When it comes to figuring out how much money is enough to start a family, I’d say that it is totally relevant to the individual and depends largely on standard of living. I have friends who earn more than my husband and I who don’t feel that they are in a financial position and I know people who earn less than us, have more children and still manage to get by.

How much money is enough to start a family? It’s a difficult question.

I guess that the best idea is to work on ‘average’ – the average standard of living (whatever that may be). In a recent survey by Seven Seas Pregnancy a majority of respondents (60 per cent) felt that a collective income of £25,000 per year is enough to start a family.

I guess the next question is whether this amount is sufficient to support more than one child. I’d say almost certainly not. A poll by Aviva found that half the participants could not afford more than one child even though they would have liked a larger family.

And the fact of the matter is that raising a child is 60 per cent more costly than it was just 10 years ago. Everything is expensive – housing, food, energy, nursery, university… it’s easy to get bogged down by financial worries, and there is just no easy answer when it comes to working out child-related expenses.

Children force us to be real about our priorities, which isn’t a bad thing. It’s a grown up thing. And no one ever said that being a grown up would be easy.

Do you think that a collective income of £25,000 per year is enough to start a family?

It’s certainly no big secret that new parents are going to lose sleep; a lot of sleep. Newborns are just plain ol’ needy – if they’re not hungry or needing a nappy change, then they’re too hot, too cold, lonely, uncomfortable… just needy. Lucky they’re also cute – I am sure it’s no coincidence.

A recent survey by Pampers has revealed that new parents lose an average of 4 hours of sleep a night, which equals 1, 456 hours of lost sleep per year. It is for this reason that mums and dads rate sleeping through the night as the biggest milestone in their baby’s first year.

The good news is; the number should decrease the older your baby gets (although I have a sneaking suspicion that this cringe-worthy statistic might rear its ugly head the day your child turns thirteen… but let’s not think about that for the moment).

Mums and dads say that the primary reasons attributing to a wakeful baby during the night are; hunger, a wet nappy and teething.

The survey also revealed that it’s mum who puts babs to bed a majority of the time, and that one 60 per cent of mums ask their own mums for advice on getting babs to sleep.

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A new study by the UK-based Kaspersky Lab has revealed that children who watch videos on YouTube are only three clicks away from music videos containing content that contains violence, nudity, guns, car crashes and the like. Not the stuff that parents want their children to see.

And…

…the more tech-savvy your child, the greater the danger of your little one being exposed to adult content. The reason for this, according to the research, is because parents who have confidence in their child’s ability to navigate a computer may leave their child unsupervised. With no adult to supervise clicking fingers, anything can happen!

And it’s not only YouTube that’s the danger; there are dodgy ads, pictures and websites lurking all over the internet.

So, what’s the solution? Here’s some advice on how to stop children from being exposed to adult content online.

The easy answer is no internet. The thing is; burying our heads to make our job a bit easier is not going to solve any problems – other children play online, which means that our children will be exposed to the internet irrespective of our efforts to outlaw it.

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Social network sites have made the world a much more accessible place. There’s no question that Facebook, Twitter etc. are successful because they rely on the innate narcissism of the human race – that we assume that other people care about what we think and where we go.

It’s called being human and it’s okay. But in the age of cyber friendships, social networks are also a great way to keep in touch with family and friends, especially those who live far away.

My family live a twelve-hour flight away, on a different continent, and I attack Facebook with a barrage of family photographs in an attempt to keep them involved, and because I think my girls are gorgeous and want to share (yup, there it is; narcissism at its best).

But often I wonder if it’s all a bit much. I mean, I am careful about the kinds of photos I post online but I am under no illusion that the content is in any way safe or secure. Is it then still okay to post a mass of pictures of my children online (pretty much without their consent), knowing that they are free for all to see and use?

I know mums who are far more active in protecting their children’s right to privacy in relation to the content that is placed online for all the world to see. Should I be better at it too?

Hmm…

In a recent survey commissioned by My Voucher Codes, 88 per cent of the parents who took part use social network sites and 23 per cent of those parents choose not to share family photographs online. Like me, you might be interested in the reasons why (although I am sure that you can hazard a pretty good guess); check it out:

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Here’s a challenge: count the number of times you lie to your child in a single day. Not to make you feel guilty but in the name of research. You’ll probably be surprised at the outcome.

At the moment, my favourite lie is “…if you don’t hurry up, I’m going to leave you at home by yourself.” – Obviously I am not going to leave my three-year-old daughter at home alone. But her ability to dawdle is honestly medal-worthy and the only thing that jolts her into action is the fear of being left out of the day’s activity.

I also tell my daughter that she has a beautiful singing voice when she actually sounds like she is singing a dirge. I am hoping that this will improve with time and perhaps a little training. I also tell my child that her screeching will scare the neighbours when I know full well that they aren’t home.

Am I a bad mum? I proclaimed in the first sentence of this article that we should not count our lies in the name of guilt but I do feel sort of guilty. Well, maybe this is no excuse, but we all do it. – Lie to our children, that is.

A new study published in the “International Journal of Psychology” has reported that most parents in the US and China lie to their children on a regular basis. Okay – so the UK wasn’t included in the study but parents are parents, and we’ll assume that the results are indicative of a parenting trend the world over.

Here are some of the top lies we tell our children (in no particular order):

• “If you tell a lie, your nose will grow longer.” (Oh, the irony!)
• “Your Fairy Godmother is watching everything you do.” Continue reading →