Woman's Hour - Parental Alienation, Afghan Judges, Being Average, Women Vets, Lady Evelyn Cobbold

Episode Date: August 26, 2021

Parental Alienation is the unjustified rejection of a parent by a child, encouraged by the other parent. We hear from one woman who hasn't seen or spoken to her daughter in six years. Dr Amy Baker, Parental Alienation expert, and Louise Barretto, a divorce and family solicitor, join Emma to discuss the impact on children, and the belief that a child's voice should always be listened to in a court of law.As the UK's evacuation mission draws to a close in Afghanistan, we look at the situation facing the country's female judges, described as being 'uniquely at risk'. We hear from a senior judge on the desperate situation she is in.Is there more pressure on us these days to be extraordinary? Listener Sarah suggested we talk about being average- and why it should be celebrated. Author Eleanor Ross and faculty member and former Head of Content at The School of Life, Sarah Stein Lubrano join Emma to discuss.Over 3 million households acquired a pet since the start of the pandemic, but vet practices are said to be overwhelmed. One listener got in touch to ask us to look at the challenges facing women vets. Lady Evelyn Cobbold was a Scottish aristocrat who became the first recorded British woman to convert to Islam and undertake the hajj - the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. Listener Sadia was inspired by her story, and joins Emma to talk about why Lady Evelyn's 1933 pilgrimage is so meaningful to her today. We also hear from the University of Manchester's Professor Zahia Smail Salhi on how Lady Evelyn's story fits into the bigger picture.Presented by Emma Barnett Produced by Frankie Tobi

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme, peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Emma Barnett and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Hello and welcome to the programme and to the fourth instalment of Listener Week, where you drive the content. And away from driving for just a moment, I'm also thinking this morning of the hundreds of people walking 130 miles from Cardiff to RAF Greenham Common to mark the 40th anniversary of the peace camp that was set up to protest against US nuclear weapons. Four decades ago, 36 people, mainly women, made that same journey. And more than 70,000 women took part in the protest at its height, the biggest female-led protest since women's suffrage. We'll be talking about the original Greenham Common protest

on next Friday's programme and hearing from some of the women who took part. But wanted to take your mind there for a moment. But back to today, like our previous three programmes this week, I can promise you a very varied menu as I try to find out answers and shine a light on the issues and people you have flagged to us. That is why we will hear the remarkable story of Lady Evelyn Cobbold, the Scottish aristocrat born in 1867 who converted to Islam and is thought to be the first Muslim woman born in Britain to perform the Hajj pilgrimage.

It's also why I'm talking to two vets today, after a listener flagged that the majority of vets are female and many are struggling to cope with the volume and intensity of their work. And it's also why we're going to talk about something slightly counterintuitive to the media, the joy of being average. This discussion has been prompted by a listener called Sarah. I hope she's listening. Good morning to you. She wrote in to say,

There is huge pressure to have a career, look great, own a big house, drive a new car, be brilliant at something. But I'm really boring and ordinary. I'm not a hero. I don't excel at anything. And I just tootle along. I have a boring admin job. My looks are average. I drive a three year old car and live in a two bedroom house. Maybe we should celebrate the average as well as the brilliant. And that is what I want to ask you about today. Do you take joy in being average? What does that mean to you?

Or do you need that energy of keeping striving, pushing, achieving, aiming for the next thing? Do you find yourself constantly comparing your work, your life, the way you look to people around you, whether that's in the workplace, in your family, in your friendship group? If so, at what cost potentially to your happiness? Or maybe it also gives you energy. Let me know. 84844.

The joy of being average or does that make you recoil in horror? On social media, we're at BBC Women's Hour or email me through our website. But first, today could be the last day British troops can evacuate any Afghans via Kabul airport as the UK's evacuation mission draws to a close ahead of the deadline. The government's Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace, has warned that not everyone is going to get out. And with many still waiting outside Kabul's airport, time is running out. The BBC's Sukunda Kamani is at the airfield. Here he is earlier describing the desperate scenes on the ground. It was incredible to see and very distressing of course

just huge numbers of people still turning up to the airport, whole families, old women sitting in wheelbarrows because they're unable to walk themselves, young children being carried by their parents and just an endless stream walking through the filth the dust the heat you know at times facing gunshots most of them or a large number of them with no realistic chance of boarding the evacuation flights because they just don't have the right paperwork that of course making it even more difficult for the handful that do have the right paperwork or are foreign citizens but are just unable to push their way through the crowd i was speaking to one elderly woman yesterday her son was a a former interpreter for the u.s army they had all been told to go to

the the airport they'd spent six days and six nights living in awful conditions in a kind of makeshift camp and And she was so frustrated with all the other people who had turned up, but also with the entire evacuation process. I mean, I asked her, I said, given all of this, isn't it worth just sticking it out in Afghanistan, seeing how things go? She said, look, we just don't have that option. The Americans should shoot us or they should let us through, but we're not staying here. It's very, very dramatic scenes. There are many groups of people who are trying to escape Taliban rule. A lot has been said about the Afghan interpreters

who helped British and US troops over the past two decades. But also at risk are politicians, humanitarian workers and those who worked in the legal system. Now, there are thought to be more than 250 female judges in the country who have been described as being uniquely at risk because of their status as women and also because some of these women will have been involved in cases and trials with Taliban members. Here at Women's Hour we've been contacted by someone who has worked with some of these women. We're not revealing who she is or her specific role to protect her

identity but here is a statement sent to us by a woman who was a senior female judge in the country. The international community has in recent years witnessed women's progress in Afghanistan on so many different fronts, creating positive change in society, participation in politics and civil society, fighting for the rights of women and children,

social justice, women's participation in high-ranking managerial roles. We created new laws and policies to fight with violence against women, freedom of speech, freedom of media, and of political cultural business activities. These are some of women's achievements in the last 20 years. During the first Taliban regime, women were forced to stay at home and experienced serious discrimination. They were deprived of their right to education and from work and activities in offices and presence in society. Female judges

and attorneys were first victims of this process. Now, Taliban are again talking about Sharia law. This means they have the same ideology and nothing has changed. And they are in no way aligned with the values we fought for all these years. Women activists, journalists, judges, and attorneys won't be able to continue working. Women judges already have received warnings and threats. I myself have received death threats by phone from Taliban members and former prisoners, and I had to leave my home and stay with my relatives. I do not believe that Taliban will keep their promises about the right of education and work for women and girls. They have their own interpretation of Islam and will impose restrictions on women based on their own understanding of the religion. They may allow some women doctors and teachers to continue

working, subject to restrictions that they have stated in their press interviews, and under international pressure, they may allow girls to go to school and study in areas that women are allowed to work. Right now, I have been forced to stay at home and won't receive my salary. Now my family and I are receiving death threats because of my work. We receive threatening phone calls and we don't know how they found our personal details, phone numbers and home address. We had to leave home and hide in another place. These are not coincidence. They have been held by people within the previous system.

Otherwise, with all those weapons and training and experienced officers in the last 20 years, how is it possible to lose a war overnight? A woman who was a senior female judge in Afghanistan. We have revoiced that statement to protect the woman's identity. That message came to us here at Women's Hour, but she remains in the country. Joining us now is I, Stephanie Boyce, President of the Law Society in England and Wales, and Baroness Helena Kennedy, QC. Stephanie, I'll come to you first. You've been calling for the government to help these

judges. What is the latest you're hearing? So, absolutely, we have supported the Law Society of England and Wales has supported efforts to immediately evacuate women judges and prosecutors by sharing information with the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office. And obviously this information

is in the strictest confidence and I'm not able to say anything more at this stage. But hopefully we will have an update later today. And in terms of, I know you do have to be careful, because this is a very live situation and people's lives are at risk. We just heard about death threats to the woman who was in touch with our programme. In terms of the experiences that you're hearing, is that similar without breaking any confidences?

Well, absolutely. I mean, the stories that we are hearing as to the individual stories we're hearing, the pleas for help and so forth is of the utmost concern as the situation that's unfolding in Afghanistan is of concern. And that's why we, the Law Society and legal professionals are very concerned with this situation on the ground there, and why we are continuing to work with government to lobby government for their safety in being relocated elsewhere and indeed to the United Kingdom.

Baroness Kennedy, good morning to you as well. Just to talk about, before we talk about any legal obligations we have or may have to these judges in this country, it is very striking just to note and pause on the fact that some of these women will have been prosecuting the Taliban. They absolutely have. I head up the Institute of Human Rights for the International Bar Association. It's based here in London. And we've had very close associations with Afghanistan,

have been very involved in the setting up of a bar association there, the development of the legal profession. And we know some of these wonderful women and they are incredible. And in that 20 years, as your woman judge said, the developments have been significant. And the changes in law to deal with violence against women, to deal with corruption in the system, to deal with narcotics, because we know, of course, it's a great drug creating place. The prisons, of course, one of the first things the Taliban has already done is emptied the prisons. They opened up the gates of the prisons. And many of these people want to get at the judges who were involved in their cases. The women are in fear. And you heard the woman talking about the threats that have been

made. That's what we're hearing all the time. We've worked with the Law Society, with the English Bar Association, but also with bar associations elsewhere, particularly in the United States, to find ways of getting the women out. Now, already, we know that we have got a whole cohort of judges, male and female, out because they're so at risk. They're in the staging posts of Dubai and Doha, and they will be making their applications to Britain and to the United States and Australia and to different places. And so we are really working with some urgency because we're in the last days now of when this is going to be possible. And you can imagine that one of the things that these women are saying is, I don't want to leave without my children.

I don't want to leave without my husband. So they want to be able to do this with other members of their family. And so that, of course, complicates the applications that are being made. But it's a really tragic and terrifying situation for them. Are they able to qualify for any of the schemes that we have highlighted in this country so far? I should say the government have highlighted. Of course, last week was the announcement. We had the Home Secretary on the programme talking about the refugee scheme. She did say that the majority of those who will be eligible will be women and children of the 20,000. And of course, we've also had the scheme to help those who've helped the forces. Do we know where the judges fit into this, Alona?

Well, we've been in touch with the Foreign and Commonwealth and the Foreign Office to say that these women have to be included because they are probably at the highest level of risk because of the roles that they've played. And we hope that we've got the ear of those who will make those decisions and that the women will be included. Stephanie is absolutely right that, you know, the difficulty is that there's going to be a process. You know, people want information information details and so on and uh and the women of course at the moment are not in positions easily to get in touch with uh um even agencies like uh the law society or or the bar council here but um um fortunately we've got people who who work there on the ground who are now out and who are able to make contact more effectively than us

because they've got the language and uh and so that's what we're doing we're using um those who are already on the outside um uh to help us deal with the arrangements for those who are inside but it means that there has been a hotline created which allows people even there to phone. But it's inundated, as you can imagine. And so it's easily overwhelmed. Helena Kennedy, Baroness Kennedy, thank you very much, QC there. Stephanie, just to give the final word to you, as president of the Law Society in England and Wales,

there'll be people perhaps listening who are legal professionals, lawyers, judges in this country. Is there anything that you're advising them to do to help well absolutely what we the law society has got uh has put numerous press releases out information on our website we ask uh individuals to get in contact uh with us if they have information um uh practical advice that we can share that we can put on our website that we can share, that we can put on our website, that we can connect with other organisations, individuals too. The legal profession is renowned for, you know, seeking to promote the rule of law and, of course, to ensure that legal professionals and others

on the ground in Afghanistan who are at risk are safe. And as Baroness Kennedy said, are with their family and relocated to safe places around the world. So do get in touch where we can connect that information and signpost individuals accordingly. Nice, Stephanie Boyce. Thank you. And to Baroness Kennedy as well there. And of course, those details about the refugee scheme,

a lot of you have been asking about that available, or the details certainly around that with from the government talking how the majority will be from that scheme will be predominantly women and children who are vulnerable, but very powerful indeed to get that testimony from a former senior judge, female judge in Afghanistan who isn't able to work at the moment and got in touch with the programme. Now, you're getting in touch with us, and it is Listener Week, about the email that we received from Sarah about being average. The messages are coming in on this. Some don't like this word. Some of you really don't like this word, but some of you are saying this is incredibly refreshing to talk about this.

Is there more pressure on us these days to be extraordinary? Non-stop updates on social media, the constant pressure to perhaps climb the career ladder. It seems a lot of us feel under strain to be special, the best, or at least better than average. But is there joy in being average? Sarah got in touch to say

she's really boring and ordinary, not a hero, and doesn't excel at anything. She just tootles along. Some messages just to read before I go to our guests. After leaving the treadmill of secondary and university education where everything was graded and therefore competitive, I've embraced mediocrity. It's such a peaceful place to be. It feels like a much more sustainable way to live life without burning out. I think the pressure to be excellent at things or to perform at a higher and higher level

holds many people back from trying new things or enjoying it at their own level. Being a beginner or being okay at something is a freeing place to be. Mediocrity for the win, or at least for taking part, says Catherine who's listening in Cambridge. Good morning.

Another one here. This took me back to 2005 when my husband and two children located to the super tech Silicon Valley region of California. While I dealt with the realities of being a mother to two school aged kids of the various good, bad and humdrum that went with the territory, I seem to be surrounded by mothers who offspring were all high achievers in absolutely everything. I remember driving behind a car one day and reading the bumper sticker, which said proud parents of the only average child in Silicon Valley. That made my day.

And some of you saying, what's average all about? Am I average? I'm not sure I'm okay with this. Let's talk to Eleanor Ross, shall we? Author of Good Enough, The Myth of Success and How to Celebrate the Joy in Average. And Sarah Steen-Lebrano, faculty member and former head of content at the educational companies

at the School of Life. Eleanor, good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Thanks for joining us. There is a rather large irony here that in trying to celebrate being average, you're talking about this on the radio and you've got a book deal and you've got a book out there. Well, yes, but I just want to really say that, first of all,

I don't think Sarah sounds very average either. I think those accomplishments, you know, a humdrum life, calm, healthy car, all sound pretty good. And I think a lot of this is just about reassessing the starting blocks and, you know, thinking, oh, well, I'm actually, the fact that I'm able to communicate and get by is actually pretty, pretty good. And I would say that is a very successful thing that we're here alive speaking with each other so let's be optimistic about that about the small things being optimistic but what drove you to want to drive uh to drive or write I should say uh to

to write about the joy of being average even if some people as I say are taking issue with the word yeah for sure I think I think for me it was the dinner party test I you know when you go to a dinner party and that sounds very middle class so you know anything really I wasn't going to dinner parties going to the bar and a stranger asks you what you do and there's a lot of pride I think in in I'm in my 30s and you know career is seen as so important and you you want to say oh I'm doing I'm a journalist or you want something that makes you sound impressive but actually what I was doing was making me very miserable I was extremely overworked and underpaid I didn't have any time for my friends and I realized that by basically pursuing something I thought was not average

I was and me and my friends were all in the same boat we were all suffering from anxiety stress depression and actually taking a step back and realizing that there's more to life than simply saying it worked for 14 hours a day has really made a huge difference to me and my my peers I think because now what do you do so I work uh as a in communications so in journalism there's a bit it has a bit of a bad rep you you if you can't hack journalism the story goes you go into comms and frankly it has been wonderful and liberating because I work a brilliant nine to five. I have time to go for runs and look after my dog. But really, it is awesome.

I do want to say the other thing that made me want to write this book and research this topic was that I think in journalism and entertainment you often see people's parents or you know you I became disappointed that I kept saying people had a leg up before I'd even got started I'm from the north of England I'm from Sheffield whenever I wanted to do work experience I had to rent a hostel in London to do that two weeks of the coveted magazine job and all those things I was more than happy to do and it was so worth it and my editors were brilliant but all those things I was more than happy to do. And it was so worth it. And my editors were brilliant. But all those friends I had whose parents already worked in media. And I think it was just redefining what success meant. It's different for different people. My starting blocks were different. you know, how much privilege and luck play a role that people do not acknowledge when they're talking about achievements. And luck is actually a huge, I mean, you can argue one comes from the other, but luck is a huge part of that, even if you've worked really, really hard. And there's been quite a lot of people talking about needing to acknowledge that. But the so-called quote,

unquote, dinner party test, having a job that's really easy to explain and sounds very cool indeed. Sarah, let's bring you in at this point. When you've been educating people, you've specialised in putting on courses for adults. Is that something that they come to you about? It needs to sound good, their life, which is part of the pressure. Absolutely. At the School of Life, we have a course on how to find a job that you'll love. We have a course called How to Fail. And both of these speak quite a bit to this problem. We have people come in and they're really miserable, just like Eleanor was, but they feel like they should keep going in this particular profession because it will impress people, because people will pay attention to them in a social event,

or because their parents will be pleased with them. And the reality, of course, is just that ours is a very achievement-based culture. And we think about that as the center of our identity. There are even interesting psychology studies that show that more than almost any other culture on planet Earth that we can measure, people define themselves not by their relationships to others, like I'm so-and-so's mother, but rather by their achievements themselves. They say, I'm a lawyer. And that's the first thing they say in a dinner party. So one of the things we focus on in our classes, in our books of the School of Life, is to remind people that this is a very particular thing about our culture and that other cultures in the past have a much more robust sense of what might constitute a successful life,

which includes, of course, being average. And also you found in your research and what you've looked at that it depends on where you live in the world. If you if you asked, are you a success living in certain countries, it will all be about what you have achieved. And in other countries, it will be about your bonds and your connections. And I think this is something that we can try to adapt in the way we think about ourselves. You know, today we think success basically means something that sounds good on LinkedIn and maybe a mortgage. That's sort of conventionally how the word success is used. But as we say, you know, we could be a success at looking at clouds. We could be a success. It just means being good at something. And interestingly, it doesn't mean that you actually have to be above average at that thing. I think something that we haven't yet figured out, partially because competition is

so useful to capitalism, and capitalism is a bit implicit in all of this, to put it mildly, is that we can measure our achievements in ways other than comparing ourselves to other people. And when we do so, we can experience other kinds of joy, including collaboration and mediocrity, which is quite joyful, really, because the pressure is so much less intense. The pressure is off. I love pressure, you see. So that's a slight problem. I sympathise, but I'm trying to reform myself. I'm trying to reform as well. Not least because I recently learned I'm not even breathing properly. I breathe in the upper chain and you should breathe from your diaphragm.

I'm an apical breather, apparently, because I'm an adrenaline junkie. Eleanor, let me bring you back in on this. We've just had a brilliant message come in from someone who is called Mrs Lawson. She said that comparison is the thief of joy. That's what she's taught her children. And it sounds like a brilliant lesson. And what a great line. Is that really at the heart of this now, do you think, more than ever, that the ability to allow yourself just to be whatever you are has been taken because of things like social media?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's a great title for another book. Thank you, Mrs Lawson. But I think social media plays a part, but it's not to blame. We've always had keeping up with the Joneses as part of our capitalist narrative. You know, who's got the bigger car, etc. But I think one of the things that is really important to just consider is how even our hobbies are becoming competitive, you know, people bake off a brilliant show. But you know, it's not just about baking a cake to relax. It's about making the best cake. It's not just about sewing. It's not just about running a 10k. It's about winning a medal. everything we do has uh you can win at it

isn't that quite good though sometimes that that energy and that that desire that it can be a huge engine in your life i mean i'm just looking at this message saying hello i'm 86 partially sighted with a heart condition but i'm still competitive i'm fiercely independent and i would hate to be considered average i I mean, that person sounds wonderful. But I think we just have to be very realistic. If you look at where we sit in the universe, we've got persons at zero, we've got a person at 100. We're not person zero, we're not person 100. Everyone in that area of people, we're average. You know, Einstein was Einstein, but I bet he was not great at doing dishes. He was average at that. I think we're average you know Einstein was Einstein but I bet he was not great

at doing dishes he was average at that I think we just have to cut ourselves some slack and you know if this 86 year old person who sounds phenomenal is is sprightly and energetic that's great and I would hate to take any of that away from them but they've they've obviously got a great control of their life and they've they've driven their own narrative whereas i think the idea of being successful drives women in particular to try and be successful at every single aspect which is quite exhausting and can lead to burnout well i was going to ask you also about this sarah when you were running these classes did you see more women sign up was it more of an issue for women i'm minded to also mention we've had another message saying i noticed people crippled by excellence they felt they have to be

the best worker parent or friend and then i came across the idea of the good enough mother being excellent can be a problem yeah that's wonderful um we don't have precise statistics on the gender attendance although i do think we might have slightly more women. But the good enough parent is something that we're obsessed with at the School of Life. We love that term. It's from the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott. And his basic point was that people would come to him with their children and they would say, you know, but maybe she didn't eat the right peas. And when should she start, you know, doing this developmental task and so on. And he would tell them, look, really, as a parent

your job isn't to be exceptional you don't need to be constantly pushing the child to do things and you don't yourself need to be particularly better than any other parents all the child really needs is for you to be there regularly to be reasonably calm reasonably attentive and so on and that's the foundation for a good life and It's really all we need to develop whole, happy, complete, to the degree that any of us are, lifespans. And so I think good enough can be transposed into a lot of other areas of life, of course. We can be good enough workers, and that's enough. We can be good enough partners, not perfect, not even exceptional, just good enough.

And we'll be quite happy if we're able to embrace that. I know, it's just a bit awkward when someone isn't good enough and they really think they are, but that's a whole other discussion, Sarah. Sarah Stein-Lobrono, thank you very much for talking to us. Eleanor Ross, you can carry on being average, you know, just having your book deal and everything else. It's been lovely to talk to you. How to celebrate the joy in average and give it its full title, Good Enough, the myth of success. And it it's nice to hear the phrase cut yourself some slack a lot of people relating to that and to what you've both said i really want to read this message on that's coming on twitter from someone called it's all about cake great motto being average is very difficult for child

free women because you don't have children everyone thinks you should have an amazing career and an interesting hobby or be a volunteer to find, quote, your fulfilment. I very much wanted to share that in light of what we just said about the good enough parent. Another message here, my husband's New Year's resolution is to embrace mediocrity and he's doing very well at it so far. And I love this from Jill before we move on.

I had a job interview this week. I'm in my 60s and I was asked for my greatest personal achievement. I was stumped. I'm here, aren't I? Just got through life. What more do they want? Grade eight flute, trampolining. Very good.

I hope you got the job. You didn't let us know that. Can you message back, please? 84844. We need to know. Do get in touch and keep your messages coming in. The joy of being average. What does that mean to you

now i did say we had received a message about parental alienation it's the unjustified rejection of a parent by a child and can be the result of psychological manipulation by the other parent well this happened to one of our listeners who got in touch to say she hasn't seen or spoken to her teenage daughter in six years. We voiced up her message. The day I had my daughter was the best of my life. I remember holding her in my arms for the first time. She was just perfect. As a toddler, she was always dancing, dressing up, laughing.

But by the time my daughter was nine, my husband had physically abused me. We started divorce proceedings, but I always protected my daughter from the truth about her dad, thinking I was doing the right thing. He had started his campaign to convince my daughter I was bad for her through continual criticism of me, calling me a freak and other coercion. He succeeded. Three years on, she went to her dad's and never returned. My life revolved around courts and child support agencies. Every professional agreed we should have a relationship, but they could only encourage this to happen, not to order it. Some agencies saw photos of my blackened body and manipulative texts from Dad.

Social services said, I am worried she's not receiving the right encouragement from her father about maintaining a relationship with her mother. Most painful was hearing alien words come from my daughter's mouth. My mum never changed a nappy, she said. I now know that using the other parents' words is a common sign. I know that my child will never again be my child. I have not heard her voice or seen her face in years.

It's a nightmare I've never woken up from. On a good day, I wonder whether starting university might change things, whether independence might give her an alternative perspective. It's too late for me. The only thing I can do positively is to raise awareness about what parental alienation is, that it can happen to any mother. Professionals must go further than simply encouraging a relationship. My child was brainwashed and I believe it's child abuse. I hope I can help prevent another mother from experiencing this pain. A voiced up version of the message that we were sent from one of our listeners who's experienced this. Dr Amy Baker is a research author and parental alienation expert. How common is this? And welcome to the program.

I'm happy to be here. I'm very, very moved by that story. That's exactly the kind of conversation that I have, you know, throughout every day, every week of my life, I talk to parents who sound very much like this mom. In terms of the prevalence of parental alienation, we don't actually have any epidemiological data. We know that about 80% of divorces, there's some elements of bad mouthing the other parent and some of the other parental alienation strategies. But thankfully, not every child exposed to those parental alienation behaviors gets all the way to the point that this particular mom's child did in becoming so severely alienated that the child completely cuts off the parent.

Is it reversible? How do you work with parents to try and get their children back? Well, that is a great and obviously really a very, very important question. So from my own research, I know that even absent any legal intervention or mental health intervention, there's a subset of these kids who do come around. There's multiple catalysts to people eventually figuring out, gee, maybe mom wasn't so bad. Maybe I shouldn't have cut her off for supposedly not changing a nappy. Maturation plays a role and talking to other people who say,

what do you mean you cut off your mother because she slurps her soup? You should see what my mother did to me and I still have a relationship. Sometimes people go into therapy. Sometimes they become a parent themselves. Or sadly, some people grow up and marry somebody like the alienating parent who then turns their child against them. There's multiple catalysts to people having sort of spontaneous awareness. Maybe I made a mistake and cut off that parent. And now that the field is progressing, we have legal interventions and mental health interventions to really intervene before we have to wait for somebody to figure it out all on their own. And I also offer coaching to targeted parents who, again, because of the efforts of this mom and so many other people, the word is getting out. You know, back in the day, somebody would call me and say, I haven't talked to my kid in 10 years. Now I realize I put it all together and I can see what was happening. Now people are aware of the signs of alienation before it progresses to your child isn't talking to you anymore. And obviously, prevention and intervention at those early stages is really key. I want to come back to you in just a moment, Dr. Amy Baker.

But let me bring in on that legal side, Louise Barreto, a divorce and family solicitor. How is this playing out in the courts, Louise? Hi. They're very sad cases. And courts are really not the best place for these things to be solved. We see a lot more of these kind of cases coming to court now. There's a lot more awareness of what can happen behind the scenes. They're often very difficult to identify because the behaviour is often very insidious. And it's only when you put it together that you see this pattern that it becomes clearer as to

what's happening to the child you know if you took each incident in isolation it may not seem so bad and I think that's what's so difficult for the judges and the professionals involved so you know there is more awareness now judges have been trained more on this and we're hoping that things will get slightly better. The main problems at the moment, of course, are the delays in getting the matter before a judge to be heard. Those delays were significant before Covid, but they're certainly even worse now. I was just going to say, can you prove that it's happened, that parental alienation has happened? Well, that's the difficulty. You would ask the judge to list the matter for what's called a fact-finding hearing so that you

could set out in detail examples of the behaviour and the judge could hear evidence from each parent and make a decision as to whether or not those things happened and whether or not there is parental alienation. This needs to be guided by, you know, experts as well, psychologists and psychiatrists and sometimes independent social workers. You know, but it's complicated. To come back to you on this, Amy, is there anything you could say? I know you would need a lot more detail, but to our listener who has got in touch, I mean, she said she wants to help others and she hopes it doesn't happen to anyone else. But are there any kind of basic tips you could give from your experience talking to people to try and get your way back? Absolutely. So the first thing really is to never give up on trying to reconnect with your child weekly, phone calls, text messages, emails, dropping by where they work. You know, unless

the child says, I'm going to, you know, kill myself or get the, you know, get the cops involved if you send me another email, oftentimes the targeted parent has to persist repeatedly reaching out because it might be the hundredth text message or the 500th phone call before the child picks up and says, yeah, I guess I am ready to talk. But more specifically, I have many, many clients whose kids are over 18. The courts cannot get involved. They can't order therapy. They can't sanction the other parent. They can't make the kid talk to the parent. And so I have developed a highly specialized, somewhat counterintuitive method for helping the targeted parent write a letter to the adult alienated child and the premise of the letter is that it's not about explaining to the child oh you think you're

mad at me because you think I didn't change your nappy and you're wrong or it's true but it's only true for this reason or not that reason you really really shouldn't be mad at me. You're misunderstanding. You need to hear things from my side of the story. That does not work. What does work at least sometimes is when I can help the targeted parent look at the relationship from the child's point of view, not saying, oh, you think I'm a terrible parent, then I must be the worst parent ever. But I think you're upset at me for this reason and this reason. And I'd like to understand more. And I'm interested in your felt experience. And I want to sort of expand my perspective to understand what our relationship felt like for you. It's a it takes like two hours for me to

help somebody write a letter. And it does work sometimes. And the kids, you know, sometimes you get an angry response back, which I actually consider good because the kids invested enough and bothers enough to write back and say, I'm mad at you, your letter missed the boat. That's a good beginning, because then the parent can follow up on that. And sometimes the child, the adult child responds back saying, thank you for this letter. I feel like you, you know, heard me in a different way, or I'm interested now in getting to know you again. And then there's the whole reparation. I mean, it's not so easy if you've been separated from, you know, if a parent and child have been separated from each other for

years, it can be very awkward and stilted and inauthentic for the two people to try to come together. And so they need support in that process as well. Well, I think the message from you, I suppose, is to not give up. And then there are these stages to go through. And it's an incredibly tragic situation that one of our listeners got in touch about. But we're very happy to have heard your advice this morning. Thank you for joining us, Dr. Amy Baker there, and also some of the legal complexities of this. Thank you to Louise Barreto, who's a divorce and family solicitor.

It is Listener Week. We have a wide range of issues that have come to the fore, and one of them has come in from Dr. Mufanwi Hill, who's got in touch about vets and what's going on in that field of work. Over three million households have acquired a new pet since the start of the pandemic. Vet practices are said to be overwhelmed. Research has revealed an increase in vet teams experiencing intimidation from their clients. Well, Mufanri Hill's written in to say the

veterinary profession is predominantly female. It also has one of the highest suicide rates of any profession. There seems to be very few programmes on television or radio about the challenges of being a vet. They seem to focus on the animal stories and hero vets or how money grabbing we are as a profession. I'd love to hear Woman's Hour explore why it's such a female dominated profession. Why do we have such high suicide rates, poor retention and are these linked? Let's welcome to the programme Dr Rosie Allister, a veterinary surgeon who manages the VetLife helpline, which does offer a support service for the veterinary community, and Dr Daniela Dos Santos, Senior Vice President, British Veterinary Association,

and a practising small animal and exotic pet vet. If I start with you, Daniela, you are president of the British Veterinary Association at the height of the pandemic. You work in a vets practice in Milton Keynes. Just how challenging has the job been of late? It has been incredibly challenging. I think there's a variety of reasons. You know, as a profession, we haven't been immune to COVID.

We've been in a situation where we've had to adjust our ways of working. You know, there was a period of time where the vast majority of vet practices were doing what we call curbside consults. So you go from having a client in your room and being able to have that interaction and that conversation and build that relationship with them to going out to the car park, taking their pet away, examining, having to have phone calls with them. And actually you lose the human touch there. So of course there was was that aspect there was the aspect of trying to keep everybody safe you know how do you socially distance in veterinary practice when you're trying to get a blood sample from an animal for example and alongside that we already had existing recruitment and retention issues that

exist for a variety of different reasons. Why do they exist? Because that's one of the questions from our listener. So we've got some pretty good evidence from a study that the BVA did alongside the University of Exeter looking at motivation, satisfaction and retention. And actually, there are pretty good links between the sense of feeling valued and fitting in, having role models that have gone before you that you can aspire to, to feel like you're a valued source of information for your colleagues. And there's also links between, you know, having negative feelings in all those areas and facing gender discrimination linked with burnout as well. So the female element of this, let's get you into this, Rosie. Why do you think more women, first of all, are drawn to this? It's a really interesting question.

I think there is a lot of interesting research around this, particularly around working with animals, that sometimes that's seen as a very gendered occupation. There's also something about relatively lower paid professions among the professions that is well paid compared to many jobs, but among the professions that is definitely not the highest paid profession. And that can affect the gender balance of recruitment that can happen.

And in your view, I mean, there's just, Daniela was starting to mention there about gender discrimination, because part of what Mufanwe, our listener was saying, was, you know, you often see hero vets, often they're men on television. And this is kind of a whole other world that we've just been given an insight into

from our listener. Why, I mean, not to shy away from this. Why are there suicides happening, do you think? What have you heard? Sure. So we talk to around about 4000 people who contact our helpline a year and about one in 20 of those is suicidal at the time that they call. We know from research with vet students that around about 40 percent of vet students have experienced suicidal thoughts so thinking about suicide and being concerned about suicide is a very important issue in our profession and we know that the reasons why some occupations have higher risk of suicide can be related to a number of different things so factors to do with their job and so job insecurity those kinds kinds of issues. There's also sort of speculative evidence, and there isn't strong evidence for this in fact, but it's partly because people haven't

actually looked at this particularly, about whether people who may be at higher risk maybe go into certain occupations. And one of the kind of theories that's happened in other areas of animal care is that, is it possible that some people who've maybe had very bad experiences with people early in life are more attracted to working with animals? And as I say, that's speculative. There isn't strong evidence for that. But it is certainly something that fits into models of occupational suicide risk. And finally, and importantly, I would say there's something about having access to methods of suicide through work. And that is a very important issue in veterinary risk.

We also know there's something about our occupational culture that makes it incredibly hard for people, and this is something we hear from a lot of women who call our helpline, to ask for help. And there's complicated reasons for that, but that is a very, very powerful force in increasing someone's suicide risk. That's a very full picture. And for people who haven't a clue about this, it will be, I'm sure, illuminating and upsetting to hear. Daniela, what do you want to say on why you think this is the case in terms of suicides? I think it's really important, as Rosie's already alluded to, that we get across that this is a really complex issue.

It's not a single factor that is leading to this statistic. You know, it is a profession where for various reasons, stress and burnout are extremely prevalent. It's not just about workplace factors. And of course, it does play a part, but it isn't just about workplace factors. No, and as you say, things will be going into that. But I think it's interesting to hear the culture of being a vet is quite solitary a lot of the time and do you think that's something that needs to improve or you're looking to change because people coming into this will you know no doubt have been through so much to get to this point as I know you have. Yes so I think it's actually the workplace culture rather

than the issue around solitariness I think because actually in small animal practice usually there are multiple people in there you know it's a whole veterinary team including veterinary nurses and receptionists farm animal and equine practice is slightly more solitary you know you spend a lot of time on the road but actually I think it's about the culture there seems to be this culture and this is a slightly personal reflection that we need to be a resilient profession but resilience isn't just about an individual it's about the systems in which you work right so if we have working environments that you don't feel valued in that you don't get regular breaks that you don't feel like you can aspire to leadership or you're actively discouraged from leadership then you feel like you don't fit in that then makes being at work stressful put on top of that the fact we do an

emotional job you know we are talking about a job that not only involves the animals, but you're dealing with families associated with those animals and emotions that come with it. So I almost think it's a slight cop out when people say vets need to be more resilient. Actually, we need to look at structures within which we work and address those. Rosie, what would you say to that about what perhaps needs to change being on that vet life helpline? I would completely agree with Daniela. I think it's really important we look at systems.

I think one of the big mistakes that gets made sometimes in mental health is kind of looking too much to individuals and saying, hey, you're doing something wrong here. Actually, it's about making systems that work for everybody we also know from research with female surgeons that there are a number of gendered aspects to work in traditionally male professions or professions where there are particular expectations that may affect women that although they might seem like minor things like small things and I've experienced these in practice myself cumulatively they're greater than the sum of their parts so it's what's called an aggregate risk.

And those kinds of things might be things like just the recognition thing. So I've had times in practice where I've been talking about a surgery that I've just done with a client and I'm giving them a pet back. And there's a male veterinary student

standing there with me. He's 20 years old and the client will address all their questions to him. And most female veterinary surgeons, I think will recognize that. And we'll recognize there's no malice or an intent there. But it's about these stereotyped expectations.

And what the research from female human surgeons shows is those stereotyped expectations, along with sometimes objectification, sometimes workplace factors like not having strong female role models in popular culture, those kinds of things that you alluded to. But also this issue of epistemic injustice, which testimonial injustice is when you aren't believed because of certain characteristics that you have. And that's an issue for women in traditionally sort of gendered professions, because women in gendered professions like that are sometimes seen as less credible or they're seen so it can feed into some of what you're you're talking about and kind of goes around and round well i i feel like we've we've covered certainly quite a few of the issues that dr mcfanway hill wanted us to with your help thank you very much for doing that and i should say because i can see you rosie you've got your very fetching top there with some bunnies on is. Is that part of your outfit every day? It has to feature an animal as a vet or just for today?

Yes. No special occasion. I'm expecting the next time we meet to see something else, a horse or a dog on there. But thank you so much, because, of course, these are tricky issues to try and cover and try and explain why they've happened. But we really appreciate you trying to do so. Dr. Rosie Allister, Dr. Daniela dos Santos, thank you to you. And I should say, if you've been affected by any issues in this discussion, there are a range of organisations and websites that can offer you advice and support. You can find them listed on the BBC's Actionline website at bbc.co.uk forward slash Actionline. A question for you, not just about being average and the joy of that, but some brilliant more messages coming in on that,

and I'll come back to those shortly. Have you ever heard of Lady Evelyn Cobbold? One of our listeners, Sadia Kousa, thinks you should have done, and I'm going to give the microphone to you. Why should we know about this woman? Hi, thank you. Well, Lady Evelyn Cobbold was an Anglo-Scottish aristocrat, and she was born in 1867.

And she was daughter of Charles Murray, who was the 7th Earl of Dunmore. And she accepts Islam in 1915, at a time when Islam is completely unheard of in the UK and changes her name to Zainab Cobble. Now, what I found fascinating about her story was, here's a woman in the Victorian era, a time when women are second-class citizens, they're very restricted, they're not in charge of their own faith, and she was completely alone in

her faith, and she was so compelled by what she felt inside that she made it an outward reality, and your second segment today was about, you know, allowing yourself to be who you are. And to me, this was actually her truly expressing herself and being successful in it and elevate and in doing so elevating others around her. And she did face many challenges because of her conversion to Islam. She was rejected by her family. It later became the reason for her separation with her husband in 1922. Again, a big deal, being a separated woman in 1922. But despite the consequences, she was so fearless and so bold. She wasn't scared of the rejection or intimidation resentment faced by society she stood

boldly against her family her aristocracy and just stood up for what she believed in and I felt so inspired by her story that I felt other people should know who she was and Muslim or not just being a person who stands up for what they believe in is something that any woman would be inspired by. And also, you know, making her pilgrimage, going on the Hajj. You know, this whole story is also made even more remarkable about that journey because women were not doing that at the time. They certainly weren't doing it on their own. They certainly weren't doing it on their own.

I mean, she becomes the first Muslim woman to travel to Mecca and make the pilgrimage in 1933. And in doing so, she says that it was her greatest wish had been fulfilled. And performing the Hajj is the fifth pillar of Islam. And it's every Muslim's wish to do that, to deepen their spirituality. And I found it fascinating that you could be somebody from a rural village in Pakistan or a Scottish aristocrat landowner, yet your dream and your passion for the Hajj and being united under God is exactly the same. And for her, she writes that Islam brings humanity, peace and justice, and can solve many perplexing problems of the world and also I found the other

thing I found very fascinating about her was that she was she came to Islam from childhood because she writes that she always felt she was a Muslim it wasn't some it wasn't a sudden conversion she spent her childhood winters with her father in North Africa, in Algiers and Cairo, and spent a lot of time with nannies and visiting mosques with children. And she was fluent in Arabic. And not only that, she met the Pope as well. And when she did meet the Pope, he asked her if she was Catholic. And she replied that, no, I'm a Muslim. And she writes, when his holiness suddenly addressed me and asked me if I was Catholic, I replied I was Muslim. What possessed me, I don't pretend to know. A match was lit and I then was determined to read up and study the faith.

So she fitted quite a bit in, didn't she, Sadia, in this life of hers, which is I know why you wanted to write to us and share the story. Thank you so much for explaining that. I just want to bring into this Professor Zahia Smael-Sahi, who is a expert in Middle East gender studies at the University of Manchester. What do you think we could all take perhaps from Lady Evelyn's story? Because it is an extraordinary one. She's certainly an extraordinary woman, not only because of this trajectory with regard to her faith, but she has always been an extraordinary woman prior to that as a woman handling three homes, fitting into aristocratic society perfectly well. She was also known as being a first-class shot and de-astalker. So she really demonstrated that she wasn't average or ordinary throughout her life. But what marked her life really is these wintering times in Algiers. And she mingled with children.

And, you know, when you are a child, you don't really think seriously about faith. And it is at this stage that she was unconsciously feeling being a Muslim. And she said it many times in her book that these years in Algiers were very formative. Obviously, I think it's very important to point out that there were a lot of other women who were extraordinary like her and who travelled into the Middle East and North Africa, called the Orient at the time, talking here about 19th century. In fact, I would like to mention that Lady Mary Montagu in the century prior to the, in the 18th century, she was the first modern woman traveler to the Middle East.

She went to Istanbul and mixed with Ottoman Harims and experienced the lives of the Ottoman women. And in fact, I think throughout her encounter with these women, she demystified the Orient and the Harem as a prison for Muslim women. She, in fact, was impressed about the lives of these Muslim women, and she didn't find that veiling or the Harem life as being prisons or restrictive to women. It is, in fact, on some occasions, she even dressed in Oriental clothing and wore the veil herself. She did not convert to Islam,

but she just found the Orient and the life of Muslim women fascinating, as opposed to the stereotype of the times that Muslim women were prisoners of the veil, prisoners of the harem. Then in the 18th century, there has been a lot of, in fact a big number of women, I would call also extraordinary, if I may mention a few of them. In fact, amongst the British, we have Gertrude Bell. She is an explorer, archaeologist, linguist, translator, from Persian

into English, a diplomat. She travelled throughout Mesopotamia, Negev and Asia Minor. So she really encountered the Orient firsthand. And I was going to say there's a bit of homework for us all there to perhaps look up some more of these women and the woman

that you've just named. Some homework for you Sadia Khawza, we always like to leave you with things to do and you started this conversation about Lady Evelyn Cobbold or Zainab as she became known. Thank you to both of you. Thank you to you Professor Zaria. It's very interesting to hear that wider context and I

know we started talking about the joy of being average and we've ended with a woman who was anything but it seems or certainly the story of. But it's been a fascinating morning. Thank you so much for your company. And we'll be back tomorrow at 10. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for your time. Join us again for the next one. Hello, I'm Greg Jenner, and I'm here to tell you that You're Dead to Me is back for a fourth series. Hooray! Yes, we are a comedy show that takes history seriously. Each episode, I'm joined by a top historian who knows all there is to know about a particular piece of the past,

and a top stand-up comedian who is eager to learn more. And we have a host of brand new episodes coming up, including episodes on Ivan the Terrible, Nell Gwynn and Ramesses the Great. And we'll be joined by comedians including Sally Phillips, Jessica Knappett, Olga Koch and Sophie Duker, amongst many other fantastic names. So if you want to laugh and learn, then search for You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Treleaven and for over a year I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody.

Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in.

Available now.