Prominent politicians must do more to protect the mental well-being of their children, according to a leading historian whose research has revealed the enormous pressures faced by those with parents in government.
Professor Elizabeth Hurren, chair of modern history at the University of Leicester, found a worrying pattern of mental health and well-being problems in the children of politicians, which was often linked to their parents’ work and the unrelenting attention that comes with it. public life.
“Child politicians need their private spaces, but few have that opportunity in an age of faster news headline social media and online clickbait,” Hurren said. “Politicians are aware of the problem, but are reluctant to discuss it.”
Hurren’s work, which will be presented at the British science festival in Leicester on Tuesday, draws on memoirs, media coverage and interviews with adult children of politicians to describe the mental health issues many struggle with. Despite obvious privilege, some children develop complex emotional problems after being in the public eye during their parents’ roller coaster rides and later when private family stories are recounted in memoirs.
by Hurren research for the british academy comes as new Prime Minister Liz Truss and her cabinet, who together are parents to at least 47 children, take on the formidable tasks of guiding the country through an economic crisis, rebuilding the NHS and navigating a reshaped world. for the war in Ukraine.
According to Hurren, Truss’s decision to keep her daughters, Frances, 16, and Liberty, 13, out of the public eye, and not to photograph them in front of No 10, suggests she has put a lot of thought into their privacy. “She is protecting her mental wellbeing,” Hurren said. “Liz Truss seems to understand this fact of political life better than many of her parliamentary colleagues who have denied it or preferred to downplay the cost of public office for a politician’s son.”
Problems can start long before children become the center of attention. Carol Thatcher was sent to a private girls’ school after her twin brother Mark went to boarding school. In Hurren’s report, Carol says that she was kicked out of her because her mother Margaret’s attitude was that she “didn’t make much sense running a house for a child.”
Thatcher’s success left Carol feeling she could never measure up, the report added. Quoted in the study, she says: “No one will ever know me for being anything other than Margaret Thatcher’s daughter, so at the end of the day, whatever I did was never good enough.”
Hurren found that many children become silent actors, called in for family photo shoots or to make political points, as when John Gummer, the Conservative agriculture minister, fed his four-year-old daughter, Cordelia, a cheeseburger. beef during the BSE crisis. . “Children know how to smile for the camera, but they are expected to remain silent actors on the public stage,” she writes.
The teenage years are often the most stressful, says Hurren. Children of politicians can be criticized at school, particularly if their parents introduce unpopular policies or become involved in scandals such as legal affairs or irregularities. There are also other risks at that age: Euan Blair was 16 when he was arrested in Leicester Square for being “drunk and incapable”, while William Straw, the son of former Home Secretary Jack Straw, was 17 when he was booked for selling cannabis. after a nasty tabloid sting.
With social media, a single photo can make headlines, says Hurren. “The news feed is fast and once a story is available it creates a narrative around you. You don’t want that when you’re a teenager because it’s so hard to shake off,” she adds.
The difficulties that children face are not always clear to their parents-in-law. In 2017, Blair told the Mirror that she once told her children that “it wasn’t that bad” for them, to which they replied, “No, you don’t realize, we used to get spanked a lot.”
Some of the most serious problems arise when politicians tell private family stories in lucrative memoirs soon after leaving office, says Hurren. Since the 1970s, political memoirs have become more candid and revealing, with politicians looking into family problems and discussing their children’s mishaps, failures, and even medical conditions. Combined with politicians posting personal information on social media, children now face a “double whammy,” she said.
“There’s a legacy of being the son of a politician and sometimes it doesn’t come out until adulthood when they’re trying to build emotional relationships. They’ve learned to be so inscrutable and not comment that they haven’t figured out how they feel,” says Hurren.
“We need to find solutions to the problems these children face, because those generic lessons could help new politicians when they enter parliament.”
