I'm starting to accept that all the research in the world can't prepare you for the day-to-day realities of parenting, and that the parent you hope to be isn't necessarily the parent you will be when you are faced with the child you end up with -- who is, after all, an individual in his or her own right. What matters is that I am the right mother for him, and he is the perfect child for me.

Last week on the Daily Mail's chat forum, someone posted an article written by a U.K. blogger who admitted she gave her daughter a sedative on a cross-Atlantic flight, just to get some peace and quiet. Cue chat room critics. I'll confess that I've done it.

A new study debunks the idea that extended exclusive breastfeeding wards off childhood obesity. Maybe we should use these results as an opportunity to ask ourselves whether having all mothers breastfeed exclusively for four or six months should really be the ultimate goal? Shouldn't other considerations about mother/child bonding, maternal sanity, child thriving and family unity be taken into account? Isn't it possible that we may have reached the level of exclusive breastfeeding that reflects the portion of the mother/child population for whom this is the best option, all things weighed?

Forget about public school versus private, or breastfeeding versus forumula. The biggest – and one of the earliest – decisions facing parents-to-b...

VANCOUVER - Babies, just like adults, may have a mean streak, says a new study out of the University of British Columbia.Psychology professor and lead...

While it's undoubtedly true that one of the best gifts we can give our children is a happy and loving marriage, it's difficult to wrap one's head around the notion of placing children second. Especially young ones. One would hope that parents could be mature enough to realize that once they have a child, that child should be the first priority.

Many of the women I know, myself included, spend their twenties and thirties struggling to live up to the ideal of having it all. When it's physically ideal to have children, most of us are off concentrating on other things: travelling, establishing careers and looking for that person to share it all with. Your twenties are really the time, if not to act, then to consider and make crucial decisions about what you want your family and future to look like. Instead, most of us defer those decisions, not realizing how fast time flies.

I was nursing my then eight-month-old who -- until that point -- was an ardent breastfeeder and had been gobbling up baby mush for two months with gusto. Then he started biting me. I turned to Google. I don't recall how many pages upon pages I looked at before stumbling across baby-led weaning. BLW in a nutshell: Baby starts eating once she can sit up unsupported and pick up her own food and put it into her mouth unassisted.

There is nothing less romantic or erotic than getting busy with the end goal of producing something that wears poopy diapers. "Trying" is really, well, trying. Anyone who thinks it's "the fun part" has never had to turn it into work -- relentless, scheduled, no-matter-how-tired-you-are, get-up-at-5:30a.m.-before-you-go-to-work, work -- which is then charted on graph according to basal body temperature.

It's amazing we grow into healthy adults at all when you consider the mistakes we make raising our kids. Like feeding them rice cereal at six months, for example. That's no longer allowed, according to the latest in parenting news that came from a statement released by Health Canada last week.

I am an absolute typical example of a new breed of women. Been married, divorced, very independent, love my job, enjoy my freedom and subconsciously take it for granted that I will have children at some point. Is it wrong to want to be settled, secure, with a house and garden before we decide to reproduce? Morally and socially, no, but biologically we are taking a big gamble.

TORONTO - It's one of the first questions people ask new parents after finding out whether their newborn is a boy or a girl: how much does the baby we...

CHICAGO - One is a healthy first-grader, the other an honours college student majoring in psychology. Once the tiniest babies ever born, both girls ar...

Just because you actually are a parent doesn't mean you're necessarily qualified to be a parent, or that you should be expected to take on said duties of being a parent. Enter, the baby concierge.

I kind of thought that giving birth would automatically turn me into a bouncing, bib-juggling, broccoli-mushing machine who felt self-fulfilled because of motherhood. But it didn't. Having a baby was equivallent to a mini nuclear bomb going off in my mentality.

It seems everyone is talking about women who choose to have children later in life. New York magazine recently featured a 63-year-old pregnant wom...

Do you go gaga for tiny onesies? First in line to hold the newborn that someone just brought into the office? Can't stop watching reruns of Kate Plus ...