Divorced fathers and bad language

There was a thing on the radio this morning about a survey somewhere which said that 1 in 3 (I think it was) fathers lose touch with their children after divorce. This is a staistic that is often cited (not always the same percentage is cited – this seems to vary considerably), and I often wonder just how reliable it is. The figure is supposed to have ‘grown’ over the last 20 years. But where is the empirical evidence from before that?

I am a divorced father, and I do see my children (although they are now neither of them children any more, of course). This was managed without the help of solicitors, to a large extent. However, the bit that made me perk up was when they had a lawyer on to talk about the problem of access to parents and, what she actually said – really and truly – was that the relationship between father and children was

“polluted by prejudicial input by a residential mother”.

I think this is a clear nomination for the award for appalling use of language, which I think is actually offered by the Plain English Society. You hear that, and you wonder how in hell the language could ever be taken by the scruff of the neck and shaken so violently. I would have driven off the road, were it not that I was sitting in a traffic jam, or, as the speaker might have said, vehicularly transfixed in a manner injurious to on-board steering.

So this is not a posting about Dads4Justice (or whatever) and their foul mouths, but another regrettable instance of the English language being garrotted.