“I never would have guessed you were from a broken home…” I distinctly remember the first time this adjective was applied to my family by a well-meaning, but misguided university lecturer at my graduation. Even as a very young woman, the response was instantly clear to me and I simply replied, “I’m not.” In reality…
The past year has been challenging for everyone. It has been particularly difficult for expectant mothers and families with babies and young children. The Prime Minister wants to build back better after the pandemic and two recent announcements may provide an opportunity to do this for the under threes and their families. The first is…
It is now a couple of years since I wrote a blog entitled “Thank goodness I was made redundant”. This redundancy coincided with my starting a family. In 2020, my colleagues at What About The Children?, Sir Denis Pereira Grey, and Philip and Diana Dean had two papers published in reviewed Journals. These dealt with…
“Winnicott: A Present for the Future’ is the title of an online conference in September to celebrate 50 years since the death of this ground-breaking paediatrician and child psychologist, who died in 1971, aged 74. Tickets will be available to book online from April 25th (email: contact@winnicott-trust.org.uk). So why are we celebrating this great man,…
Well, what a year we have just been through. Thankfully, the vaccine is giving us hope that life will get better. I was interested, but not surprised, when so many of those receiving the vaccine were asked what difference it would make, they replied, “I will be able to hold my grandchild” or “hug my…
In his recent Reith Lecture, Mark Carney, ex-Governor of the Bank of England, points out the danger that market values, rather than humanistic ones, increasingly permeate our lives. Unfortunately, for some considerable time, such a trend has been insistently evident in the world of the child. Since the late 1980s, Motherlove has morphed into the…