I can't be the only one who read about the Dáil's directive to allow new mums to breastfeed within the chamber with a massive eye-roll. I can't see how feeding your baby while at work symbolises...
I can think of few things guaranteed to disrupt marital harmony as quickly as one party's inability to read a map, a trait which usually manifests itself as you're whizzing down a European...
Some people think football's a matter of life and death, said Bill Shankly. I assure you, he added, it's much more serious than that. I wonder what old Bill would do if he were invited to a wedding...
What exactly is the correct etiquette for dealing with local election candidates on the doorstep? I wish someone would tell me. Because truthfully, there are few things in life that fill me with as...
The flight home was delayed, which meant several hours hanging around the airport gate, waiting for news of a departure.
It is a simple fact and yet apparently it bears repeating: in Ireland, you are legally entitled to breastfeed anywhere you want.
I've got to confess, it took me only seconds to climb aboard my very high horse when I saw Gwyneth Paltrow's daughter Apple giving her mum a ticking off for posting a photo of them sharing a ski lift on social media.
Lately, because I have been feeling very busy, I have been trying to be more mindful. Yes, I realise I'm not exactly at the cutting edge here; everyone from Madonna to Oprah Winfrey has embraced mindfulness and meditation with the kind of enthusiasm celebs usually reserve for kale smoothies.
Once upon a time, back in a world before Marie Kondo, we worried about David Beckham.
The 'Derry Girls' hilarious field trip to meet the Protestants in the new series opener on Tuesday night reminded me of a long-forgotten school trip to Belfast in the early nineties.
Just in case you were in any doubt, it truly is open season on men. You can slag them off as much as you want now, safe in the knowledge that they brought it all on themselves, what with their...
Oh Marie Kondo, how I love you, with your tiny white cardigans, your charmingly broken English, and your lovely, calm, graceful manner as you...
The preparations were akin to a Broadway show. There were daily rehearsals, with the actors poring over their lines until they were seared, word-perfect, into their memory.
It all started innocently enough when he said he would bring a tree home.
Hear that? It's the sound of the last nail being hammered into the coffin of the 'Lean In' era. The hammering is being done by the glorious Michelle Obama, who's in the middle of a mega-watt...
I hate tipping. Not because I hate handing over money to poorly paid waiting staff - as a former waitress of many years standing, I'm only too aware of just how much restaurant staff rely on them to make ends meet.
Mocking the generation after you as you settle into comfortable middle age never goes out of fashion, and today's young people frequently make that task so very easy, with their safe spaces, their Instagram obsessions and their tendency towards snowflakiness. And then, sometimes, something happens to remind us that we make fun of young people at our peril.
There are 900 million dogs in the world, and sometimes it feels as though they have all congregated, as one, and chosen my favourite woodland walk as their collective toilet.
I'll be honest, I never realised wearing leggings was so controversial until I read about the furore it's caused on an American college campus, where a mum has written to female students beseeching them to stop with immediate effect.
It is a simple fact, and yet apparently it bears repeating: in Ireland, you are legally entitled to breastfeed anywhere you want.
Hot off the presses from Milan Fashion Week: the in-crowd have ditched their trainers. That's right: those comfy runners are no longer the height of sartorial savvy; to be on-trend, you must replace them immediately - ideally, according to the experts, with cowboy boots (horse outside optional).
Jennifer Aniston turns 50 this week, an occasion which sparked roughly 9,423 articles asking why we still insist on calling the multimillionaire actress 'poor Jen'. Except we don't. Not in real life, anyway, although I grant you magazine editors have had a long and fruitful career picking over her various misfortunes.
It feels a little like we're in a time machine. Yesterday, newspaper headlines proclaimed the return of the bootcut jean, last seen fraying around the ends as you trailed through a muddy field at Oxegen.
The minute I saw Sabine Weyand's yellow jumper, I knew she was going to say something interesting. Sabine, the deputy chief EU Brexit negotiator, popped up on the news on Monday night to pour cold water over the idea of renegotiating the backstop.
How much did you weigh when you were 20? Can you even remember? It could prove crucial, because new research suggests that women who stick within a stone-and-a-half of their weight at that age have a greatly increased chance of reaching 90.
If you can't face another round of Christmas drinks looking as old as you actually are, and dream of nothing more than looking as young as you did a few years ago, I urge you to seek out the newly published book by French author Mylène Desclaux, 'Why French Women Feel Young at 50'.
Parents, I've noticed since becoming one myself, tend to divide quite neatly into two subsections. On the one hand, you have the Advance Planning Brigade, who had their kids down for secondary school the moment they'd binned the positive pregnancy test, have their Connemara cottage rental pre-booked every August 'til 2022, and began their Christmas preparations in earnest on July 1. And then there are the rest of us, the Chronically Disorganised, who find it hard to plan past mid-afternoon and can never remember if it's PE day or not.
In the run-up to his 70th birthday, Prince Charles has been enjoying an unusually benign period of press coverage, with a series of fluffy interviews highlighting everything from his popularity with his grandchildren (they call him Grandpa Wales, which is cute) to his culinary inventiveness (he devised a recipe for grouse moussaka, or 'groussaka', which is disgusting).
I've never considered wearing a poppy, but the annual fracas about who's wearing it and who's not saddens me.
ELDERLY primigravidas are all the rage this week, which means that for once, I feel fashionable. Doctors apply this charming epithet to anyone over 35 who is giving birth for the first time and as royal mum-to-be Meghan Markle is currently 37, she falls firmly into this category, as did I when I had my first baby at 35.
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to Instagram it, did it really fall at all? That is the great philosophical conundrum of the 21st century, when every special moment is snapped, edited in a flattering light, and posted to social media. Enough, says concert designer LeRoy Bennett, who is backing a ban on smartphones at gigs. Bennett, who's worked with stars such as Madonna and Paul McCartney, is irritated by fans taking pictures of the stage and capturing it from a bad angle. The artists get upset, he said, and presumably he gets it in the neck as a result.
I once worked with a lovely restaurant manager called Kevin whose motto at work – and in life – was: “It’s nice to be nice, it costs nothing.”
SOME things are, or at least ought to be, sacrosanct.
You’re most likely to be murdered by someone you know, we are regularly informed by domestic violence charities and, indeed, the statistics bear this out. A 2017 report from Women’s Aid found 88pc of women murdered in Ireland were killed by a man they knew, most often a partner or an ex-partner.
THE endless battle of the national bulge got a shot in the arm this week with the welcome arrival of the sugar tax. Anything which spurs big business to cut the calories in their over-sweet products is welcome, as far as I’m concerned. But will it go far enough? I’m not sure that a few extra pennies on the price of a can of Coke is going to put Professor Donal O’Shea out of business any time soon.
Every generation has its own housing horror story to tell. Unfortunately, by the time you’ve recovered from the fright and are ready to turn your one-time nightmare tale into an amusing scare-at-bedtime yarn, the next generation isn’t interested in hearing it.
AN old friend called me recently with a dilemma. He’d recently become a new dad, and his wife wanted to baptise their baby girl. She was planning a big family celebration, a lavish party with friends and family in attendance, and it all sounded lovely.
TODAY is International Women’s Day so to celebrate, I got up at 4.30am, did my make-up, had a blow-dry, threw on my Jimmy Choos, then attended a 7am city-centre breakfast meeting and did some high-level corporate networking before changing into my workout gear for a quick Pilates session. Then I put in a 12-hour stint at the office, smashing a few glass ceilings with my...
Some studies seem so obvious you wonder why anyone needed to research them in the first place. Academics at Swansea University have found the more baby manuals mums read in the first year of their newborn’s life, the more anxious they become, and the more likely they are to end up depressed.
It's D-Day for the country's thousands of Leaving Cert students who got their results this morning and, as ever, there'll be plenty of bright, capable teenagers in tears because those cursed CAO points don't reflect either their ability or potential.
The Lodge at Ashford Castle has been voted one of the world's Top 10 hotels. Liz Kearney checks in and breathes out.
Picture the scene: Jennifer Aniston is on a cover shoot for a glossy magazine.
Thanks to the searing eloquence of the unnamed victim in the now notorious Stanford rape case, this weekend many of us are a tiny bit closer to understanding the devastating, long-lasting effects of sexual assault.
There are few things in life as depressing as the sight of two females arguing about how best to be a modern woman, while the lads sit back and watch.
'Yes, but which Barbie is the hottest?' He was half-joking, but the colleague who took one look at Mattel's three new-look dolls - the tall one, the petite one and the curvy one - was simply asking the question that the iconic American toy has always demanded we ask of her.
This week, insurance company GloHealth launched its 'Mothers are Amazing' campaign. The TV ad features a busy working mum who is smilingly devoted to her children. A woman who, as the voiceover has it, is "up before dawn, to get the breakfast, to clear, to work and tend and play. A woman who works all day and returns home to put in another shift and then takes the time to...
How did I end up a stranger in my own home? I'm alone in the sitting room, surrounded by a pile of remote controls I don't know how to use, shouting at the TV in tears because I can't even turn on The Late Late Show (I don't even like The Late Late Show).
Question: If you are not a feminist in 2015, what does that make you? A sexist pig? A misogynist? Or just someone so tired of seeing the F-word attached to everything from serious sexual violence to light-hearted wolf-whistling that you'd gladly torch your copy of 'The Female Eunuch', rip up 'The Second Sex' and stamp vigorously on 'How To Be A Woman'?
How much longer is this rugby thing going to go on for? I ask because I'm considering removing myself to a place without TVs, radios or any newspapers, where I'll be able to enjoy a sport-free life for the remainder of my tournament while the rest of the country carries on losing its head over an oval ball.
It is 15 summers ago now, but I still remember the tears at Dublin Airport.
On Thursday, the National Women's Council of Ireland hosted a successful conference in Dublin called 'Feminist Futures'.
From a mum's point of view, it's difficult to know which aspect of this scandal is the most frightening - the fact that there is so much lead in our water supply that it could harm your baby, or the fact that the HSE's response to this was to glibly point out that actually, we should all be breastfeeding anyway.
Within minutes of sitting down with Pat Kenny for what is supposed to be an in-depth, face-to-face interview with the broadcaster ahead of his new UTV Ireland show, he's calling the shots.
"Doyle's books are credited with giving Dubliners a confidence about the way they spoke and how they saw themselves. And his influence was far-reaching."
Once, years ago, long before I became a mum, I was cooing over a photo of a cute, fluffy white kitten and trying to persuade a male colleague at the newspaper where I worked to put the picture in the paper.
There is a scene in 'Fifty Shades of Grey', this weekend's box-office smash, in which Anastasia, the ingenue who has fallen prey to the sexual charms of billionaire philanthropist and part-time sadist Christian Grey, tries to call the whole thing off.
If you go down to the woods today, and those woods happen to be in the grounds of the beautiful Killruddery House in Bray, Co Wicklow, you'll probably trip right over a gang of pre-schoolers haring around their tree-filled wonderland.
IMAGINE, for a second, that you are a best-selling novelist, a household name whose work has been translated into countless languages and adapted into a global TV hit.
When Leo Varadkar told his mother he was gay, she said she just wanted him to be happy. Two mums tell how they felt when their sons came out
As a resolute night owl, late-night radio has always been my best friend. And lately, during solitary nightfeeds with our newborn baby, it was literally my only friend.
Liz Kearney asks five women about the milestone birthday — and the key to a long life
Every year, newspapers publish photos of shoppers careening through the doors of the nation's department stores, as the post-Christmas sales begin with a bang.
Prince George looks very cute in his Christmas picture, but his retro outfit for the big day isn’t to everyone’s taste. Two writers argue the case for and against the fashion choice...
Sleep deprivation. Two words guaranteed to strike fear into the heart of any new parent.
Be honest with yourself: what do you really think when you see a mother breastfeeding in a public place?
No art award is more coveted, more controversial, or more criticised than the Turner Prize.
HE'S the world's most feared food critic, and his caustic critiques have been known to push some chefs over the edge.And AA Gill's recent visit to Cork has left a bitter sweet taste with two of the area's most renowned restaurants.
Tom Parlon caused a stir at the weekend when he suggested that Lucinda Creighton might be ready to quit politics simply because she's having a baby.
Michelle Obama's 50th birthday celebrations have got off to an inauspicious start. The First Lady is planning a bash in the White House on Saturday -- and the invites have succeeded in making one of the most eagerly anticipated Washington parties sound about as exciting as bingo night at the old-folks home.
Confused by Michelle Obama's birthday invite? We've parsed it for you, so that if you get one in the post this week, you'll know exactly what to do
Our first reaction on hearing about teenagers as young as 14 getting drunk is usually one of horrified moral panic.
Broadcaster Claire Byrne is back at her microphone just ten weeks after having her first baby, a snippet of news that many new mums will find impressive and terrifying in equal measure.
For 10 long years, Sarah and her husband had been trying to start a family, with no success.
Christmas can be a bit of an endurance test at the best of times: aching feet from the last-minute downtown dash to buy the final pressies, the indigestion caused by demolishing an entire tin of Roses while supine on the couch watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, not to mention the hangovers caused by three too many at the office party.
NO ONE envies Nigella now, say the headlines. She's no longer the Domestic Goddess. Her brand is irrevocably damaged, her budding US career thrown into disarray by a deluge of damaging headlines.
Fiction The Rising of Bella Casey Mary Morrissy Brandon Books, €11.99, pbk, 352 pages. Available with free P&P on www.kennys.ie or by calling 091 709350
1 Deal with it now: Don't wait until you're overwhelmed to tackle stress. Learn how to cope when you're well, and you might find that stress never gets the better of you.
If you've always believed that stress is bad for your health, Kelly McGonigal has news for you. In a TED talk that's become an online phenomenon, McGonigal, a health psychologist at Stanford University, urges us to stop thinking of stress as a heart-attack causing bogeyman.
As first-time mums continue to get older, fertility clinics continue to get busier. That's a poignant consequence of women postponing starting a family until their careers have taken off, or until they've found that elusive Mr Right.
What is your favourite... MOVIE?
Pregnant? Then you're probably having a bad week. First, mums-to-be learned that maternity benefits will be slashed by 30 quid a week – cheers Enda! – and now they can add air pollution and plastic to the ever-lengthening list of things to fret about during pregnancy.
There's a name for it: arithmophobia. I'm a lifelong sufferer: I was bad at maths at school, and today, many years after struggling through my last school exam, anything number-related still has the ability to make me break out in a cold sweat.
Big decisions hit the little people hardest, and the bank guarantee was one hell of a big decision. For the citizens sleeping soundly in their beds the night the politicians decided – on their behalf – to keep the banks afloat whatever the cost, years of uneconomic uncertainty lay ahead, not least in the housing market where investors, families and young people alike were badly stung.
Mount Merrion is the debut novel by Irish poet Justin Quinn and it is a mesmerising one, a deceptively simple family saga spanning more than 40 years.
The wedding photos are from a fairytale: the tall, willowy princess in the shimmering custom-made Oscar de la Renta gown, jet-black hair pulled back in a chignon, rose-red lips fixed in a broad smile, while beside her, the adoring husband clasps his hands round her tiny waist. His grip is so tight he looks as if he will never let her go.
Eleanor Walsh and Jillian McNulty were the closest of friends. They were the same age and they shared a wicked sense of humour. They were so devoted to one another, they were like sisters, and Jillian was utterly devastated when six months ago, Eleanor died at the age of just 37.
There's nowhere Michael McGinley would rather have been on a sunny afternoon than on the golf course at Dunfanaghy in his native Donegal.
When the Hollywood star opened up about her double mastectomy in a newspaper article this week, memories came flooding back to Margaret Keating of her own experience. She talks to Liz Kearney
THERE are many ways that fellow diners can irritate: chewing noisily, talking with their mouths full, or – my own personal bugbear – eating off their knives.
Surrogacy is an increasingly popular option in Ireland for would-be parents who, for whatever reason, cannot have a child of their own 'naturally'.
Every cloud, as the saying goes, has a silver lining, and if the world ends tomorrow, it won't all be bad. Here are five reasons to be happy about the apocalypse:
Deirdre Carolan discovered she had a cancer-causing gene.
It's hard not to feel desperately sorry for Kimberley Vlaminck, the 21-year -old Belgian youngster who has lived to regret having 56 stars tattooed across her face.
The push for nutritional labels suggests knowledge is power in the battle of the bulge -- yet our svelte Gallic cousins haven't a clue what's in their food, says Liz Kearney
Apart from being glamorous, rail-thin, celebrity clothes-horses, what do Sarah Jessica Parker, Anna Wintour, and Julianne Moore have in common?
Embryologist Kathryn Berrisford spent her working days in a lab at a fertility clinic, making babies for couples who had struggled to conceive naturally. But when she went home, she continued dealing with infertility -- her own.
If any wife had cause to walk out on a marriage it would be Mary Archer. Her husband, the best-selling author and disgraced MP Jeffrey Archer, has cheated on her more than once.
IT may be that trying to cross the Liffey bridges at the same time as Queen Elizabeth wasn't one of my brighter ideas, but naively I thought that even such a momentous event as the arrival of the British monarch would not impede people going about their daily business on foot. Silly, silly me.
IT'S a train journey I've taken thousands of times, so there was nothing to divert my attention from the newspaper as the Dart rattled out of the city centre en route to Bray. Instead I pored over acres of newsprint, trying to get my head around the grim details of a deeply troubling week.
Imagine a shop where every new dress, from every leading designer, from every new collection, was laid out on an endless rail in front of you, clearly visible from all angles and shown off to its best advantage.
Cycling is having something of a moment these days. Whether it's the Green Party supporter out saving the planet on his trusty mountain bike, lycra-clad Lance Armstrong lookalikes haring up mountains after a day at the office, or the It girl trundling through Dublin 4 on a quaint set of wheels, they've all got one thing in common: they're part of the bikegeist.
Peter Dunne loves wine. After all, it's his business. As a director of Mitchell and Sons Wine Merchants, it's his bread and butter -- as well as a lifelong passion.
Some women are getting their fashion fixes from counterfeit goods. But can they ever be as good as the real thing? Liz Kearney reports
If Vogue magazine is the bible for thin, glamorous, fashion addicts, then French Vogue is the bible for even thinner, even more glamorous Parisienne fashion addicts.
An email arrived from my friend Lisa the other day. It was short and to the point. "Hello everyone," it read. "I am giving Facebook a break for a while and have deleted my account. See you all in the real world."
Some years ago, I suggested to a friend that we go on a mini-break to Prague. She pulled a face. "What would I want to do that for?" she asked. "If I wanted to be harassed by drunken stags, I'd spend a night in Temple Bar."
Getting There
Each morning, Arthur O'Hara woke up, ate breakfast, and got into his car to drive the short distance from his Leixlip home to his job at Garda headquarters in the Phoenix Park. He'd had the same routine for ages -- but a few years ago, something changed.
TS Eliot reckoned that April was the cruellest month, but that can only mean he'd never spent January in Ireland. If he'd had to contend with the combined challenges of snow, ice, torrential downpours, howling gales, a post-festive hangover and a bank account bled dry by an excess of December parties, he'd quickly have conceded that April wasn't so bad by comparison.
Just four short years ago, Rachel's world was as near to perfect, she reckoned, as it was possible to get. She was 28, loving her job in a big internet firm and best of all, thanks to a tidy lump sum from a previous redundancy package, had just put down a deposit on her first house.
James Farrelly remembers the day he turned 16 like it was just yesterday, but not for the reasons you might expect.
It isn't for life, you know, said Peaches Geldof, as she tied the knot at the ripe old age of 19 to guitarist Max Drummey.
The first thing that greets you in the hallway of Gretta Mahony's neat four-bed suburban semi is the happy chatter of her grandson Josef as he plays with his grandad in the living room.
