TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers | How not to make young children self-sufficient
The availability of more adult hands to help out with kids in India also means that there is generally less urgency in pushing children to be independent.
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers | Let's talk about sex
Our kids live in an overly sexualized environment. An open line to conversations about sex, relationships, and emotions with the parents is important.
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers | How did our moms do it?
Did our mothers feel less guilty in an information-lean world? Will our children have more information in the future and find us wanting as parents?
HEALTH-AND-FITNESS
My Family And Other Globalizers | Talking to the kids about cancer
What is the proper comportment to adopt when breaking the news of serious illness to one’s children?
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers | Landlines made us more social; mobile phones, more forgetful
It was the family landline that helped me, and countless others, become adept at the artifice that is so much part of social life.
HEALTH-AND-FITNESS
Kingdom of the Sick: Breast cancer and me
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers | Parenting nightmare: Losing the kids
Because learning about parenting failures can be more useful than parenting tips. The former are balm for guilt; the latter only stoke the flames of self-recrimination.
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers | Perks of being a parent
One of the greatest uses of kids: giving parents common ground when life would otherwise pull them in different directions.
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers | Shrinking the confidence gap
Women need more practice at valuing themselves more, and perhaps men could tone down their tendency to self-promotion a tad, too.
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers | The trickster called time
In the end, you have your kids on borrowed time and it passes in as achingly beautiful a moment as a sunrise.
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers | Happy Teacher’s Day to all teachers, past and present
Teachers might come in a bouquet of colours - good, bad and ugly - but what they have in common is that they act as surrogate parents for huge swathes of most young people’s lives.
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers | Mommy wars and the politics of "choice feminism"
Though “choice” is an important part of empowerment, “choice feminism”, or the idea that any choice a woman makes is a feminist one simply because it is chosen, is quite absurd.
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers | The problem with favourite things
Sorting gives little ones a way to group their thoughts, process information, store and retrieve ideas, and describe items. But it has limitations.
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers | How to talk to kids about India and Independence Day
As Independence Day rolls around, I sit with the children and tell them about India’s inspirational freedom struggle. Stories are how we all make sense of the world.
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers | Announcing your pregnancy to your boss
A dreaded moment that I’d hitherto been putting off, was now nigh. I needed to inform my boss that his star reporter was now about to become a... drumroll… mother. It felt like a confession.
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers | The pregnancy diet
The expecting woman is stuck in a quagmire of less-than-scientifically-robust advice about what she should be denying herself - coffee, sushi, massages, swimming...
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers | Baby, breast, bottle
Breastfeeding was a lesson in humility for me. I was used to getting my way. Until I had a baby and my breasts refused to obey.
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers | Let there be music
Time and again, music has stood in for love when words failed, soothed hurts - physical and emotional - and been the glue when cracks appeared in family life.
WORLD
History might give Shinzo Abe an 'A' for political longevity but 'C' for almost everything else
Although Japan saw periods of economic growth and low unemployment under Shinzo Abe, the country was still mired in a slow-growth, high-debt deflationary trap when he stepped down as PM in 2020.
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers | On the other side of working mom guilt
No one can have it all. But everyone can have different bits and bobs of “all” at different points in their lives. What’s important is the arch of one’s life.
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers | Bringing up digital natives
How to come to terms with kids watching other people play video games, and spending as much time as they can online.
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers | Birthdays in three time zones
Caterers were interviewed, alternative entertainers weighed for months, and professional photographers were de rigueur...
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers | Decoupling value from money alone
Non-financially remunerated work, like that undertaken by stay-at-home parents, is devalued, regardless of how critical for the functioning of society it may be.
TRENDS
My Family and Other Globalizers | The Tao of the Jigsaw
In the early months of the pandemic, my boys and I attempted 1,000-piece puzzles. Watching pictures magic themselves out of messy heaps, I found myself divining some Dreamworks-ready philosophy.
