Woman's Hour - Reappraising Christine Keeler, Snowplough Parents & Why women love reading fiction

Episode Date: January 11, 2020

What impact did the Profumo Affair have on the woman at its centre Christine Keeler? We hear an interview she did with Jenni in 2001 and Baroness Joan Bakewell and Professor Kate Williams discuss the attitudes to Christine Keeler at the time and how they have changed now.We hear why women are at particular risk when it comes to experiencing a concussion. We hear from Dr Willie Stewart the Head of Glasgow Brain Indury Research Group and from Samantha Ainsworth who has post-concussion syndrome.Professor Helen Taylor tells us why women are the main readers of fiction.The government’s official advisers on youth justice are calling for a full review of the age of criminal responsibility. We hear why there are calls for it to be raised from ten years old to twelve. Dr Eileen Vizard a consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist and Louise King the Director of Policy and Campaigns for Just for Kids Law.Are you a snowplough parent? Are you guilty of doing your child’s homework so that they don’t experience failure? Rebecca Glover is the Principal of Surbiton High School and Dr Angharad Rudkin is a child psychologist discuss.Presenter: Jane Garvey Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed Editor: Karen Dalziel

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This is the Woman's Hour podcast. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hi, good afternoon. Welcome to the weekend edition of the programme. This week, why is it that so many women, and I'm one of them, absolutely devour works of fiction? We'll talk about Christine Keeler. Her story is being told again on BBC Television on Sunday night. We hear from her from a Woman's Hour interview back in 2001. Christine Keeler, her story is being told again on BBC television on Sunday night.

We hear from her from a Woman's Hour interview back in 2001 and discuss how she's regarded now. Here's Professor Kate Williams. Other than these were good time girls who had a fun time, what a joke, and then they brought down Perfumo, really showed that these were two women who were absolutely hunted down by society. Christine Keeler was made to suffer for the perfumo affair for the rest of her life and could never escape it. Also today, the age of criminal responsibility

is just 10 in England and Wales. It's the lowest in Europe and some official advisers think it has to change. Plus, are you a snowplough parent? The sort of person who tries to clear their child's path to guarantee success. If your mum's made the volcano cake and that gets, you know, a great gold star at school, you can sit there with a smile on your face as an eight-year-old child, but you might think, actually, that wasn't my success.

But in the longer term, there are some really, really significant difficulties that may emerge if your parent has snow ploughed the way through. Much more on being a snow plough parent and whether it can ever pay off in the end on this afternoon's Weekend Woman's Hour. First to the word concussion, which actually might sound quite benign, but concussion can have lasting consequences and women are particularly at risk. Women seem to experience concussion differently with worse symptoms and a longer recovery time. Dr. Willie Stewart from Glasgow University has been trying to find out why. He will explain that he's been somewhat hampered by the lack of female brains available to study. Samantha Ainsworth is a lawyer who has post-concussion syndrome after a skiing accident two years ago.

First, here's Willie on what concussion is. Reality is we don't really understand fully what happens inside the brain, but we know it's a form of traumatic brain injury. In the terms of what we understand at the moment, what we think is happening in many cases is that the very fine fibres that run from the brain cells and connect up the different centres in the brain and pass messages out to the body, they become stretched and twisted when the brain rotates at the point of impact. And that causes the symptoms, the very complex symptoms that people present with and can lead to some of the long term problems as well. Now, just in October of last year, I had a fascinating conversation with Professor Gina Rippon.

She'd written a book called The Gendered Brain. And at the centre of her book was the belief that female brains and male brains are not fundamentally different. You seem to be suggesting otherwise. Well, that's a very important point. We've known for some time that there's this difference between men and women, as you mentioned, that women seem to be more susceptible to concussion and seem to get symptoms that last longer in many cases. But we haven't really understood why. And recently there's been some science to try and figure out why that might be.

And one of the things that's turned up is those very fine fibers that we were mentioning, these fibers that might be responsible for some of the concussion symptoms. In women, they're very much more slender and very much more fragile than they are in men, and that may be why they're more at risk. Can you just take us through what happened to you, Samantha? Because I know that your accident happened on a skiing holiday, and you were standing still, I think, at the time of impact. Is that right?

Yes, that's right. So I was wearing a helmet. That's, I think, quite time of impact is that right? Yes that's right so I was wearing a helmet that's I think quite important to to stress um so I stood at the side of a slope waiting to cross so it was at a crossroads of two pieces and there were skiers coming downhill so waiting for this group to go past when one of them didn't came down the side of the slope and hit me took me off my feet and as I fell I landed heavily hitting my head twice, really knocking it hard. That was it. That was the impact or double impact. And in the short time, how did you feel?

Terrible. I was winded. I'd hurt my neck and back. And I thought that was the main injury initially. But it quickly became apparent that I had a really bad headache that came on quickly. The rescuers arrived very soon after and sort of got me sorted out. They sort of thought I had a neck injury. What was explained to you about what lay ahead for you in terms of recovery? At the hospital in France, nothing. They kept me in overnight after scans and they gave me a neck brace and said I had a contusion.

I can speak French, so I understood that to be a bruise. They gave me a sheet of information and said, return if you have any bleeding from nose, ears, and pretty much stay off screens, rest, come back if you're sick. And that was it, but nothing about sort of longer term. No, OK. You lay in a darkened room and you got a bit better clearly but you were explaining to me earlier that months later I think it was months later you were doing things like

well frankly forgetting to collect your children from school so initially even back in the UK I was seen at a local hospital and the advice there was pretty much rest they mentioned second impact syndrome which was something that I'd never heard of and it was very concerning it was sort of be very careful not to bump your head again because with the initial brain swelling a second impact could be fatal. The symptoms seemed to change from that sort of initial shock to loads of different things like confusion, tinnitus, ringing in the ears, hypersensitivity to light, major forgetfulness, clumsiness. I had stuttering as well. Now you're a lawyer. I know you are trying, you tried once to ease yourself back into work

and it just was too much for you. One of the main things was I didn't have, and maybe other people have this, is no clear plan. I think if you break your arm you come back you see a doctor you get your arms set you know you're going to go back to hospital etc and you may have physiotherapy afterwards I found that I was just getting signed off every couple of weeks because my symptoms weren't getting better there was no plan of treatment to sort out the dizziness photosensitivity all of these. And I was looking for help. Can we just bring Willie Stewart back in again then?

I mean, is that, from your point of view, Willie, a typical female recovery or journey after concussion? I think for most people with a mild brain injury or a concussion, recovery is fairly rapid. So we can expect for somewhere between 80%, 85 percent 90 percent of people to get better within a couple of weeks but there are this really uh important and and complex group of patients who 10 15 percent or slightly more who will get persistent symptoms and develop a post-concussion symptoms that can be really challenging i mean these kind of symptoms have been described the dizziness the forgetfulness and just difficult to get back into mean, these kind of symptoms have been described, the dizziness, the forgetfulness,

and just difficulty getting back into life is the kind of things that people experience. Rehabilitation services, as Samantha has outlined, are really dreadful at the moment for people with mild brain injury. And your struggle, Willie, to find female brains to study, why is that a problem for you? There's a great attention on the late effects of brain injury at the moment, particularly people who played football or rugby at a high level. They tend to be male-dominated sports,

and so attention just naturally seems to drift towards talking about former male footballers, former male rugby players, former male boxers. But actually, these sports are played by women in large numbers and have been for some time, but we haven't been having that conversation about the need to be looking at the differences in the female brain. We had an email, Willie, from a listener called Heather who says she had a head injury a couple of weeks ago whilst playing netball at a local leisure centre.

She hurt her temple, she went to A&E, she had five stitches. But five weeks later, she says, I'm still feeling the effects of the concussion. It's wearing off gradually, but it's been very traumatic. So there's somebody who was doing a sport you wouldn't think of netball as a contact sport. And of course, lots of women simply fall over, particularly in older age. So this is a concern if female recovery is just slower than male, isn't it? It is. And actually, you know know another one that's been in the news recently is alex danson the the gbe hockey captain yes is just getting back to to playing now after 18 months you'd think that was a hockey injury but actually it wasn't she she was on holiday and banged her

head in a concrete uh stair or step so you know unfortunately your brain injuries happen everywhere we focus on sport but actually they're just part of life. Standing in a queue at the bottom of a ski slope is a risk. Skiing is a risk. It's about recognising these risks and managing them better. And a quick mention, because it is significant, the menstrual cycle and the possible protective impact of progesterone. Can you explain that? Well, now that's a very complex story.

Can you be really pithy and brief? I'm going to be really pithy and brief. What really smart colleagues of mine in America have done is looked at young women representing with concussion and realised the symptoms can be worse if they get their concussion in the second half of their menstrual cycle which is where progestin levels are typically higher and I think that what's happening there is that actually the protective effect of progesterone is suddenly lost because the control system for your menstrual cycle gets interrupted and that progesterone level drops suddenly and produces much worse symptoms in these ladies and so depending where you are your menstrual cycle can produce perhaps worse symptoms for ladies. That's Dr Willie Stewart

and Samantha Ainsworth. We had an incredible response to this actually I was quite surprised. This is from Sarah who says I'm writing this and I feel rather tearful. I had a head injury just over three years ago when I slipped in the shower on holiday. My neurologist believes that my head hit the marble shower tray at 30 miles an hour and my life changed forever. As Samantha said, the lack of a treatment plan was a nightmare, particularly for me as I am a planner by nature. I had four further falls, two requiring hospitalisation, and I was also left with a legacy of chronic vertigo. The forgetfulness, the motion sickness, migraine and personality change have all been horrible and you have nowhere to turn to. A simple ENT manoeuvre

of my head two years ago after the first fall eventually helped the vertigo. This combined with being perimenopausal has been very challenging. Yeah, Sarah, I'm not surprised. Thank you for emailing the programme. And of course, you can do that if there's something that you hear on Women's Hour that you think, well, I've got something to add to that conversation, please do contact us. You can do it really easily via the website bbc.co.uk slash Woman's Hour. Now, the trial of Christine Keeler is currently running on BBC One on Sunday nights. Of course, it's also on the iPlayer. And you might very well be very familiar with the story. The 19-year-old British woman caught up in a scandal back in the 60s with John Profumo, the Minister for War, a Soviet naval

attache, and someone who's always referred to, and it's always struck me as slightly odd, as a society osteopath. He was called Stephen Ward. Now, Christine Keeler has often been portrayed as, frankly, a prostitute. And Ward, some people thought, was her pimp, living off immoral earnings. Christine herself talked to Woman's Hour in very different terms when she spoke to Jenny in 2001. How did her affair with Profumo start? Jack did ask me for my telephone number, and I put him off by saying, you know, ask Stephen,

because I certainly didn't want him to phone me. I mean, he was an old man and I didn't fancy him at all. And Stephen said, Jack's asked for your phone number. You must go out with him. And I said, why did you give it to him? I don't, you know, why? I don't want to see him. And he said, really, he said, you mean to say that you don't want to know about

the next prime minister and i mean you're not really interested in and it made me sound sound seem as if i was completely stupid of which i probably was anyway well you're not suspicious though christine i mean you say that hollis who was the head of MI5, was around there all the time. Here was the Soviet naval attaché. Here was the war minister. Here was Stephen suggesting to you that maybe you might like to ask him about plans for nuclear placements. Did it not occur to you that you might be getting caught up in something really, really big? Security to me in those days was something I didn't understand.

But, yes, I did know that they were up to no good, especially with Hollis, because he was a sinister sort of a chap, very stiff sort of a chap, whereas Blunt was more laid back. Of course, Stephen told me that there was money in spying. I knew that it wasn't right but I sort of shut my eyes to it and I didn't want to think about it and when he asked me to get involved I was very afraid. You do claim very categorically that Sir Roger Hollis was the fifth man alongside Burgess, McLean, Blunt and Philby.

Now some of the critics who've looked at the book have said no no no she's talking nonsense you know several inquiries have been held they've failed to conclude that Hollis was involved in any wrongdoing. Why should people believe you when it's been dismissed so often. I assure you that Hollis came to see Stephen many times when I was there and stayed in my bedroom, as did Anthony Blunt. Anyone who met me could see that I wasn't the lying whore. I had been set up to be by Denning. Why is it that Denning set me up like that? Why is it that he lied that I spoke to the press immediately after the case?

Why is it that he lied that I was on drugs before I ever... ..that I was taking marijuana before I ever did take it, even though I had tried it with Stephen? Why did he go on about who I told, who I told, who I told, when he was the only person that I told? Why did he, Christine? Because I told, who I told, who I told, when he was the only person that I told? Why did he, Christine? Because I was the star of the Denning Report. And so all Denning had to do

was to make sure Stephen was called a ponce and made a ponce, because Stephen had to be stopped no matter what, and to condemn me. There was even a photograph of one of my portfolio pictures and Denning remarks in the Denning Report. You could see by her photograph what she was. Well, there is no doubt that this new dramatisation of Christine Keeler's story does portray her

in a more sympathetic way. But how is she perceived these days? Well, Jenny talked this week to the historian Professor Kate Williams and to Baroness Joan Bakewell. What does Joan remember of the Profumo affair? I remember it being very exciting. I thought it was a great thriller, and of course it proves to be so because she was clearly enmeshed in a whole spying issue.

And spying was a big deal in those days. Really, politics of the Cold War were at their height so not only was it very juicy salacious stuff but it was going to bring down Macmillan's government and at the time we rejoiced in that prospect. Kate it makes for excellent television drama now and I guess even better salacious tabloid headlines at the time how significant was it really would you say? I think it's impossible to overstate its significance for the 20th century.

It really is seen as the beginning of the sexual revolution. But also I think it's when the establishment really breaks apart. Because let's face it, before the Perfumo affair, there very much was an idea that men could do as they pleased. Establishment men could do as they pleased and no one would tattletale it was a boys club and this broke it apart the questions of morality the questions of behavior this tiny boys club that was ruling the country and i'm not saying it's any better or particularly changed to the degree it should have done but i

think that was the beginning of the moment in which people said, who are these men and are they the right men for us? And the class hold was so great they could protect their own. You see, Macmillan's wife had had an affair with Robert Boothby for some 20 years and had an illegitimate child. Macmillan knew all about that. He was prime minister. But the established class held the secret to themselves. But when they tangled with girls, as they would say, no better than she should be, then they had to dismiss that. They were extremely young women, both Christine and Mandy Rice-Davies. Was that ever something you remember registering?

Did you ever think, oh, gosh, they're so young? I think I had in my mind a popular image of young, racy models having quite a sexy life. And of course, having a sexy life was great in those. I mean, it was a new idea and one that we all thought was terrific. So the fact that she was a naughty girl rather appealed to us. We didn't sympathise with her in the way this wonderful remake of the idea does, because in those days there was no social media, we didn't pay a great deal of attention to the detail,

there was just a girl involved and, you know, she had to make her own way. So we weren't particularly sympathetic. Kate, how accurately would you say the television series portrays the sexual politics of the time? I think the television series really is very accurate on the sexual politics of the time? I think the television series really is very accurate on the sexual politics. It's very accurate on showing Mandy and Christine caught up, really, these girls, these showgirls

who were caught up in a world that was, really, they didn't understand. And there were presents and there were men who took them out. And it's interesting, she said to you, I didn't like him, he was an old man. But she didn't really have any choice. And I think that really is really brought to the fore in the drama,

which is so well done. And yet it's continued, hasn't it? I mean, with Monica Lewinsky, she was seen as this femme fatale bringing down Bill Clinton when obviously now we're saying, look at the power imbalance, an intern, a president, and she's blamed for everything. So the woman is always blamed. She's Eve, she's the scarlet woman,

she's attacked for blame for bringing down the government when it was the government who did it to them, the perfumer who did it to himself. She is, Joan, still primarily remembered as the scandalous woman who played a symbolic role in bringing down the government and changing deferential attitudes to the establishment. So does this recasting of her as an exploited and vulnerable teenager make a difference? I think it plays very much into the way we're constantly revising where we are as women in the actual power game today. And it's

going on, of course, it's going on all the time, we've never come to an end of it. So it plays along with our review that women in the past were not given anything like equal hearing, their role was different. And of course, they are different, the place they play as seductress plays very well into the historical story. And we're now having to take that out of the popular imagination and say, no, women in their own right as intelligent beings with their own agency. This series is part of that rethink. Was this a drama that had to be made by a younger generation of women, Kate?

I feel this was a drama that had to be made in that way. And it was crying out to be made, wasn't it? The whole fact is we are completely saying, what are the women's stories? What are the women's voices? And what did she herself feel? So I think that saying Christine Keeler, the Profumo affair from her point of view,

because she had spoken about it, as she did to you, she's written her book. Her voice was not absent. It just was no one was really listening. And this drama has really brought it to the fore and said, rather than these were good time girls who had a fun time what a joke and then they brought down perfumo really showed that these were two women who were you know absolutely you know hunted down by society and mandy of course rather made a good had a pretty good inning she

went off to israel set up nightclubs had some very happy marriages. But Christine Keeler was made to suffer for the perfumer affair for the rest of her life and could never escape it. And the way in which society makes women pay for men's sins, I think younger generations are saying this has to stop. Well, if only it would. That was Professor Kate Williams and Baroness Joan Bakewell. And the trial of Christine Keeler continues on BBC One on Sunday at nine o'clock. And of course, if you haven't watched any of it so far, it is all there for you on the iPlayer, the episodes already shown. Women are the main consumers of fiction

and they outnumber men as readers in all categories, apart from science fiction, horror and fantasy. Now, a book called Why Women Read Fiction by Professor Helen Taylor draws on over 500 interviews with dedicated female readers. I asked Helen why in the past it was considered rather subversive for women to read at all. Women, of course, have not been educated until this century, really. Women suffered from very poor education. They were

expected to have a domestic role. They're expected to be carers and nurturers. And so reading has always been something that women have had to do secretly, or they've been very privileged elite women who've been encouraged to read by their fathers and, you know, have had access to libraries. But on the whole, women have been kept out of libraries, perhaps nuns. Nuns have been the biggest readers because they had their own libraries. So it's only in recent centuries when women started to read the novel and the novels were written for women and women started to read, to write fiction that women were able to read. And we've taken to it like ducks to water. Yes, we really do quite like it. We do.

Yeah. And it's interesting that a lot of women in the book express guilt at seeking out time in their lives to read. And I think somebody, one contributor compares it to men who apparently don't feel guilty about, say, fishing or football. Well, women feel guilty about doing things for themselves. Let's face it. You know, we are supposed to be doing things for others. We're taking care of others. We're providing for others. And of course, we do provide for others by giving them reading.

Women read to their daughters in bed. Women have made sure that they have shared reading because they see it as something which gives women a little space for their own intellectual and emotional development and how important that is for us all. Can I just ask then why fiction? Why do women read fiction in far greater numbers than men? One hates to generalise, but we are in a patriarchal society and women don't have access through work and family responsibilities to imaginative spaces outside fiction. And fiction really gives women time and space to think about their own relationships, to think about themselves, to think about what the world means to them.

And I think that that's one of the things that comes through again and again, women saying that they travel to different worlds in their minds. I don't doubt it. The fact to bear out what you're saying, there's crude statistics of who buys books and by whom. Indeed. Bear all that out.

But why don't men need that same opportunity? Well, I've asked various women this, and some women tell me that they think men are not very interested in how people think. I don't think that's true. It's a bit hard on men. It is a bit hard on men. What I wanted to do was to celebrate the fact that women buy sort of 80% of fiction, that they read every conceivable genre, and they celebrate fiction by joining book clubs, which are mainly women only. And they go to literary festivals because they're fascinated by writers. And I wanted to celebrate that and say,

fiction is kept going by women. And Ian McEwan said that, that when women stop reading, fiction will be dead. And it is true that we should be remembered as the ones who are keeping that fiction alive. Yes, I'm more than happy to do so. But the oldest of all literary chestnuts is the notion that women read men and women and men only read men. They do. That's true. Still true? It is true. There are different studies which say that men and women tend to read novels by their own gender. But actually, women read more fiction by women than men. And men, certainly a lot of men, are turned off by a woman's name,

which is why writers like J.K. Rowling and M.C. Beaton gave themselves initials because then they sound ungendered. Now, we have in the last couple of years talked on this programme about fan fiction, about erotica, and there is no doubt that e-books, audio books are, I was going to say allowing, allowing women, I'll say it anyway, to read the sort of stuff that they may not have sought out a decade or so ago. Well, the number of women who told me that they could read Fifty Shades of Grey

on their Kindle or their iPad and nobody knew what they were reading is legion. And it's certainly true that erotica has become a very large body of work that women have taken to. And, of course, people are very shocked that Fifty Shades has been such a success. They shouldn't be that shocked, could they? Because women have always read erotica. Indeed they have, yes. And right from Radcliffe Hall through to Sarah Waters. Radcliffe Hall is the well of loneliness.

Well of loneliness. Which was about lesbianism. Yes, it was. Was it banned or was it simply something? Yes, it was banned. It was. But a lot of women discovered it. And then, of course, it was reprinted, I think, by Virago.

And Virago Press has discovered all these novels by women that women never knew about. And they've been a huge success as a result. I'm going to ask you an impossible but obvious question, which is your favourite book? I never answer that, Jane. I'm sorry. I thought I was onto something. No, I don't have a favourite book because, you know,

often my favourite book is the one I've just been reading. OK, what have you just been reading? What have I just been reading? Well, let me say that Bernadine Evaristo's... I'm glad you mentioned that, winner of the Book mentioned that. Winner of the Booker Prize. Winner of the Booker Prize and how wonderful that novel is. And that brought so many new...

I need the title. I know I've got to hear it. So many new... Girl, Woman, Other. Yeah. She brought so many new voices into fiction, voices I'd never heard before. And it's funny and it's clever and it's complex.

And it's so delightful to see a BAME woman getting all the attention that she's getting. Well, not before time. Not before time. But Camilla Shamsi, Monica Ali. I mean, there are other BAME women who've really changed the way in which we think about women's writing. They're not just all white middle class women that we're reading now. Helen Taylor.

And you'll be able to hear her book on Radio 4 next week just before Women's Hour in fact she is Book of the Week on Radio 4 at 9.45 Roseanne says I was an avid reader I could stay up all night with a good book until, guess what the menopause

Roseanne says I lost the ability to concentrate I've tried short stories I've re-read books no luck, thank goodness for Radio 4 and audiobooks. Yeah, you obviously haven't said podcasts in that one, Roseanne, and I'm sure you meant to say podcasts. There are some wonderful ones out there on BBC Sounds, some excellent podcasts, suitable for all. Rachel says women need more fiction, perhaps because they need more escape, as it has been acknowledged that women

do more for other people. So escape is a higher priority when we do take time out. That's Rachel's view. Thank you for that. Now, the government's official advisors on youth justice would like to review the age of criminal responsibility. And it is only 10 in England and Wales. I say only because that is the lowest in Europe. The advisors think it should be raised by at least two years to 12 which is the same as Scotland. We should say the last children to get a custodial sentence in England and Wales were two brothers sentenced back in 2010 for a violent attack on two other young boys. I talked to Louise King, Director of Policy and Campaigns from the youth and legal charity Just for Kids Law,

and to Dr Eileen Vizard, who's a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Institute of Child Health at UCL. I asked Eileen what she thinks about the fact that we still have our criminal age of responsibility in England and Wales at just 10. It's not a good thing because at age 10 children are not sufficiently mature to understand the process into which they're about to enter, let alone participate effectively, as they are expected to, in their own trial.

It's also not a good thing because what we're doing is we're criminalising very young children. And this worries me a lot. They're adopting an identity, which is that they are a young criminal. And regardless of the outcome of the trial, but particularly if they are found guilty, that's an identity which they carry with them for the rest of their growing up period. And it's something which adds to the risk that they pose to other people in terms of violent behaviour or other types of offending. So in many ways it's a really bad thing. It's also extremely inhumane because these children really don't understand what's going on around them. It would seem that England and Wales are a peculiar outlier. When you look at the

age of criminal responsibility elsewhere in the world, I mentioned the Democratic Republic of Congo at 16. Argentina isn't the only country to have 18. Norway, 15. China, 14. Why has this been 10 for so long in England and Wales? Well, I think the government really are to blame. Sequential governments have dithered and dathered about this. They're fearful of upsetting victims groups. And of course, the voice of the victims who suffer at the hands of these young perpetrators, the voice of the victims must be heard. But there is already space for that within the criminal justice system. And I think we've got to look to recent research into brain development and brain functioning, which underlines strongly important aspects such as moral development, the development

of empathy, being able to see it from the other person's point of view, and being able to take the longer term view of the consequences of your own violent behaviour, for instance, these are abilities which children of 10 do not have to any great extent. Louise King, what do you think the age of criminal responsibility should be? Similar to what Eileen was saying, we believe that it should be significantly raised. I mean, we do think that 10 years is far too young. For example, I'm a mother of a boy, my oldest son is 10 years. And you know, over the Christmas holidays, he had a nightmare and got into my bed because he was scared. And yet at that age, we still think that children are able to be capable of understanding the consequences of their actions,

and also be able to participate in a very formal and harmful process where we know from our work that they're simply not able to understand what's happening or be able to participate effectively. And also the UK government have received numerous recommendations from the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Human Rights Council saying to the UK that we simply need to increase it and indeed the UN Committee issued new guidance last year saying that the age of criminal responsibility at a very minimum should be 14. So we're certainly slipping behind progress elsewhere. Can I just read a statement from the Ministry of Justice who's told us there are no plans to raise the age of criminal responsibility. Setting it at 10 provides flexibility in addressing criminal behaviour by children and allows for early

intervention to help prevent further offending. Now everybody listening to this item, certainly if they're my age, slightly younger and a lot older, we'll be thinking of one crime and one crime above all others, which was the hideous murder of James Borgia by two boys of 10. And Dr. Eileen Vizard has already mentioned the victims groups who, of course, we all understand why they feel so passionately about this. What do you say to them, Louise? Well, I think when we're talking about how we treat children who have got into trouble with the law, we're certainly not undermining the feelings of victims or, you know, how they felt. But I think it's important to recognise that actually the current approach just simply doesn't work. There's been numerous research that actually shows when children come into contact with a harmful and formal criminal justice process, it actually makes them more likely to be swept into a current of crime where they cannot escape,

they're unable to actually fulfil their potential and go on to actually make a positive contribution to society. So actually, the current approach is counterproductive. So as well as being harmful for children, and we know in our work, in all the children that we we represent that it really does have quite a traumatizing effect on them it actually isn't effective in terms of addressing the root causes of why children might be actually coming into contact with the law. Well Eileen is she's the person consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist Eileen why does a child carry out appalling acts of brutality at around the ages of nine or ten? Why might any child do that? Well, all the longitudinal research which has followed up children who do commit these crimes into adult life has confirmed that they have similar groupings of risk factors in their early childhood. Now, many other young offenders who commit less serious offences also have risk factors, such as poor parenting,

parenting with mental illness, drug addiction, parenting with histories of convictions of violence, parenting with other problems. But what makes the child who seriously offends at age 10 stand out is that there are multiple risk factors that link together often they have suffered what is now called multiple aces adverse childhood experiences serious serious risk factors they've often suffered multiple types of child abuse which intermingle with their effects. And finally, the more serious offenders may be those with a genetic predisposition towards psychopathic traits.

And the research I did myself on our own sample of 280 young offenders who were both sexually and physically violent showed that there was a very tiny minority of children who could be identified at a much younger age, below 10, as being on, if you like, a bad trajectory, a red line towards later offending. Now, there's lots of research that confirms this. Governments know this. They know that if they intervene early, nip it in the bud, at age 10 by moving these children to a welfare-based system where they could have special targeted treatment for the perpetrating and offending behaviour, it's quite important to say that although they've all also been victims, just giving them treatment for PTSD when they are an offender is not, in my view, sufficient. There are available treatments, CBT manualised treatments, for dangerous young offenders which could be used. We need to get this all in perspective.

And it was interesting looking, Louise, at the table that showed the range of crimes committed by 10-year-olds. A variety, I should say. Burglary, acts of violence, arson. But there has been a drop in the number of offences since 2010, 903 incidents down to 122. So that would suggest that actually judges are not criminalising young children, Louise. Well, I think when having this conversation, it is really important to have perspective in terms of actually the the huge kind of majority of children that are kind of coming into contact with the criminal justice system are actually only committing very minor offences and it is only a very very tiny number of children that commit very serious crimes but in terms of kind of decreasing numbers, there has been some positive approaches

in more recent times to actually divert children away from the criminal justice system. So, for example, one of the police targets, which kind of focused on ensuring offences were brought to justice, that was changed to focus on the most serious offences, which are more likely to be committed by adults. So that meant there was kind of a drop in children coming into contact with the police. And also there's been a change in kind of police policy nationally. So the National Police Chiefs Council have issued guidance which kind of focuses on taking a child-centred approach and recognising children's rights. So there has been a kind of a move towards seeing children as children first and foremost. Louise King and Dr Eileen Vizard.

Now, no doubt you have heard of the expression helicopter parent. This is the person who hovers diligently over their child 24-7 to make sure they're doing the right thing at all times of the day and night. Well, now the helicopter can buzz off and make way for the snowplough parent. This is the one who clears all obstacles from their child's path, apparently attempting to guarantee success. Dr. Anne-Harrod Rudkin is a child psychologist and Rebecca Glover is the principal of Surbiton High School. She has a TEDx talk called Do Snowplough Parents Remove True Grit? What examples has Rebecca come across?

More recently, I suppose, the introduction of a homework app in schools allows pupils, but more importantly here, parents, to be able to see homeworks as they are set by the teacher in any school day. We had a Year 9 parent came to see me to say that the app was actually distracting her from her working day because she was finding herself starting her daughter's homeworks as they appeared and were set during the day and she was researching historical data and creating graphs and she'd even built a volcano cake for her daughter's geography project before her daughter had even

come home from school so we're finding that many parents are doing their children's homeworks for them. But hasn't that always happened? And that's just a parent trying to be helpful? I think parents have always supported their children in their homework. But I think we have moved to a culture where parents are so afraid of their children failing or not getting the top marks that they are intervening to a much larger extent than they have done in the past, to the extent that they are completing their children's homework. And what impact does it have on the child?

When a parent behaves like this, they must think, oh, that's great, mum's done all the research. Yes, they can think that's great. But actually what they're not building up is resilience. So resilience, we know for a fact, can only be built up through experience. You can't teach it. You can't read about it. And if you don't go through tricky times as a child, you never find out that, A, things are never as bad as you think they might be,

B, that you can cope with them, but also C, that you can take responsibility not only for your own mistakes, so I will learn from my mistakes, but also genuinely celebrating your own success. If your mum's made the volcano cake and that gets, you know, a great gold star at school, you can sit there with a smile on your face as an eight-year-old child. But you might think, actually, that wasn't my success and that's not me. And I don't think I could have done that myself. So actually, yes, it's helpful in the short term for a child to think, brilliant, parents will do that. But in the longer term, there are some really, really significant difficulties that may emerge if your parent

has snow ploughed the way through. Rebecca, I know you've been rather impressed by an aspect of Japanese education. Why? Yes. So in Japan Japan it would appear that they put their children into what is known as the learning pit almost 50% of the time and research of maths shows that actually if you make something very difficult for a child and put them into the learning pit so that they can experience failure through learning, actually they build up that resilience to be able to tackle problems when they are very difficult. So in Japan, they will set them maths questions or English questions where they have to work individually or as a group to solve problems that are very, very difficult to solve. So they get used to finding things hard and they

get used to building up that immunity, if you like, to failure. And interestingly, it's seen only 1% of the time in English classrooms and in American classrooms. And I interestingly that's only it's seen only one percent of the time in English classrooms and in American classrooms and I think that's because we are culturally trained to jump in and support our children and show them the way so we don't allow them the same opportunities to struggle. Does that feel a little bit brutal to you Angharad that you stick them in a room give them things that are too difficult for them to do well i think even by asking that question it shows doesn't it how far away we've moved from allowing our children to experience the full richness of life that we are so um not wanting them to feel distress or disappointment that we that we just protect them from all of those things

and i you know i think of parenting as almost like growing a plant, that all you can do is provide optimal conditions. For a plant, you'll need water, sunlight, good soil. As a parent, you provide the optimal context of warmth, love, security, a lovely strong pair of arms to hug them when they're having a difficult time. But beyond that, they've got to live their own life. You cannot grow the plant. You cannot create your child's life. You've got to live their own life you cannot grow the plant you cannot create your child's life you've got to let them unfold naturally. But you know Rebecca as exams and

testing testing testing has become so much a feature of the education system it's hardly surprising that some parents think they have to snowplough they have to provide a tutor to help with exams what basically is wrong with that? I think you're absolutely right. I think our education system, with its reliance on getting good grades, has certainly fuelled the opportunity for parents to become snowplough parents. I don't think there's a great deal wrong with parents supporting their children because that's absolutely what a good parent should do,

is support their children to learn and to grow. But we're finding in schools that the first thing that a child will fail at is their driving test, because we're not allowing them sufficient opportunities to fail. And therefore they're not building that resilience so that when they do fail later in life, it's a disastrous fail as opposed to having those small failures as they move through from childhood to becoming an adult. So how should an involved parent behave Rebecca? So what we're advocating is trampoline parenting so allowing your child. There are all kinds of new terms aren't there for these things

so trampoline parents what do they do jump up and down? So allowing your child opportunities to fail, but being there to jump high, but to fail, but supporting them as they fall back down to the ground in much the same way as you jump on a trampoline. So providing opportunities to experience many different things, but being there to support them if they do fail. Rebecca Glover and Dr. Anne HarHarrod Rudkin talking to Jenny. Thanks to everybody who's contributed this week. We are back live, of course, just after the news at 10 on Monday morning. 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'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.