Domestic violence could be stopped earlier, says study

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abuse, abusive relationships, Children, coercion, control, coping, danger, domestic abuse, domestic violence, fear, harm, health workers, help, impact, isolation, murder, police, professionals, relationships, risk, serious injury, teenagers, training

Domestic violence could be stopped earlier, says study

Victims of domestic violence are abused for almost three years before they get the help they need, and some are subjected to more than 50 incidents during that time, according to a study of the largest database of domestic violence victims in the UK.

The figures from the domestic abuse charity SafeLives reveal that almost a quarter of “high-risk” victims have been to an A&E with injuries sustained during violent abuse, and some went as many as 15 times before the problem was addressed.

Analysis of the SafeLives database, which has records of more than 35,000 cases of adults experiencing domestic abuse since 2009, found that 85% of victims had been in contact with an average of five professionals in the year before they got “effective” help from an independent domestic violence adviser (IDVA) or another specialist practitioner.

“Time and time again no one spots domestic abuse, even when victims and their children come into contact with many different public agencies. It’s not acceptable that victims should have to try to get help repeatedly. This leaves victims living in fear and danger and risks lifelong harm to their children,” said Diana Barran, the chief executive of SafeLives, which was previously called Co-ordinated Action Against Domestic Abuse (Caada).

Barran said the study was “more shocking evidence” that domestic violence could often be stopped earlier. “Every conversation with a professional represents a missed opportunity to get victims and their children the help they need,” she said.

SafeLives estimates that there are at least 100,000 victims at high risk of murder or serious injury in England and Wales, 94% of them women.

The study found that victims and often their children lived with abuse for an average of 2.7 years. Three-quarters reported abuse to the police, and 23% went to A&E because of violence sustained in abusive relationships.

Frances Wedgwood, a GP in Lambeth who provides training on domestic violence to health workers through the national Iris project, said a challenge for doctors was that many women did not come to them to disclose domestic violence.

“Domestic violence is still a very hidden problem and in my experience women do not disclose if they are not asked,” she said. “We need to get better at asking people directly if they need help.”

The study sheds light on the long-lasting impact of living in a family coping with domestic violence. According to the survey, in about a quarter of cases on the domestic violence database the victim has a child under the age of three. The study estimates that 130,000 children in the UK are living with domestic abuse, and that children are directly harmed in 62% of cases.

Among teenagers who suffered domestic abuse in their own relationships, almost half had grown up in households where violence was commonplace, the study found.

Vera Baird, former solicitor general and the current police and crime commissioner for Northumberland, said professionals needed help and training to have the confidence to deal with domestic violence.

“Domestic abuse is not a one-off violent attack. It is deliberate long-term use of coercion to control every part of the partner’s life. Violence, sexual abuse, financial control, constant criticism, isolating from family and friends are all familiar tools,” she said.

“People in that situation do not find it easy to speak and need those who could help to be alert. The alternative is what these figures suggest: victims and their families locked unnecessarily into cruelty and ill-treatment for years.”

Case study

Rebecca, 34, lived with domestic abuse for eight years before she sought help

One time I was having a nap in the afternoon, the baby had been teething so I’d been awake all night, and I woke up he was standing over me with a mop handle carved into a point, like a spear. He was pushing it into my throat, accusing me of cheating. Then he picked me up and threw me against the wall. I ran downstairs but he followed me, kicking and punching me and split my lip.

I locked myself in the bathroom and called 999. When the doorbell rang I heard chatting, calm talking. There was one young male officer, and my ex-partner was telling him that I was postnatal, that I’d gone mental and he was just defending himself. I started shouting at the officer: ‘Why aren’t you helping me?’ I swore and the officer said people could hear me, and it was a public disturbance so I swore again. He put handcuffs on me. He wouldn’t let me put my shoes on, so I wouldn’t move, and he lifted me up by the handcuffs and put me in the back of the car.

I was in a cell for hours asking for a solicitor. The duty sergeant finally came and when he opened the hatch he could see I’d been attacked. He got the officer to come and apologise to me and asked me if I wanted to file a complaint, or if I wanted to press charges against my partner. But I said no. I was exhausted and my baby was at home with my partner, who’d been drinking since the morning. It got worse after that. He was sort of smug, saying he could do what he wanted. I know there’s more training for police now, but that put me off calling the police for years.

By 2003/4 the abuse was worse. We had two girls by that time. I was hospitalised with concussion after he’d kicked me in the head wearing steel-toe-capped boots. The police and the paramedics came and I was patched up and sent home. They asked me if I wanted to press charges but I didn’t want to go through all that, I thought it would make it worse. I didn’t know where the support would come from, where I could get help.

Another time I went to the hospital walk-in. I had a black eye and it wasn’t getting better. A doctor asked me what had happened and I said I’d been punched in the face. He repeated what I said: ‘You were punched in the face.’ I didn’t know what he wanted me to say. I was ashamed, I didn’t want to say my husband did this to me. If he had asked, I’d have told him. But he didn’t.

Social services got in touch because of the paramedics’ reports; he got put on an anger management course. But Christmas Day night he’d been drinking. He grabbed me by the throat and I stumbled and fell; he kept kicking me over and over again. My teeth went through my lip, my nose was bleeding, I couldn’t see. He picked me up and carried me to the bathroom saying: ‘Look what you made me do. Why did you do that?’ I crawled to the living room and phoned the police before he ripped it out of the wall.

I did press charges that time. He was sentenced to four months for ABH. He served two. We were separated, but we got back together. Why? I had such low self-esteem and he was always there, always pestering me, grinding me down. He’d be so nice, helping with the children and I was exhausted, I needed the help. I thought it might be OK.

It was OK for a while. The kids had been on the at-risk register because a couple of incidents had been reported, but they came off that and social services were visiting less. His behaviour just went back to the way it had been before, and that’s when I decided to leave.

I remember the exact moment when I saw the sticker for the Women’s Aid helpline: it was on the back of the toilet door in Asda. It took me a couple of months to call but when I did they offered me refuge. I didn’t even know that existed. They organised transport when he was out. It was quite surreal, but it was such a relief.

Women’s Aid were so helpful, they gave us so much support including counselling. My eldest daughter was seven when we left, her sister was three and their brother was nine months. That was the main reason I left, I was terrified for my kids.

I do think professionals should offer support. If they can’t support victims themselves, they just need to know who can. I think if I’d had that information I would have left earlier.

I was 16 when we got together; he was 23. By the time I was 17 we had a daughter. I thought it was a good relationship, he helped with the parenting and around the house, but about a year later, in 1999, slowly controlling behaviour crept in. He wouldn’t like certain friends, or me going out without him, wearing certain clothes or makeup. It was quite subtle at first, but then when we argued there was pushing, then hair-pulling – each time it was a little worse than before.

Soon it was normal to have slapping, kicking, punching, throwing things. At first I didn’t tell anyone; my self-esteem was very low. I just tried to pretend it wasn’t happening, I didn’t know anything about domestic abuse.

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One in 10 do not have a close friend and even more feel unloved, survey finds

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contentment, employment, family, friends, health, loneliness, love, money, relationships, well-being

One in 10 do not have a close friend and even more feel unloved, survey finds

Millions of people in the UK do not have a single friend and one in five feel unloved, according to a survey published on Tuesday by the relationship charity Relate.

One in 10 people questioned said they did not have a close friend, amounting to an estimated 4.7 million people in the UK may be leading a very lonely existence.

Ruth Sutherland, the chief executive of Relate, said the survey revealed a divided nation with many people left without the vital support of friends or partners.

While the survey found 85% of individuals questioned felt they had a good relationship with their partners, 19% had never or rarely felt loved in the two weeks before the survey.

“Whilst there is much to celebrate, the results around how close we feel to others are very concerning. There is a significant minority of people who claim to have no close friends, or who never or rarely feel loved – something which is unimaginable to many of us,” said Sutherland.

“Relationships are the asset which can get us through good times and bad, and it is worrying to think that there are people who feel they have no one they can turn to during life’s challenges. We know that strong relationships are vital for both individuals and society as a whole, so investing in them is crucial.”

The study looked at 5,778 people aged 16 and over across England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland and asked about people’s contentment with all aspects of their relationships, including their partners, friends, workmates and bosses. It found that people who said that they had good relationships had higher levels of wellbeing, while poor relationships were detrimental to health, wellbeing and self-confidence.

The study found that 81% of people who were married or cohabiting felt good about themselves, compared with 69% who were single.

The quality of relationship counts for a lot, according to the survey: 83% of those who described their relationship as good or very good reported feeling good about themselves while only 62% of those who described their relationship as average, bad or very bad reported the same level of personal wellbeing.

The survey, The Way We Are Now 2014, showed that while four out of five people said they had a good relationship with their partner, far fewer were happy with their sex lives. One in four people admitted to being dissatisfied with their sex life, and one in four also admitted to having an affair.

There was also evidence of the changing nature of family life – and increasing divorce rates – in the survey, which found that almost one in four of the people questioned had experienced the breakdown of their parents’ relationship.

When it comes to the biggest strains put on relationships, a significant majority (62%) cited money troubles as the most stressful factor.

The survey also found that older people are more worried about money, with 69% of those aged 65 and over saying money worries were a major strain, compared with only 37% of 16 to 24-year-olds.

When it comes to employment, many of those questioned had a positive relationship with their bosses, but felt putting work before family was highly valued in the workplace.

Just under 60% of people said they had a good relationship with their boss, but more than one in three thought their bosses believed the most productive employees put work before family. It also appears that work can be quite a lonely place too: 42% of people said they had no friends at work.

Nine out of 10 people, however, said they had a least one close friend, with 81% of women describing their friendships as good or very good compared with 73% of men.

How would you react? Hard-hitting film suggests male victims of domestic abuse aren’t taken seriously

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domestic abuse, male victims

How would you react? Hard-hitting film suggests male victims of domestic abuse aren’t taken seriously

A revealing hidden camera stunt has shown how stranger’s reactions to domestic violence differs depending on the gender of the victim.

Charity ManKind set up hidden cameras in a London park, and filmed onlooker’s reactions to two different domestic violence scenarios.

In the first, a male actor attacks his ‘girlfriend’, prompting a swift reaction from shocked members of the public.

One woman threatens to call the police, telling the actress, “you don’t have to put up with that honey, he’s not worth it.”

Another man makes sure the woman is okay and even offers his office as a place to escape her attacker.

When the female actor attacks the man, not one person steps in to help the victim as he’s violently forced against the park railings.But the crowd’s reaction to the second scenario is very different.

In fact, many onlookers do nothing but stare and laugh.

Somerset-based charity ManKind Initiative claims the footage is important because society is failing to take male victims of domestic abuse seriously.

They claim that 40 per cent of domestic abuse victims are male, and that 720,000 men were victimised last year.

Mark Brooks from the ManKind Initiative insisted that male victims should be “supported in the same way that female victims rightly are”.

“The fact that in 2014 this is not the case shows the change that is still needed, especially as many men fear they won’t be believed if they come forward,” he added.

 

Young people are sexting – but that doesn’t mean they necessarily want to be, says research

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relationships, sexting, young people

Young people are sexting – but that doesn’t mean they necessarily want to be, says research

With the rise of smartphones and Snapchat, sexting is in vogue – but a new study has found that many young people engage in the practice without really wanting to.

More than half (52.3 per cent) of young adults have engaged in “ unwanted but consensual sexting with a committed partner”, according to research to be published in February in the journal Computers in Human Behaviour.

Most did so for flirtation, foreplay, to fulfil a partner’s needs, or for intimacy, but women were more likely to consent to unwanted sexting because of anxieties about their relationships.

The research, which was carried out by scientists at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), polled 155 undergraduates in committed relationships on their sexting habits.

Fifty-five per cent of the female respondents said they had previously engaged in unwanted sexting, while 48 per cent of men had done the same.

The results show similarities between sexual behaviour online and off: in both cases, couples will willingly go along with sex, even when they do not feel like it, from reasons ranging from satisfying their partner to avoiding an argument.

But while women are often considered to engage in unwanted sex more than men, the research shows only a small difference in the number of men and women partaking in unwanted sexting.

The authors of the article argued “gender-role expectations” could be to blame. Men might be more likely to agree to undesired sexting because doing so is “relatively easy and does not require them to invest more into the relationship,” while women might be discouraged from virtual sex because it fails to help them attain their relationship “goals”.

The survey also showed that people who were anxious about their relationships were more likely to send begrudging sexts, in a bid to alleviate fears about alienation or abandonment by their partners.

Why have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

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'celibacy syndrome', Japan, relationships

Why have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

Ai Aoyama is a sex and relationship counsellor who works out of her narrow three-storey home on a Tokyo back street. Her first name means “love” in Japanese, and is a keepsake from her earlier days as a professional dominatrix. Back then, about 15 years ago, she was Queen Ai, or Queen Love, and she did “all the usual things” like tying people up and dripping hot wax on their nipples. Her work today, she says, is far more challenging. Aoyama, 52, is trying to cure what Japan’s media callssekkusu shinai shokogun, or “celibacy syndrome”.

Japan’s under-40s appear to be losing interest in conventional relationships. Millions aren’t even dating, and increasing numbers can’t be bothered with sex. For their government, “celibacy syndrome” is part of a looming national catastrophe. Japan already has one of the world’s lowest birth rates. Its population of 126 million, which has been shrinking for the past decade, is projected to plunge a further one-third by 2060. Aoyama believes the country is experiencing “a flight from human intimacy” – and it’s partly the government’s fault.

The sign outside her building says “Clinic”. She greets me in yoga pants and fluffy animal slippers, cradling a Pekingese dog whom she introduces as Marilyn Monroe. In her business pamphlet, she offers up the gloriously random confidence that she visited North Korea in the 1990s and squeezed the testicles of a top army general. It doesn’t say whether she was invited there specifically for that purpose, but the message to her clients is clear: she doesn’t judge.

Inside, she takes me upstairs to her “relaxation room” – a bedroom with no furniture except a double futon. “It will be quiet in here,” she says. Aoyama’s first task with most of her clients is encouraging them “to stop apologising for their own physical existence”.

The number of single people has reached a record high. A survey in 2011 found that 61% of unmarried men and 49% of women aged 18-34 were not in any kind of romantic relationship, a rise of almost 10% from five years earlier. Another study found that a third of people under 30 had never dated at all. (There are no figures for same-sex relationships.) Although there has long been a pragmatic separation of love and sex in Japan – a country mostly free of religious morals – sex fares no better. A survey earlier this year by the Japan Family Planning Association (JFPA) found that 45% of women aged 16-24 “were not interested in or despised sexual contact”. More than a quarter of men felt the same way.

Many people who seek her out, says Aoyama, are deeply confused. “Some want a partner, some prefer being single, but few relate to normal love and marriage.” However, the pressure to conform to Japan’s anachronistic family model of salaryman husband and stay-at-home wife remains. “People don’t know where to turn. They’re coming to me because they think that, by wanting something different, there’s something wrong with them.”

Official alarmism doesn’t help. Fewer babies were born here in 2012 than any year on record. (This was also the year, as the number of elderly people shoots up, that adult incontinence pants outsold baby nappies in Japan for the first time.) Kunio Kitamura, head of the JFPA, claims the demographic crisis is so serious that Japan “might eventually perish into extinction”.

Japan’s under-40s won’t go forth and multiply out of duty, as postwar generations did. The country is undergoing major social transition after 20 years of economic stagnation. It is also battling against the effects on its already nuclear-destruction-scarred psyche of 2011’s earthquake, tsunami and radioactive meltdown. There is no going back. “Both men and women say to me they don’t see the point of love. They don’t believe it can lead anywhere,” says Aoyama. “Relationships have become too hard.”

Marriage has become a minefield of unattractive choices. Japanese men have become less career-driven, and less solvent, as lifetime job security has waned. Japanese women have become more independent and ambitious. Yet conservative attitudes in the home and workplace persist. Japan’s punishing corporate world makes it almost impossible for women to combine a career and family, while children are unaffordable unless both parents work. Cohabiting or unmarried parenthood is still unusual, dogged by bureaucratic disapproval.

Aoyama says the sexes, especially in Japan’s giant cities, are “spiralling away from each other”. Lacking long-term shared goals, many are turning to what she terms “Pot Noodle love” – easy or instant gratification, in the form of casual sex, short-term trysts and the usual technological suspects: online porn, virtual-reality “girlfriends”, anime cartoons. Or else they’re opting out altogether and replacing love and sex with other urban pastimes.

Some of Aoyama’s clients are among the small minority who have taken social withdrawal to a pathological extreme. They are recoveringhikikomori (“shut-ins” or recluses) taking the first steps to rejoining the outside world, otaku (geeks), and long-term parasaito shingurus(parasite singles) who have reached their mid-30s without managing to move out of home. (Of the estimated 13 million unmarried people in Japan who currently live with their parents, around three million are over the age of 35.) “A few people can’t relate to the opposite sex physically or in any other way. They flinch if I touch them,” she says. “Most are men, but I’m starting to see more women.”

Aoyama cites one man in his early 30s, a virgin, who can’t get sexually aroused unless he watches female robots on a game similar to Power Rangers. “I use therapies, such as yoga and hypnosis, to relax him and help him to understand the way that real human bodies work.” Sometimes, for an extra fee, she gets naked with her male clients – “strictly no intercourse” – to physically guide them around the female form. Keen to see her nation thrive, she likens her role in these cases to that of the Edo period courtesans, or oiran, who used to initiate samurai sons into the art of erotic pleasure.

Aversion to marriage and intimacy in modern life is not unique to Japan. Nor is growing preoccupation with digital technology. But what endless Japanese committees have failed to grasp when they stew over the country’s procreation-shy youth is that, thanks to official shortsightedness, the decision to stay single often makes perfect sense. This is true for both sexes, but it’s especially true for women. “Marriage is a woman’s grave,” goes an old Japanese saying that refers to wives being ignored in favour of mistresses. For Japanese women today, marriage is the grave of their hard-won careers.

I meet Eri Tomita, 32, over Saturday morning coffee in the smart Tokyo district of Ebisu. Tomita has a job she loves in the human resources department of a French-owned bank. A fluent French speaker with two university degrees, she avoids romantic attachments so she can focus on work. “A boyfriend proposed to me three years ago. I turned him down when I realised I cared more about my job. After that, I lost interest in dating. It became awkward when the question of the future came up.”

Tomita says a woman’s chances of promotion in Japan stop dead as soon as she marries. “The bosses assume you will get pregnant.” Once a woman does have a child, she adds, the long, inflexible hours become unmanageable. “You have to resign. You end up being a housewife with no independent income. It’s not an option for women like me.”

Around 70% of Japanese women leave their jobs after their first child. The World Economic Forum consistently ranks Japan as one of the world’s worst nations for gender equality at work. Social attitudes don’t help. Married working women are sometimes demonised as oniyome, or “devil wives”. In a telling Japanese ballet production of Bizet’s Carmen a few years ago, Carmen was portrayed as a career woman who stole company secrets to get ahead and then framed her lowly security-guard lover José. Her end was not pretty.

Prime minister Shinzo Abe recently trumpeted long-overdue plans to increase female economic participation by improving conditions and daycare, but Tomita says things would have to improve “dramatically” to compel her to become a working wife and mother. “I have a great life. I go out with my girl friends – career women like me – to French and Italian restaurants. I buy stylish clothes and go on nice holidays. I love my independence.”

Tomita sometimes has one-night stands with men she meets in bars, but she says sex is not a priority, either. “I often get asked out by married men in the office who want an affair. They assume I’m desperate because I’m single.” She grimaces, then shrugs. “Mendokusai.”

Mendokusai translates loosely as “Too troublesome” or “I can’t be bothered”. It’s the word I hear both sexes use most often when they talk about their relationship phobia. Romantic commitment seems to represent burden and drudgery, from the exorbitant costs of buying property in Japan to the uncertain expectations of a spouse and in-laws. And the centuries-old belief that the purpose of marriage is to produce children endures. Japan’s Institute of Population and Social Security reports an astonishing 90% of young women believe that staying single is “preferable to what they imagine marriage to be like”.

The sense of crushing obligation affects men just as much. Satoru Kishino, 31, belongs to a large tribe of men under 40 who are engaging in a kind of passive rebellion against traditional Japanese masculinity. Amid the recession and unsteady wages, men like Kishino feel that the pressure on them to be breadwinning economic warriors for a wife and family is unrealistic. They are rejecting the pursuit of both career and romantic success.

“It’s too troublesome,” says Kishino, when I ask why he’s not interested in having a girlfriend. “I don’t earn a huge salary to go on dates and I don’t want the responsibility of a woman hoping it might lead to marriage.” Japan’s media, which has a name for every social kink, refers to men like Kishino as “herbivores” or soshoku danshi (literally, “grass-eating men”). Kishino says he doesn’t mind the label because it’s become so commonplace. He defines it as “a heterosexual man for whom relationships and sex are unimportant”.

The phenomenon emerged a few years ago with the airing of a Japanese manga-turned-TV show. The lead character in Otomen (“Girly Men”) was a tall martial arts champion, the king of tough-guy cool. Secretly, he loved baking cakes, collecting “pink sparkly things” and knitting clothes for his stuffed animals. To the tooth-sucking horror of Japan’s corporate elders, the show struck a powerful chord with the generation they spawned.

Kishino, who works at a fashion accessories company as a designer and manager, doesn’t knit. But he does like cooking and cycling, and platonic friendships. “I find some of my female friends attractive but I’ve learned to live without sex. Emotional entanglements are too complicated,” he says. “I can’t be bothered.”

Romantic apathy aside, Kishino, like Tomita, says he enjoys his active single life. Ironically, the salaryman system that produced such segregated marital roles – wives inside the home, husbands at work for 20 hours a day – also created an ideal environment for solo living. Japan’s cities are full of conveniences made for one, from stand-up noodle bars to capsule hotels to the ubiquitous konbini (convenience stores), with their shelves of individually wrapped rice balls and disposable underwear. These things originally evolved for salarymen on the go, but there are now female-only cafés, hotel floors and even the odd apartment block. And Japan’s cities are extraordinarily crime-free.

Some experts believe the flight from marriage is not merely a rejection of outdated norms and gender roles. It could be a long-term state of affairs. “Remaining single was once the ultimate personal failure,” says Tomomi Yamaguchi, a Japanese-born assistant professor of anthropology at Montana State University in America. “But more people are finding they prefer it.” Being single by choice is becoming, she believes, “a new reality”.

Is Japan providing a glimpse of all our futures? Many of the shifts there are occurring in other advanced nations, too. Across urban Asia, Europe and America, people are marrying later or not at all, birth rates are falling, single-occupant households are on the rise and, in countries where economic recession is worst, young people are living at home. But demographer Nicholas Eberstadt argues that a distinctive set of factors is accelerating these trends in Japan. These factors include the lack of a religious authority that ordains marriage and family, the country’s precarious earthquake-prone ecology that engenders feelings of futility, and the high cost of living and raising children.

“Gradually but relentlessly, Japan is evolving into a type of society whose contours and workings have only been contemplated in science fiction,”Eberstadt wrote last year. With a vast army of older people and an ever-dwindling younger generation, Japan may become a “pioneer people” where individuals who never marry exist in significant numbers, he said.

Japan’s 20-somethings are the age group to watch. Most are still too young to have concrete future plans, but projections for them are already laid out. According to the government’s population institute, women in their early 20s today have a one-in-four chance of never marrying. Their chances of remaining childless are even higher: almost 40%.

They don’t seem concerned. Emi Kuwahata, 23, and her friend, Eri Asada, 22, meet me in the shopping district of Shibuya. The café they choose is beneath an art gallery near the train station, wedged in an alley between pachinko pinball parlours and adult video shops. Kuwahata, a fashion graduate, is in a casual relationship with a man 13 years her senior. “We meet once a week to go clubbing,” she says. “I don’t have time for a regular boyfriend. I’m trying to become a fashion designer.” Asada, who studied economics, has no interest in love. “I gave up dating three years ago. I don’t miss boyfriends or sex. I don’t even like holding hands.”

Asada insists nothing happened to put her off physical contact. She just doesn’t want a relationship and casual sex is not a good option, she says, because “girls can’t have flings without being judged”. Although Japan is sexually permissive, the current fantasy ideal for women under 25 is impossibly cute and virginal. Double standards abound.

In the Japan Family Planning Association’s 2013 study on sex among young people, there was far more data on men than women. I asked the association’s head, Kunio Kitamura, why. “Sexual drive comes from males,” said the man who advises the government. “Females do not experience the same levels of desire.”

Over iced tea served by skinny-jeaned boys with meticulously tousled hair, Asada and Kuwahata say they share the usual singleton passions of clothes, music and shopping, and have hectic social lives. But, smart phones in hand, they also admit they spend far more time communicating with their friends via online social networks than seeing them in the flesh. Asada adds she’s spent “the past two years” obsessed with a virtual game that lets her act as a manager of a sweet shop.

Japanese-American author Roland Kelts, who writes about Japan’s youth, says it’s inevitable that the future of Japanese relationships will be largely technology driven. “Japan has developed incredibly sophisticated virtual worlds and online communication systems. Its smart phone apps are the world’s most imaginative.” Kelts says the need to escape into private, virtual worlds in Japan stems from the fact that it’s an overcrowded nation with limited physical space. But he also believes the rest of the world is not far behind.

Getting back to basics, former dominatrix Ai Aoyama – Queen Love – is determined to educate her clients on the value of “skin-to-skin, heart-to-heart” intimacy. She accepts that technology will shape the future, but says society must ensure it doesn’t take over. “It’s not healthy that people are becoming so physically disconnected from each other,” she says. “Sex with another person is a human need that produces feel-good hormones and helps people to function better in their daily lives.”

Aoyama says she sees daily that people crave human warmth, even if they don’t want the hassle of marriage or a long-term relationship. She berates the government for “making it hard for single people to live however they want” and for “whipping up fear about the falling birth rate”. Whipping up fear in people, she says, doesn’t help anyone. And that’s from a woman who knows a bit about whipping.

When a child leaves the nest, how does it affect younger brothers and sisters?

Tags

anxiety, change, Children, dynamics, empty nest syndrome, family, home, parents, relationships, siblings, students, transition, university, withdrawn

When a child leaves the nest, how does it affect younger brothers and sisters?

It’s five years since my eldest child left home, but now it’s that time of year again, the shops filled with students buying value sets of crockery and stationery, harassed parents doing the Ikea run. I’m reminded of one of the most unexpected sides to our so-called emptying nest.

When my youngest child, seven years old at the time, became cowed with anxiety by day and unable to sleep at night, I thought at first it had something to do with his new class at primary school. It was a few weeks into the start of a school year, and our previously robust youngest had undergone a massive character change. He had been outgoing but was now withdrawn. He had been a joker; now nothing made him laugh. He started wanting reassurance at night.

It took days of probing to get to the root of the problem. No, he liked his new teacher. Yes, his friendships were all fine. When he admitted, reluctantly, that since his sister left home, it had felt to him as if a piece of the family was missing, I was dumbstruck. It simply hadn’t occurred to me that her leaving would make such a strong impact on him, especially as one sister was still at home.

“Every time I see any of the things she’s left behind, I feel upset,” he tried to explain.

At bedtime, he used to find the music and background chatter from his sisters’ rooms comforting. When one or both of them were out, he knew they would be there later. Now that the eldest had left, for good, as he saw it, he simply couldn’t get to sleep or think about anything but the gap that was left.

Empty nest syndrome is pretty well documented. Parents may well experience feelings of either grief or exuberance – a step towards regaining their freedom – as their brood take their first steps into the big wide world, but it hadn’t occurred to me to pay attention to the effect on her siblings when our first-born left.

On reflection, it seems obvious – even when other siblings remain at home, the departure of one of them affects family dynamics. Relationships shift and alter the way they have to adjust when a new baby is born, with roles altering and pecking orders changing. But there is no “empty nest” label for siblings to attach to their confused feelings, particularly those who are very young (the gap between our youngest and his 18-year-old sister perhaps exacerbated the problem), and my son, unable or unwilling to articulate his sense of loss, was suffering anxiety and sleeplessness instead. I suspect, with the instinctive perception of children, that he might also have avoided telling me why he was affected for fear of upsetting me – I may have mentioned how quiet the house seemed without the eldest or that I missed her, and he picked up some of that and didn’t want to make things worse.

Now I thought about it, I realised that her departure meant that other things had changed in the household, which must have felt unsettling to a young child. Our middle daughter, 16 at the time, had started going out more with her friends, and one or the other of us parents was usually preoccupied with work or study. The house became a place to sleep rather than the family home it had been. With only four of us, rarely all at home at once, we hardly ever gathered for family meals any more. We used to sit and watch TV or films together; now we never did.

What message had this given to our youngest? That it wasn’t worth the effort just for him?

The change must have felt catastrophic. Our first-born leaving was poignant for her parents. It was the end of an era, but it also meant we were embarking on a path that would eventually lead us back to living a child-free life again, to which in some ways we were looking forward.

For our youngest child, who had never known life without his older sister, the change was far more significant. It was uncharted and so potentially scary. It must also have felt final – he had no idea, as we did, that students come scurrying back home every holiday and often in between. As far as he was concerned, if one person could just leave, who was going to disappear next?

But all siblings are affected. Our 16 year old had lost a confidante and ally. The silence in the house was conspicuous now that the two girls’ gossip and summary of their day no longer took place nightly in their room. And, indeed, my middle daughter says it was a difficult transition for her too. “I felt really upset, driving away from her,” she admits. “And I missed her a lot,” she says.

The difference between her and the youngest was that she was able to express her feelings and fill the gap by increasing her social life and endlessly messaging her sister. But the result was that she too edged away from home, leaving the house all the emptier for her younger brother.

Once I began to think about the whole issue of siblings leaving, I remembered that when my elder brother went off on his travels, it catapulted me into adulthood. I was left at home with my younger brother, who at that stage seemed much less exciting, and I was lost. Who would I go to parties and gigs with now? My younger brother (who may also, like my youngest son, have had unexpressed feelings himself) withdrew into his room as he hit puberty, my mother returned to full-time work and my father was out more. When I got in from school, the house was silent, cold and tomb-like. I couldn’t wait to leave and made sure I did, as soon as I could.

Home was no longer the place of solace it had once seemed. Because, of course, accompanying the emotional changes when a child leaves, are economic and practical ones. Parents have to support their older kids through university and may take the opportunity – as mine did – to work more hours, in the process leaving the younger ones behind. The conflict is one I recognise only too well, as the need to earn more to support my older children through further education has been pitted against the responsibility of being around for the younger one. When you’ve been a parent for 18-plus years, it’s easy to feel that it’s time to ease off when they start to leave home, and to give yourself a bit of a break, pursuing interests you may have had to shelve during the child-rearing years, but younger children may feel – and indeed be – sidelined as a result.

There is also an effect on the parents’ relationship. Couples who have worked at staying together “for the sake of the kids”, may give up making the effort once there are fewer kids at home. A friend, the mother of two adult daughters, recounts: “We managed to hold our relationship together while the older one was at home, even though it wasn’t going well. I didn’t realise it at the time, but now I see there was a link between her leaving and our relationship ending. It wasn’t conscious, but it was there. I worry now that my younger daughter must have felt she didn’t matter as much as the older one because we held it together for her sister, but not for her!”

In the years since our first daughter left for university, she has been back to live at home and moved out again. The middle child has also left, but I made more of an attempt to be aware of how her brother may feel, and to remind him that her “leaving” didn’t mean she was disappearing for ever. But by then he was older and knew that such changes aren’t finite anyway.

There are, of course, advantages to a sibling leaving. Younger children have a chance to try on new identities, to expand into the space left, to have their own room – for the first time in some cases – to take on new roles, and, potentially, to grow closer to other siblings or their parents. My son is 13 now and reaping the benefits of having siblings who have left home. “It was difficult when I was little,” he says. “But now they’re living in London it’s like I’ve got a second home,” he says.

For me, it was a salutary lesson in how strong the bond between my own children really was and how much more sensitive I should have been to the change a child leaving would make to her siblings in the first place. It seemed to me that my children became closer when they started living apart, but perhaps, and more likely, it was simply that I hadn’t realised how close they had always been. We are often the worst witnesses to what is in front of our noses within the family. I am also aware that while for us, the parents, it was a step towards a couple-only lifestyle, for my youngest, life really would never be the same again.

Perhaps these two recollections from friends best illustrate the sense of the gap that can be left when a sibling leaves home. “My sisters shared an attic bedroom just above my room. When they’d both left, I used to lie in bed aware of, and terrified by, the dark, empty hole that was left. I loved it at Christmas when they came home and that dark hole filled with the light and noise of their presence again.”

Another friend, who shared a room with her older sister, recalls how when she left home she wondered who she was going to talk to at night. “I found it devastating when my sister left, and I used to carry on the conversations I would have been having with her when she was there,” she says. “For months after she left, I just kept on talking to an empty bed.”

Domestic violence: ‘As a man, it’s very difficult to say I’ve been beaten up’

Tags

abuse, domestic violence, embarrassment, men, partner abuse, stigma, taboo, violence

Domestic violence: ‘As a man, it’s very difficult to say I’ve been beaten up’

An inch under six foot tall, Dave, a gardener with a deep, gravelly voice is not most people’s idea of a domestic violence victim. But he suffered two years of abuse at the hands of his girlfriend and was too embarrassed and loyal to report her to the police. He slept in his car for weeks before speaking to his local council, who found him a place at a men’s refuge.

He struggles to keep it together when he recalls the day his girlfriend smashed a bottle of Jack Daniels across his head, leaving him bleeding on the pavement: a deep scar is still clearly visible on his forehead. But when the 45-year-old from Essex describes the relief of being believed by the authorities, he breaks down, his broad shoulders heaving beneath his rugby shirt.

“When help finally comes it’s an emotional thing,” he says, sitting on the sofa at a safe house in Berkshire where he is being helped to rebuild his life. “As a man, it’s very difficult to say you’ve been beaten up. It seems like you’re the big brute and she’s the daffodil, but sometimes it’s not like that.”

He is one of the lucky few to get help. His refuge has two new requests every day to take in men from across the country who are fleeing violence. The home, which can accommodate three men and their children, is already full.

One in three victims of domestic abuse in Britain is male but refuge beds for men are critically scarce. There are 78 spaces which can be used by men in refuges around Britain, of which only 33 are dedicated rooms for males: the rest can be taken by victims of either gender. This compares with around 4,000 spaces for women. In Northern Ireland and Scotland there are no male refuges at all.

Alan Gibson, an independent domestic violence adviser for Women’s Aid which runs the men’s refuge in Berkshire that is helping Dave, said: “Four organisations phoned us today looking for places for four different men. They’ve been attacked and abused, but there is only one room available in the country and someone will have to decide which of those four men is most in need.”

More married men (2.3 per cent) suffered from partner abuse last year than married women, according to the latest British Crime Survey. Yet help is still much harder to find for men.

Mark Brooks, chairman of the men’s domestic abuse charity, the Mankind Initiative, said: “Support services for male victims remain decades behind those for women. This is not helped by the Government and others having a violence against women and girls strategy without having an equivalent for men. Everybody sees domestic violence victims as being female rather than male. This is one of Britain’s last great taboos.”

The Mankind Initiative helpline receives 1,200 calls a year from men or friends and family calling on behalf of men. Stigma and fear of being disbelieved, among other factors, make men much less likely than women to report abuse to the police. The British Crime Survey found that only 10 per cent of male victims of domestic violence had told the police, compared with 29 per cent of women. More than a quarter of male victims tell no one what has happened to them, compared with 13 per cent of women.

The human cost of ignoring the problem is stark: 21 men were murdered by a partner or former partner in 2010/11.

Kieron Bell very nearly became one of those grim statistics. He is also one of a handful of men who has successfully prosecuted a partner for violence. The 37-year-old bouncer from Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, had to have emergency heart surgery after he was stabbed in the chest by his wife, Sarah, in 2009. She had been violent since the start of their marriage in 2006 but he did not want to turn to the police at first, initially because he still loved her and later because he thought they would never believe that a 5ft 2in woman would be subjecting a bulky 5ft 10in bouncer to a reign of terror.

After the stabbing, his wife tried to claim that Mr Bell fell on a knife but, while recovering in hospital, he decided to report her to the police. In 2010 she was charged with grievous bodily harm and was released from prison only in May last year. “I was scared to call the police. I’m a big bloke and I thought I’d get laughed at,” he said. “I think there needs to be more information out there for blokes. If I’d known what the signs to look out for were before, I could’ve done something sooner. But I loved her and because of my child I stayed with her.”

Nicola Graham-Kevan, an expert in partner violence at Central Lancashire University, said: “Society is blind to women’s aggression. The biggest disparity is women’s ability to seek help which makes men very vulnerable to false allegations. People often won’t believe that men are victims. Men have to be seen as passive, obvious victims with clear injuries, whereas, if a woman makes allegations, they are believed much more easily.”

Dr Graham-Kevan believes the system needs to adjust to make it safer for male victims and their children, who can end up with an abusive mother. “The biggest thing for me as a parent is that children are being placed in significant positions of harm. It sounds anti-feminist, but I think we’re allowing women too many rights in the family court, because courts assume that the women are the best parent as a starting position, rather than looking at it equally.”

A Home Office spokeswoman said: “We recognise that men are victims of domestic violence, too, and they deserve protection. In December 2011, the Home Office set up the Male Victims Fund to support front- line organisations working with male victims of sexual and domestic violence. We also fund the Male Advice (and Inquiry) Line.”

Names have been changed to protect identities

‘My wife attacked me 11 times. I didn’t think the police would believe me’

Tim, 59, has severe learning difficulties and is now living in a men’s refuge in Berkshire after his wife assaulted him repeatedly during their short marriage

“My wife attacked me 11 times through our marriage. We were married for 18 months, but, being a bloke, you don’t know where to go to get help.

“She tried to strangle me and she used to bite me. She also stabbed me in the hand with a fork. I’d been on my own for 14 years and she seemed like the right woman for me when we got together.

“The violence started in the first three months of the marriage. She would go for my throat if I wouldn’t do certain things.

“She wouldn’t let me see anyone. My family were trying to help me cope with my disabilities, but she wouldn’t let them come round. On New Year’s Day, she threatened me with a knife and I was frightened. Then the other day she tried to strangle me again.

“My sister said I should call the police, so I did.

“I didn’t think the police would believe me because she always seemed to twist things, but they want me to press charges and make a statement now.”

I really didn’t like my son

Tags

Children, family, parenting, parents

I really didn’t like my son

“Get inside the house!” I say, in a low growl, which I hope the neighbours can’t hear.

“No,” replies George.

“Listen, you brat” – tempers are frayed – “I know I promised a trip to the ice-cream place, but Auntie died two days ago and we are too upset, too busy. We’ll go another time.”

In the emotional-manipulation game, I’ve played my trump card. Now George plays his: “I don’t give a fuck that Auntie died.”

I stare at my eldest child, who meets my apoplectic gaze with blank defiance, and the thought hits me like a saucepan to the head: I don’t like you.

How did we get to this?

George is 10 and reminds me of Two-Face in Batman. He has a capacity for gentleness, is kind, generous and sensitive at heart. Yet his innate goodness – that soft, precious side – is these days mostly hidden beneath an arrogant, flinty exterior. His teacher likes his intelligence and wit, but confesses that her assistant finds him cocky and rude.

I agree. I feel a gouging ache of despair, even though I know that if I question him, he’ll be indignant and exclaim that the assistant always, unfairly, blames him when it’s the girls’ fault. And, immediately, I hate the assistant, for not understanding him, for her ignorant sexism (when he was a reluctant reader, she cemented the problem by forcing him through Eva, The Enchanted Ball Fairy). But mostly, I hate her because her attitude towards my darling son is uncomfortably reminiscent of my own.

So often, George seethes with latent rage and the tiniest imperfection will cause an eruption – last night, a too squashy satsuma. He is ferociously competitive and often casually cruel to his young brother – elbowing him on the stairs, so that the poor child flinches every time he passes his tormentor. He reaches extremes of emotion in seconds, screaming, crying, hurling books or balls across the room. It’s frightening because he is easily as strong as I am.

Recently, he called his father a bastard for forbidding him to watch South Park. If I’d spoken to my parents like that, I told George, I’d have been hit across the room. “And would that have been right?” enquired my son coolly.

I’m not Zen enough to always remain impassive when provoked. I don’t want to be a parent who hits, but I have grabbed George roughly, scratching his arm, to prevent him attacking his brother. I apologised with the weasel caveat, “Listen to me, then I won’t have to physically restrain you.”

My son isn’t stupid. He senses my fleeting dislike and it is poisoning our relationship. I lurch between futile forgiveness and condemnation. If we ban him from his favourite sport as punishment, we fuel his anger. The penal system is not a deterrent. But if we talk ourselves hoarse, he barely listens. Or he might cry, feel contrite, submit to a cuddle, then revert to venom and violence the instant he’s tested.

After 10 years of instinctive, cack-handed, self-analytical mothering, it strikes me I have no idea what to do.

It doesn’t help that on some pathetic level, I goad myself that this was inevitable; dysfunction rumbling miserably down through generations. I was a child who meekly obeyed autocratic parents: I never, ever answered back. My own mother shouted and hit. She was perpetually sour and incandescent with fury at the smallest infringement. Do I secretly resent my son, for his ingratitude, for the happy but exasperating fact that he isn’t afraid of his mother?

Of course my son cares about Auntie but I willfully choose to take him at his silly word and have a fight about it. Meanwhile, George derives grim satisfaction from watching me lose it. He is spoilt – not materially – but he often gets his way. I don’t know what I should deal with: the insolence or its cause – why is he like this?

Mostly, I fear I know. Stress and grief mean his father and I are a-boil with tension. All my unprocessed anger towards other people has accumulated into one bristling ball. Only at home do I give vent. My 10-year-old has seen me stamp and shout. He has absorbed this anger and thrown it back at me.

Yet I’m not like my mother: I cuddle, comfort, praise my children, and can’t hugely care when the light fitting is hit by a tennis ball. But her shadow remains and my reflex reactions are sometimes hers. I speak in her voice: “Get a move on! Pick up your feet!” That harshness is within me.

As I argue with my son in the street, I wonder if I possess the mental strength to be a parent. Perhaps because of my upbringing, my confidence evaporated when the hospital staff let me take this baby home. I was glad to have a part-time nanny, relieved to hand over my son to a professional. I was scared of him; his need for me was so great, I was terrified of failing him. I managed the practical stuff: steamed his organic carrots, overdressed him, read him Elmer. But I connected warily.

Eventually, you must stop excusing your failures, and take responsibility for your attitude and actions. My approval is certainly conditional but when does that spill over into withholding love? We spend a lot of time with our son – some quality, some purgatory. I often wish I worked in an office: despite the home-cooked meals, taxiing to various sports, the reading together, familiarity breeds contempt.

I am critical, correcting him on his table manners 10 times in one sitting. I discipline him supposedly for his good, but also for mine. He is a frequent, casual loser of coats, which maddens me. I am not always accepting of the child I’ve got.

As I start to write this, venting my frustration, each word feels like a betrayal of a small boy who should trust me. My sister-in-law says: “He tries so hard to please you – he always looks to you for approval.”

What she says resonates. I’m so desperate to change the situation that over the following months, I force myself to be warm, tolerant, minimise blame, smile – even when I want to yell my head off, like when he methodically picks the stuffing out of the dining-room chair.

I also consult Gaynor Sbuttoni, an educational psychologist who specialises in emotional issues. She says that as a parent, I must see that I come second. I must allow him to be angry, look for a solution, but limit the behaviour. Tell him: “You can’t hurt anyone, you can’t hurt yourself and you can’t break things. But you can stomp and shout and get your anger out and when it’s over we’ll carry on and we’ll do the right thing.”

Sbuttoni adds, “With most children, anger is covering up their anxiety. If he was feeling you didn’t like him – how scary is that? If your mum can’t love you unconditionally, nobody can.”

At last I recognise what is happening. I also see that I am not a victim of his behaviour; I have the power to stop it.

I comment on his every good deed: “That was kind of you, to read to your brother.” I try to promote intimacy. I have a foolish reticence, as if by pushing myself close, I’m interfering. At heart, I’m scared of his rejection. But when I join him in the garden to play, he is so pleased and surprised I feel ashamed for holding back. He blushes with delight when I attempt to fast-bowl.

I give him credit. I recognise that we expect a lot of him and work on recognising his vulnerabilities.

Sbuttoni explains: “A boy, developing emotionally, is fraught with pain. On the outside they are supposed to be big and strong and tough – inside they’ve got real feelings and are trying to cover them up, understand them – and many people do not acknowledge that with boys. It’s still hard for a boy to talk about feelings and when he has an adult who allows him to, there is friction inside: ‘I can do all this talking but when I get with the gang, I have to be angry, abusive and aggressive so that the male community will accept me as a male.’

“All kids are struggling with so much at any one time and Mum is the one they test it all out on,” she says.

My power to do good or evil is thrown into sharp relief by her words – and with it, my huge responsibility. I also see, with far greater clarity and compassion, his position. When George does explode with frustration, instead of snapping, I charm away his bad temper. I find this supremely difficult. When he swears, I say, “Please don’t speak like that.” I don’t stoop to a squabble. I even – as Sbuttoni advises “stand there, as if you are a gorilla over him” – to indicate on important issues that while he is as powerful as me, I am in charge. But mostly I try to put my ego aside and see it his way. When I help him with an essay, he asks, “Were you the cleverest person at English in your year at university?”

“God, no!” I say. “There were a lot of naturally brilliant people there. I just tried hard.”

He says, “I think it’s far better to try hard and do well, than to be clever and not try.”

“You’re right, George,” I say. “Thank you,” and he beams.

I feel a great rush of love. Because he’s so eloquent, it’s easy to mistake his for an adult mind, to roar, “Oh, grow up!” when he plays the fool or needles me. I am a difficult parent: disorganised, grumpy, sarcastic and unfair. Yet he loves me, as I do him, with painful, primal ferocity. I see I just had to learn to try harder.

Names have been changed

An expert opinion

Is it common not to like your child? It’s difficult to know as it’s such a taboo subject that people won’t readily admit to it. We are supposed to love our children from the minute they are born, like magic, and if that doesn’t happen you can feel you are stumbling from the start.

While it’s perfectly normal to find your child annoying occasionally, or dislike aspects of him or her, not liking them long term can usually be traced back to a reason, or sometimes several. There might have been a rupture in the bonding process. Sometimes children remind the parent of parts of themselves that they don’t like. Or they find it hard to cope with a child’s extreme vulnerability.

How you were parented can also have an impact: if you had a really difficult relationship with your mother (or father if you are a man), it can be really difficult to know how to be a good version of a mother/father yourself.

What is damaging for children is if they can’t get back to a place where they know the parent really does love them – in other words, if there’s never a time at which the child has a secure base. There has to be trust on the part of the child that underneath it all, he or she is loved.

Family therapy can really help if things are cyclical because unless someone steps in to change the patterns – how parent relates to child and vice versa – it just perpetuates. The sooner you get help, the better: younger children are more able to adapt to changes in their parents.Ryan Lowe

• Ryan Lowe is a consultant child, adolescent and family therapist,childpsychotherapy.org.uk

Why divorce can be so difficult for teenage children

Tags

Children, Divorce, family, parents, relationships, Teens, young people

Why divorce can be so difficult for teenage children

“Peter, just to say, I’m thinking of you and I love you very much. It would be great to talk to you, Dad.”

“Fuck off.”

The text messages between Chris Huhne and his then 18-year-old son, Peter, are painful for any father or son to read.

Over a period of 11 months to May 2011, they show a dad attempting to maintain a connection with his son as he goes through a messy and very public divorce. They also show a son who is absolutely furious with his father – for his “affairs”, for reducing their relationship “to lies and pleasantries”, for being “a pathetic loser and a joke”.

When I was 16 and my parents separated, I vowed that I would never forget what it was like to be a teenager in that painful situation, but reading Peter’s texts, 20 years on, I realised I had.

None of us can judge whether Peter’s anger is justifiable or not, but it is shocking. And it sheds light on an overlooked part of divorce: how deeply it can affect adult, or late-teenage, children.

I know so many people whose parents did something similar to mine: struggled on in a difficult marriage “for the sake of the children”, finally splitting up when the kids went to university or were considered old enough to handle it. This can be a selfless parental act, and is often what the children want: although my parents were visibly unhappy in my teenage years I was desperate for them to stay together.

The upside is that it can be better to maintain the familiar family structure, says Christine Northam, a relationships counsellor for Relate; the downside is that children may develop in “a sterile and not very loving” environment.

Unfortunately, parents who stay together for the children “don’t take into account the model they are presenting to their children”, thinks Northam, and these loveless examples can hamper children in their adult relationships. Parents staying together for the children may have another person in their lives and children learn to keep secrets, or protect mum or dad from the infidelity. Parents “are modelling something that perhaps is not very good for the kids”, says Northam.

My parents divorced in the pre-mobile phone era, although I don’t think I would have sent my dad messages like Peter’s. But I was angry with my father for several years, blamed him for the family breakdown, and sought to support my mum. As a teenager, I was deeply critical of my dad and what I regarded as his flaws. I think my feelings were complicated by my struggle to emerge as a man in my own right: somehow, my dad’s desires and relationships were embarrassing and eclipsed my own and, I felt, inhibited me from expressing desire or forming romances of my own.

“It’s loss, it’s grief, it’s bereavement,” says Northam of the anger felt by late teens whose parents divorce. “Kids of 18, 19 are quite judgmental; it’s all very black and white. They’ve lost what they had – they’ve lost mum and dad together. People just don’t understand that when they think: ‘I’ll have an affair and leave.’ Kids love stability and the family they grew up with, and that is the model we buy into as a society.”

It is easy for parents to assume their late-teenage children are more grownup than they are, says Angharad Rudkin, a clinical psychologist and chartered member of the British Psychological Society who works with adolescents struggling to come to terms with family breakdown. If they are 17 or 18, we may overestimate teenage maturity because they no longer have irrational strops. In fact, research shows that the brain continues to develop until the age of 25 or 26. “Assuming an older teenager will be able to understand why we’ve split up, and is sensible and fair, is still asking an awful lot,” says Rudkin. “Older teenagers can look back and feel like they were living a lie – that this family life they had grown up with and perhaps never questioned was something their parents were just waiting to break up when they went away to university.”

Splitting up when children are young adults may spare everyone awkward enforced access; the weekends with dad or the new life divided between two homes. But it creates a new difficulty: how can a parent who is shunned by a teenage child maintain contact? If they back off to give teenagers space to rage, that can be interpreted as uncaring. After my parents split, I remember feeling that the onus was on my dad to maintain contact with me; luckily for both of us, he did.

When you keep reassuring your teen that you love them, only to be faced by insults or silence, it must be hard not to lash out, or at least tell them it is tough for you too, and they are old enough to deal with it. It is absolutely essential, Rudkin and Northam agree, that divorcing parents of late teens remember to be the grownups. “You will have to swallow your pride and take the more grownup stance – they are still going to be furious little kids under it all,” she says. “It’s the adult’s responsibility to go out of their way to make contact with the teenager, and not expect a gracious response.”

Grownup children may become one parent’s confidante or “best friend” and children then feel responsible for their parent’s happiness (as they often take on an unnecessary responsibility for the disintegration of their parents’ marriage). “The parents need to stay in the role of parents,” says Northam. “Fathers need to remember that however grownup your child may look, you are still the father, and you need to be the parent who makes the effort to see your children – it’s not the kids’ responsibility. It sounds a bit banal, but one of the obvious things [for a departing father to do] is to say sorry.”

I have no idea whether Chris Huhne and Peter, who is 20 and at university, have repaired their relationship since those awful text exchanges. I hope they have. And if they haven’t, I hope that Chris is still trying, and Peter feels less fury.

Twenty years on from my parents’ divorce, the fact that I find it easier to empathise with Chris than with Peter’s teenage anger is one sign that my dad and I managed to repair our relationship. My own teenage rage seems a world away. I’m very grateful my dad never stopped trying with me, and I admire him for it now, even though I am not sure that a child ever forgets the pain their parents cause, no matter how grownup they are.

Why stay-at-home dads are still the invisible men of the house

Tags

Children, choice, economy, family, fathers, house dads, househusband, parenting, parents, primary carers, relationships, women

Why stay-at-home dads are still the invisible men of the house

Edmund Farrow is facing redundancy. For 11 years he has worked up to 90 hours a week, looking after Matthew, 11, Daniel, nine, and seven-year-old Joanna.

“I haven’t regretted being a house dad, but now we’re at a stage where I have to think about what next. I used to be a computer programmer, so obviously things have moved on a bit in that field.

“I got used to being the only man in a hall of 30 women and learned that if I saw another dad at the school gates he’d probably have a day off. The numbers of dads looking after young children is still very small.”

Small but growing. Whether changing nappies, playing with the children or reading a bedtime story, most fathers are undoubtedly far more involved in their children’s lives than their own fathers would have been 30 or 40 years ago.

New research from the Office of National Statistics suggests the phenomenon of the househusband has seen a rapid explosion in numbers, but experts say the trend is less about choice and nurture than an economic necessity that is not being recognised by policymakers.

Last year 62,000 men were classed as “economically inactive” and at home looking after children, tripling from 21,000 in 1996. The figures did not include fathers working from home or part-time in order to be the main stay-at-home parent.

A survey out last week from the insurance company Aviva suggested there could be 600,000 men, 6% of British fathers, in that role, a further rise from the ONS figures which recorded 192,000 British men as the primary carer for children in 2009 and 119,000 in 1993.

Farrow, from Edinburgh, who set up DadsDinner.com to tackle the gap in services, said: “My wife and I made the decision that I would stay at home because of personality. My temperament meant I’m better with the kids for long periods of time, whereas she can get wound up more easily by them and needs to be out and about. So it suited us. But every other dad I’ve talked to has done it for financial reasons.”

Adrienne Burgess, head of research at the Fatherhood Institute, feels there is little understanding in government about family life and that more men could be househusbands. “What’s changing is not the fathers but the mothers,” she said. “More mothers at the time of their first child are earning as much or more than their partner. So couples make rational economic decisions. By the time the child is 18 months old, three quarters of mothers are back in paid work and those who aren’t tend to be the most poor or disadvantaged who don’t have the options because of the cost of childcare. The fully fledged stay-at-home parent is a dying breed.

“Go to any antenatal class today and there’s a split between the mothers who are going back to work and those who aren’t, each side a bit beleaguered. Motherhood is still in that flux and, while men are seeing being the primary parent as an option, their voices aren’t heard. They are ghettoised. What holds a lot of men back is a lack of confidence and a culture that is sometimes hostile and excluding of men.”

Anne Longfield, chief executive of the family charity 4Children, said efforts were under way to make a transition to equal parenting and for services to target fathers “despite society’s undeniable prejudice towards seeing mothers as the core carers”.

“Whether or not dads are full- or part-time carers for their children, what we have seen is their increased presence, and this is fantastic. However, there is still work to do – while mothers are often involved in their children’s centres as volunteers, fathers are less likely to be, and there are still some who do not always routinely seek to involve both parents in their children’s early education and play. The wider issues of workplace flexibility and the gender pay gap are also still relevant if we are to seek a more even balance.”

But others warn how changing roles throw up new pressures for the fraught modern family. Divorce lawyer Vanessa Lloyd Platt said she was seeing a trend of relationships suffering because of resentment building up between couples trying to navigate traditional gender roles. “I hate to say it but things are changing so fast for women and an awful lot of men are not moving forward. Relationships are suffering.

“I noticed a trend some years ago. I started to act for a lot of husbands who were staying at home. There had been this revolution, women earning more, then children arrive and sometimes they don’t want to give that career up, or the husband just can’t earn as much.

“For some people it worked, it’s essential to say that, but for others there is a pattern of dissatisfaction set off by this reversal of fortune. That resentment builds up after a few years and suddenly the woman is working really, really hard and thinks the husband is sitting around with his feet up, and the man has seen his career fold and his ego is mush.”

It’s a pattern recognised by Andrew Holmes, 52, from Devon. He has started working again part-time now that his children are at school, but remains the primary carer. “Leaving work to pick the kids up still gets comments from other blokes. There is the sense that I’m not putting in a full day. It can be hard going at times. I did feel quite isolated and resentment did build up between my wife and I. She envied me spending so much time with the kids and I envied her freedom when she went off to work. Neither of us was entirely happy with the way things were, but it was the only way financially.

“I value having been at home with the kids, but if I was to do it again I’d do it differently. I’d force myself into social situations a bit more. Mothers definitely didn’t invite me round for a cup of tea and it’s difficult when you go to a toddler group and women sit talking about pregnancy, as invariably they did.”

The rise of the stay-at-home father remains against a backdrop of social pressures on women to be good mothers and on men to be economic providers. Half of fathers still do not take the legal fortnight’s paternity leave because of fears that it will affect their careers or because they can’t afford to.

Men also seem to stay at home for a shorter time than women, said psychology professor Dr Charlie Lewis of Lancaster University. “It’s difficult to do research because they are such a transitory group,” he said. “A lot of people go into it with rose-tinted spectacles and great enthusiasm and then, partly to do with the social isolation, find it doesn’t suit them. They think they are breaking the mould, but then realise what it’s all about and bolt.

“Dads have to surmount a lot of problems, not least that women can be very unwilling to delegate parenting, even to their partner. There is so much pressure to be the good mother that it can lead to them holding men at bay, even when they desperately want to be involved.”

He added: “The economic climate compounds the problem. People are under stress and families are more complex than ever, complexities rarely conceded in statistics. One study five years ago looking at 5,000 households identified 73 different family types. Yet we continue to hold to the simplistic stereotype of motherhood, but there are many permutations of what makes a good parent.

“To declaim role reversal as a bad thing is just as catastrophic as to declaim it as a good thing. When people change roles with great gusto and intent and it doesn’t work out, then that disappointment can destroy the relationship. What we should be thinking about is how can social policy support systems fit all types of families.

“There really has been a seismic shift in gender roles, but really we will only know it’s changed when men start cleaning the toilet. That’s the last bastion.”

But, for most couples, childcare remains a juggle in changing social and economic times. Dan and Ilana Rapaport-Clark, from north London, both work part-time, although Dan is the main parent for Lola, three, and Jacob, one.

“I always wanted to do it, even before we had kids,” he said. “My family was supportive but some of my friends thought it was a bit odd. You definitely have a different experience to mothers and you rarely see another dad. A lot of men who would like to do it are put off by the dominance of women, so it becomes a bit of a chicken and egg situation. I wanted to see them walk and hear their first words, childhood is such a finite time. I love hanging out with my kids.”

See also:

Fathers are happier when doing more housework, says study