The other day I blogged [1] about a new website in America that allows those who went through divorce as 
children, but are now in adulthood, to recount their often very painful and bitter experiences. I then tweeted it.
Here is what Labour councillor Niamh McGowan tweeted in reply: “Like parents who make the difficult decision to separate really need this guilt inducing nonsense.”
This has to have been a knee-jerk reaction from Niamh. She can’t have meant to sound as completely adult-centred as she did.
Her reaction, taken at face value, was straight-out denying the very real pain experienced by many children whose parents have divorced or separated. It was as if these people had no right to speak up at all in case it makes their parents feel guilty.
This does not sit well with the notion that we are a much more child-centred society than we once were.
A child-centred society would listen to people who went through divorce as children and not silence them or marginalise them because it upsets the adults. That really is putting adults ahead of children.
In the last few years I have had university students come to me who were doing radio projects on divorce for their communications courses. They wanted to get my take on divorce. But I was much more interested in listening to what they had to say.
They themselves had parents who were divorced and they had interviewed other students whose parents had also divorced. I’m not aware of any major radio show that has run similar interviews.
If they haven’t then they need to, and they need to do it consistently and systematically. These voices need to be heard and not hidden away just become some adults might not like it.