Juliet Linley

If you buy TIME magazine this week in the U.S., you'll see this picture of a mom nursing a 3-year-old under the headline 'Are You Mom Enough?'

In the upper left-hand corner you find the headline 'The French Rejection,' referring to Nicolas Sarkozy's defeat in the French elections.

Meanwhile, if...

"Do you like my penguin, Mummy?" our daughter asks me as we walk out of her French kindergarten in Rome and she waves this drawing under my nose.

"Gorgeous," I answer (obviously).

"OK," she tells me as she trots along breathlessly beside me, "I'm going to explain to you just...

"You threaten your kids too much."

That sentence, said with gentle firmness, made such an impression on my friend Amanda that she repeated it to us the moment we saw each other again once the summer was over.

Who said it? Her mother, the grandmother of her three sons.

"And...

"We're taking Dave to Florida to swim with the dolphins," Tom and Mary told us when their son was just over 4 years old.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that such a vacation is a little over-the-top, given that at that age playing with a mere stuffed version of the...

I was talking to a young mother last weekend at a children's party in Rome. Let's call her Giovanna. She's 24 and is the mother of Niccolò, who's 13 months old. Giovanna is very happy to be a mom and is enjoying her little one in a manner she'd never...

For the Nicolosi-Murray family, it all started with those photo-calendars that you send family and friends for the Holiday Season -- the ones with cute pictures mainly of the kids, and maybe even of the dog.

Now, Mom Alexia Murray, Dad Nick Nicolosi, their two kids and their dog...

When I was expecting, my mother suggested I visit a Craniosacral therapist. Not because there were any problems with my pregnancy -- on the contrary, I worked until a few days before delivery -- but simply "To make yourself feel even better."

I was rather skeptical about something which basically...

I'm currently reading an Italian book entitled "Il Bambino non é un Elettrodomestico" ("A Child Is Not a Domestic Appliance"), and I must admit that I have finally found in the author, Dr. Giuliana Mieli, a person who puts the needs of the child first.

I'm chatting one morning to a group of mothers by Rome's Termini Railway Station about the advantages of sending our children to foreign schools.

All are in favor, "Because you need to give your kids the best opportunities -- the working world is so brutal."

Then I venture: "Surely,...

Can a natural birth be a sensual experience? Can you experience pleasure while giving birth to a child? And -- crucially -- do "orgasmic" or "ecstatic births" really happen?

It's not a new concept (the "Orgasmic Birth" documentary by Debra Pascalli-Bonaro was released a couple of years ago),...

My friend Francesca is in the last month of her pregnancy. In fact, she could well be in a Roman delivery room as you read this post.

She sent me this anecdote yesterday, after having complained to me in a previous email about the lack of support she's been getting...

We're entangled in an Atlanta traffic jam, besieged by pachyderms on four wheels. Many of the SUVs are so enormous all we can see are their rear bumpers.

With little else to look at, I start studying the ubiquitous bumper stickers with which Americans so love to adorn their cars.

During our vacation in Sicily last month, I overheard a conversation between several Southern Italian women on the subject of waxing. But it wasn't about their own adult experiences at beauty parlors. It was about having hairy legs when they were young girls.

Yes, young seven or eight-year-old girls, not...

Brazilian bombshell Gisele Bundchen has dropped a bombshell. In an interview with Harper's Bazaar UK magazine, she declared that mothers should be legally held to breastfeed their babies for six months.

Obviously the supermodel's words triggered many a vicious response even in Italy:

There are those that wonder what would...

I grew up in Rome in an eccentric, decaffeinated family -- in which tea lorded unashamedly over coffee.

And I have to say, they weren't even normal teas like Earl Grey or Orange Bergamot, but herbal potions made from Thyme or Linden flowers and Rosehip or Roiboos teas.

For reasons...

Our daughter adores going to shopping malls, simply because they're full of what I call 'coin chomping chimps.' Be they monkeys, gorillas or dragons, as soon as she sees them she goes crazy. Plus, the more fluorescent flashing lights they bear -- and the louder the absurd noises they emit...

A couple of foreign moms in Florence, Italy, are planning a school charity auction with a curious twist. Rather than putting objects under the hammer -- like books or toys -- they're auctioning experiences, like a Napoleonic treasure hunt or a home-cooked, cowboy theme dinner, organized by the parents themselves.

Being half Swiss (the other half is from Trinidad and Tobago), I often get mistaken for a Swede when I'm in the States. Probably because 'Swiss' and 'Swedish' sound vaguely similar...

But, let me tell you, I actually wouldn't mind being re-born in Sweden. Not because I'd probably be blond,...

The Italian media constantly bombard us with news that some actress, model or TV presenter returned to work just days or weeks after giving birth -- preferably without an ounce of extra fat and with baby and nanny in tow.

But nobody ever asks whether it is good for...

My best friend Jonathan lives in France, where for a number of months the book Le Conflit ('The Conflict') has been topping the bestseller lists. When he sent it to me, I read the title so quickly I thought it referred to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- a topic dear to...