List of All Articles with Tag 'features'

Forget about the funny pages. If Kay Powell wrote for your paper, you dove straight into the death notices.

Seven years ago, I was at my local antenatal class preparing for the birth of my firstborn. In my forties and armed with a coloured birthing ball, I looked around and gasped. All the other soon-to-be-mums were at least a decade younger than me. Some were nearly half my age. It briefly panicked me. Would I make any friends? Why did I leave it so late to have kids? Was I doing something wrong? In hindsight, though, I had no reason to worry: your forties is absolutely the best decade in which to have your first child. According to data published last week in The Daily Telegraph, the number of women becoming first-time mothers in their forties has increased in recent years: today, one in 25 UK births is to a woman aged 40-plus. That’s a lot of women just like me, despite the fact that getting pregnant over 35 gets you labelled as someone of “advanced maternal age”. That might sound harsh until you remember that older pregnancies used to be termed “geriatric” – thank God that’s been phased out. I’ve never regretted waiting until my forties, even if I had been trying for children for years by that point. My story is undeniably unique: my partner Alex took his own life while we were doing IVF, but that didn’t stop me from continuing to try to get pregnant. The maternal call was strong, so I decided to carry on with the process using Alex’s frozen sperm. Today I have two beautiful daughters with him: Lola, seven, and Liberty, five. It is an understatement to say I was ready for a baby at 40. I was grounded. Confident. Unlike when I was in my twenties or thirties, I knew exactly who I was and what made me tick. I had life experience. I no longer got FOMO. I didn’t even drink, having been through hell and back to become sober 20 years earlier. My career was fully off the ground, and therapy had helped me identify the family dysfunction I knew to ditch for the sake of my kids. I also wasn’t worried about my body bouncing back after the birth. I just desperately wanted to be a mum. Of course, there are all sorts of advantages to having children in your twenties and thirties. A huge bonus is that you’re simply more fertile. According to research, 31 is the magic age to have a baby – you’re still as fertile as in your twenties, but you also have more money. I’m sure motherhood in your fifties is great, too – although using your own eggs is highly unlikely, unless you froze them at some point before you turned 35. It means that some older mums often turn to donor eggs. Thinking back on my twenties and thirties, I don’t know how I would have managed motherhood. I don’t think I was ready to put my own needs on hold. I can’t imagine how hard it would have been to juggle work and my children, especially with the spiralling costs of childcare. I do accept that there are greater risks inherent in waiting to have kids. Both the quantity and quality of eggs dwindle. The rates of failed fertilisation, miscarriage and birth defects rise with age. There’s also the social pressure that comes with not having children early – you’re forced into endless conversations about the “ticking timebomb” of your fertility, and expected to fend off probing inquiries about your biological clock. The British Fertility Society advises women to start trying for a baby by the age of 32 at the latest, for a 90 per cent guarantee of having a child without resorting to IVF. But this advice simply wouldn’t have worked for me – I was determined to find the right person to have children with, and that didn’t happen until I was 35. When mine and Alex’s attempts to naturally conceive failed, and then Alex died, only at that point did I know I had the maturity to go it alone. I do have some regrets – I wish I’d frozen my eggs at the peak of my fertility in my mid-twenties, for instance (this process costs between £4,000 and £7,000 in the UK). But otherwise, having children in my forties was the right thing to do. Yes, I had my wobbles. I remember sobbing on the bathroom floor after yet another failed pregnancy test. I would berate myself for leaving it so late. I had to force myself to remember that many women experience fertility struggles in their twenties and thirties, too. All of those anxious feelings, though, flew out the window once I had my first child. When I left the hospital to begin parenthood alone, a new bag of nappies in hand, I didn’t have a meltdown. I was just so grateful that I’d had a baby, especially when the odds seemed so stacked against me. Sleepless nights trying to coax my child back to sleep were what I had most desired. It was all so good, in fact, that I went on to have a second child in my forties. I had a spare embryo in a freezer in St Petersburg. Now I call her Liberty. Every day since becoming a mum, I have embraced the mess and chaos, and appreciate every minute. I’m sure my younger self would cringe at the thought of me spending my evenings helping my children with their homework. But I’m proud to say that I’m living my best life. Read More Vanessa Hudgens addresses pregnancy speculation amid Cole Tucker engagement Rachel Bilson reveals she’s suffered multiple miscarriages Pregnant woman has maternity photo shoot in hospital before giving birth Hailey Bieber responds to ‘disheartening’ pregnancy rumours Like Rebecca Adlington, I also lost my baby at 20 weeks Britney Spears reveals she had an abortion while dating Justin Timberlake

I’m standing outside my local cafe in west London, looking bedraggled as I’ve been up since 6.45am making the dreaded school packed lunch. It’s nothing exotic – margherita pizza for Lola, who is a fussy eater, and plain pasta with cheddar cheese and corn on the cob for Liberty. There were all the snacks to pack, too – sadly, no chunks of carrot, just Pom-Bears and breadsticks. I am buying a croissant to add to one of the lunch boxes when I bump into the mum of one of my daughter’s friends. “Oh darling,” she tells me, “it’s all ‘white food’. Not good.” I shrug my shoulders knowingly, then stupidly ask her what’s in her kids’ packed lunches. “Sushi bento box,” comes her instant reply. “Crudites and organic hummus. Japanese panda crackers. Seaweed crackers. Dim sum. Oh, and sandwiches cut into little shapes – I do hearts and stars.” Right. That’s a good start to my morning; I now feel totally inadequate. When it comes to my children, I am a slave to the packed lunch. But gone are the days of stuffing a hard-boiled egg, a jam sandwich or processed cheese triangles into a box – as was the case when I was a child. Even apples have been voted a prehistoric lunchbox item by 17 per cent of parents. Instead, packed lunches are now a status symbol. The actor Hilary Duff, for instance, gives her son caviar for a snack – and it’s not that unusual. One in 10 parents (9 per cent) choose sushi and, according to a recent survey by Amazon Fresh, 26 per cent of parents take a photo of their children’s packed lunch for Instagram. A third (33 per cent) have also admitted they’ve taken a sneak peek inside another child’s lunchbox – and believe me, it’s often to silently snack-shame another parent. I can’t help but wonder if food and snacks are a kind of modern litmus test of parenting. But does it really make you a better parent if you give your child home-cooked wild keta salmon and wholemeal rice in a thermal container for lunch? The playground politics of packed lunches are complex. Parents are constantly criticised for sending inappropriate lunches to school. The TV chef Jamie Oliver once said unhealthy packed lunches are tantamount to child abuse. At the other extreme, parents are finding the time to stamp cucumbers with flowers and dice dried herbs into them for their kid’s bento boxes – then post them online. There seems to be no middle ground. Christina (not her real name) is a 40-year-old PA and tablescaping specialist whose child attends a prep school in west London’s Notting Hill. She makes all of her daughter’s packed lunches from scratch, and it’s always organic produce. “I always wanted to go that extra mile,” she tells me. “My motivation to do this was never to be ‘Queen Bee mum’ – it was to make my daughter happy and proud of me.” The “presentation” and “the taste” of the packed lunches, she says, is “super important” – to such an extent that it needs to be “Instagram-worthy” and “fun” in order to encourage her daughter to eat healthily. One of her lunch box specialities, she adds, is mini American hot dogs “decorated with a little flag and a drizzle of ketchup”. “I know it is always going to be flagged by other mothers because the school is very competitive,” she continues. “This dish goes around the mums like wildfire because mums always want to outdo other mums.” If I put out a post saying how much fibre children should be having, I get people replying saying that ‘it’s unrealistic’ and ‘we can’t do that as well as everything else’ when it comes to kids’ foods. It ends up with parents pitting themselves off against one another with food Charlotte Stirling-Reed, child and baby nutrionist While school playground rivalry among parents used to be about pigtails and bows in your children’s hair, Christina says, now it’s about lunch and snacks. “Kids have a much more sophisticated palate,” she explains. “They’re exposed to a lot more than a ham and cheese sandwich. The playing field has widened, and the bar has been set higher due to social media, and Deliveroo and Uber Eats – everything has become more instantaneous.” For other parents, it’s about making a packed lunch as wholesome as possible – something my children would scoff at. Ella Mills, the founder of the plant-based food brand Deliciously Ella, tells me she has found “batch cooking” easiest for her daughter’s packed lunches at nursery. “It’s a real rush getting everyone dressed, ready and out of the door each morning,” she says. “Plus, thinking of something to cook at 7am that’s got no nuts, no sesame in it [due to possible nut allergies], that I’ll know they’ll eat, and that doesn’t take a little while to make. So I make huge batches of veggie bolognese, bean chilli or sweet potato and chickpea stews plus big batches of grains, then simply heat a portion up and pop it in a thermos. Something that’s pre-made makes a world of difference.” Other parents call in the professionals. Chef Meryem Korkut Avci of Mary’s Mobile Chef Services does “meal preps” for elite customers in west and north London. She sends over an ingredients list and will then come to your home once a week and cook for the whole family – a two-hour session is £120 for six dishes (on the seventh day, her clients usually get a takeaway). For packed lunches, she says gluten-free muffins are popular. “Also egg or chicken fried rice, chilli con carne with tortilla, little mini puff pastry rolls with cheese – or sausage rolls.” She’ll even wash up – and says clients use her because “they don’t have time” or are “bored of their own food”. Dr Megan Rossi, a gut health scientist, bestselling author and founder of the website The Gut Health Doctor and The Gut Health Clinic in London, says an ideal packed lunch would contain something from each of the super-six plant groups: “Legumes (such as chickpeas), vegetables, whole grains (such as oats and barley), fruit, nuts and seeds and herbs and spices. Hitting all these is a tricky one but for optimal health, the goal is for them to have at least one from each of these most days. It’s a great target to have in mind!” She advises “hiding legumes and whole grains in sweet treats like black bean brownies with porridge oats,” and says that “while not a long-term strategy to keep plants a secret, it can help build some confidence and comfort with those plants (as well as training childrens’ taste buds) for you to reveal when the time is right.” For chocolate lovers – like my daughter, Lola – Dr Rossi also suggests “making your own chocolate bars with dried fruits, popcorn, seeds and nuts included for extra dietary fibres and a more satiating treat”. I personally can’t see how I would fit that into my schedule. But for many parents healthy eating is a full-time job. Children may need to be offered a specific food “around 10 times” before they accept it, according to research, while Dr Rossi adds that it means nothing to a child if you merely tell them food is healthy or unhealthy. “Try explaining to them from a young age about the importance of their gut microbes,” she says. “Tell them they need to feed the little pet bugs in their tummy with broccoli, for instance, to help keep them strong.” I often feel ashamed that Lola is a fussy eater – though I find solace in the fact that her younger sister isn’t. Dr Rossi claims that what mums-to-be eat during pregnancy may also affect the kind of food your child will have a taste for. “That could play a part with fussing eating,” she says, but adds that she’s not keen on “mum guilt”: “Pregnancy is hard enough without the added pressure of nutrition.” Charlotte Sterling-Reed, “The Baby and Child Nutritionist”, runs a fussy eater course, and assures me that “parents are not bad parents if they are struggling with a fussy eater at home”. She says she is currently witnessing a backlash from “defensive parents” who are fed up with being told to live up to the “ideal” of being a perfect parent. “If I put out a post saying how much fibre children should be having, I get people replying saying that ‘it’s unrealistic’ and ‘we can’t do that as well as everything else’ when it comes to kids’ foods,” she says. “It ends up with parents pitting themselves off against one another with food.” An extravagant lunchbox is also not realistic for the majority of parents, she adds, “whether working or not, and nor should it be – there is a way to find a balance”. She says that a middle ground is possible. “As parents, [we can] pick something that is balanced but that also works for the family situation. This constant comparison between two extremes on social media makes us feel like we are failing in multiple aspects of parenting.” I don’t think I’m ever going to be posting my kids packed lunches on Instagram. I also know that sliced pepper fingers won’t get eaten even if I arrange them in the shape of a smiley face. More than anything though, I won’t feel guilty about my kids’ food habits any more, or the lengths I sometimes go to to get them to eat healthy – I once told my daughters that if they didn’t drink their freshly squeezed orange juice, their legs would fall off. And, you know what, it worked! Read More Keir Starmer is keeping his children out of the public eye – but that won’t stop them being privileged I’m a jellyfish parent – my run-in with a tiger mum was terrifying Kate Moss credits her stress-free life to ‘moonbathing’ – can eccentric wellness regimes help me too? Vasectomy and British men in their twenties: ‘Young, none and done’ Why taking a mental health day could be bad… for your mental health What the world’s happiest children tell us about where Britain is going wrong

In the fallout from last year’s overturning of Roe v Wade, the legislation that secured abortion rights in the US, a great many young American men simultaneously did a quite radical thing. They took to social media to intimately document themselves getting a vasectomy, to prove it was a simple and painless act. One was vegan bodybuilder and influencer Brian Turner, who was certain from around the age of 22 that he’d never want children. He acted on his stance, aged 30, and made some genuinely great content in the process. “The reaction was positive,” he tells me. “A few people commented in disbelief, calling me crazy names or saying, ‘You’re no longer a man – you chopped your balls off.’ But they don’t bother me. I have a thick skin.” It started a global discussion on vasectomies, chiefly around how men can step up and take the burden of contraception away from their female partners forever. Adam, a 35-year-old father of two from Brighton, had the same desire around the same time: “I had a growing guilt about never really fully taking responsibility for contraception. Apart from condoms, all the solutions are for women, and they all seem to have pretty gnarly side effects. It seemed like the decent thing to do, to try to take on the responsibility.” But what of younger British men, who absolutely, definitely don’t want children, who know they want to be what I call “none and done”? For them, although the hurdles are curiously higher and their reasoning more diverse, the same desire to make an informed decision about their body exists. Britain has never had a big national conversation about the vasectomy, the way America – a place where some states even offered them for free in the wake of the Supreme Court’s historic verdict – clearly has in recent years. “The vasectomy was thought to be illegal here until around the Sixties, and only came on the NHS in the early Seventies,” explains Dr Georgia Grainger, a historian of vasectomy. Before this, the concept of men choosing to sterilise themselves was – in her words – “murky”, owing to many of the key doctors and campaigners evangelising the process also being supporters of eugenics. It was actually the beloved broadcaster Michael Parkinson who, in Grainger’s eyes, did the most to burst bubbles on the subject. “He was open about having a vasectomy back in 1972 when it was still very uncommon. He did an interview about it that was on the front page of the first issue of Cosmopolitan magazine. It definitely brought awareness and also dispelled some myths – that it would affect a man’s masculinity or even cause things like a higher-pitched voice”. While the procedure has undoubtedly become more common, I’m not sure that we as a society know a huge amount more about it than in the Seventies. The good news for men is that the procedure is more successful than ever. Doctors reported in March this year that, after surveying 94,000 patients, only 0.2 per cent of men get what’s known as “chronic scrotal pain”. It is generally seen as being more than 99 per cent effective as a form of birth control. The bad news is that there’s still a lot of misinformation around it – from daft macho ideas that it decreases your testosterone levels or sex drive (it doesn’t) to the more assimilated notion you hear a lot: that, similar to an intrauterine device (IUD) with women, it’s easy to undo (it isn’t sadly, not all reversals work, they get less successful over time plus they’re significantly more expensive too). In reality, a vasectomy is quick, carried out under local anaesthetic and takes around 15 minutes. Today, most are what’s known as “scalpel-free”, meaning the incision is so tiny (only 2-4mm) that it doesn’t require stitches. The two tubes that carry sperm from your testicles are severed (hence the colloquial term “the snip”) and closed. Post-surgery, men are encouraged to rest for a couple of days, to apply ice packs to their scrotum and – if possible – wear a jock strap that’s slightly too small to ease any swelling. And that’s it. “The most common question I get asked is, “Do you still cum?’”, says Gregory, who had a vasectomy in January. “It’s funny how so many people think you’ll never ejaculate again after a vasectomy. The truth is: the difference isn’t noticeable.” In fact, sperm is still produced, but it’s discharged internally and absorbed by the membrane around the epididymis (the coiled tube behind each testicle) in a totally natural process. The body still produces semen, which is ejaculated but it no longer contains sperm – although it’s said that a man needs to ejaculate on his own a good number of times before the presence of sperm totally vanishes. “I did hear rumours about ‘40 w***s’,” confirms Gregory, “but I just stuck with the doctor’s deadlines and the sperm test came back clear four months later.” Yet, while the procedure has some fringe areas of conjecture, one important aspect is dramatically less well known: men – especially young men – won’t automatically be granted a vasectomy if they choose to have one. There’s huge variation in the UK, based on regional NHS procedures and resources, plus, “a lot depends on the individual doctor, unfortunately” according to Grainger. Some areas don’t offer them, meaning having to go private and pay an often prohibitively expensive £600. But even simply having the autonomy to choose is also a grey area. “A lot of younger men, especially if they’re unmarried or don’t have children, really have to push to get a doctor to take them seriously,” says Grainger. “We often think of that kind of pushback as being something women get within their reproductive healthcare, but I’ve heard a lot of men share their experiences of having to go to multiple doctors to find one to agree to refer them for a vasectomy, just because they ‘might change their mind’.” This seems like quite a significant flashpoint, given that all the urologists we spoke to confirmed a definite movement of younger people wanting the snip. “Traditionally, the typical age of a man seeking a vasectomy would be 35-40 years old,” states Dr Peter Quinn who performs the procedure for Vasectomy NI. “However we are finding more and more younger men in their twenties are looking for a permanent method of contraception.” Luckily, I didn’t encounter a single man who had any regrets or who had “changed their mind”. What I found instead were more men making an informed choice around their own reproductive health, from a variety of backgrounds, viewpoints and life situations. Some for example, like Simon, are single and dating. He had his tubes snipped aged 28, while in a long-term relationship that subsequently ended. Does he have any regrets? “Absolutely not – I really want to make that clear.” Despite being from a big family with plenty of cousins whom he loves, he’s felt like he’s known he never wanted children himself “from as far back as my teens”. Now aged 30, he’s starting to date again. He doesn’t declare his snipped status on the dating app he uses, but does bring it up quickly, in case there’s any awkward confusion. “Not wanting to have kids is a pretty big part of who I am, I feel like I talk about it all the time anyway without needing to advertise it.” Ray, who is also young, single and snipped feels “it’s a flex” when it comes to being on the dating scene. Aside from being a talking point and a sign of emotional maturity, crucially it “finalises that aspect of ‘maybe he’ll change his mind’. which I have experienced in relationships in the past. I’ve been very clear I don’t want children previously, but nobody fully believes that when you tell them. They might put it to one side and say ‘let’s think about that later’.” Ray also has no regrets. Dr Nick Demediuk has performed more than 50,000 vasectomies in his career. The name of his clinic in Australia says it all: Dr Snip. His perspective over 34 years of performing a life-changing operation is thus pretty unique and his recommendation is unequivocal: “It’s the simplest and easiest form of permanent contraception that responsible men can use to contribute to their relationships and the planet.” For him, one of the key reasons behind the growth in younger men taking up vasectomies has been “issues related to climate change”, with a significant subgroup of “hard-line vegans”. There’s not enough resources for people alive on earth today – it feels almost a bit selfish for us to contribute to that scenario Nat and Charlie* This chimes with Nat and Charlie*, a male/female couple who moved from a big city to the English countryside this year, in part motivated by a desire to give their beloved trio of cats more space. Having been on the fringes of eco-activism since university, their decision – raised initially by Nat and enthusiastically supported by Charlie – to have the procedure when Nat was 29 was very much informed by the climate emergency. “We both feel like we’re loving people and capable of lots of love,” says Charlie “but we both felt inside of ourselves that we never wanted to have children, especially in the world as it is today.” Citing the extreme weather events all over Europe this summer as just one example, they fundamentally worry about the world being safe enough to bring kids into, as well as the feeling that “there are not enough resources for people alive on earth today – it feels almost a bit selfish for us to contribute to that scenario.” They stop short of endorsing the emerging philosophy of anti-natalism, a controversial belief first advanced by South African philosopher David Benatar that sees all human reproduction as immoral, in part due to the climate emergency but also because life is inevitably tinged with suffering and pain. But, in choosing not to have children out of concern for the environment, they find themselves at one end of an extreme and widening political spectrum. The same week I speak to them, Hungary’s leader Viktor Orban was holding the fourth of his biannual Demographic Summits, which – with Italy’s leader Georgia Meloni, religious leaders and right-wing thinkers in tow – aimed to solve what’s seen as a crisis in underpopulation in Europe. Encouraging more babies via defence of traditional family values feels a world away from the outlooks of Nat, Charlie and the many others taking up the vasectomy as a way of definitely not having kids on principle. As if we didn’t have enough 50-50 splits in society today, an increasing number of people believe we need fewer children while an equal number believe we need more. Britain in 2023 therefore seems conflicted between two worlds – the privatised freedom of America where a young, non-parent like Brian Turner is waved through (“I talked to my GP and she said, ‘All good’ and referred me straight away”) and a more prohibitive or simply untrusting mindset that looks at a young man and says, “Hmm, go away and think about it a while.” Perhaps if we want young men in society to play a more positive, active role, maybe they need to be trusted with their own bodily autonomy first? *Names have been changed Read More No music, no ball games, no fun: society is wiping out play ‘I was really struggling to get it up’: Why younger men are turning to Viagra I couldn’t climax, so I let ‘big testosterone’ take me for a ride Woman prepares hamper basket as her husband’s vasectomy gift Why taking a mental health day could be bad… for your mental health What the world’s happiest children tell us about where Britain is going wrong

Twitter Inc Chief Executive Elon Musk on Tuesday revealed details about new features including adding calls and encrypted