Parents and children

Shared joy and shared sorrow, big emotions and big conflicts: few relationships are as emotional, but also as crazy, as those between parents and children.

They can be inseparable even when they live far away from each other, like Valeriu Pocitari and his daughter Valeria. He works in Greece, she studies in Moldova - and yet the bond between them never seems to break.

In China, millions of children are growing up with their grandparents because their parents work far away. We talked to Photographer Tami Xiang about these children who were left behind by their parents, and about the gratitude she feels towards her own father, even though he, too, was absent when she grew up.

But parents and children can also be strangers, even if they have spent a lifetime together. British author Daljit Nagra describes the rift that has existed between him and his parents since his childhood in London. They are traditional Sikhs, he is gradually transforming into a “white man” before their eyes.

In families, generations negotiate and argue about life, politics and identity. What connects us to our parents - and what have we always wanted to tell our children?

October 2023