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During 23 years with the BBC, and in a 42 year journalistic career (when he was trained to use clear and simple language, avoiding jargon), for our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry, covering sad details of marriage failures was a mainstay of his journalism – with a rise in break ups reported during holiday periods, as are now approaching, because families are cooped up together and arguments frequently break out. This is highlighted by a new book today about the effect on children.
Unfortunately journalists like me thrive on bad news.
It is a fact that something which might be TERRIBLE for the parties concerned (like a car crash or divorce) regrettably makes good copy.
When I started in journalism in 1983 on the South Wales Echo (SWE) (then the biggest paper produced in Wales), a staple task was to ring up the Marriage Guidance Council (as it was before it changed the name to ‘Relate’) after Christmas or Easter to find out how many couples had contacted them asking for help.
Most long-term couples were married then, rather than simply living together, but during a holiday period they would be at home, realise they didn’t actually like the other person, so they would seek help in sorting it out or file for divorce.
It used to be thought that a divorce was in fact BETTER for children, because it was worse to live in a household where the parents were rowing all the time, but this is no longer the case.
So I read with interest a new book putting centre stage the devastating effect on the children concerned.
While divorce rates have slightly declined in recent years, this is from a very high base, and Custody, by Lara Feigel shows that divorce still has a terrible impact on children, and in Wales we know this only too well because the figures reveal it in stark detail.
Despite dropping a bit recently, divorce numbers are still high, with 17.5 per cent of all marriages ending in an official split over the last decade.
In 2023, the rate was 8.5–8.6 per 1,000 married residents, with the highest Welsh rates being in Neath Port Talbot (NPT), Blaenau Gwent (BG), and Denbighshire (D).
A report on this appalling state of affairs, conducted by the family law firm Reiss Edwards Family Law, identified that in the first two areas more than one in six people who have been married are now divorced, or have had their civil partnerships dissolved.
Denbighshire (D) has a divorce rate of 16.66 per cent, only SLIGHTLY lower than Neath Port Talbot (NPT) or Blaenau Gwent (BG), and after these ‘top’ places comes Conwy (C), where 16.49 per cent of once-married people are now divorced.
Divorce is one of the biggest social transformations of the past century.
In 1971 the divorce rate per thousand married people was just 5.9 per cent, but by 2003 this figure had climbed to 14 per cent.
In the UK nearly a quarter of children now live with single parents – though far more couples live together and have offspring than in days gone by.
Ms Feigel also writes about her own situation. During the pandemic she moved to the countryside and wanted her children to stay there with her.
That, though, sparked her own custody battle, which friends admonished her to avoid, with warnings that the ordeal would cut her children in half, (and everyone since King Solomon’s time knows that no good mother should choose to split a baby!).
So we have witnessed an enormous social change, and sadly it looks as though parts of Wales may be leading the way.
But every cloud has a silver lining – for journalists anyway!
The memories of Phil’s astonishing, decades long award-winning career in journalism (when at the beginning he invariably had to ring up the Welsh counselling service for details of the divorce rate), as he was gripped by the rare neurological disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A Good Story’. Order it now.
‘Custody’ by Lara Feigel, is from William Collins.
Tomorrow – how during that career, Phil was always taught DO NOT USE JARGON AND SAY WHAT YOU MEAN!
This is now highlighted by a bulletin from the Bank of England (BoE) about the state of the economy in these uncertain times, which would have been complete gobbledygook to Mrs Jones in Rhyl.
