A new year and a new spouse

Fri, 21 Jan 2000 17:00:00 +0000

Forget quitting smoking. Forget losing weight. This year, a vast number of Britons at the dawn of the millennium resolved to lose something else -- their spouses.

They're calling it "clean slate syndrome."

Divorce lawyers in particular -- but marriage counselors as well -- say that they've been inundated with calls from disenchanted spouses since New Year's Day. These callers see the new millennium as the perfect time to either question, or to end, their not-quite-so-perfect relationships.

Celebrity couples, too, greeted the New Year by kissing their spouses goodbye. The former Spice Girl Melanie Brown, better known as Scary Spice, announced that her marriage to the Dutch dancer Jimmy Gulzar was ending -- 15 months after they took their vows. (In the United States, Ted Turner and Jane Fonda announced their separation on CNN's Web site this month following eight years of marriage.)

Vanessa Lloyd Platts, of matrimonial law specialists Lloyd Platts & Co., calls it "matrimonial millennium madness."

"We have a flu epidemic in Britain, but we also have a [divorce] epidemic. If people continue to call us as they are now, there won't be anyone left to get a divorce in 10 years," she said.

High noon for nurturers

Tue, 26 Oct 1999 16:00:00 +0000

Dr. Penelope Leach, child-rearing guru and advocate of unlimited affection for children, appears ready to administer a spanking. The British psychologist and author of the parental advice bible "Your Baby and Child" will not, however, be putting any kiddies over her knee. Instead, her sights are set on American Gary Ezzo, an evangelical Christian minister and competing child-care expert who, with his wife, Anne Marie, advocates a "tough love" approach to child-raising. That approach includes spanking as well as scheduled feedings, scheduled potty training and a rule that infants be left to cry themselves to sleep at the age of 8 weeks.

"I believe their programs incite child abuse and should carry a
government health warning," says Leach, poised with a great deal of tension on a couch in her Hampstead home office. "We don't allow pediatric pornography, so we should not allow this."

That which should not be allowed is a visit to England by the Ezzos, who plan to invade Leach's territory this week to give a series of lectures (the largest is set to take place at London's Westminster Chapel on Saturday). Leach, backed by an alliance of 200 organizations called Children Are Unbeatable, has condemned the Ezzos as "dangerous" and has attempted to ban them from any advocacy on British soil. (The British government has not yet responded to her demand.)

Salon.com > Shelley Emling

A new year and a new spouse

High noon for nurturers