Parenting

Today

12 October 2026

The trouble with raising sons

In 2019, our second son was born and our family was, to my mind, complete. Just two years later, my wife sought to persuade me that I did not know my mind. It only took her three more years to succeed. In 2024, our third child was born: another son. That was not what my wife had ordered, and Lionel Richie’s promise of ‘once, twice, three times a lady’ had turned out to be empty words. I’ve seen too many teenage boys shrug their shoulders when asked what they intend to do when they leave school In many cultures and countries, three sons would deem us truly blessed. But surveying the disaster zone of the playroom, we knew we were instead truly messed. A recurrent theme on Mumsnet is posts about ‘gender disappointment’.

Wednesday

17 June 2026

Lara Prendergast

Beware the ‘matrescence’ con

Every so often, a fashionable new concept is born. Witness the arrival of "matrescence," which, for the uninitiated, is a phrase used to describe the physical, psychological, emotional and social transition a woman undergoes when becoming a mother. Or, as my mother and grandmother would have put it, and perhaps yours too: motherhood. "Matrescence" first appeared in the 1970s, coined by the medical anthropologist Dana Raphael, but it seems to be reaching maturity now. Advertisements splashed across the back page of the New York Times make the case for the inclusion of the word in the dictionary. A "global movement" is being launched (by a social networking site for women and a company that sells baby bottles) to put matrescence on the cultural map.