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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
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.
RT1
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