At the weekend I attended a charity event – a family fun day to launch a new local branch of a national charity. As the charity has campaigning amongst its objectives, all of the prospective parliamentary candidates were invited to start building links and one showed up. After the opening speech he asked if could speak about [...]
Archive for the ‘Parents’ Category
Hijacking charity events for political gain (and failing!)
Posted in Children, Parents, Politics, tagged campaigning, election, politicians on March 29, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Mother’s Day
Posted in Children, Parents, tagged mothers on March 13, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Some of the LaptopMums contributors share their thoughts on Mother’s Day. We would love to hear yours in the comments section. Puddlepie:I’m apparently the best mummy in the whole wide world universe. I’m even better than all the Alien mummies. But I don’t feel like it much of the time. So much of my life [...]
International Women’s Day
Posted in Parents, Politics, tagged feminism on March 8, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Happy International Women’s Day! To celebrate, Laptopmums brings you a selection of today’s interesting, thought provoking or just plain entertaining articles. A subject close to our own collective heart: what do the politicians actually mean by ‘the women’s vote’? Lisa Ansell writes on the subject in an all women issue of Labour List: ‘If you [...]
Working mums in the doghouse
Posted in Children, Employment, Health, Parents, tagged bbc, research, working mother on March 4, 2010 | 5 Comments »
Here we go again: Children of working mums are less healthy than those who work part time. To the BBCs credit, they do at least briefly ask ‘what about Fathers’ – but this is yet another judgemental article, castigating full time work, and making assumptions about the type of parenting that goes on. I found [...]
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Posted in Employment, Parents, tagged childcare, grandparents, mothers on March 3, 2010 | 2 Comments »
A third of families use grandparents for childcare, according to the charity Grandparents Plus, often causing hardship for grandparents who retire early or cut their working hours in order to help out. The charity calls for these effort to be ‘recognised financially’ by the government, since free childcare often allows parents to go to work [...]
Should home educators pay the price for Khyra Ishaq?
Posted in Children, Education, Parents, Politics, tagged child protection, Education, government, legislation on February 27, 2010 | 13 Comments »
I read the harrowing case of Khyra Ishaq just before I cuddled my own daughter (3) to sleep last night. As I wrestled my arms out from under her, I held my face next to her podgy cheek. My thoughts turned to Khyra and, inevitably, food. My daughter loves breakfast. In the morning she takes [...]
Parent Power
Posted in Education, Parents, Politics, tagged Education, Labour, parenting, school on February 23, 2010 | 8 Comments »
Have you ever been involved with your children’s school PTA? Have you experienced cliques of parents in the school playground? Have you felt marginalised or even…dare I say it?…bullied by other parents?? I bet the answer in many cases is ‘yes’. We often experience political machinations amongst parents concerning many issues ranging from whether the [...]
Finding the Balance
Posted in Children, Parents, tagged parenting on February 22, 2010 | 3 Comments »
I don’t like the term ‘pushy parent’, yet I do intend to push my children. How do I find the balance, though, between encouraging and supporting my children, and being the kind of parent who focuses so much on the children’s potential that I forget to nurture them as I go? There’s also the danger [...]
Down and Disillusioned
Posted in Education, Parents, Politics, tagged election, expenses, government, Labour party, vote on February 20, 2010 | 5 Comments »
I know that if I had been born 100 years earlier that I would have been a suffragette, out chaining myself to railings, smashing windows and going on hunger strike. I feel so strongly about the fight for our right to vote that I would never, ever, ever, contemplate not voting. I’m not really a [...]
Too Much Too Young
Posted in Children, Parents, tagged career, pregnancy, teenagers on February 18, 2010 | 4 Comments »
In the late 1990s, when I was 18, I sat 3 A-levels and got good grades – an A for English Literature, a B for Business Studies and a C for French. I was accepted at my first choice of university to study law and took up my place 6 weeks after getting my A-level [...]
