Editor's Letter: Always Loving You, the Love a Mother Gives Without Limits or Conditions

Who first taught you what it means to love without conditions?

For most of you, the answer is a mother. She loved you before you could do anything to earn it, and she kept loving you through the tantrums, the slammed doors and the years when you forgot to call home. Her love has no limits and asks for nothing back. That is the heart of this edition, and the words on our cover say it best: Always Loving You.

A mother's love does not stop at her children. Look around you. A woman walking through the winter streets has a little dog trotting at her side and the dog's own travel bed folded on her shoulder, so there is always a familiar, comfortable place to rest wherever they stop. Anyone who has raised a puppy, sat up with an old dog on a cold night or planned a whole holiday around a cat knows that this is motherhood too. Children, grandchildren, a rescue dog, a nervous cat: a mother loves them all, and she loves them always. Our tips for children and pets who dread fireworks were written with every kind of family in mind.

That love changes you. Neuroscientist Susana Carmona has found that pregnancy changes your brain more than adolescence did, and decades later mothers may have brains that look younger than their age. Love keeps you playful too: mothers laugh almost twice as often as their toddlers during play. And the UK's largest ever baby study has begun following 30,000 babies born this year, to learn what helps every child thrive.

Loving without limits also means feeding, protecting and letting go. We explain why your child will not eat broccoli, which foods give them enough omega 3 and how to support your family's immune system through cold and flu season. With the social media ban for under-16s starting in March 2027, some families are bringing back the house phone. Our guide to stopping helicopter parenting shows you how to give your child room without losing sight of them, and we look at tough love and the other parenting trends overwhelming millennial mothers.

Yet the same mother who gives everything often keeps nothing for herself. She hears a child cough at three in the morning and ignores her own exhaustion for months. She remembers every birthday except her own. If you feel alone, you are not imagining it: UK parents of babies feel lonelier and less confident at play than their European neighbours. So this month I ask you to turn some of that love towards yourself. Stress is contagious, and your calm protects everyone around you. Eat enough iron for your own energy, take our self-awareness lessons from this year and look at the seven ways to close your pay gap. You deserve the same patience you give everyone else.

November is full of family moments. Diwali and Remembrance Sunday both fall on 8th November, and we show you how to celebrate one and explain the other to your child. When the Christmas lists start arriving, our guide to presents by age includes the best picks under £20. For your own reading pile, this year's Pulitzer winners include Yiyun Li's memoir of losing her two sons, a reminder that a mother's love outlives everything.

Children grow up and move away. Dogs grow grey around the muzzle. A mother's love stays the same.

This week, love someone without conditions, and put yourself on that list too.

Then write and tell me who taught you to love this way. I would love to hear from you.

Marina Nani Editor-in-Chief