The Gazette 1979

GAZETTE

SEPTEMBER

197

not t o advise and support a break-up o f a marriage whether by separation or divorce. I am sure you all know a typical sort of situation. The mother concerned often reports that the father i s probably drinking too much, giving her insufficient money, avoiding his responsibilities as a father, a provider, and a husband, and maybe terrorising his family on week-ends during his drunken bouts. The wife may be a virtual prisoner in her home and subject to unreasonable suspicion about any contact with the opposite sex. I n fact she may be accused of being promiscuous an d having illicit love affairs quite unreasonably. Th e children involved ar e frequently disturbed, suffering from nightmares, bed wetting and other symptoms of emotional disturbance and may often prove t o be failing a t school and finding i t hard to get along with their own age groups. Many of them may be showing some o f the father's aggression i n every day dealing with other people, whether i t be their own age group, teachers, etc. There ar e o f course multiple variations to this picture which I am sure you know too well. I t would a s i f I am talking about the father a s always th e villian an d certainly this i s th e way i t commonly presents itself to community social workers and to child guidance clinics. If, however, you eventually do get to see the ogre, you often get a mild surprise. You are very likely to find a lonely man suffering from low self esteem, who often comes from a deprived background and often still overtly dependent o n his mother. H e frequently feels excluded from his own family and he feels he i s filling a role half expected o f him, and half encouraged which has been handed down from generation to generation. ("What do you expect of him his father was just the same'O. He may have sought out the pub in the first place a s a refuge from a nagging, over-powering dominant spouse, just as she for her part may have run to the priest, the family doctor, or the social worker to seek support for her difficulties and point of view. In spite of this however, in time alcohol tends to take its toll and the typical Jeckel and Hyde personality begins to emerge, and the father then does seem in the eyes of the world to be the villian of the piece. So often in the past wives in this intolerable situation seem unaware o f any way out. Sometimes with great encouragement and support from social workers and other caring personnel they can be guided on the dangerous road towards seeking barring and maintenance orders or may even have the house put in their own name. If this can be concluded successfully it can often have a dramatic effect on a situation t o the benefit of wife, children and even the father. The mother for the first time can experience a sense of strength and an increase of her own self-worth and can discover that she has the ability after all to control her husband's behaviour and influence the quality o f her life and that o f her children for the better. This i s something she never dreamed remotely possible before. Surprisingly enough many fathers also seem to welcome these controls placed on them and their abusive drinking by such Court orders. A period o f waiting for a Court case for a barring order can be a dangerous time or felt as such by the wife concerned. She can be placed under fairly severe physical and mental pressure by her husband to change her mind during this period. Eventually this pressure does prevent many cases reaching Court. Again i t seems to me that this danger should be recognised and these cases resolved quickly, i f at all possible. Unfortunately my experience from

has often been that they tend to be delayed and adjourned for an unduly long time. So often have I seen a frightened wife brace herself with considerable courage to face the dreaded day in Court only to find at the last minute it is adjourned o r the decision of the Court postponed. I f a barring order i s refused i n this type o f situation i t can convince th e abused wife o r he r powerlessness and worthlessness and she may retreat to the prison of her marriage never to re-emerge. The position of the bullying alcoholic father i s consolidated and his damaging effect on his family perpetuated. From what I have said you may feel I am somewhat biased in favour of the child. I admit this is probably true but I make no apology for it. The Year of the Child gives me some excuse for this. However, a much more valid reason i s that as a child psychiatrist I see myself as an advocate o r spokesman for the child. Children do not tend t o protest and complain like adults. This may be because they do not know any better, or that they do not have the verbal ability, or i t may be too dangerous. Put another way, children may be the unwilling partners in a conspiracy of silence. I have found that what children do not say is important and revealing as what they say. Should then a child's rights have priority? To this question I would answer yes. Very often there is little we can do to change the damaged adults of this generation but there is a lot we can do for the adults of the future by ensuring the present generation o f children receive the optimum environment in which to grow.

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