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.

I've never had a very closely connected family. My parents split up when I was young and I was living with my mom for a little while then I was kind of just on my own really young. It wasn't some kind of global tragedy it was just never really a very close-knit family. So there was support in the sense that they didn't stand in my way.

My grandfather's family used to own a pasta factory in Naples and they would go door-to-door selling their pasta. So his love of food came from his parents which was then passed down to my mother and then again to me.

My family my parents are hippies.

My parents were drawn to the idea that there was space and opportunity in Australia. For the meagre sum of £10 you could sail your entire family out to Australia so that's what my father chose to do.

As a child the family that I had and the love I had from my two parents allowed me to go ahead and be more aggressive to search and to take risks knowing that if I failed I could always come home to a family of love and support.

My parents were French and Irish and our family even has Spanish blood-and I do so love the United States and consider myself part American.

I guess you could say I devoted myself so strongly to my music that for awhile I forgot about my family. But I only get one set of parents and I think I forgot about that for a little while.

We believed in our idea - a family park where parents and children could have fun- together.

To maintain a joyful family requires much from both the parents and the children. Each member of the family has to become in a special way the servant of the others.