The lost grandchildren

MYRA says it's almost worse than a death: "When someone close to you dies, you can eventually arrive at some kind of acceptance…

MYRA says it's almost worse than a death: "When someone close to you dies, you can eventually arrive at some kind of acceptance. But they're not dead, they are still out there. They have been part of our lives, we thought they would always be part of our lives, now we could pass them in the street and not know them."

Myra hasn't seen her two young grandchildren since her son's marriage ended four years ago and his wife and children moved to another part of the country. The separation was hostile and the young mother has put up the barricades against her former husband and family. Myra is one of a growing breed.

While generations of Irish parents have lost out on grandchildren through emigration, an increasing number of today's older people are having a precious relationship severed abruptly through bitter breakdown. Grandparents, as well as children, are becoming the pawns in a new power game.

Now some grandparents are fighting back. GPO stands for Grand Parents Obliterated. It is both a support and a campaigning group and has its first public meeting in Dublin on April 21st. GPO spokeswoman Una Hayden is a grandmother who says her weekly visit to her three grandchildren is one of the main joys of her life. But she began to realise that others were not so fortunate:

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"It started through creative writing classes which I do with older people. We would be talking about life, the past, and when I would ask `have you grandchildren?' there would often be a hesitation, and slowly the stories would come out. Some of them are heartbreaking. Grandparents talk about going to shopping centres, to the school gates to catch a glimpse of grandchildren they are no longer allowed to see formally. One woman had a grandchild who died in a cot death, but said this is worse." Una felt she had uncovered a large, unrecognised problem.

She wrote a short letter to a newspaper on the issue and was deluged by desolate grandparents: "I had 643 letters and phone calls, and it hasn't stopped. Today my phone begins ringing at half eight in the morning and I take it off the hook at night to get a break.

"They all say the same thing. `What did we do? Why should we suffer?' They can't realise how someone can do this to a child. They go around looking at children all the time. We also have cases where a child is being put into foster care because of a family difficulty yet there may be a set of perfectly good grandparents who would love to care for the child, but nobody gets to see or consider them."

In almost all cases, the lost grandchildren are the children of a son rather than a daughter. Occasionally, the child is extramarital, and the relationship between the parents has soured or dwindled.

"In some cases, grandparents have never seen their grandchild, never went to the christening, and just know that he or she exists," says Una. "But usually, it's marital separation and when the case comes to the family law court, that's when the trouble starts. It's assumed that fathers are not capable of rearing their children and women are given custody almost automatically. A child has two parents, and it's to the benefit of the child that two parents are equally involved."

Even when Dad has access to his children, grandparents may still be excluded if an ex wife gradually imposes conditions: "Grandparents tell us that the child can come out some Sunday and say to Dad `You can't take me to granny's because Mam says so'. It's just another way to get at the man and his family."

Grandmothers, of course, are also mothers in law. "You've said it", says Una, "there can be old scores to settle. It's a complex situation, but again, I ask, should children suffer?" She says allegations of child abuse by a mother against a separated father effectively deny him access: "This has been the flavour of the year. What happens is that he is immediately prevented from seeing his children. The case can take a year or longer to come to court, and all that time he may have no access to his children. Say, then, the DPP eventually throws it out, that's meant to be the end of it. But it can be very difficult for the father to make up the lost ground with his children, and the suspicion might always be hanging over him.

"I believe some women do make spurious allegations in order to deprive the man of access. Also, some children are brainwashed against their fathers. Some grandparents have used the term `moonied', to describe how their grandchildren are turned against them. Because if Dad loses out, then his parents also lose out."

GRAND Parents Obliterated has found common cause with Parental Equality, an organisation of separated men fighting for an ongoing relationship with their children, and more justice, as they see it, from the Irish courts. Alan Beirne, PRO for Parental Equality, is a separated man with one child: "I think we are still living with the legacy of the 1970s when women won many much needed rights. I used to call myself a feminist, but now I'm not so sure. The wheel has gone the other way. In 90 per cent of cases women get custody, and even when men look for joint custody to help co parent their child, they can be turned down with no reason given. Why should our rights be less?"

Father Martin Tierney is director of family ministry at St Audoen's Parish, Dublin, has supported the establishment of GPO.

"I was alerted to the situation by meeting a distraught grandmother who was being denied access to her grandchildren because her son's marriage had broken up. She had lobbied TDs and got an interview with a Government Minister, an ordinary working class mum prepared to take on the system.

"Since then I've realised it's happening all over the place. I'm thinking of a parishioner of 86 who hasn't seen her grandchildren for two years, it's breaking her heart. She is totally innocent. Grandparents are being penalised in this, losing out in their old age".

Meanwhile in Britain, of the 200,000 divorces there in 1993, the children in 100,000 of these families will now have lost touch with their non residential father, according to marital and family therapist Margaret Robinson. "Contact with fathers is broken not because they don't care, but because they cannot deal with the pain, or they have nowhere to take the children, there is hostility from the mother, or the child is angry and doesn't want to see them, or through, lack of money," she says.

And again, if he loses out, so do his parents. The Grandparents' Federation was set up in Britain in 1985 to campaign against children being made wards of court in cases where grandparents could have offered a home, or at least wanted a voice. The organisation fought successfully for the Children's Act which was introduced in 1991. It allows claimants, including grandparents, who can prove they have a close relationship with a child to make a case for ongoing contact. In its first year, 60,000 contact cases came to court.

"The contact need not be face to face, it can be letters, phone calls," says Noreen Tingle, a founder member of the federation, which continues to advise and support grandparents.

In Newcastle, the federation initiated the Befriending Project where grandparents offer support and guidance to young mothers who have lost contact with their own mothers. A similar project is about to start in Essex.

"Many young mothers need help and advice with childrearing, and here grandparents in the community can be a great help," says Noreen Tingle. Within families, she feels the two generations offer each other something special. "Grandchildren give grandparents a sense of continuation," she says. "My grandson has a crooked little finger exactly like his father's, and a granddaughter has my mother's tight curly hair. We give them the same in reverse. We give them a sense of stability, identity, belonging, history."

IRISH therapist Nuala Cadwell echoes this: "I see the loss of grandparents to children and vice versa here as a loss of a sense of community. The nuclear family with fewer siblings gives children a narrower range of relationships and experiences, and even if the relationship is turbulent, you learn about managing the bad as well as the good.

"Also I think grandchildren can relate to grandparents at one step removed. Grandparents can be a buffer for children if they're having problem with parents, equally children can often reach out to grandparents in a more tolerant way than the adults in between can because they are not caught in the same role trap."

Grand Parents Obliterated is looking to the Commission on the Family (set up last month by the Government to examine how existing laws, policies and services affect our changing family structure) to consider their plight. They want a change in the Guardianship of Infants Act to include grandparents as suitable guardians in certain circumstances. They also want improved access. At present there is provision for a son to apply for access for grandparents in cases where this is denied, though few families know this. Access is at a judge's discretion.

Tom, a separated man with one child, lives with his parents and brings his five year old daughter, Alannah, home to them every Sunday and every second weekend from Friday to Sunday.

"To see her interaction with my father is very poignant for me," says Tom. "She gardens with him, she bakes cakes with my mother. She is also getting a sense of family. She will say `you're my Daddy, and that's your Daddy, and that's uncle Jack'. Allanah's mother's parents are dead. Being able to know, love and be loved by my parents helps her know who she is".