Foster and kinship carers are volunteers who provide day-to-day care to children who are unable to live safely with their parents. A kinship carer is someone who is either related to the child or has a previous relationship with the child (such as a neighbour or family friend). Prior to placement in their care, a […]
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New products that claim to replicate mother’s milk have entered the lucrative market for infant formula. To an anthropologist and public health scholar who studies breastfeeding, these claims appear to be built on old patterns of misleading scientific statements – and reveal the power of marketing to exploit gaps created by inadequate societal support for […]
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The COVID-19 pandemic and associated public health measures have added a whole new set of challenges for parents. Their social support systems diminished, economic security threatened and access to essential services limited. There is no doubt that the pandemic has had a substantial impact on parents, with documented increases in mental health difficulties, alcohol consumption […]
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Exclusive breastfeeding in the first six months, as recommended by the World Health Organisation, is vital for child growth and survival. Exclusive breastfeeding means that the infant receives only breast milk. This is because breast milk has adequate amounts of nutrients and water required for healthy growth as well as immune factors required for the […]
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Britain’s birth rates are plunging. The number of babies being born has been in steep decline since 2017. Now, researchers are investigating early signs that the pandemic may have caused rates to drop even further. This is not totally surprising given the difficult economic conditions that have come with the pandemic – history also shows […]
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Although babies and young children are at lower risk of getting very sick with COVID-19 compared to older adults, a small proportion of babies will require hospital care. There has been immense interest among scientists, health-care workers and new mothers especially in understanding whether potentially protective antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) can […]
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Jean, a 24-year-old mother of two, said: “People don’t think there’s hungry kids out there [in Canada].” She would like us to know “there definitely is.” More than 1.2 million children in Canada live in food-insecure households, including babies of the families as well. In Nunavut, that number is higher than any other part of […]
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Learning to read does not begin when a child puzzles over the words in a book for the first time. In the early weeks of their lives and even before birth, babies are skilfully processing important information about the sounds they hear. They are attuning to tones, patterns of language and distinguishing their own familiar […]
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Imagine you’re strolling through a park and you overhear a middle-aged couple cooing over each other, doting over their “wittle sugar pwum” and “baby doll.” “Ewwww,” you might reflexively think. Baby talk is cute when grown-ups dote on babies. But when adults converse with each other? Not so much. Yet in my work as a […]
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I remember a decade ago sitting in front of my 9-month-old daughter, who was in her high chair, and trying to spoon-feed her a pureed green vegetable. It didn’t matter if it was peas, green beans or something else, because the outcome was the same: I spooned it into her mouth, and it came right […]
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