>>FWIW, I used to have to stop and think every time I wrote "it's" or "its" to figure out whether I needed the apostrophe. Finally, I realized that the possessive "its" follows the model of "his" and "hers." Never had the problem since.
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>When writing it's I 'hear': it is.
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>More problematic is Tamar's and father's. Not so much in English, but in Dutch. Your language hasn't changed much in centuries. Our language is revised every ten or so years and it always gives a lot of dispute. A fairly recent change (AFAIK) is that we now should write "Tamars book is missing", "fathers pipe was broken", "These are baby's clothes", "Antigone's brother is here". So, only some conditions require the apostrof. Certain new standards drive me nuts and I'm one of a large group that refuses to comply to all those new standards. There's even an alternative dictionary that is used by many major newspapers.
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>You English speakers should be glad that your language has remained stable in centuries.

I believe you're far from the truth here and English language's grammar changed as much as in other languages.