ANOTHER VOICE
Towards a commonsense view on children and divorce
AUBERON WAUGH
Would it, I wonder, help reduce the incidence of divorce in Britain, which now has the highest rate in Europe, if the young children of divorcing parents, or those of any age who were not yet able to support themselves, were put to death as part of the settlement? Remembering King Solomon's adjudication in the case of the disputed baby, I feel sure this would be his solution. As a leader in this week's Sunday Telegraph put it:
The national interest would clearly be favoured by fewer divorces, since most avail- able evidence suggests that members of unbroken families commit less crime, do bet- ter at school, and are more likely to get and keep a job and enjoy good health, than those from broken ones.
In fact, of course, the proportion of children from broken homes which lands up in prison is comparatively small. The fact that it is much larger than the propor- tion of children from unbroken homes in prison can easily be explained by the delinquency factor: delinquent parents tend to breed delinquent children, even as they tend to be unable to support a stable relationship with a member of the oppo- site sex.
To say that most delinquents divorce is not the same thing as saying that most — or even a significant proportion of — people who divorce are — or is —delinquent. And so on, and so on. However much the Gov- ernment has got it into its head that divorce should be discouraged, there can be no case for the Michael Howard-style solution of sending would-be divorcees to prison. Apart from the fact that many of them have done nothing wrong, there is the appalling cost to take into account, which would cer- tainly dwarf any benefit.
But the national interest might well be favoured if the young children of divorcing parents were inexpensively put to death. Quite apart from the greater statistical probability of their committing crimes, doing badly at school, being unlikely to secure or keep a good job, or enjoy good health, there is the simple fact that our population continues to grow by something like 0.3 per cent per annum. This means that every year there are an additional 171,000 people for the welfare services to count, inspect and report to each other about. This is over one and a half times the population of Oxford — in an England which already has one of the highest popu- lation densities in the world, at over 941 to the square mile (363 to the square kilome- tre). Rwanda, by comparison, had 597 peo- ple to the square mile (230 to the square kilometre) before the recent civil war. Now it probably has rather fewer. Children of divorced parents are a nui- sance in other ways, apart from any tenden- cy to show the characteristics of mental dis- turbance and emotional insecurity, to commit more crime, do less well at school, fail to be given jobs or keep them or enjoy, good health. They can be highly inconve- nient to their parents, denying them the fresh start which is what the sacrament of divorce promises. Unwilling parents, seek- ing nothing but the freedom to be them- selves, find that they are shackled to these twitching, exigent dependants for the best part of two decades. Hundreds of thou- sands of babies are aborted ever year for no better reason.
There is a final reason why Mr Red- wood's think-tank (or whatever is the appropriate policy-forming body) might consider the option I have mentioned. A Mori survey for the Reader's Digest, con- ducted among children aged 10 to 17, recently claimed that four million children in this age group go to bed every night afraid that their parents might split up.
Their fear is reasonable enough. Although it is still claimed that only one in three marriages end in divorce, this figure is somewhat out of date. There is now one divorce for every two marriages, despite a drop — the first for 50 years — in 1994.
However, I doubt the accuracy of this figure of four million children going to bed every night in fear of their parents divorcing. It does not have what Richard Ingrams used to describe as the ring of truth. The survey was conducted among only 508 children, and it is my observation that children are the most tremendous liars. Time and again they will say whatev- er they think the grown-ups wish to hear and want them to say.
My own enquiries suggest that only a very small proportion of children carries any great anxiety on that score. Children of divorced parents are better disposed towards the institution of divorce than those whose parents are still together. Fewer than one in five feel that children's parents should stay together, even if they are unhappy, while 69 per cent disagree. Among children of divorced parents hold- ing any opinion on the subject, a substan- tial majority — more than one and a half of those to the contrary — feels it would be a mistake to make divorce more difficult.
Even if young children suffer very little anxiety on the score of whether or not their parents plan to divorce — the sug- gestion that they do suffer may be seen as part of the manipulative sentimentality which attends any discussion of children in our child-hating, dog-loving culture — I feel it would not be such a bad idea if they did. A little anxiety is good for the growing child, I feel. My own early child- hood was enriched by the war; children in Belfast and throughout the whole of Northern Ireland perform better in school than anybody else in the United Kingdom. Modern children have too little to care about, but they would have good reason to feel anxious when they went to bed if they thought they would be put to death in the event of their parents divorcing. I think they would profit from such an awareness, and live fuller lives as a result of it.
In fact, I know practically nothing about divorce, having been married for 34 years to the same woman. My chief interest comes from a new novel on the subject Her Husband's Children by Sophia Watson (Sceptre £16.99) — which I happen to have been reading, and which gave me the idea of suggesting that the children of divorced parents might be put to death, if the Gov- ernment really wished to involve itself in these matters. An alternative suggestion put forward by the Government is for a `fidelity payment' — couples who stay mar- ried for ten years would receive a cash reward from the state, but this doesn't seem a perfect solution, either. My own feeling is that our rulers would be well advised to leave it alone. About 1.5 million children have seen their parents divorce in the last ten years, and surprisingly few of them have gone to the bad.
The truth is that many of us have become so unpleasant since the lifting of constraints once imposed by the class system that we can't live together any more. No amount of government activity will change that. We must make the best of things, and it is in that spirit of optimism that I will be giving away my younger daughter to her fine young bridegroom in the Church of St Peter and St Paul, Combe Florey, this Saturday.
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