All Family matters Articles

One curious outgrowth of the "graying of Facebook" is the real-time interaction among generations -- children, parents and grandparents. A common question among the younger set is, "Should I 'friend' my parents?" And for the older generation, it's "Should I 'friend' my kids?" Fifty-year-old Bruce Headrick and his wife, Lisa, have four children, spanning from Read more...

Are you carrying the guilt of a family secret? Is something in your past too embarrassing to reveal? If so, Mary E. DeMuth has a blog for you. The Web site she began, My Family Secrets, allows people to anonymously post their secrets and, she hopes, enjoy some freedom. "I was a bit hesitant to start at this," said the Texas-based author, "because I knew the kind of person I Read more...

Just over seven years ago, my cousins in the midwest made use of the free "groups" feature on Yahoo to set up a discussion group for my mother's side of the family. A gang of us had gathered that May, when Mother's Day is celebrated, to honor first and foremost my grandmother, then a youthful 94, and all the mothers in subsequent generations. Really, it was just an excuse to hold Read more...

Lisa Spahr of Regent Square, Penn., by her own admission, acted in a nasty way toward her stepfathers while growing up, when her mother married several times. So when Spahr, 35, met her husband -- Rob, 44 -- she was wary about his having four children, three of whom are younger than 18 and live with him. But when she met the younger kids -- Matthew, 8, Austin, 10, and Amanda, 12 -- she felt Read more...

It used to be a dilemma only for college students. But these days, as middle- and no-longer-middle-age people flock to Facebook, it's a question for the over-40 set, too: Sure, she's your mother. But is she your "friend"? For 47-year-old Paul Yost, who's in the middle of three generations on the social networking site, the answer is unequivocally yes. His teenage daughters were Read more...

DETROIT -- As soon as 5-year-old Nate sees the two girls hop from their father's car, he starts squealing. He dashes through the empty house as Shayla, 12, tears off after him, tackling him with hugs of affection. While they play, Simone, 17, examines the room that will soon be hers. The girls' father, Tom Staley, and Nate's mother, Jakey Hoffman, have been working on the Rochester Hills, Read more...