Woman's Hour - Supreme Court definition of a woman, Disabled children and social care support, Parental infidelity

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

The UK Supreme Court rules that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex. BBC correspondent Catriona Renton joins Nuala to discuss the ramifications of the ruling. Parents of disabled children are being forced to spend thousands of pounds of their own money to plug funding gaps in the health and social care system, according to new research by the disability charity Sense. Nearly half of mums polled have had to give up work as they don't get enough support to care for their child, and many families are turning to loans, credit cards and even crowdfunding to plug the gaps. Nuala is joined by Harriet Edwards, Head of Policy at Sense, and mum-of-three Kimberley Hind. The Irish writer Edna O'Brien died last year at the age of 93. The last person to be granted an interview with her was the documentary director Sinéad O’Shea. Her new film Blue Road weaves those final interviews with archive and readings from Edna’s own diaries to tell the story of her extraordinary life. How does parental infidelity impact children, even years later when they become adults? Juliet Rosenfeld, a psychoanalyst and author of Affairs, and Tanith Carey, parenting expert and author of What's My Tween Thinking, join Nuala to discuss.Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Dianne McGregor

BBC Sounds music radio podcasts. Hello, this is Nuala McGovern and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Good morning and welcome. Well, as you might have been hearing in the news bulletin there, the Supreme Court in London is issuing a ruling right now clarifying the legal definition of the word woman. This is a complex case that comes after a long running battle between the Scottish government and a woman's group and the outcome could have

far-reaching implications on how sex-based rights apply across Scotland, England and Wales. We will speak to our correspondent about the verdict as it comes in this hour. Also I have a question for those of you whose parents had an affair. How did that parental infidelity impact you, if in fact it did? Whether you found out about this affair as a child or as an adult, I'd like to hear from you. And also, how do you feel about it now? Does, or did it, affect you in any way? I do appreciate this is a sensitive topic, so of course anonymity is fine. You can text the program that number 84844 on social media we're at BBC

Women's Hour or you can email us through our website. You can also send a WhatsApp message or a voice note for that number it's 03 700 100 444. I'll be speaking to two guests who have thought deeply about this including a psycho analyst so maybe if you have a question on this, you can also get in touch about that. This hour we have the director of The Blue Road, that is Sinead O'Shea. It is a gorgeous documentary about the groundbreaking and rule-breaking Irish author Edna O'Brien. So that's coming up in the next hour. But let us begin

with parents of disabled children. They say they're being forced to spend thousands of pounds off their own money to plug funding gaps in the health and social care system and it's according to new research that's out today by the Disability Charity Sense. Nearly half of the mothers polled have had to give up work as they say they don't get enough support to care for their child. Many families are turning to loans, credit cards and even crowdfunding to plug the gaps the research has found. The charity is also calling for stronger legal protection for those children and their families. Well I have two guests with me joining me as head of policy at

Sense which supports disabled people with complex needs, Harriet Edwards. Good morning, Harriet. Good morning. And also mum of three, Kimberly Hind, who has given up work, like many others that were polled, to care for her deafblind four-year-old son, Harvey. Welcome, Kimberly. Good morning. Let me start with you. Tell us a little bit about Harvey. So, Harvey is my amazing four-year-old little boy. He's registered severely sight impaired, blind and he is profound deaf. So he's four, he's doing amazing by the way and he has two brothers, two fully-abled brothers.

Yeah and he's excellent, he's fantastic. What does he need? He needs support. Harvey needs support to build pathways for him to learn like any other child and to get the right support around his social care needs. I suppose all his needs really, educational. Yeah, it's support. There's a huge lack of it for us from my experience and we are, you know, it's been a very challenging experience straight from the diagnosis, especially coming out from the pandemic a few years ago. What would it be in a day-to-day basis, Kimberly, so people can understand a bit more fully? So Harvey is very particular on his routine. So everything has to be exact. Everything, I mean, right down to where we step on the curb.

If there's a car parked, you know, it's not supposed to be parked. It really gets really disorientated, and that can be really, really challenging, especially in the morning when I'm by myself, you know, trying to get all three boys to school. So he is very, very particular, and he doesn't have that verbal

communication just yet to help us understand what he needs or what's bothering him. So it's a guessing game at the minute for him and trying to understand what his needs are I suppose still. And what sort of support do you receive? So good question. Local authority wise not very much at all and it has been like that probably from the start. We do get immense support from Sense, they are my lifeline and also a couple of other charities that we use. He does have a very consistent teacher of the deaf, which is fantastic, but otherwise it's been all self-taught myself, you know, we've had to learn everything, we've had to stay up many nights and research, I've self-taught myself some British Sign Language to help Harvey, I've taken some braille courses. If I can't get the funding from the charities,

they have had to come out of our own pocket as well. I know he uses a walking aid, which also we've had to fund ourself because there was just no support in mobility habilitation for him at the time and still isn't. You know, and other resources, I suppose, that he needs that we can't get for him off,

you know, from the system or from the support, we've had to fund for ourself, which is ultimately why I've had to give up my job, you know, to help be there for him. And I know there are some other difficult decisions, financial decisions that you're making in your family as well, which I will come back to. But thank you for sharing that, Kimberly. Let me turn to you, Harriet, some of Kimberly's story we're hearing there. How does her experience and Harvey's experience fit into the research that Sense has conducted? Well, Kimberly's experience resonates across the whole UK. We found that families are forced to navigate a really broken

and fragmented system. They're bearing the brunt of costs cutting at local level and they're facing huge delays in their wait for assessment. On average this was 200 days for families which is four times the legal guideline for assessment. And what come back to parents have in that particular instance? Well it's really tricky and it's not consistent across the UK so we found that the law is really not working. Local authorities are playing by their own rules. And what we really need is the government to set out a new way of working,

a new framework and also an eligibility criteria. Because at the moment, every disabled child should be assessed, but aren't getting that. You know, some might be be wondering how does this intersect if it does with SEND, with special educational needs and disabilities. We know in that particular system, although as we've heard on this program many times, a lot of criticism of it, a child could have an education and health care plan that legally entitles them to certain provisions. Does that work for children like Harvey's

or others that you're representing? Well, in Harvey's case, he's preschool age. So we see a lot of the time huge challenges before children start school. The system in early intervention is really not there. It should be. EHCP should kick in whenever a child needs it. But a lot of the time, local areas won't start

until someone starts school. But social care is an additional entitlement. So the law is very clear. Every disabled child should be assessed for support. A social worker can then assess a child's needs and work out what a local area can put in place. But social care is a bit outside of school as well. It's the family life. It's independence in the home. It's a child getting to do the same hobbies that a non-disabled child takes for granted. So for my son for example, he has cerebral palsy and without social care support we couldn't go to swimming lessons each week and those swimming lessons are £50 for 30 minutes. That's what disabled children face is this huge chasm in the cost of

everything just because they're disabled. Let me read a little of what the government spokesperson has said. This government inherited a children's social care system failing to meet the needs of this country's most vulnerable children and in dire need of reform. As part of our plan for change, we're ensuring thousands more families will have the support of a specialist worker to help them overcome challenges, including managing a child's disabilities, by doubling council funding for early intervention from this year. We're also thinking differently about what the SEND system that I mentioned should look like, starting by investing £1 billion into SEND and £740 million to encourage councils to create more specialist places in mainstream schools, paving the way for significant long-term reform. Harriet?

Well that's all really welcome. Schools are very important but children aren't in school all the time. They don't reach school to age five. There's a huge amount before that time where support needs to be put in place. So we often see this really over focus on send. Really welcome, important but you can't forget social care is getting left behind. Why social care, it's getting left behind. Why do you think it's getting left behind? Well there's a lot on the government's plate isn't there? Sometimes these challenges feel really big and a lot of the systems are in crisis as they've said themselves. But with

children's social care there's some real solutions now, there's been a number of reviews, there's been a lot of trials and evidence, cross partyparty support for tackling this issue. Last government did a review and the Law Commission now have just done a big review as well so the evidence is there. We know what families need, we need to listen to them now and the Law Commission has done a brilliant job of talking to families and getting out there on the front line and listening to services as well so we're urging government to listen to that review and really think about the law and

set out serious legal reforms that are going to change the way disabled children can get support. Give me a concrete example. So right now what we're hearing is in every local area when families are asking for an assessment in some cases the local area will say your child's not able to get one. That's not the law at the moment but it, but there's been no repercussions for that. In other places, we've heard that they're told their child's too disabled for support,

which is just incredible if you think about it. And these are families that are often not reaching out until they're in crisis as well. So any burdens they feel or any negative experience can really put them off and stop them reaching out. Also what we see and what we know is that child protection is often dealt with at the same time and so disabled children are forced through a framework of child protection. It's the same form to get support in all children's services. So I mean how do you feel as a mum or as a parent feeling in a child protection form

when actually all you want is a bit of help to get to swimming lessons? That's not the same thing. I understand, I understand. Let me come back to you Kimberley as well. I do want to read we did get a statement from Lancashire County Council which is the council you are part of. Its spokesperson says we're continuing to support Harvey and his family we're able to confirm that Harvey does have an education and healthcare plan to support him at a nursery. Again that's the more school-based aspect of it that Harriet was bringing up. However we absolutely understand this is a challenging situation. We're continuing to work with

Harvey's mum to find him an appropriate setting for reception. In addition we are looking into our early years provision as part of the wider SEND sufficiency strategy and how we better support our nurseries to meet the needs of our SEND children in the future. For guidance the age range for statutory entitlement to a specialist educational provision is from four years, so talking about school, while any specialist health matters such as requests to see an ophthalmologist would be a matter for the NHS, so pushing it out to a different area there. First your reaction to that if you don't mind, Kimberly, and then I'd

like to pick up on your personal situation again. Yeah absolutely, so he does now have, excuse me, an EHCP plan finalised. However, it took us almost two years to get that plan and like Harriet said, the law is very clear, anybody from the age of zero to the age of 25 who requires a plan and a diagnosis are entitled to an AHCP plan. The law does state that it's 20 weeks, it should be finalised. So that was a real, real battle for us. And in the case of he's a mainstream nursery with his plan where he's, he was exceptionally struggling in terms where there's just these areas of Harvey's needs that are stated in his plan, that wouldn't be a

mainstream school would not be able to meet naturally, you know, things like small class sizes, being taught with peers of similar needs, that sort of thing. So, yeah, he does have an EHCP plan. And I think from, like Harriet said, it's really difficult because everything seems to be focused from school age. And we still have these early years to get through, you know, and like I said, they're entitled from the support by law and our local authority, for an example, we applied for an occupational therapist going back to social care needs, where we needed some support in sort of living, you know, I needed to do adaptations to

my home for Harvey, and it was refused. And we went to our local MP who ended up contacting the service, who still refused to assess Harvey on his needs because he wasn't school age. Because for some reason when they reach the school age, it's, you know, okay, we'll offer you the support then, but that isn't what the law is, you know? So interesting. But coming back, I'm just struck there by the, when you said, you know, you have to make adaptations to your home, which makes perfect sense with your son, Harvey, as you've described. But I've also read that you are in the process of trying to sell your home because of financial

difficulties. Talk me through that a little. Well, it was more, it was more to make it accessible for Harvey. I mean, I gave up my job because knowing that we would lose our wage, we're not entitled to any of the top-ups or the universal credits or anything. So in effect, we're losing a full-time wage. So it was more, some had to give. It was either a wage or it was, you know, God forbid, somebody's mental health.

So we went with the wage and we needed some, because we didn't get any support in terms of the social care living, we said we're gonna have to get another house. We're gonna have to get some better living space for Harvey because he doesn't go upstairs by himself, you know, and he doesn't sleep in his own bedroom and he has these anxieties that we're struggling with.

So ultimately, you know, one of the reasons, because we wasn't reasons, because we wasn't assessed and because we refused the support from anybody who could help us in terms of living, we put our house up for sale, yeah. How does that feel though? I mean, I can understand you've been through such an intense time, but now as we all know, moving house can be an incredibly stressful thing to undergo as well. Yeah, it's probably the smallest challenge we've faced out of the whole four years, to be honest with you.

And like I said, something had to give and we just have to appreciate that it is only the money that we've lost. And I can recover from there was a time where I wasn't doing so well, but I got some help for that. And then, you know, my husband said to me, he said, someone's got to give and it's not going to be any of us. So, you know, this is just another challenge of many others that we face within four years. And that's we just we accepted it. And, you know, we're moving moving trying to move on from that. Well I want to thank both of you for coming to speak to us today on Women's Hour. Harriet Edwards who is the head of policy at Sense and also Kimberly Hind mum of three but who was telling us about her little boy Harvey. I hope he

continues to do well thanks both of you for speaking to us. 84844 if you would like to get in touch with the programme. But I want to turn next to the Irish novelist Edna O'Brien who died last year at the age of 93. Edna's first novel The Country Girls was published in 1960 and became part of a trilogy that was banned in Ireland for its references to sex and to social issues, publicly burned actually in some quarters. The last person to be granted an interview with Edna just shortly before her death was the documentary director Sinead O'Shea.

Sinead's film Blue Road, the Edna O'Brien story, is out on general release from Friday and it weaves those final interviews with archive and readings from Edna's own diaries and they tell the story of her extraordinary life. She came from a difficult, bookless childhood in rural County Clare to become a controversial, prolific writer and a glittery London society hostess as well. Here's a little clip from the film. How would you describe a country which has been ravaged? Isn't there some peculiar way in which you yourself are doing the same thing?

I mean, aren't you... Stealing from it? Yes. Yes, I knew you would ask me that. Why did you know I'd ask that? But I felt it. I felt it in the air coming. I have to defend myself. I don't think I do. I'm not attacking you. No, no. I'm trying to make a statement about it.

It is true. I take from the fund of history and geography and stories and I make of it, or would like to make out of it, my own song. Edna O'Brien there. Well, when I spoke to the director Sinead O'Shea, I asked her what Edna O'Brien means to Irish women now. I think she means so much to Irish women and she can mean a lot as well to any woman who wants to pursue a creative vision because she faced so many obstacles and she actually did succeed in being her own woman and I just think for that she deserves to be so lauded. Why do you think she was able to overcome those obstacles?

It wasn't like her background set her up for that success. Not at all. I think she was exceptional. I think she had extraordinary brainpower, which is something which is very overlooked when people consider Edna O'Brien because obviously there are so many big headlines. She was so beautiful. Her lifestyle was so glamorous.

She was so prolific. And people, I think, seem to think it came about, it just happened. These books just came out of her. And certainly she had these incredible instincts, but she also had a great brain. And I think she just wasn't able to endure the Irish life that was being presented to her, even as a child, you know, this sense that she must defer to everything, she must defer to all authority, no matter how idiotic that authority is.

You know, she grows up in a household with an alcoholic father, a mother who defers all the time, all of society is supporting and propping up this really woeful man. And she, as any sensible person might, didn't like it. And she just couldn't live with it. And I think then, you know, she she fell into her very abusive marriage. She couldn't live with that either. She but she had to be accountable to her own self, her own brain power. If that makes sense.

So interesting. Do you remember when you first became aware of Edna and her work? Yes, I do, because it was so belated. The shame has never left me. I studied English in university in Dublin, so it really is remarkable how I came so late to her. But I also think maybe it's a part of the story that, you know, my sense of Edna always when I was in university was that she was quite fluffy and quite lightweight.

And then I was assigned by Publishers Weekly, an American magazine. I was asked to write a profile of her. And I remember thinking, oh, it's going to be really boring, which is just such a terrible attitude because, I mean, I was just so incredibly wrong. She's the least boring person I feel that ever lived. And then I read her book, Country Girls. And, you know, it was just such an amazing experience for me because, you know, not only does it still feel so fresh

and it's so beautifully written and it's so funny, but it also seemed to speak directly to my own adolescence, which was in the 1990s in rural Ireland and, you know, all those tropes were still there, you know, just covering up for violent men and toxic friendships and a society that's really complicit in the worst, worst matters. And then I met her and I just, you know, I still feel I haven't recovered from that first meeting. You know, she's so charismatic. So funny. Let's talk about that, because, you know, you talk about thinking it might be boring. And I think now you'd probably agree that she really had one of the great lives of the 20th century.

Absolutely. I mean, it's it's so extraordinary this life, you know, because it's so prolific from a literary perspective, but it also includes encounters with so many, you know, the great personalities and people and artists of the 20th century. And then she herself, I think she embodies so many of the struggles that women overcame over the course of the 20th century. So, you know, I don't think you can make a claim too big when it comes to Edna O'Brien. You mentioned you were writing a piece for Publishers Weekly. You got to meet her. What do you remember of your first encounter? Well, I remember I was quite an ove her because by then, you know, I'd read some of her books. I hadn't expected her to be, I suppose, so vulnerable because, you know, her life had been so spectacular and her work was so accomplished.

And, you know, she just she had me really worried for her quite, quite soon after we met. I remember looking around her kitchen for mice with her. You know, she was really worried that they were about to steal all her food. And so she was very beguiling. She was both extremely impressive, you know, very erudite. She was quoting from so many great writers and she really, you know, her life, her whole existence was so informed by great literature and by her love and affection for, you know, other writers were people she collaborated with in her imagination.

It was all very intertwined. And yet at the same time, there was this real sense of vulnerability. We talk about the fact that she had an unexpected life considering her home life and also her upbringing. The other part which is so surprising about Edna, you talk about writers and the influence and how erudite she was, but she grew up with no books in the house. No books, prayer books only and blood stock manuals. You know, what a thing to come from a house that kind of deplored and certainly distrusted literature and learning. And she herself was so resolute about it and she saw a path and she was so

determined to do it. And, you know, it's so touching. I got to read her diaries as part of making this film. And you can see she's teaching herself, you know, she's teaching herself new vocabulary, newer, more challenging words. And it's like, you know, she's been trained as AI and quite a fascinating. I want to get on to the diaries, actually, because when I think of your film, I think of a lot of things, but I very much think of these diaries and her short

little notes to herself about stuff that happened, but also her husband, Ernest Gabler, who has red writing on top of some of her black pen filled notebooks. Talk us through that and how you came to be in possession of them. So I had started filming with Edna and she decided I should read her diaries. They were all kept in an archive in Emory College in Georgia. So I began to transcribe these diaries and I realised that somebody else had been annotating them and this was the red handwriting.

And I realised it had to be her husband, Ernest Gabler. But I had to verify this. And so I had to ask her son, Carlo. He said, yes, that's my father's handwriting. And I think he was quite accustomed to this because Ernest was actually a great annotator. And he never stopped. He would take Edna's books out of the library in Dublin and annotate them and point out terrible passages of writing in his opinion. But in the diaries, he just basically tries to undermine everything that Edna says.

But in doing so, I think reveals himself to be a terrible bully, a real narcissist and a very jealous man. Because he thought he should be the writer. Well, he was the writer. So you see, he had sold five million copies of his first book, The Plymouth Adventure, and it was turned into a film. And he was a really big deal when Edna first met him. And then she began to eclipse him. And he just really short circuited. And so my sense is that she eventually walked out on him in 1962. And I think he found her diaries. She left very abruptly. I think she was really frightened for her own safety.

And he found the diaries and he decided to rewrite what had happened, I suppose. His version of events. Exactly. But it's so ironic because I think he thought by doing so, he would position himself, you know, as the kind of moral centre of the marriage when it's just anything but. And we see, obviously, what a prolific writer she is. The work was always there churning out book after book right to the end. But there's that other part of Edna, the bon vivant, the person who, through these parties, I mean, there is one little anecdote. She talked about taking LSD and living many lives within 24 hours. Then she talks about Sean Connery coming to visit to check that she's okay after taking this drug. But that's actually not a hallucination. That actually happened, which gives us an idea of the craziness of one part of her life at times.

Yeah, it was very heady and there were a lot of parties. It's really funny because Edna says, oh, people have overstated this. But I don't know if they have because I've met so many people subsequently who've talked very fondly about the parties they had with Edna. So, yes, she was a bonfire, she loved life, she loved parties and people. And yet, as Sasha, her younger son, points out in the film, she was writing a book a year at the height of this. So, you know, she somehow managed to be very productive while partying with Paul McCartney and Marlon Brando and Richard Burton at all. And talking about her enjoying life, you did ask her for tips on how to do it and she talks about a nice drink,

she talks about trifle, she talks about the tenderness between mother and child. She was also 90 plus when you filmed her and I'm wondering, did that responsibility lay heavy on your shoulders? You did do the last interview with her. Yes. It was a huge responsibility. I know she felt this was her final chance. You know, and she didn't really know me and it was a huge thing. You know, you want to be as accurate as possible. You don't want to sugarcoat.

And possibly I did sugarcoat because I was kind of so smitten by her. However, I still feel that Edna, especially in Ireland, she was subject to the most terrible criticism, and I always felt the criticism was very unfair. There are actually lots of things you can criticize her for. You know, she was very queenly. She was dominating. She could be bad tempered, but she was really an extraordinary writer and a very gifted woman.

And she was just denigrated so badly in Ireland. I just felt it was important to attend to her achievements as well. And the denigration wrapped up in misogyny. Absolutely. I mean, it's it's really interesting to trace how it happened and to trace it all the way then to, you then to the likes of me thinking she's fluffy. So her husband and her marriage breaks up. Her husband starts telling everyone he's written her first two books. He returns to Ireland. He tells everyone there he's very well connected.

And then just this whispering continues in Ireland about her for years. Her first six books are banned. Her first book, Country Girls, was actually burned by lots of people. And again, this story is debated at home. You know, I've actually met a woman who was told as a child to burn Country Girls in their back garden. Yeah. So it's. And yet it's still debated. And so eventually she kind of moved from being a sort of a kind of a threat to the kind of patriarchal order to being a sort of, I suppose, someone who was considered to

be a kind of a laughing stock and to be fluffy and to be kind of silly and a flibby gibbet, as she puts it. So there were all kinds of ways in which Ireland attacked her. Do you think now, she died in July 2024, but do you think that she has the place she deserves in the pantheon of Irish writers? I think so. I don't know, I mean, who does create the canon? I mean, they're quite subjective things, but I would say she's had to struggle to be taken seriously in a way that no Irish male writer has ever faced. I think, yes, people now in Ireland feel guilty, but so they should.

That is the director Sinead O'Shea about her film, The Blue Road, the Edna O'Brien story and what a story it is. It is out on general release from this Friday. Now the UK Supreme Court has ruled that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex in a landmark ruling just from the past 30 minutes or so. The judges say it is not a triumph for one side over the other but the law still gives transgender people protection against discrimination. This decision comes after a long-running legal battle between the Scottish government and a women's group. We do hope to speak to our correspondent in Scotland shortly. But before that I have been asking for your stories and

experiences this morning on how parental infidelity impacts children, including years later when you've become an adult. A new book, Affairs, True Stories of Love, Lies, Hope and Desires, looks at partners who cheat and follows five people and their experience of affairs. And one of the themes that comes up in these real stories is about the children caught up in the middle of the affairs. So we're taking a closer look at parental infidelity when one parent is unfaithful to the other and how that impacts the children and the ramifications that can at times last into adulthood. We have

Juliet Rosenfeld who's a psychoanalyst who spent four years researching her book affairs. Good morning Juliet. Good morning. Good to have you with us. Along with us is Tanith Carey, parenting expert and author of What's My Tween Thinking, who is also a haughty experience of parental infidelity. Welcome Tanith. Good morning. Well, you know the minute I put it out to our listeners as I did this morning, I have so many messages that have come in. Here's one. My father's infidelity affected me greatly. It has led me to feeling insecure in my own marriage I'm often questioning what love is do I love my husband enough? It has had a massive impact on my mental health

I've had to put my children on my family first and have stuck to this no matter how hard the going gets sometimes I'm a champion for children's mental health when my friends are going through a rocky time. I urge them to prioritize and their children Here's another. My dad had an affair and left the family when I was nine. As a child I struggled with the thought of my dad abandoning me for another woman. I also always felt that he betrayed me and my boyfriend, not just my mum. I definitely have issues trusting my romantic partners now. I expect a man to treat me like my dad treated my mum.

What hurts me the most is my dad married the woman he had an affair with and I struggle with the feeling of him choosing her over me. I'm 30 and it hurts just as much as when I was nine. People have been very open with us this morning, Juliet. I have a number of comments that have come in. What drew you to write about the impact that affairs can have on children? Well, I mean, I think the first thing to say is that, you know, experience varies tremendously. But I have seen many patients in my consulting room who, as your listeners are saying, felt that the experience of appearance in fidelity was still very devastating and in the 30s, 40s, 50s. And that was one reason for being very interested in it. And

the other reason is I think that affairs are a subject that are not insufficiently kind of covered in some ways that we talk about them a lot. They, people are very interested by them but sort of taking a serious look at them in the way that I tried to from a clinical perspective. It was a book I sort of wanted to read really so that was one of the reasons why I wrote it. I think we do often, when we hear about affairs, more from the people going through them or the people left behind, but perhaps not the children to the same extent. But it is interesting, Julie, if you bring up there are many experiences that people will have. Most that are getting in touch with me talk about a negative effect that it had on them, 84844.

If you'd like to get in touch perhaps, the experience maybe you feel had no impact on you. I'd like to hear from you as well. Tell me a bit about your experience. You are a parenting expert, but when you were a child, you went through something quite traumatic. Yes, my father was a very secure man and he needed the validation of women. My mother always said that almost as soon as I was born he was out having affairs. As a child I grew up with a revolving door of mistresses coming in and out, so my mother would leave and then I'd go back to our family home and a new woman had moved in and I'd

go into the wardrobe where my mother's clothes had been and somebody else's clothes would be there. And eventually my mother had enough and didn't follow him to Australia where we thought we were, I thought as a 10-year-old we were going to make a new life. And instead of coming back to get me, my father flew his mistress out there. So yes, it threw a very long shadow over my life for a very long time. And how do or did you manage that? I mean, were you immediately cognisant that it was impacting you very deeply? And your father, I mean, even the number of affairs that you've mentioned there, obviously it was something that was ongoing, it wasn't one instance that was then forgotten. Yeah, I mean, I think that my family was extremely dysfunctional, so I was lucky enough that I could see that this was not how normal people behave.

And also my father would say things to me like, oh, which is ironic, that when you grow up, you'll probably get divorced. So that made me very determined to break the cycle. Initially, when my father left, I did think that as a 10-year-old, I went into a period of depression. My schoolwork went down dramatically. I took it out on my peers. And then I went through a very long stretch of being very kind of turning inward on myself. And as the research shows that infidelity and high conflict divorce does lead to issues of low self-esteem, low self-worth, peer issues, achievement issues. And I really think it's time that, I think you guys have done a great thing here because we do need to put children at the front and center of these decisions. I mean if you do decide to have an extramarital affair I think we do need to be more aware of how

long term these effects are. It brings up a lot of questions. They can last decades. I am hearing that from the distance as well, Tanith, let me read another one. When I was 13 my mum sat me on my bed and told me she was having an affair with someone she worked with. She had no one else to talk to and chose me. It weighed very heavily on me as a young teenager. It also meant I spent the rest of my adult life wondering if I am like her, whether it's part of my DNA, that I'm prone to being unfaithful. I wish she had never told me.

Juliette, a number of different stories coming in there. Does it make any impact from what you've seen of whether the parent who has the affair is the mother or the father? Well, I, I, I'm not convinced that the, you know, about the research on, on that. And I think the sort of virtue of psychoanalysis and indeed I think psychotherapies at each case is completely individual. So I think gender, whether it's father or mother, I think it's equally difficult for a child. Now I was just going to say something about, you know, what Tanith is saying, which

I think that stories such as hers are very important. I think more than statistics, we understand someone's experience by their stories. And I think one of the big problems with these sort of generations of people, really from the 70s onwards when divorce and separations become much more common and these are people now in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, is that this idea that children are terribly resilient and adaptable is problematic because I think children adapt because they have to. As Hannah's story illustrates, you do what your parents or caregivers tell you as a child. You don't make choices about two separate houses or you don't necessarily want to have Christmas with dad and Easter with

mom or one at the football match and one not. So I think this is a very important discussion that we need to start having about the longer term impact that the impact of infidelity is not just on the child. It very often really does stretch on for decades and trying to understand that seems to me to be very important. I mean, there are some comments that are coming in where parents were not thinking of the children from my reading of them at the moment, but I would imagine most that find them in that situation, they do worry about the children. That's probably maybe the foremost of their worry at some point, particularly if the affair is known between the couple and you know could be

leading to potential separation or divorce. And as we know, particularly listening to listeners or from the research you've done, they are a fact of life for some families. So maybe I'll throw it back to you Tanit, as a parenting author, what would you advise for somebody who finds themselves caught up in this? What, as a parent who is thinking of having an affair? No, that they might be in a situation that that has happened, they're worried about the children, that they're now hearing from you or from Juliet or from our listeners, that the impacts can be lifelong.

It's never too late to go to your children and connect with them and be honest with them and also be introspective about yourself, about your own reasons, which will probably date back to your own childhood. And you know, be compassionate because you know, a lot of the reason that people have affairs is based in their own attachment issues and that's why it's very sort of generational. So if you... Sorry, go on. No, forgive me for stepping in on you.

I was just about to say, Tanit. So you do believe there's a way to communicate about an affair, perhaps in some ways that is more helpful than others. I think that you have to put your child front and centre. I mean, I think that if you have got carried away with an affair, which is obviously giddy and exciting, and you think that you're going to appear at a phase of self-justification, I think that you just have to step outside yourself because what might seem exciting or romantic and justified to you at that point

is you are making a choice. No one's forcing you to do this and your children did not make a choice to be here. You invited them into your world and it is your role as a parent really to make them feel safe and show them that the world can be trusted because what this kind of stuff does is it takes away a person's sense of trust and safety in the world which is very hard a person's sense of trust and safety in the world, which is very hard to recover. It can be done on with a lot of work and a lot of introspection and a lot of awareness. But if you are a parent, you've had an affair, then own what has happened, take responsibility and come back to your child to reconnect and repair the rupture and show them that you can be a consistent and safe parent again. Let me read some of the comments coming in, different experiences. I was 18 but when my

father had an affair and left my mother, I think being an adult limited the effect of that point that my mother was so devastated. However, I had to take responsibility for her emotional well-being, finances and even moving house. So talking about ramifications in a very practical way there. Here's another. My dad had several emotional affairs with women until my mom finally had enough. I found it hard at the time. Now in adulthood, I had an affair with someone who has children the same age that I was. Oddly, it has made me understand my dad more. I think the switch has been understanding that our parents are indeed just other humans and I think that's what I was trying to get

to, Juliet, within this what is the best way we're hearing a little from Tanith there to navigate for somebody who finds them in this messy situation. Well I think you know if an affair comes to light and if an affair is part of the reason for a relationship or a marriage breaking down, then I think that one of the most important things and I think we're agreeing that parents sacrifice a lot for children. And I think part of, by the way, that narrative adaptability and resilience is to do enormous guilt that parents feel when they often in quite desperate psychological circumstances do decide to separate. And I think one of the things that is very, very important, if it is possible, and it's obviously very hard for the parent that has been betrayed, is a sort of shared narrative that can be

adapted in an age-appropriate way as the child gets older. A shared narrative about, first of all, what happens that the child can understand. But I also think that children very much need to know that even if a parental relationship has gone badly wrong and the family has separated, that they were created by love and that that can be very difficult, as one parent has been betrayed, but that is what children want to know. They want to know that they came along and that they are there because there was a couple in the beginning that wanted them there. And so that idea of a story that can be told, that can continue to be told, as I say, that later on when children, you know, realise that their parents are fallible human beings, and they can

understand a bit more about the circumstances that have led to the breakdown of the relationship, that can adapt. Here's another one, Kevin, please don't forget that, echoing perhaps a little of what you're saying, Julia, please don't forget that an affair is often a desperate response to loneliness and misery in the family. I did this because my partner was simply not able to support me or even talk but I loved him deeply and after a horrendous time keeping this away from our adult children we worked through it but I'd be lying if I said it doesn't have a lasting effect. Yeah.

Thank you so much for all the messages that are coming in. Here's one more. My father had an affair when I was 15. I found his phone messages and photos. I was so scared about my parents breaking up that I never told either of them what I found. I've harbored the secret into adulthood. I'm 35 with two young children of my own and have buried the disgust and guilt. My parents are retired and not happy together and now I wish I told my mother as a child. What a heavy burden for a child to hold. Thanks to both of you for speaking to us. Juliet Rosenfeld, a psychoanalyst who spent years researching her book Affairs and also we have Tanith Carey, parenting expert and author of What's My Tween Thinking and thank you also to all of you who got in touch with your messages. I know they're very personal and

sensitive stories you're sharing with us there so thank you very much 84844. But I do want to turn next to the UK Supreme Court because it has ruled that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex. It's a landmark ruling, the judges said it is not a triumph for one side over the other and the law still gives transgender people protection against discrimination. This comes after a long-running battle you might know between the Scottish government and a women's group. Here to talk us through the ruling, who's been watching it closely, is Katrina Renton, the BBC Scotland correspondent. Good to have you back with us Katrina. So what does this

ruling mean and any more detail that we should be sharing on what the judge said? Well I think this is going to take us a while to go through the actual judgment as George Hodge said there, it was a very very long judgment and he could only set out so much in the handing down of the judgment in court. So I think there's going to be a lot of implications that we need to really look in depth at what this will mean for the future. Now, the UK Supreme Court ruled there that the definition of a woman and sex as set out in the Equality Act 2010 refers to a biological woman and that was a unanimous decision but he did say that this was not a triumph for any particular group. What this isn't about

is policy making, this is about understanding the letter of the law and how the law is interpreted. So it provides some clarity now doesn't it that the ambiguity that was there between the Gender Recognition Act in 2004, which said that if you had a gender recognition certificate for all intents and purposes under the eyes of the law, you were what that gender was that you had reassigned yourself to be. However, if you look at what for Women Scotland were arguing throughout was that sex, as it is defined in the law, is an immutable fact. So what this has done is give some clarity as to how the Equality Act is interpreted. And of course, the rights, as Lord Hudge made absolutely clear when he

handed down the judgement, transgender people still have, this doesn't undermine transgender people's rights, what this does is clarifies what the word woman means in the Equality Act. I think it's kind of, if we look at it at that level, as simple as that, but what this is going to do is cause, I think, issues for politicians and for public bodies. How are they going to deal with all of this? Now, if you look at the fallout over the last few years in Scotland, we've had some very clear cases where there has been ambiguity about what are women's spaces and should trans women be included in that.

So if you look at the case of the double rapist, Isla Bryson, Adam Graham was the person who raped two women and was sent to jail but initially the van that was taking him to prison was taking him to the women's prison. Now that changed and he was sent to, Isla Bryson was sent to the man's prison but that caused an enormous amount of confusion for people at that point. We've had confusion with the case of Sandy Peggy, the NHS nurse in Fife, that didn't want to share a changing room with a transgender woman who is a doctor. So these things have been playing out, so maybe what this will do is actually help people to

interpret the law and it might make things a bit clearer and maybe make things a bit easier for politicians. We heard Four Women Scotland say had the judgement gone the Scottish Government's way then that might be even more complicated to sort out. So it's a massive judgement that's going to take a long time for some very clever lawyers to get their heads round. I can see that Susan Smith for the Four Women Scotland, she says what our politicians need to get their heads around is this is the law but says that there is going to be an ongoing fight. Who are For Women Scotland exactly? For Women Scotland are now become quite a

high-profile group. They have some famous supporters, JK Rowling for one and they are a grassroots feminist campaign group and we've seen them involved in a number of these battles. They were involved in the decisions taken over Isla Bryson, previously Adam Graham, and they were also involved very heavily in the case with Sandy Peggy the nurse. So they are very high profile campaigners and they have very high profile women within the group. Joanna Cherry the former MP and Acacy is one of their leading campaigners. So they are a very high profile group of campaigning women.

Also I suppose people will be asking, they talk about transgender people still having legal protection from discrimination, the court says, within this ruling. But I suppose who will interpret, for example, the implications for a single sex space? I guess that's going to be down to the lawyers again, isn it and that's where this is the the difficulty because and this is why this has taken so long if we look back to how this started this was in 2018 when the Scottish Parliament passed a bill it's a fairly niche piece of legislation that was looking about gender balance on public

sector boards and that included trans women as part of the quota and the Scottish Government's position was that a transgender person with a gender recognition certificate stating that they are female is a woman for the purposes of the Equality Act. But we had of course four women saying that sex is a matter of immutable biological fact And I think though what Lord Hodge tried to say in his judgment and indeed said very adorably and with great clarity actually is that the ambiguities, the difficulties, you can't carry on with that. You know, what they're trying to do is be very clear about what the words mean. So it's all about interpretation

isn't it and it's something that I suspect we're gonna hear an awful lot about over the next few days, weeks, months. I mean some I would because the Equality Act of 2010 was central to this complex case. Will it have to be updated? Well certainly there's been calls for that. That's one of the things that I think has come to light throughout this debate, this debate that has been in and out of the Scottish courts, and of course it's been decided at the UK Supreme Court, the highest civil court in the UK, which tells you about the scale of this and the landmark level that it got to the UK Supreme Court. That's something that many have called for throughout

this ongoing debate is that the law be reviewed, be updated perhaps, there's maybe a word to use for it, and that politicians need to, they need to be clear on what it is that they are doing policy-wise. It will be interesting to see some of the reaction that comes in, just to remind our listeners I suppose this is really within the past hour that the UK Supreme Court ruled that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex. I'm wondering as well, the EHRC, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, really wanted the law clarified as well and I wonder will this satisfy what they are asking for, perhaps

too early to know because reaction just continues to come in, Katrina? I think that's right, I think at the moment what we are, you know, and what I'm hoping for is from some real legal experts to give some clarity and advice as to what the implications of this will be. The Equality Act of course is a UK-wide act. It applies to England and Wales as well as Scotland. So this may have been brought by a Scottish campaigning group, but actually this has got implications for the whole of Great Britain. So there are going to be questions and it's interesting because I know that there's a case pending in England about another case about how should a transgender woman be treated under the law. And you know we're seeing today Lord Hodge trying to say well look, women for the intents and purposes of this means a biological women at birth but what he was clear about, what he was

very clear about was that these are judges not policymakers. These are judges these are telling us how to read the law, what the words mean in the law. He is not selling politicians what they should be doing policy-wise, that's for them and I think that there will be an enormous fallout from this. And because the Scottish government and the UK government were at odds over self-identification in particular, what does it mean now do you think? Well do you know we've been talking about this in between our live broadcasts of it, what does this mean? And the Gender Recognition Reform Bill which the Scottish Parliament passed was blocked by the UK government because they were saying that the

Scottish government had gone beyond its remit of devolved powers. I think there's going to be a lot of questions to be asked now about what the implications of this are. What the Gender Recognition Reform Bill was trying to do was to make it easier for people who were trans to be able to identify in the gender that they wanted to be identified as. And actually, it's been, I think, quite a headache for the politicians. They've been tying themselves in knots about how they deal with these things. And, you know, maybe Lord Hodges made it easier.

I don't know. It's going to be really interesting to talk to legal experts and see what they think, because it's a debate. it's a debate that's been going on and on, maybe with a step further to just having a bit more clarity when it comes to interpreting these policies. Katrina Renton, thank you so much. I know you are going through all those pages trying to figure out the nuts and bolts of it. She is our BBC Scotland correspondent. The top line is the UK Supreme Court has ruled that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex. If you'd like to read the ruling it is on the BBC live page right now. Thank you so much for all your

messages that have been coming in in relation to affairs. I want to read one here. While an affair can indeed be devastating for children you also need to take into account the fact that parents who don't have an affair but dislike each other can be equally toxic for children. I grew up in a family where my parents heartily disliked each other and although there was no infidelity as far as I'm aware it was a pretty traumatic childhood and one from which I have never recovered indeed. We could also talk about the affair being a symptom as well as a cause, of course.

Do join us tomorrow, Kylie Pentelow in the host seat and her guests will include the writer, journalist and body image advocate Stephanie Yaboa, who will be speaking about her debut romantic comedy, Chaotic Energy. Do join us then. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. I'm David Dimbleby and from the History Podcast and BBC Radio 4, this is Invisible Hands, the

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