate like Germaine Greer letting fly. This time it was about Elton John’s family.
There’s a sense that people who want to be child-free are somehow draft-dodging the duty of parenthood – we’ve done it and suffered, so why haven’t you?
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Societies overwhelmingly endorse reproduction, but the pressure this places on people who don’t want to have kids may be putting their health at risk.
Since the start of the new millennium, South Africa has had to contend with an HIV epidemic and a set of confused policies to address it.
Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko
South Africa’s maternal mortality rate rose dramatically after 1998, almost doubling to 302 deaths per 100,000 live births by 2009.
The UK came 24th in a recent study of the best places to be a mother.
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Save The Children’s latest State of the World’s Mothers report highlights the impact of rising inequality on maternal deaths.
A 2012 survey found playing was top of dads’ caring list.
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Efforts to get fathers more involved in raising their kids often entail changing leave provisions, but research shows that’s not helping dads get more involved in caring for their children.
Ready for porridge!! Approaching six months baby Joe loves his mushed up food.
Olivia Carter
With a chuckle an old school friend of mine confessed that when he was a teenager he would try to destroy his best mate’s chances with the chicks by casually slipping this statement into conversation as…