TED Talks Kids and Family

To understand what makes marriages work, we need to talk about why they sometimes end, says family law professor Jeannie Suk Gersen. Follow along as she lays out three ways that thinking about marital decisions through the lens of divorce can help you better navigate togetherness from the beginning.

More than a billion people worldwide, mostly children, do not have a legal identity. In many countries, this means they can't get access to vital services like health care and education, says legal identity expert Kristen Wenz. She discusses why this problem is one of the greatest human rights violations of our time -- and shares five strategies to ensure everyone can get registered and protected.

"Co-parenting" isn't a buzzword -- it's a way of showing up for your family openly, consistently and lovingly, says storyteller and father Joel Leon. In this moving talk, he challenges all parents to play an equal, active role in their children's daily lives, even in a world that often places the weight of sacrifice on mothers alone. Leon encourages nuanced conversations about parenting and reminds us that being a parent isn't a responsibility -- it's an opportunity.

Stories help you make sense of your life -- but when these narratives are incomplete or misleading, they can keep you stuck instead of providing clarity. In an actionable talk, psychotherapist and advice columnist Lori Gottlieb shows how to break free from the stories you've been telling yourself by becoming your own editor and rewriting your narrative from a different point of view.

How does psychological trauma affect children's developing brains? In this powerful talk, social worker Luis H. Zayas discusses his work with refugees and asylum-seeking families at the US-Mexico border. What emerges is a stunning analysis of the long-term impact of the US's controversial detention and child separation policies -- and practical steps for how the country can do better.

Over his eight-year prison sentence, Marcus Bullock was sustained by his mother's love -- and by the daily letters and photos she sent of life on the outside. Years later, as an entrepreneur, Bullock asked himself: How can I make it easier for all families to stay connected during incarceration? Enter FlikShop: an app he developed that lets families send quick postcards to loved ones in prison and help keep open a critical line of support.

Social entrepreneur Julie Cordua works on a problem that isn't easy to talk about: the sexual abuse of children in images and videos on the internet. At Thorn, she's building technology to connect the dots between the tech industry, law enforcement and government -- so we can swiftly end the viral distribution of abuse material and rescue children faster. Learn more about how this scalable solution could help dismantle the communities normalizing child sexual abuse around the world today. (This ambitious plan is part of the Audacious Project, TED's initiative to inspire and fund global change.)

Most of us know Bruce Lee as the famous martial artist and action film star -- but he was also a philosopher who taught "self-actualization": the practice of how to be yourself in the best way possible. In this inspiring talk, Bruce's daughter Shannon Lee takes us inside the mind of her father, exploring how to use his philosophy in your daily life to achieve profound personal growth and make a lasting impact.

For the past 20 years, photographer and TED Fellow Jon Lowenstein has documented the migrant journey from Latin America to the United States, one of the largest transnational migrations in world history. Sharing photos from his decade-long project "Shadow Lives USA," Lowenstein takes us into the inner worlds of the families escaping poverty and violence in Central America -- and pieces together the complex reasons people leave their homes in search of a better life.

Drawing on her research into early childhood development, psychologist Sara Valencia Botto investigates when (and how) children begin to change their behaviors in the presence of others -- and explores what it means for the values we communicate in daily interactions. (Watch for cute footage of sneaky toddlers.)