Family Review: Family Profiles ninth set | Children's Commissioner for England

As part of our work on the Family Review, we asked families to contribute to our research by sharing their Family Profile – a snapshot of what families means to them, their strengths, the challenges they may have experienced, how they like to spend their time and the support that they value the most.

Read our next three profiles below:

We are a family of 4: myself, my partner, and our 2 children, aged 1 and 5. On my partner's side, he has 2 parents, still married, and 2 full siblings. On my side, my parents are divorced with new partners (married) and I have 3 half siblings, who in turn have their own half siblings. We have one dog and one cat. We work really hard, we don’t have much structure and we take time to have fun together. One challenge has been that working full time for both parents means that days can feel quite hectic and stressful; I carry a lot of guilt on not being fully available for my children, and them spending a lot of time in childcare. The impact of this I think, is that sometimes we can feel distant from one another, but at the same time I think that we set good standards for our children as to having strong work ethics and identities outside of parenthood. I think being at peace with the chaos helps us cope; we don't beat ourselves up too much about set dinner times, bed times etc.

I am a single parent with a toddler. I have a dad, sisters and brothers. I really value time spent together making memories such as cooking and BBQs. It was really challenging losing my mother in June. We are still dealing with it but taking each day as it comes. It’s helped being together as a family and looking back at old memories with our mum. We’ve been able to talk to each other about our struggles and just grieving and helping each other through. It’s been difficult as we are really sensing the absence – even just usually calling her we can’t anymore for advice on cooking, recipes, childcare. I’m glad that the children have memories with their grandma in pictures which we will cherish and show them when they’re older. I’m glad I got to spend most of my adult life with my mum supporting me. I was lucky to have been raised to this age where we’re all independent and can look after ourselves. She’s done a great job and can rest in peace with a smile on her face.

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