There is a poem published in the book You look prettier when you smile, by Georgina Hudson, who says that a daughter raised by a mother unable to tune into her needs loses her voice. She learns that she cannot speak No, because this leads to rejection; that she cannot express her anger, because it condemns her to isolation; that she cannot love any other maternal figure, nor have any close friends, for fear of arousing her jealousy. She lives with the fear that her rage might explode without warning, like a volcanic flood of words or a terrifying withdrawal. Ultimately, the daughter learns that it is not safe to be herself, and so she tries to become what she thinks her mother wants her to be. This pattern does not end in childhood unless the daughter, as an adult, learns to reclaim her voice and set boundaries, which involves grieving for the mother she would have needed and never had.

Fatima Ouassak was born in Morocco, but moved to France when she was just one year old. A political scientist and activist, she presents the essay The power of mothers, written out of anger at racism and Islamophobia, and fear of the consequences this can have for their children. It defends the power mothers have if they are able to organize politically.

We read in the ARA an article, quite surprising, by The Economist which is titled "Why are more and more families preferring girls over boys?" Gosh, you. And it explains cases of couples who cry when they're told it's "a boy" and that the networks are full of a pathology (it's not new, but it's been given a name) called "gender disappointment" and they show "the sadness of not having a little girl." I was going to say that we deserve extinction, but it's not necessary. We're close at hand.

"I'm excited and very happy, but I think a lot about the future and sometimes I think he'll be alone or that when I retire he'll be 16," admits Carmen Martín, who is playing with little Mati on the floor of their dining room. She is 48 years old and he is a year and a half old. When she met her current partner, they were both in their forties, and she already knew she wasn't going to be a mother, that the time had passed. But he really wanted to, he convinced her, and they went to a fertility clinic to see what options they had. "If we want to be parents, we have to be now," she recalls, referring to the urgency and excitement of that moment. At the center, they underwent a study that revealed that Carmen would no longer be able to have children with her own eggs; she needed those of a donor to have a better chance of getting pregnant. The surprise came when she succeeded on the first try, which is very difficult, since it usually takes several attempts.

The success of Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham, creators ofAdolescence–the series of the moment–, has been bursting the bubbles of the generational and gender filter by transferring the cultureincelFrom the screens of teenagers locked in their rooms to a commonplace frequented by adults like Netflix. The series chronicles how the sinister influence of toxic masculinity floods and expands into digital environments. It comes at an opportune time, now that there's no shortage of moral panics about social media. Its virtueAdolescence It's a shock, but the challenge after watching it is to avoid falling into a reactive, prohibitionist, and short-sighted mode. How can we take advantage of the buzz the series has generated to better support our teens?

In Spain there are almost two million single-parent families, 81.4% of which are headed by a woman. Most of these households are single-parent due to divorce or separation. In the words of Xavier Roigé, professor of the Department of Social Anthropology at the UB, "contrary to popular belief, this is a constant element in history, the main cause of which was family abandonment or widowhood." Roigé insists that what is "historically new" is single parenthood by choice. According to data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), in Spain from 2012 to 2022 the number of single mothers by choice has increased by 32.8%. In Roigé's opinion, the increase in this single motherhood "is mainly due to the dissociation of the link between conjugability and motherhood." Today, it is possible and viable for a woman to have a child without needing a partner, "either through assisted reproduction techniques or through adoption."

Anna Gual's son was four years old when he had to be operated on for carnots and tonsils at the Hospital Universitari de Terrassa. It was November 3, 2023. Gual entered the operating room lobby with the little boy in her arms. There, they both witnessed the sedation – intranasally – of a crying girl and then she was taken inside. One, two, three, four, five minutes. It was her turn. Pre-anesthesia medication is administered with the aim of reducing the anxiety of patients in pediatric operations. Unfortunately, and unlike that girl, the sedation did not have the desired effect on Gual's son: "He was so nervous that he kept crying." Two nurses then took him away: "They had to tear me from my arms to take him to the operating room; it was traumatic," she laments.