Family

Every January, my sisters and I would be forced into a stinking hot car that, according to Mum, Dad had forgotten to service, and we’d argue our way to a camping ground. There we would argue some more and shower in a communal block where everyone wore thongs, so as to avoid that classic ‘70s foot disease, tinea.

As Dad’s “short cuts” meant that the trip had taken us around the same amount of time as flying to Russia, we would have had precisely one day to “relax”. Or as an adult might put it: “Shut up, you’re on holidays and you’ll bloody well enjoy yourself.”

On the way home we’d be treated to a night at a motel called something enticingly foreign like La Stupenda. If the health inspectors hadn’t been tipped off, we would race each other to dive into the filthy swimming pool which bore no resemblance to the aquatic wonderland featured on La Stupenda’s brochure (“Come and enjoy our range of superior European-style facilities with a Hawaiian feel.”)

Continue reading "Bad family summer holidays prep you for the real world" »

Given the season of excess that is Christmas, the event seems strangely downsized lately. Many of us bumped Christ a long time ago, whose birthday the event celebrates, in favour of a definition of Christmas that’s less about God and more about making merry with family.

Now that tradition might also be on the wane with some ditching the family bash, in case they’re tempted to bash up the rellies, in favour of a get-together with like-minded people they actually like. Then there are those, like Young Jean Lee, who just want to spend Christmas alone.

Lee, a subversive New York playwright, last year released her own carol singing the praises of a solo Christmas. In it, she enjoys her festive season minus disappointed family, egocentric friends, impossible standards, tension and yelling.

Continue reading "A solo Christmas is not necessarily a sad thing" »

When the Reverend Seth Kaper-Dale took over the running of the Reformed Church of Highland Park, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, he didn’t realise that most of his Indonesian Christian congregation was living illegally in the United States.

Now, after almost a decade of battles, a deadline is pressing hard on 73 members of his church, who are being told to go back to Indonesia.

This may seem like an old story; and one that is happening far from Australia. And it is, on both counts. But these Indonesians, living in fear in New Jersey, still somehow seem to me like Australia’s neighbours.

Continue reading "Our American dream, our American nightmare" »

Today is national Go Home On Time Day.

In a classic Looney Tunes cartoon of the 1950s, Ralph E. Wolf and Sam Sheepdog would clock on at the same time every day at the sheep meadow. When their shift ended, Ralph would stop trying to abduct Sam’s precious sheep and they would both clock off again. Their work done for the day, Ralph and Sam would exchange pleasant chit chat and trot home.

If this kind of thing seems quaint today, perhaps it is because the boundaries between work and life are increasingly blurred. Many of us don’t only do our jobs, we are our jobs – regardless of what time it is or where we happen to be.

Continue reading "Go home. Get outa here. Spend some family time" »

Nothing on this earth would entice me to have a baby at home.

Call me old fashioned, but I’m all for the protective womb of expert physicians and latest technology in a crisp white hospital environment. The risks are simply too great; the act of childbirth too unpredictable; the potential loss too devastating to contemplate.

And tragically, in South Australia we’re hearing all too much about risk becoming reality.

Continue reading "The real miracle of pregnancy isn’t childbirth" »

There were six of us and we were around 10 years old. We had come together for Alice’s birthday and pretty much left to our own devices. 

It was Alice’s idea to go to their attic. Attics were something the Secret Seven might explore - they did not exist in the houses I frequented. So Alice had already scored points with this plan. Little did I know the experiential gold that awaited.

Safely up the ladder, we clustered around her to see the reason for our ascent. There, in several old filing boxes, was at least a decade’s worth of Playboy, carefully stored away by Alice’s taciturn father.

Continue reading "The internet makes Playboy look like a Penguin Classic" »

This week, my daughter and I made a pompom. You know, one of those mad, multi-coloured things constructed with wool and cardboard that we all used to make before such quaint activities were usurped by the PS, the DS and the iStuff.

I groaned inwardly when she came home with a doughnut-shaped circle nearly the size of her head. As a child of the ’70s, I know the bigger the hole, the more wool winding. This wasn’t a pompom we were making; it was an RSI-inducing fluffy football (thanks, Ms F).

So, for a week, we wound and threaded and knotted and chatted, pausing only to dispatch her father for more wool supplies (don’t send a man to buy textiles unless you want variations on brown). This morning, as she trotted off to school, it was hard to tell who was more puffed up – my daughter or the massive woolly doughnut that, by day’s end, will be a pompom.

Continue reading "Time is the best gift you can give a child" »

My friend Nick doesn’t talk like other people. Over the years, I’ve become used to the way he leaves long pauses in conversation – last week, I counted a full 11 seconds – as he thinks about what he’s going to say next. It can be unnerving, yet when he does eventually speak, what he says is sound, wise and invariably a smart solution.

I thought of Nick a couple of weeks ago, when Kevin Rudd went on ABC’s Q&A and confessed he’d been wrong in ditching the emissions trading scheme. In the ensuing hoopla over whether he was out to nix the PM, his most sentient comment was overlooked.

During his leadership, Rudd told the audience, he had neglected sound advice to “leave yourself time to think, to reflect and to plan”.

Continue reading "Six ways to “being” not just “doing” human" »

I’m writing this while on holiday with my Mum and Dad. Nothing remarkable about that, you might think, except my Mum and Dad aren’t married. Well, not to each other. They’re married to other people. Nice people, actually.

So when my brother, who lives in Japan, mooted a family reunion – which turned out to be all the more poignant due to recent events – he sent an email to everyone.

Mum and Dad split when I was 19 so, naturally, they’ve had to share a pew at a few weddings and a couple of funerals over the years. But a week-long holiday?

Continue reading "Can families survive the pain of divorce?" »

Bad TV. Naughty marital upheavals. Evil, self-centred friend-tionships.

This – give or take some neologistic hyperbole – is the view of British academic Frank Furedi who is upset that popular culture doesn’t depict more “functional” families.

Of particular concern to the man cited as being the UK’s most cited sociologist is the high-end American soap opera Brothers and Sisters which screens on Monday nights on the Seven Network

Starring Rachel Griffiths, Sally Field, Calista Flockhart and (up until recently) Rob Lowe, Brothers and Sisters revolves around an extended California-based clan called the Walkers.

Continue reading "The family values of Brothers and Sisters" »

Jordan Rice was 13 years old when he died. His rescue was imminent but he refused the help, insisting his would-be rescuers take his 10-year-old brother, Blake, first.

When his rescuers returned Jordan was insisting they take his mother, Donna, first - but there was no more time.

The rope to which he and Donna desperately clung snapped and they were both swept away by the raging floodwater.

Continue reading "Love in the time of tragedy" »

Few people escape the house guest experience at this time of year.

So thank god for Martha Stewart who reckons the only real difference between a swanky three room suite at the Hilton and a couple of nights on the lumpy mattress in your spare room is a stack of fresh towels wrapped in white ribbon.

Oh, and a vase of flowers. Preferably some that weren’t wilted by the heat of Christmas Eve or the torrential rain of Christmas night; access to a full length mirror, a stack of spare coat hangers, hanging space and an empty drawer or two.

Continue reading "How to have really good house guests" »

It’s hard to believe that another year is over and tonight thoughts of Santa Clause’s arrival into homes across Australia will have many a young mind too excited to sleep.  It’s a fabulous time of year for sure and as things wind down towards Saturday, the festive spirit is rapidly starting to sink it. 

Around this time of year I always find myself reminiscing back to when I was a child and it always gets me thinking, is Christmas still the same? Overlooking the obvious differences of my AGE and the fact that I now spend my Christmas in a hot climate away from the snowed over landscapes of Europe – do I still celebrate Christmas like I used to?

Not getting into any of the religious aspects of Christmas, for me the spirit has always been that something in the air, that thing that can’t really be described but which I know exists. A festive feeling, a general vibe! For some reason though, I’m not feeling it yet this year and I’m wondering why?

Continue reading "Struggling to get hold of the Christmas spirit" »

For retailers, the miracle of Christmas hasn’t got anything to do with a heavily pregnant woman and a manger, but rather anticipated sales of $39.9 billion dollars between mid-November and December 24.

The slap up meal most of us will be tucking into on the 25th accounts for a big chunk of this spending but many billions of dollars will also be spent on gifts. 

Perhaps the scariest part about this is the billions that will be spent on fizzers: gifts that don’t hit the mark, gifts that don’t even get airborne; gifts that break before the New Year; gifts that you need to keep out of sight and then retrieve whenever the relevant donor is in the vicinity. 

Continue reading "Presenting: A guide to Christmas gift giving" »

I became an Uncle again in early August of this year. Within minutes of having arrived at the hospital to meet the newest member of our beautiful clan, I had taken a photograph of him, and posted it on my facebook profile.

Within minutes of doing that, I had a message of congratulations from a first cousin I have never met, and who lived far away in the remotest parts of Northern Italy.

At first I thought this interaction and the technology that allowed it was simply marvelous. In discussing it with my mother, Madame Perin still found it impossible to believe. Not unlike the reaction she had when J.R got shot.

Continue reading "A picture tells a thousand lies" »

Rule 1 - Santa never asks children whether they have been naughty or nice. These days all kids are nice (apparently…)

Rule 2 - Santa needs to regulate his ho-ho-hos to a moderate level so as to not scare small children. Therefore, the large bellowing ‘HO-HO-HO’ is a no-no.

Rule 3 – Santa needs to keep his hands visible at all times, especially when photos are taken. This rule is legally in Santa’s best (legal) interests.

Continue reading "The sad side of modern Santa" »

With official interest rates set to rise and the costly festive season looming large on the horizon there’s no doubt Australian’s budgeting skills will be put to the test over the next few months.

Financial skills are incredibly valuable but it’s often not until you get older that you begin to appreciate the small lessons about saving and spending your parents may have taught you when you were a kid.

Growing up on a farm meant my Mum and Dad generally made the most of having me and my two siblings around during school holidays to do the jobs that needed to be done. Often we were given the opportunity to make some cash carting hay or working in the wool sheds.

Continue reading "Giving kids an early start in learning to make ends meet" »

When I was eight, I spent an entire school term at show and tell entertaining my class mates with stories about my made-up family.

Every week, for about twenty minutes or so, I’d climb the class room platform and regale, what I thought was a captive audience, with the adventures of my ten brothers and sisters, (four of which were older brothers), until the day I painted a “family portrait” when my mum helped out in class. I was busted.

Continue reading "Us eldest siblings get the raw end of the deal" »

Newborn babies are hands down the best thing on the planet. Never had one myself, but I’ve never met one that didn’t make me gush.

It’s no surprise that new mum Josie Gagliano is partial to a bit of gushing when it comes to her twins.

Josie says: “So now I am a mum, I’d love the whole world to experience the joy of motherhood, particularly the women who are having difficulty falling pregnant. That’s why I am so supportive of IVF.” She goes further, defending the right of parents to select their baby’s gender, if that’s what they really want.

Continue reading "Choosing sex, the next great leap in selfish parenting" »

Given that my previous post was celebrating the joys of (benignly) neglecting my children, it may seem incongruous that I’m now rushing to defend of the exhilaration of parenting in all its chaotic splendour.

But I’ve been saddened by the number of recent articles that have sought to somehow diminish or trivialise the overall happiness that having children brings.

With the exception of Josie Gagliano’s lovely post the other day, there have been a slew of parentally-negative pieces, ranging from this article in the British Psychological Society journal, to The Atlantic’s: ‘Selfish Reasons Not to Have More Kids’  followed by the New York Mag’s ‘All Joy and No Fun’, and then through to ‘Why Non-Parents are Happier than Parents’ in the US News.

Continue reading "In defence of parenting" »

Call me a bit of an idealistic Charlotte from Sex & The City, but if I have experienced something amazing, I want the world to experience it too.

So now I am a mum, I’d love the whole world to experience the joy of motherhood, particularly the women who are having difficulty falling pregnant. That’s why I am so supportive of IVF. Strangers (even friends who have dared not ask for fear it’s too private) assume I had my twins via IVF. I did not. And I would be willing to shout it from the rooftops if I had.

I have seen people close to me finally get their wish to be a parent thanks to this miraculous medical procedure. A few of the beautiful mums in my twin prenatal class had their multiples thanks to IVF and I know just how eternally grateful they are that the procedure exists.

Continue reading "Choosing a baby’s sex: the next great leap for parents" »

Are you a helicopter parent? An over-scheduler? Or do you give your kids a healthy dose of neglect?

Benign neglect that is, nothing more serious. But two things inspired me to neglect my kids during these school-holidays-just-finished, and as a result I reckon we had one of the best breaks ever. 

The first was a kids’ book, Mosquito Advertising, by Kate Hunter. It’s an adventure book, along the lines of a modern-day Famous Five. It’s great, but what I really like about it is that when the characters aren’t devising advertising schemes, saving companies and foiling $4 million thefts, they’re sitting around watching Play School (because the host is hot), climbing trees and eating Milo from a tin. And their parents basically leave them alone to get on with it. Fiction, yes. Idealised world, maybe. But surely something to aspire to.

Continue reading "Can children thrive on benign neglect?" »

We won’t need a tourism industry in 20 years’ time. And forget about annual leave, school holidays and sibling rivalry too.

Because, at least according to a series of predictions this week, by 2030 Australia will be a jumble of stressed individuals who’ve spent 10 years scrimping and saving for a house deposit and will be too broke and possibly too frightened to contemplate bringing more than one child into the world. Instead the choice will be to hold on for dear life to careers and term deposit accounts that have been fought for long and hard.

Take real estate, for example.

Continue reading "Life’s looking grim in 2030" »

On Tuesday this week, 25,000 Australians delivered a clear message straight to the people who represent them in the nation’s Parliament.

Signing a national petition, nurses, teachers, hospitality and construction workers, uni students, school kids, their mums and dads, their grandparents demanded that their elected representatives stand up and vote for the Rudd Government’s national paid parental leave scheme.

After waiting decades, working families are set to be the big winners when the Government delivers Australia’s first paid parental leave scheme and Australia finally catches up with the rest of the developed world on this vital reform.

Continue reading "Australia catches up to the world on paid parental leave" »

One night recently on a suburban Melbourne train, several young teenagers—some reportedly as young as 13 or 14 years of age—terrorised a carriage full of innocent passengers who were returning from a day out at the football.

Purportedly this bunch of pimple-faced brats pelted rocks at the windows of the train and threatened the frightened passengers, including elderly people and young children. 

Meanwhile, on another suburban train, a young woman was smashed over the head with a bottle in an unprovoked attack by a group of hostile teenage girls, resulting in several stitches to her head. What is wrong with these kids?  And why should innocent people have to put up with this?

Continue reading "The law must step in where parents have failed" »

Next week is Hair Expo. The very best stylists in the land will gather in Sydney to show off their talents.

There is no more defining characteristic than hair. It is both unique to the person yet capable of dramatic change. What we do with our hair is an expression of our personality.

Yet the pinnacle of hair expression lies not with people but with poodles. The poodle coat has become a canvass for the most artistic of canine coiffeurs. With a pom-pom on the tail and an afro on the head a non-descript mutt can be transformed into the elegant high society hound.

Continue reading "If clothes maketh the man then hair maketh the poodle" »

According to the Australia Bureau of Statistics – and despite Kevin Rudd’s almost hysterical wooing of working families - about a quarter of women in their reproductive years are likely to never have children. Some of them will choose not to have children, but many will have that choice made for them by circumstance.

I asked eighteen men and women who are involuntarily childless about the impact that this has had on their careers, lifestyles and relationships with family and friends.

Now chances are that – whether you’re aware of it or not – you know a number of people who are childless not by choice. And unless they are a very, very close friend, these are a few of the things not to say to them …

Continue reading "What not to say to your childless friends" »

Where the heart dares to tread, politicians’ chequebooks follow in an election year. Tony Abbot embraced his (sort of) inner feminist on Monday announcing his proposed maternity leave plan that would see women paid up to $150,000 for six months’ at home after their baby is born.

This, on the heels of Kevin Rudd’s maternity leave proposal that offers women the minimum wage of $544 for 18 weeks, due for delivery in January in 2011, is surely good news for women and men keen to do their bit of our nation’s population growth.

But in this mad scramble to win the hearts and minds and bank accounts of “working families” have Rudd and Abbot paused to consider whether maternity leave is necessarily a positive thing for women?

Continue reading "Could women actually be the losers from maternity leave" »

Pay attention all parents before the Family Court and any parent who has come to the attention of the Police or community services. Here’s the deal: your kids’ rights trump yours.

Last week the Government got a report suggesting that some parents think that a system that respects a child’s right to have the benefit of access to both parents means that they have a right, an automatic and overriding right, to equal custody.

If I may abandon the normal strictures of politeness for the sake of kids having their lives wrecked by selfish or abusive parents - stuff that.

Continue reading "Getting tough on parents when kids come second" »

A few years ago there was a funny little survey funded by fruitgrowers which spoke volumes about the relationship between men and women, particularly on the vexed question of domestic chores.

The survey found that the overwhelming majority of men refused to eat fruit, but said they would be prepared to eat fruit if someone could peel it, cut it into small pieces and hand it to them on a plate.

The survey has at its centre a kind of male patheticness which many blokes seem to regard as endearing, and which most women probably cannot stand.

Continue reading "In politics as in life, working women can’t win" »

Another happy-go-lucky Hollywood production is out about infidelity: ‘It’s Complicated’. It may even win the star of the movie an academy award.

I don’t want to rain on Merryl Streep’s parade, but what’s not complicated is fidelity to your partner and kids.

There are two simple rules – your marriage matters more than nearly everything else, and if you are a parent, be a parent.

Continue reading "What’s not complicated about marriage and family" »

Would you believe it if I told you more Australians know what their loved one’s favourite tipple is, or the song that tops their personal playlist, or what their go-to comfort food is - than whether or not, if the end was nigh, they would choose to be an organ donor?

It sounds slightly flippant when you put it like that but that’s the finding from a new national survey of 3800 Australians conducted on behalf of the Australian Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation Authority. 

The survey also revealed most Australians believe ending a relationship, talking to an elderly family member about aged care and explaining the birds and the bees to their kids are harder conversations to have with their loved ones than organ and tissue donation.

Continue reading "If you discuss one thing with your family this Christmas…" »

In a speech last month, our outspoken Treasury Secretary Ken Henry referred to the hitherto unknown but enticingly-titled “Treasury well being framework” as a measure of determining what is best for families and working parents.

Wow ! After years as the ultimate BBQ stopper-conversation, maybe the esteemed boffins at Treasury stumbled upon the elusive answer to the work/life balance question?

I looked forward to reading the magic formula and seeing how I measured up.

Continue reading "Stay-at-home parents left out in the cold by Treasury" »

It’s one of pop culture’s great clichés that some actors and some films are best known for their great dying scenes.

I’m watching another dying scene right now, but this is real life and to the people involved, as the weeks have gone by, it seems all the drama has been bleached out of it. The dull flat winter days are turning to vibrant spring. My family is watching my mother slowly dying.

I hold her hand. The cancer inside her is fighting hard. She is resilient and quietly tough and fighting too. But by this stage, we all know what the final result will be. It’s a matter of time, a matter of days. The nurses and the palliative care team, magnificent, tireless, dedicated, work to make her comfortable.

Continue reading "As I watch my mother slowly dying" »

MY wife’s mother died a few days ago. A stroke it was, suffered on Father’s Day.

It was very sudden and deeply distressing as a result, for though she was 85, she had been in good health for a person of her years.

She’d lived by herself in her own home, did for herself, managed her affairs with careful and practiced prudence.height="270" />

Continue reading "The public hospital system is fuelled by love, not money" »

Fathers Day - or in our house Feathrs or Farthers day depending upon the cards I received last year - is nearly upon the kids. Last year I got lots of cards - approximately 8 by my count. I don’t have that many children nor did I discover I had some I didn’t know about. Instead my known children were extremely productive; to the tune of 2.67 cards per child. What is more, they were all self-made.

We now have a rule at home that Hallmark holidays should mean that no money should be spent that would go anywhere near Hallmark. That means everything is made.

Not only did I get the cards but several paintings and a treasure hunt. The last one was imaginative but, ultimately fast, because my then 6 year old son organised the whole thing but didn’t have the patience to wait for me to decipher his clues and took me straight to the treasure.

Continue reading "Don’t buy my book for Fathers Day" »

Noted US Professor of Economics James Heckman is a much quoted figure by the Australian Labor Party. 

In these times of economic upheaval and challenge his message has a unique and appealing social angle – essentially his work outlines the economic benefits of investing well in early childhood education to address social disadvantage.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has quoted Heckman extensively in the past, and did so again this week in his Burgmann College Address , saying:

Continue reading "Big Brother Rudd ignores the family in education" »

I have four children. That’s not an easy thing for me to admit in public. It’s not that I am ashamed of it, far from it, but it brings with it an expectation from people about how I should be/have that I don’t always live up to. Let’s just say it’s one of many well-worn-out stereotypes I don’t do well.

It bothers me though that I feel compelled to somewhat mask this side of my life, not out of privacy, but for fear that my own identity will be drowned out by the din of social constructs that requires one’s personality to drop out of your vagina when giving birth to your first child.

I can’t believe that “motherhood” is still in need of an image shake-up in 2009, or we at the very least we need to extend the parameters of how we expect mothers to behave.

Continue reading "Apprentice’s tale: mums don’t lose personality in birth" »

There’s a quiet revolution going on in the suburban backyards of Australia. 

Rather than sitting back and admiring our perfectly manicured “outside rooms”, gazing lovingly at our mondo grass, perfectly coiffed hedges of murraya, buxus or newly acquired rows of trendy agaves, we are choosing to head outside armed with buckets of kitchen scraps, water collected from baths and showers while we attempt to figure out where we should build a chicken coop, locate the veggie patch, compost heap and herb garden. 

Suffering a slow death (and not for lack of water) is the passive, over-structured garden.  Instead we are rediscovering how much fun it is to actually interact with Mother Nature and the vital lessons she has to impart to us and our children about nourishing ourselves and our environment.

Continue reading "Chooks and chokos are more fun than mondo grass" »

There is an online revolution occurring with women taking to the blogsphere at a phenomenal rate.

They are connecting, supporting, sharing, creating and doing business with people they probably have never met.

It is a new wave of feminism.

Continue reading "Rise of the mummy blogger" »

These things I remember.

I’m in a car, bumping along a stony track in the mountains, when suddenly, to the right, a big, sand-coloured helicopter rises up out of a valley. It’s close - close enough to see the eyes of the heavy-machine-gun operator flick contemptuously my way, before dismissing me as a potential target as the aircraft banks and flies off.

I’m in a sub-tropical rainforest in the rain. Suddenly, from my left, I see a flash of movement: a wolf, its fangs bared, charging towards me. I pull out a sword and defend myself.

Continue reading "Second Life? I’ve got enough on my plate with the first" »