Makies, the #toyslikeme campaign and the broader focus on disability in digital spaces show we are in the midst of a significant shift towards an inclusive world view of disability.
Many people are shocked by what children are willing to share about themselves online. Is it that they don’t understand privacy, or just have a different conception of it compared to adults?
Fairy tales have happy endings. They may be dark and scary but the prince always finds Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood susses out the big bad wolf. Right? All too often many assume that fairy stories…
Many adults believe they are not artistic and feel nervous about visual art. They vividly recall the moment when a teacher or family member discouraged their efforts to creatively express their ideas through…
“I didn’t encourage my daughter to play with Barbie dolls and dress up in flouncy fairy costumes, but she just gravitated toward them.” When confronted with the idea that gendered marketing and stereotypes…
Not unlike the bear himself, the film Paddington has had a long and bumpy ride to the big screen. Paddington’s movie, like the character, unwittingly left a marmalade smeared paw print on the delicate…
National Adoption Week is upon us and we are again being asked to consider becoming adoptive parents to a child in care. In the past four years the week to recruit adopters has quadrupled, leading to a…
Earlier this year, an American mother was arrested for allowing her nine year old daughter to play unsupervised in a park while she finished her shift at work. Even though this story got a lot of press…
Daily interactions require bargaining, be it for food, money or even making plans. These situations inevitably lead to a conflict of interest as both parties seek to maximise their gains. To deal with…
Once a hidden crime, domestic violence has in recent years emerged as a mainstream criminal justice issue in Australia. Cases such as Queensland man Gerard Baden-Clay’s murder of his wife Allison and the…
It’s often suggested that children with same-sex parents have poorer outcomes because they’re missing a parent of a particular sex. But research my colleagues and I published in the journal BMC Public…
Due to Australia’s small population and high concentration of few media voices, public broadcasters play a pivotal role in shaping the media ecosystem and cultural landscape. With the ABC and SBS under…
It was reported last week that spending on youth services is down by one third, with some budgets cut by 78%. The cuts to youth service budgets have been called “disproportionate” by Tim Loughton, the…
The recent debate in the House of Commons on the cost of going away during the school holidays has reignited a long-running concern about price banding in the tourism industry and the educational impact…
Professor, Canada Research Chair in Determinants of Child Development, Owerko Centre at the Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute, University of Calgary