The editorial in November

Dear reader
I couldn't do it without Kathrin. Kathrin is my mother-in-law - a sprightly woman in her late sixties and a former special school teacher. How lucky she is that she still loves children - especially our little rascals. The love is mutual - the children enjoy their time with their grandmother. She lives in a Villa Kunterbunt, where almost everything is allowed; there is a dog, a kitten, a large garden, a vegetable patch and lots of trees to climb. At Grandma's, the children are allowed to lick moonstone, abseil down from the balcony, make a fire and knock stones in the house's own quarry.
We couldn't do it without Kathrin. My wife also works and travels a lot as a travel journalist. We share the care and nurturing of our children as best we can. I work 80 per cent at Schweizer ElternMagazin, Friday is Dad's Day, I make sandwiches, clean shoes from the last day in the woods, dress wounds, mend blocked drains. We go cycling, I go shopping, do the bills, attend the parents' evening.
I couldn't do it without Kathrin. My mother-in-law supports our little family with help and advice. Always in a good mood, she conjures up mountains of food on the table in no time at all, doesn't even let her prematurely pubescent daughter upset her, practices drums with Junior, paints and makes pottery and carves with the children and has our backs when my wife and I have too many balls in the air.
We couldn't do it without Kathrin. So at this point and quite officially: thank you, dear Kathrin and all the grandmothers and grandfathers in the world for your support. The patience. The time. And the inspiration.
But how do you manage to juggle family and career when there's no Kathrin around? If your employer doesn't allow you to work part-time? When you can't work from home? Is it even possible? What needs to change in the economy, in politics, so that working mothers finally have the same conditions as working fathers? And how can working mothers be relieved? Our dossier «Family and work: the lie of compatibility» deals with these issues.

«The female social network - mothers, sisters,
friends - relieve
working women the most
most sustainable.»

Irene Mariam Tazi-Preve, Austrian family
family researcher and political scientist

While others are losing readers, we are gaining: the Swiss parents' magazine Fritz+Fränzi is reaching more readers. The new figure is 154,000 - that's an increase of 7,000! On behalf of the editorial team and publisher, I would like to thank you, dear reader, for your loyalty. Because we always want to improve, your opinion is important to us: what do we do well, what can we do better? Which titles, which stories do you remember, which topics would you like to read more about? Please take a few minutes to complete our big reader survey - click here for the link: www.fritzundfraenzi.ch/leserumfrage.
As always, I hope you enjoy reading our magazine.
Yours sincerely, Nik Niethammer