DR MAX PEMBERTON: Stop being so selfish and stay together for the children

A few weeks ago, I was commenting on Ewan McGregor’s divorce. The actor had spoken of the toll his wife’s divorce had taken on his family, describing it as a “bomb” going off and how they are still “healing” from the consequences.

I wrote that a lot of the way adults are behaving these days regarding divorce makes me furious, because it’s people like me – doctors, teachers, social workers – who see the utter devastation, family quarrels and divorce. I waited for a response from furious divorcees.

Instead, I was surprised by the number of people who contact me to say, ‘Thank God someone says this.’ Finally, someone gives the alternative take on the idea that divorce is just a minor family accident, a slur that can be swept under the rug so the adults can go on with their own lives.

A teacher wrote to me and told me that, in her experience, it was the main cause of problems in children.

“Please write about this topic every week until people start listening,” she asked.

Another wrote: ‘No parent wants to accept it, but divorce ruins children’s lives.’ So I make no apologies for coming back to the subject this week.

This time it’s Ioan Gruffudd’s divorce from Alice Evans that makes headlines, as the two act out their psychodrama and drag their kids into it, while Ioan now accuses Alice of telling them against him.

Ioan, who is seeking joint custody in his court papers, appears to be trying to clarify that he is the victim of the split. Sorry but no.

It may be a bitter divorce, but you’re not the victim here – the kids are. They had no choice in this.

Of course, I accept that in the days before divorce was so common, many people were stuck in miserable marriages. But with so many couples now going their separate ways, the misery has simply passed on to the children. It is they who suffer the most when their homes are shattered.

In most cases, the adults who once grinned and had unhappy marriages had made the choice to get married in the first place. Children have no say in their circumstances.

They are powerless and completely innocent.

Yet they suffer greatly as a result of society’s changing perception of divorce – something once considered embarrassing, now the answer to any difficulty or struggle in a relationship.

I know this isn’t what people want to hear, but not wanting to hear something doesn’t make it false.

It’s not just the process of divorce that has a negative effect on children – it’s also what happens after the divorce, when the ink has long dried on the absolute decree.

It’s then that parents try to build a new life for themselves as singles, free to date whoever they want.

I have no doubt that divorce can leave individuals feeling vulnerable and alone and that setting up another stable, loving home with someone else can be good for the children involved – indeed, the evidence supports this.

But time and time again, I’ve seen parents—mature adults—ignoring the instability they bring into their children’s lives by going through a series of transient relationships. It makes me boil with anger.

Psychologists distinguish between instability in children and hardness in childhood. The latter means low income or socioeconomic status – how poor a family is. The first, on the other hand, refers to the number of moves a child has undergone, whether the parents are divorced, or whether they have a stable father figure.

Every piece of research shows that instability in children is the single biggest factor influencing mental health and, surprisingly, childhood hardness actually has little impact. In any case, it has been shown to contribute to a higher level of empathy later in life.

A well-known 2012 study showed that childhood instability was associated with addiction and mental illness, while childhood harshness was not associated at all.

A rich teen who grew up in a divorced family is more likely to become a drug addict than a poor teen who grew up in a stable family.

Children pay the biggest price for divorce: their mental health.

It’s heresy in modern times to suggest that someone may have to sacrifice their own comfort, happiness, or instant emotional satisfaction for another — even if that other person is their own child — but that’s sometimes what it takes when you’re grown up.

It is high time that we, as a society, accept the devastation divorce wreaks on children’s mental health and stop being so utterly selfish.

My foolproof hangover cure…

There has been a lot of publicity surrounding a new supplement that claims to reduce hangovers. The tablet, called Myrkl, you take before drinking helps to break down alcohol in the gut before it is absorbed into the bloodstream. It is likely that the intensity of your hangover will decrease because your body has absorbed less alcohol than you have actually drunk. The supplement, which costs £30 for 30 pills, has proved so popular that it sold out in the UK before its launch last week. But there is a perfectly effective and cheaper option: willpower. A few years ago, in the ER, I heard a nurse say something that resembles a drunk patient on an IV. They asked for medicine for their hangover. She replied, “A surefire way to avoid a hangover is not to get raped in the first place. Works every time.’

Women are twice as likely as men to worry about life after Covid, a study shows. Is this a surprise? The reality is that when it comes to caring for families, women still bear the brunt of the job. I see this often – it is almost always the daughters who take care of elderly parents, in addition to children, jobs and housework.

I was always wary of hopping on the mindfulness train. In mental health, we often see fads being hailed as a panacea, only to find that they aren’t quite what they used to be. They can still be useful, but there is rarely a one-size-fits-all solution. Although I’ve trained mindfulness, practiced it myself, and taught it in a day hospital, I feel it has limitations. Not everyone can ‘live in the moment’. Sometimes people’s mental state is too overwhelmed. Despite this, mindfulness was rolled out in schools in 2019 as part of a trial. Now the study of more than 28,000 kids ages 11 to 14 finds that the majority don’t like it and, it concludes, mindfulness training shouldn’t be in schools. Ditch the mindfulness and bring back old-fashioned hobbies, I say.

DR MAX PRESCRIPTION…

INSPIRING HIV SERIES

AIDS: The Unheard Tapes (BBC) shows the real voices of AIDS patients from the eighties and nineties. The audio clips are brought to life by actors who lip-sync the words (eg Hugo Bolton). It also has interviews with those who worked during the crisis. It’s terrifying — many of the voices are from people who didn’t survive — but it’s also a reminder of how quickly medicine responded and the incredible advances in HIV treatment.