Children
Did the makers of When I Grow Up have no qualms turning a small boy into a hate figure?
Channel 4’s When I Grow Up had an important lesson for middle-class white males everywhere: you’re never too young to…
My wife has gone back to work – and I’ve turned into a SADDO
When I proposed to Caroline back in 2000, she was a trainee solicitor and I was a freelance journalist. In…
The facts – and fiction – of piracy
Avast there, scurvy dogs! For a nation founded on piracy (the privateer Sir Francis Drake swelled the exchequer by raiding…
Of course the young like socialism – they’re taught to
It beggars belief that Jeremy Corbyn can, with a straight face, announce that capitalism has failed and we’d all be…
It’s not transphobic to question transgenderism
This column is not in my interest. But then, not for the first time. I cannot count the conversations conducted…
The highs – and lows – of learning to fly a kite
I’ve flown only three kites in my life. My stepfather bought me the first. I remember seeing him from a…
Children are everywhere – and they’re spoiling everything
There was a time when middle-class liberals used to complain that the English were a nation of child haters. They…
Who really wants to read feminist children’s books?
A friend of mine who commissions book reviews has added a sub-category to the list of titles coming up: ‘femtrend’,…
Is it any wonder children can’t express themselves when all they have is emojis?
Smiley face. Sad face. Smoochy face. Sick face. Edvard Munch ‘Scream’ face. How are you feeling today? Any of the…
Channel 4 marked women’s suffrage with an episode of the Secret Life of Five-Year-Olds
To mark the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage — if a little oddly — Channel 4 on Tuesday brought us…
Mary solves your problems: What do you say when a screaming child is ruining your lunch?
Q. My wife and I were having lunch in our local bistro. A boy of about two was wandering around…
The kids aren’t all right
Our histrionic parenting is making today’s young people mad, unhappy and fat
The danger of no danger
We all know about helicopter parents and how terrible they can be. In New York, where I live, a mother…
How baby names got so weird
How Wolf and Skylar pushed out John and Mary
A dispatch from a family of fooshers
I’d like this to have been one of those Spectator diaries that gives the ordinary reader a glimpse into the…
It’s dangerous and wrong to tell all children they’re ‘gender fluid’
Children are not all ‘gender fluid’. It’s dangerous and wrong to try to persuade them that they are
Tis the season for disagreeing with your spouse about everything
The older I get, the more Scrooge-like I become. I’m dyspeptic, misanthropic, curmudgeonly, parsimonious and unsentimental. Caroline, by contrast, is…
Tips from Just William on making a Christmas list
William Brown had the right idea about Christmas lists. Under the heading ‘Things I Want for Christmas’, he requests: a…
Dear Mary: How to stop someone from giving my tiny children expensive clothes that they never wear?
Q. Is there a tactful way to deter certain people from buying clothing for one’s tiny children as Christmas presents?…
How do you explain events that even adults can’t understand to a child?
Seeing my ten-year-old daughter, Freya, a week after the massacre in Paris, I asked her if she had heard anything…