Daughters

Daughters can be hard work. We headed for a pub on Thursday evening, at the desperate request of a friend whose sixteen-year-old daughter is giving her grief, by staying out overnight and not answering her mobile phone. Friend needed someone to talk to and -being a single mother - some adult company for a change. What can she do? Her daughter refuses to give her the boyfriend's address, or even his name, and there is no way of forcing the girl to divulge the information. So she's sent the girl to her grandmother for a week, but that is leading to resentment and arguments.

We were joined by another couple. Their nineteen-year-old is sulky, uncommunicative and unco-operative, hardly speaking a word to her parents. They are upset because this girl has just refused to attend a family wedding in favour of a mate's party. Both girls have exams in a month's time. I wonder if that has anything to do with their moods?

Porklet has been a model of good behaviour in comparison, I guess. That is, apart from the odd spot of drunken damage. I don't think that we're any better parents than the others; one of whom is fairly strict, and the other less so but very moral; so I suppose that it's down to luck and genes and the girls' choices of friends.