Lisa Dick
My son and I stand on the corner of Frederick and Great King Streets in Dunedin. He is wearing seven strings of beads around his neck and holding a blue collection bucket. His necklace is so heavy it makes his neck ache, so he didn’t put it on until we reached our designated spot. The hospital looms above us, blotting light from the pavement below. But, here on our corner, the sun shines.
At 12 years old, my son is confident. He catches two buses to school each day. He’s a house captain. He plays football, futsal, water polo, underwater hockey and field hockey. He learns guitar and drums. He has a dramatic streak that appears when he, his siblings and their cousins put on family shows in the summer. He’s getting tall. His brown hair needs a cut, and his collection of Lynx deodorants clutters up our bathroom drawer. He’s fit, he’s healthy and he’s active. [Read more…] about 499 beads
As a child of the 70s and 80s I was raised with the idea that women could (and did) do anything, and always eschewed the ‘traditional’ feminine trappings of makeup, skirts and heels. As I got older I became aware that this slogan was frequently understood to mean that women should do everything, including juggling work and family, but it was not until I started thinking about whether – and if – I wanted children that I fully realised the extent to which social attitudes towards motherhood remain among the most potent and pervasive constraints on female (and male) identity and freedom.
During her recent trip to the United Nations, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern used her speech to recommit the government to making New Zealand the “best place in the world to be a child”, ensuring that:
The 194 member states of the World Health Organisation (WHO) met recently in Geneva for the annual United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly. The delegation from Ecuador proposed a global public health resolution to encourage breastfeeding. The resolution stated that research evidence convincingly shows that mothers’ milk is healthiest for children, and called on governments to “protect, promote and support breastfeeding” and to strive to limit inaccurate or misleading marketing of breastmilk substitutes (infant formula).
Bone needs an adequate supply of calcium and phosphate to mineralise properly. Failure of this mineral supply (for any reason) results in defects like osteomalacia (impaired mineralisation of the bone matrix) and osteoporosis (overall low bone mass). In children, inadequate mineralisation causes rickets. There are multiple causes of rickets, but the main one is vitamin D deficiency.