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The first 1,000 days of life shape every day that follows.
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A beat by Irene Caselli
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Populism meets parenting
Childhood is political. The decisions about who has a child, when, and how go far beyond personal choices. Authoritarian and populist politicians the world over are despairing over falling birth rates. They are trying (and often succeeding) to set strict rules about conception and birth
Forever in the archive
War has no borders
Dear reader, I am in Lesbos this week, the Greek island that became the symbol of migrants and refugees in 2015 when tens of thousands of people arrived after crossing the sea from Turkey. Many drowned in the Aegean Sea before making it to shore.
What does war mean for children?
Jasminko Halilovic was four years old when the siege of Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, started in 1992. His memories of the war are punctuated by the rare breaks from shelling when he would go out into the street to learn how to ride his bike.
When children feel like a burden
When do children become a burden rather than a joy? I’m not ready for the question that Nacho, my husband, asks me while he’s driving us from one errand to another. Lorenzo, our son, is with us today because of something Covid-related (is it the
Do we really want our children to be independent?
The week my son Lorenzo turned three he put his shoes on by himself, opened the front with a “Ciao”, and said he was going to catch the bus to daycare alone. That same day, he had woken up wanting to be held and played
The importance of learning how to be lazy
When we returned recently from our time with friends in Thailand, I was excited to take advantage of the time difference and jet lag to start my days at 6 a.m., as I had done for many months last year. Think of the possibilities! Writing
Why we should give every child the right to quality daycare
In Italy, there is a new plan to invest heavily into building new daycare centres as part of the NextGenerationEU recovery plan. Initially I was surprised to find so much push-back against these early education spaces, even from right-wing spaces such as senator Tiziana Drago, who
Three days stranded in an airport with a toddler
We went away to Thailand over the vacation to visit one of my best friends and her family. Lorenzo went to a daycare with elephants, but I will share more about that soon. We were on our way back to Athens, Greece, but a mighty
Not having children does not diminish us
Pope Francis recently created a big controversy by criticising couples who decide to have pets over children. “This denial of fatherhood or motherhood diminishes us, it takes away our humanity,” he said. “Civilisation becomes aged and without humanity, because it loses the richness of fatherhood
Let’s talk about sleep, baby
If you read my newsletter last week, you may remember that my intention for 2022 is to get enough sleep every day. Ten days into the new year, I am already sleep-deprived: I’m writing this after having slept only five hours, as I stayed up well
Three ways The First 1,000 Days plans to start 2022
This is a special edition of this newsletter that marks our first-year anniversary, so I’ll skip recommendations for this week. They will be back next week as usual. Since I was little, I always paid attention to the Neapolitan tradition that whatever you do on
Forever in the archive:
The novel anxiety of driving with children in tow
The last time I drove was in the very early stages of my pregnancy. We were house-sitting in a stone house in the French Alps. Nacho, my partner, had gone to Russia to report on the World Cup. I had to get into town for
Humanising childbirth: less silence about the violence
We don’t remember when we were born — let alone the circumstances and the scene that day. They’re not really stories we sit around a fire or kitchen table listening to, especially if the experience itself was negative: if the person giving birth had negative
Dragons in the sky: children’s books tackling tough topics
Above our home in the south of Athens, Greece, Lorenzo often sees dragons. That’s what he thinks aeroplanes are, as we’ve been reading Anita and The Dragons. The book is no fantasy yarn, but is actually about migration: Anita, a little girl from the Dominican Republic,
In Greece, migrant children have the right to go to school
This is Marianna Liakou, a Greek kindergarten teacher I learned about thanks to the work of journalist Nikolia Apostolou, who is a member of this community, and who spoke to us for this week’s edition over email. A disclaimer: Nikolia’s work was possible thanks to
How to change how we talk to children
Before we get into this week’s story, an important announcement! If you leave a comment below a story, you can now receive notifications if someone replies or the conversation continues. A few of you had pointed out how impractical it was not to receive notifications.
‘Zika babies’ — and the stories that should not fall off our radar
It’s been six years since the Brazilian government declared a national public health emergency for Zika — a mosquito-borne virus that attacks the developing brain and that can lead to severe health problems in children born to mothers who contracted the infection. At the time,
Can you draw? I didn’t think I could – but then I was surprised
I can’t draw. This is how I premise any attempt at putting a pencil on paper, or even a piece of chalk on the pavement. I may be able to write or have a good sense of how to combine colours, but I’ve always thought
14 things I wish I knew about sex before I started having it
This week’s post is long, so I’m skipping recommendations. They’ll be back next week! The image is a still of a scene from the series Sex Education. Source: Netflix Dear reader, I had different plans for this week’s newsletter but I got a bad cold
This week I turn 40 – and I mark a loss
*Warning: This newsletter touches on the subject of miscarriage. If you find the topic triggering, maybe skip reading this edition, and check out this book that I highly recommend. This week is also Pregnancy and Baby Loss Awareness Week, and you can find more resources there.
Is not using the word tantrum enough?
A few weeks ago I wrote a newsletter about why we should stop referring to children’s meltdowns as tantrums. Michael, a reader, inspired me when he wrote to say that the word tantrum had negative connotations and stigmatised children. Thanks to the help of Andrea
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