It's one of the worst-kept secrets of family life that all parents have a preferred son or daughter and the rules for acknowledging it are the same everywhere: The favored kids recognize their status and keep quiet about it - the better to preserve the good thing they've got going and to keep their siblings off their back.

There aren't a lot of ironclad rules of family life but here's one: No matter how much your parents deny it - and here's betting they deny it a lot - they have a favorite child. And if you're a parent so do you.

Playing guitar was one of my childhood hobbies and I had played a little at school and at camp. My parents would drag me out to perform for my family like all parents do but it was a hobby - nothing more.

Getting a family into work supporting strong relationships getting parents off drugs and out of debt - all this can do more for a child's well-being than any amount of money in out-of-work benefits.

By measuring the proportion of children living with the same parents from birth and whether their parents report a good quality relationship we are driving home the message that social programmes should promote family stability and avert breakdown.

My family although they're very large on both my parents' sides they don't know much about their family tree. Occasionally they try to dig but they can't get very far and it's baffling. In Dublin it seems that so many public records were wiped out it's proven to be very difficult so I know very little.

Here's the thing: the unit of reverence in Europe is the family which is why a child born today of unmarried parents in Sweden has a better chance of growing up in a house with both of his parents than a child born to a married couple in America. Here we revere the couple there they revere the family.

A lot of parents never speak to their transgender kids again that's not the case in my family.

It never occurred to me that I wouldn't go to college and have a career - as well as a family - of my own. Both my parents but especially my mother encouraged me and led me to believe that it was possible.

It's not an accident that both my sister and I are writers. Our parents created an accidental Petri dish. My family has great storytellers and I grew up in a very funny conversational house and didn't have television. This small family farm was a bubble world that didn't have much to do with reality.