Everyone knows at least something about family life because we’ve all had the experience of being a child, perhaps a sibling, and maybe even an aunt, uncle, parent and grandparent. If we exist, we have some family. There are some challenges that each member of the human family face simply by virtue of being human. Then there are those challenges intrinsic to domestic family life. I need not rehearse the mundane aspects of life peculiar to being a husband and father of three children under the age of five. Suffice it to say that, with small children, what used to be the easiest and

most straightforward of activities – like leaving the house to go somewhere – can become exasperatingly difficult. And that’s just getting children out of the house; I haven’t even considered the greater project of raising them. Family life is demanding, but also incredibly rewarding.