Relationships

From TV brats to natural born serial killers, prospective parents have been given stark warnings about the dark side of child-rearing. So, asks Bettina Arndt, are the naysayers about parenthood right? It’s a mesmerising image. The gaunt mother stands stock still surrounded by road workers, clutching her baby pram right next to the booming rat-a-tat-tat […]

The internet can be a dangerous place for children — here’s how you can make it safer. Julia was a trusting girl. She trusted her school friend when she suggested that they make a video together after school. Julia trusted that it was like a game. And Julia trusted that, when asked to wear garish […]

Divorce can be one of the most painful experiences in life. Yet it doesn’t have to be that way — more couples are working to keep their split friendly for the sake of the children, write Michael Sheather and Sue Williams. For Pru Quinlan, marriage wasn’t exactly the happy ever after she’d imagined it to […]

After decades of claims they were ‘living in sin’ unwed couples might finally have the last laugh, with a new study finding unmarried partners are happier than their married counterparts. The research — published in the Journal of Marriage and Family found that cohabiting couples experience greater levels of happiness and self-esteem than married couples. […]

The death of a loved one is devastating — but a new study has found it could literally break your heart. Researchers from Harvard Medical School have found that your risk of heart attack dramatically increases in the days and weeks after the death of a close friend or family member. Related: Juices that can […]

It seems Christmas shopping for some men has become a little more expensive this year, with a new study finding that cheating men spend more money on their mistress than their wife. The statistics taken from 2,000 men who use the Illicit Encounters website, an extra marital affairs dating service in the UK, found that […]

Penny-pinching millionaire Ebenezer Scrooge is famous for his mean, miserly behaviour — now new research has suggested that rich people really are less compassionate than their poorer counterparts. A study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, found that poorer people were better at recognising signals of distress in others because they had been […]

The older we get, the less we need our friends and family to be happy, new research has claimed. The latest Gallup analysis found that US citizens require less and less social time as they age. People over the age of 65 require just three hours of socialising a day to maintain a happy outlook, […]

Women are said to be the fairer sex, but when it comes to Christmas presents they spend an average of 50 percent less on their partner than he spends on them. A British survey has found that women were planning to spend a maximum of $175 on their husband or boyfriend, while men were anticipating […]

My boyfriend Drew comes from a very close family and I’m pretty sure no woman would ever have been quite good enough for him in their eyes. If they were to ever find out the truth about me I hate to think what would happen. So I had mixed feelings when I heard his mother […]