I was interested to learn recently that parents in the USA seem to be as sick of Peppa Pig as a lot of us over here are. Their gripes are quite different to mine though. To be fair, most people will differ from me, as I have a complete manifesto against the anthropomorphic pig. I …
In my eight years of writing this blog, I’ve published regular rants about the media’s representation of dads. And while I genuinely think that we’re in the early stages of a cultural shift in thinking, it’s agonisingly slow. Two news stories about dads caught my eye this week. They were opposite viewpoints of something very …
As I alluded to in my last post, we’re more than ready for the return to routine that comes with the new school year. To be honest, we were probably ready for it a week ago. Now, before we get started, this isn’t a whinge about my children. Sure, they’ve got on my nerves now and …
At the start of the summer holidays, we went clothes shopping. The hardest thing to find were shorts for our two-year-old daughter. To cut a long story short, we didn’t think hotpants were appropriate so came home empty-handed. While we were looking in one store, though, I spotted a T-shirt which really annoyed me. “I …
I was interested to read an article in Huffpost Parents this week. It reports on a claim that a family of four would need £40k a year to live comfortably. I have to admit that I’m somewhat surprised by this figure. Why? Well, we’re doing fine on a significantly smaller amount and there are five of …
With Father’s Day on the horizon, lists of the most important ‘dad skills’ are doing the rounds. With over seven years of blogging under my belt, I’ve seen a lot of these. And I really wish they weren’t a thing. I can see why people make these lists as marketing tools, of course. Society is slowly …
As a parent blogger, I receive a lot of press releases about kids’ books. One that arrived recently really stood out. At first for good reasons and then quite the opposite. The book in question features rhyming verse and colourful illustrations about fathers looking after their kids. “Brilliant!” I thought. “A title that celebrates hands-on …
Today was a sad day. We learned that, despite council tax increases, our local library – as well as six others in the county – is to close. For the last few months, I’ve been campaigning with a group of like-minded school parents to keep it open. We’ve worked really hard petitioning, raising awareness and …
The Government has today launched a new initiative aimed at increasing the uptake of shared parental leave. Unfortunately, the ‘Share the joy‘ campaign misses the point. When I read the headlines this morning, I naively thought that some much-needed policy change was on the way. Sadly not. It’s just raising awareness of a pre-existing option …
I was interested to read about a school banning pupils from dressing up as YouTubers and sports stars for its World of Work Day recently. I wrote about the amount of homework young children get earlier this week and it links to the same theme. Namely that we should let kids be kids. The rationale …