Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman's Hour: Listener Week

Episode Date: August 24, 2019

Why does society judge women who are single? We’ll hear from listener Joy, Emily Hill author of Bad Romance and from the journalist Bibi Lynch.Doreen and Virginia have belonged to the same book club, set up in 1965, for decades - is it one of the oldest in the UK? They're joined by Melissa Cummings-Quarry and Natalie Carter who are the co-founders of the Black Girls Book Club to discuss why book clubs are so appealing to women.We explore Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (inattentive type) in girls, with Heidi whose daughter was diagnosed at 14 and Dr Celine Ryckaert a clinical lecturer at King’s College London.And we talk about the pain of a close friendship ending with Annabel Fenwick-Elliot senior content editor at The Telegraph and psychotherapist Hilda Burke.Presented by Jane Garvey Produced by Rabeka Nurmahomed Edited by Jane Thurlow

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, good afternoon. Welcome to a slightly shorter edition of the weekend Woman's Hour programme. This week we're featuring some of the highlights of our Listener Week. And if you missed any of the programmes last week, I really hope you get the chance to revisit them. You can hear the podcast, of course, on BBC Sounds. You may have missed Anne, who told us about getting divorced as she headed for her golden wedding anniversary.

I don't think I realised quite how unhappy I was until I was away from home and I was doing something a bit different. And I realised that I was happy. And it was a feeling that I realised that I hadn't had for a very long time. And then there was 19-year-old Gwyneth, who was fed up with unwanted attention in public. There was this crazy guy, he grabbed my friend's thigh, and then we, like, shouted at him and he burst out laughing. And then the next day, I can't remember what it was that was shouted at us, but it was quite gross.

And then when I went home, I put on put on like a long t-shirt and like trousers and I was like I'm dressing like this for the rest of the summer. And Bernard who talked about coping with life after the death of his wife. I did not want to sit at home brooding yes I have memories and I have times when I'm down and depressed and I have a few tears. So I sold the television set and went out. That's not the end of Bernard's story. You need to find out exactly what he did do because so many of you loved hearing about Bernard. That's all available via BBC Sounds.

Hear all the podcasts from last week. But just to give you an idea about Listener Week, we are going to feature some of your thoughts on this shorter version of the weekend edition of Woman's Hour. So you're about to hear members of what could be the oldest book club in the country. We'll discuss a form of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in girls and discuss the pain of a close friendship ending. First of all, then, single women. Karen sent the programme this email. I am a single, childless woman. I'm 60. I have many friends and we have a great life. I'm a nurse with a fantastic career and career opportunities and projects, all of which are likely to keep me active, healthy and fulfilled until I'm 70. So why are we judged? Well, we went on to discuss this with Emily Hill, who's 36 and the author of the book Bad Romance. Bibi Lynch is a 53-year-old presenter at BBC Sussex and Surrey. And Joy is a Woman's Hour listener with a nine-year-old son. Where does Joy think the

judgment about single women comes from? It's just in our DNA almost over the years in novels, in films, we just feel like that, I guess. But then when the reality hits you as a person, you can find it so very, very different. You're right about the novels, but that's sort of Jane Austen territory, isn't it? Emily, what would you say about that? I think that's right. It is very, very embedded in our culture. That's why I actually started writing about single women as a phenomenon because I don't think that we are represented in the culture enough. I think what's happened is when single women were new in the 90s,

there was Carrie Bradshaw, there was all the girls in Sex and the City, there was also Bridget Jones. Bridget Jones is married with a baby now. All the Sex and the City. There was also Bridget Jones. Bridget Jones is married with a baby now. All the Sex and the City figures. And then what we have now, we had girls, and they're all in their 20s, and I just couldn't relate to it at all.

And then we have Fleabag, who's this kind of terrifying vision of what a single woman might be. And cultural representations of single women throughout history, I mean, now people will say, oh, you will sort of, people will say, oh, you know, don't get a cat. And it's like, why shouldn't I have a cat if I like cats? But it's this kind of vision of women as witches. And, you know, we used to get burned to the stake.

And now, you know, we've suffered to go on all these horrible internet dates because society kind of expects us to at least be trying to get married. All right, Bibi, what would you say? Trying to get married. Go on. I think single and childless is the double whammy of pity, the poor Jen head tilt, the pity. Listen to this. I was at a funeral. Yeah, I can't believe this story, but carry on. Yeah, and a woman who apparently I'd met before, and I don't recall, came up to me, my sister had to hold me back and she said to me

so, did you get married? And I went no. And then she went, did you have children? And I said no. And she went oh well done anyway, it's not for everyone. It's so extraordinary how we are judged and I think

that's proven by that research that came out from an lsc professor recently who said that childless and single women are the happiest in society that went viral because because we felt that we were being acknowledged but i actually found it really patronizing that added to it i can't see that someone with 2.4 children and being married to a man or woman is any necessarily more happy than I am because I'm not sitting here wanting to kill someone because the sound they make when they eat a baguette you know I have a great really great life I'm straddling happy but I'm not allowed to be happy because I'm told I'm not allowed to be happy oh that's interesting yeah and that's the worst thing

about it yeah um okay I mean I follow you on Twitter're very funny. But you can be a bit bleak sometimes. You acknowledge there is another side to this, isn't there? But there's another side to being married and a parent as well. Of course, yeah. But that's not allowed. And the reason we're not shown that because of all the fake book posts, you know, I'd love to be in love. That doesn't mean I want to be married.

Because I can't commit to a shampoo. So I don't know if I could be with someone forever and ever but we're told these fake book posts kind of tell us that life is this and life is that

but we all know the reality isn't that but they're perpetuating a myth that doesn't help them or doesn't help us I'll say one thing the people that I interview I interview a lot of young people

and they seem to have a really great take on this because they're polyamorous they're pansexualxual, they're in throuples, ladies. So that's a man and a woman and then they've got a girlfriend or a boyfriend. This is extraordinary. They're exhausted, but they're happy because they don't have the confines of the role models that I feel that we're still suffering because of. I think if you're in a throuple, and I haven't got the energy, obviously,, doesn't that mean that possibly two people could annoy you with the way they eat a baguette? I mean, let's be honest.

Emily, what would you say? I agree entirely. I don't understand that urge at all. But I do completely agree that one of the issues that we face, I think, as single women is if we want to have children, I would love to have children. That becomes a major problem. And there's this phenomenon that isn't again isn't talked about i think because we're women of social infertility it's like i agree completely i would love to fall in love what what's social oh i see social

infertility you just can't find anybody to fall in love with and and have a baby with and then we're all blamed you know for the falling birth rate and that's entirely our fault rather than actually it's not finding a man who you know wants what we want I think the thing is there are many many upsides to being single and those aren't talked about either and joy I know at the moment you're prioritizing your young son he is only young of course he won't be staying at home with you forever no no that's right but I completely agree with what I've just heard you know in terms of finding that I have time if I wish to, which I do, as well as running my own business and looking after my son, I have time to go and play tennis and paint and print make and go to life drawing classes. All things which, you know, if I had to stay at home and do ironing, God or you know cook huge family meals i couldn't do

that's our listener joy in praise of the single life and lots of emails throughout the week actually and thank you for all of them suzy says i have done reasonably well for myself and a woman i hadn't met before came into my home and said oh you did well in the divorce didn't you i've never actually been married. Society still has a long way to go if it can't see a moderately successful woman without presuming that a man must have helped. From Jackie, I'm 52 and I've been happily single all my life. Although, as confirmed by your contributors,

my friends, family and work colleagues find this an alien concept. What can irritate me is the assumption by colleagues that I'm a lesbian. This is highly offensive to me and to lesbians. It's my choice not to be in any sort of relationship and I'm happy. Why is it that some people seem unable to accept the concept of happiness without a significant other. So everything on the programme this week, everything we've talked about has been decided by you because you emailed or wrote in the case of the next listener we're going to feature, Doreen, to tell us what you wanted us to talk about. So Doreen wrote a letter in which she said it was high time we talked about book clubs. Hers in Canterbury was founded back in the 60s and

it could well be the oldest in existence. What then is a book club really for? Natalie Carter and Melissa Cummings Quarry are the founders of the Black Girls Book Club and Virginia Connybear has been a fellow member of Doreen's Club in Canterbury since 1980. Doreen was one of the founder members. Here she is telling Jenny whether or not she's surprised it's still going. I don't think I am surprised. People have come and gone. Canterbury is a fairly static community, I think I could say. It's a very attractive place to live and lots of us have simply not moved away.

Virginia, how did you get involved? Well, I got involved at the school gate. I arrived from Oxford with my two young children, went to the local primary school, and it wasn't long before a very nice person called Doreen spoke to me, and we became friends, and before very long, she had told me about this group and asked me to join, which was a wonderful way to be introduced to life in Canterbury. Natalie, why was yours founded? Melissa and I have been best friends since we were 11 and a half and we always shared books between each other

and one day we just thought, wouldn't it be amazing to share these books, not just between ourselves but with other black women in London and then Black Girls Book Club was born and that was it. Melissa you describe it as not your common book club what do you mean by that? Well the thing is someone said we were just a common book club you know we weren't that special and I thought how cheeky we're more like very cheeky we're more than that you know we're not just a book club that just meets up and like we read we do things like parties we've even taken over the houses of parliament we do so many different things and i think to myself screenings you've had guests

coming to talk haven't you like mallory blackman who we were speaking to on the program last week we've had so many amazing people yeah yeah dory now i hardly dare ask you are you just a common book club yes we're a very common book group. We just meet once a month in each other's houses. We think of a book to read in a couple of months' time and then talk about the book we have read during the past month. We're terribly impressed, Virginia and I, hearing about the activities of this other lot.

More than 500 books, Doreen, I think, have been read. Which books, after all these years, stand out for you? Certainly one, and it's very interesting with your other contributors, that a lot of us, including the founder, who's now very frail and over 90, was Toni Morrison's Beloved.

Oh, we absolutely love that. Oh, these two have just... We absolutely love that. You must have heard them. We want to do that as a tribute to Toni. Oh, we absolutely love it. Oh, these two have just... We absolutely love that. You must have heard them. We want to do that as a tribute to Tony. Oh, if you haven't read it yet, you must. We need to do it. I've read it.

Melissa's yet to read it, but we want to read it with the book club, so it's just so nice to hear that. It just reinforces that. Shall I say that needs to be our next book because we'll have listeners who will come up to us and be like, when are we reading Tony? Yes, OK. You've just ordered the rest of your group. OK. That is the next book because we'll have listeners who'll come up to us like when are we reading Tony yes okay you've just ordered the rest of your group okay that is the next book to read

now Natalie having made the ghastly confession that your book club has not yet read Beloved what books have stood out for you we read my personal favorite book The Colour Purple by Alice Walker I think that's a classic book that every black woman should read and reading that with the book club and going through the different stories, the characters and how the experiences of

the main female characters are so relative to the experiences that people have today that is the book that stands out for me and also our first book Americana. What stands out for you Melissa? I think for me they're Eyes Watching God so that is the book that stands out for me and also our first book americana yeah what stands out for you i think for me they're um they're eyes watching god so that is my favorite book and i was really excited to bring it to the book club because a lot of girls hadn't read it and it is a classic it's a wonderful book but it's one that was kind of lost so it's really important to us

that we said look we're going to do something you might not have heard of before let's just get into it and it was amazing because it's a real story of kind of like black womanhood a journey from girlhood to womanhood and it was quite nice i think as the other ladies were saying to have people's opinions on it and see how they felt about it now obviously dorian the choice of book and the discussion about the book and the sharing of opinions for all of you is very very important but how supportive has your group been over 54 years? It's amazing. Yes. Well, the books are the cause of us getting together,

but obviously we are friendly with each other and some of us have our very closest friendships and that spills over because we all live in this relatively small town and go on knowing each other. And in those early days, especially when we were all looking after children and husbands and homes, as I say, people have left, they've come back, others have joined us. We're certainly not all university wives for a long while ago.

And before we get cut off, could I put just one other plea in? Very occasionally, we managed to get the route to read poetry. Yes, well done. Poetry is very important. One other question. I know you're keen to know if you're the oldest book club. Why does that matter to you? It doesn't. It doesn't matter a bit. But as we started thinking about it, we just thought, we wonder if there are any other groups.

And we do know these days there are lots and lots and lots of groups which take all sorts of different forms but another interesting thing is we suspect the majority of them are for women. Doreen and Virginia from the book club in Canterbury and you also heard from Natalie Carter and Melissa Cummings Quarry of the Black Girls Book Club. Loads of emails on this subject too from Barry. The oldest book club still going, and of which I have a record, is in Dalton Infernus in Cumbria. It was founded in 1764, and the last time I had contact with it, all the members were male.

Alex says, I was a founder member of a silent book club in South London, mainly made up of working mothers with young children. We held it every other Tuesday at a local wine bar. Now, the idea was that in the first hour, you could just sit in peace and quiet and read whatever book you wanted, usually with a glass of wine. For the second hour, we put our books down

and talked either about what we were reading or more often about everything else that was going on in our lives as a group of young working mothers it was such a valuable time to be able to unwind and socialize yeah i think i think book clubs do take many forms don't they certainly my sister has the worst hangover she ever discusses the morning after book club so i'm not entirely sure what goes on at that particular event. I will never know. Heidi contacted the programme to say please talk about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder inattentive type and this was the particular relevance to her own daughter and to girls generally and mental health. Heidi's daughter was diagnosed with the disorder when she was 14, after initially getting a diagnosis of anxiety.

Dr Celine Reichardt is a child psychiatrist and clinical lecturer at King's College London. And you'll hear from her in a moment after you hear Heidi telling me how her daughter's diagnosis came about. We completely missed it and it had been masked by her anxiety. She didn't particularly have school problems. She wasn't a naughty girl? She certainly wasn't, no. As I've learnt, many girls, they come full, they try to fit in, but she realised that she didn't quite fit in.

She had some problems with sustaining friendship. She said she's a really attractive child, so that's, you know, kind of of she's got a good sense of humour, so she can make friends, but she had difficulty maintaining those relationships. And while she achieved at primary school, when I look back now, from the beginning of secondary school, where as a parent you're doing less for them because quite rightly they want independence and you want them to have that. Of course. where, as a parent, you're doing less for them because, quite rightly, they want independence

and you want them to have that. Of course. She's been on a downward trajectory and just not achieving at all. So your concern would be that this is something that is missed in girls, that society doesn't expect it in girls. Is that it? That's right. They don't conform to the stereotype. Most of the data my understanding is that it's been researched on boys and people sort of immediately think of the

stereotype even professionals you know when i've raised it with school and initially at cams people are like inattention you know and it does get missed and I think in my daughter's case, because she didn't know what was happening to her, the anxiety developed. And again, we were looking at that and trying to get her help with that, but we weren't looking at the underlying problem. Well, let's bring in Dr Celine Reichardt, who's a child psychiatrist and a clinical lecturer at King's College in London.

Celine, first of all, the point that this is sometimes missed in girls because society is more likely to associate it with boys. What about that? College in London. Celine, first of all, the point that this is sometimes missed in girls because society is more likely to associate it with boys. What about that? That is 100% true indeed. So the question of gender in ADHD is an interesting one, but sadly not one that we currently have many, many answers to. But we do know it tends to get missed. What we also know is in childhood, it tends to be overrepresented in boys. So for, in general, population samples, meaning just people on the street, for every two and a half boys, there would be one girl with ADHD.

But then when we look at clinics, we see there actually for every four boys, there would be one girl. So somehow girls don't find their way to the clinic. And even when they're then in the clinic at clinical services, they are still quite often overlooked and quite often misdiagnosed. And the search for the right diagnosis for the discovery that it was ADHD, which might have contributed to emotional symptoms, is often a long search indeed. So why that is, is poorly understood, but there has been speculation, exactly as you say, Heidi,

that it might have to do with there being a certain stereotype and that girls don't necessarily always fit that. So historically, ADHD was thought of as a childhood disorder and the very classic presentation would be a seven-year-old boy running around shouting, interrupting people. And even though that is definitely one of the presentations, it is not the only presentation. It's the most striking one perhaps for teachers and for parents. Well, I was going to say it's the most conspicuous one

and it causes the most problems for everybody else. That's exactly right. Not per se for the person suffering from it. And we as mental health professionals had to learn that as well by actually speaking to children who grew up, who became more vocal and who became young adults, who then actually told us that what they quite often struggle with isn't per se the hyperactivity, but it is the inattention and often also the associated emotional symptoms the feeling of not being worth as much roller coaster moods feeling very happy one moment and then the tiniest thing can completely switch the mood and you're tumbling down often feeling

quite a little bit blue maybe down in the dumps for no apparent reason. So all of these things, you know, happen quite often too. But the good news is that Heidi's daughter's diagnosis has helped Heidi's daughter. Yes. And so the prognosis is a good one, isn't it? Exactly. So ADHD is one of these disorders which mental health professionals are actually quite happy to say that once that is done, it opens the way to quite effective treatments, which can be really life-changing

and which can really make sure that the person being treated is fulfilling their full potential. Dr. Celine Reichardt and our listener Heidi. Kirk emailed, we've been struggling for nearly a year with our daughter who is no longer able to go to school. The story of Heidi's daughter does mirror a great deal of what we're going through and none of the professionals have suggested any form of ADHD. Of course,

diagnosing mental health issues is not easy, but after hearing about Heidi and doing some research, I think our daughter ticks every single box for this condition. The really disturbing thing is that I happen to be listening by pure chance. If this does happen to be a big part of the puzzle to help our daughter, I cannot stop but think about what may have happened if I hadn't heard about Heidi. Thank you very much for that email and I hope things improve for you and for your daughter. Now, another listener wanted us to talk about falling out with friends, with a best friend in fact. The email came from Jill, who'd fallen out with a friend of 25 years standing a couple

of years ago. We talked to Hilda Burke, a psychotherapist and the author of the Phone Addiction Workbook, and to Annabelle Fenwick-Elliott, senior content editor at The Telegraph. How did her breakup with a friend happen? We were best, best, best friends for about a decade. Boyfriends came and went through both of our lives. But I think it changed sort of really quite abruptly about two years before we split up when she got engaged and seemed to undergo quite a personality transplant so there were many things that from that moment leading up to the last straw for me about two years after that and what was the last straw so she'd promised to take me to my ex-boyfriend's funeral and I was very upset

on that day as you can imagine and she bailed at the last minute and didn't take me, and I just thought, that's it. Have you spoken to each other since? Not once, no. Why was the relationship so important to you? I've always been the sort of person that has one rather than lots of friends, and she was that person. We met first day of university, and I just got on with her so well we used to always say no one will have a friendship like ours we lived together we went

through breakups together we went on holiday together we sort of that decade from your 20s to your 30s is obviously key and we survived all of it up until the ring went on apparently. Hilda how often do you see this kind of breakup happening in a professional capacity? Quite often Jenny I mean I see it from both sides so one would be the friend who has lost their best friend like Annabelle and feels bereft but I also see it from the other side which is people who have been sort of best-friended or still sort of cast in the role of best friend you know 20-30 years on but they don't feel that that role fits them anymore they don't feel the same way about the relationship with their friend it may be that they still want to maintain a friendship with that person but not to the same sort of degree of intensity so i see it you know

in from both sides of the equation in friendship relationships why do you think it's becoming more common if it is for these kind of friendships to break i think you said earlier you know a female best friend is for life so i think that whole idea like friends are family, I think friendships are becoming more intense, particularly for millennials who are settling down later. They're very, you know, avid users of social media, which, you know, puts them in contact with their friends a lot more often than maybe friends would have been in contact 50 years ago.

There might have been close friends might have called each other once a day. But now, you know, close friends will message a couple of times an hour. So there's that kind of level of intimacy and contact that I think previous generations rarely had. So I think, you know, that coupled with the fact that people are settling down later, it leaves a lot more capacity. I think people have more capacity, particularly women, for friendship in their lives. And of course, anything that you invest more in, you expect more back from. So expectations are higher. Annabelle, what effect did the split have on your use of social media?

Because presumably you had a lot of shared friends. We actually don't have that many mutual friends which is a good thing in this case all of the friends that we would sort of hang out with together were from university were more her friends always than they were mine so I don't miss seeing any of those people I deleted her from social media and I actually deleted two of these mutual friends too just because I didn't want it to come up on my feed and it was just easier that way so yeah were you so hurt by the breakup yeah you had to get rid of her out of your life absolutely yeah I knew I had a choice I knew

that I had to either the people change and you can't change people, that I either had to accept this new iteration of our friendship and whittle my expectations away, which I did many, many times to the point where it was a different friendship. But the funeral was the final straw. And I just thought, no, this is too much disappointment in my life and I'm better off without it, really. Hilda, how do you begin to get over the pain of such a breakup? I think in Annabel's case, I mean, it sounds particularly painful because of that moment when you expect your best friend to be at your side. It's a very painful thing to go through, the funeral of a significant ex-partner. So I can really hear the sadness in that story. But I think, you know, it really depends on the scenario. When you say a breakup,

some breakups, friendship breakups are mutual. Sometimes friendships just ebb away. But that is a real, that's a significant rupture. Hilda Burke and Annabelle Fennec Elliott. On Instagram, a listener called Catherine says, I lost a good friend and a work colleague 20 years ago over a job interview. She didn't appoint me. Yeah, to be fair, that must have hurt. We both behaved badly, but I was worse. In my really hurt state, I ignored her and avoided her. It is one of my regrets in life. I will never behave like that again. Friends are precious. Catherine, thank you for that.

Now on Monday, Tina Dehealy's here. She'll be talking about women in the British construction industry. Currently, women make up just 16% of the total UK construction workforce of 2 million. So how can the industry attract more girls to the trades and to the wider world of construction? That's Tina on Woman's Hour on Bank Holiday 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 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.