Psychiatric Bulletin (2000) 24: 400. doi: 10.1192/pb.24.10.400-a
© 2000 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Psychiatric Bulletin (2000) 24: 400
© 2000 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Wednesday's Child: Research into Women's Experience of Neglect and Abuse in Childhood, and Adult Depression
By Antonia Bifulco & Patricia Moran
Susan Pawlby, Senior Research Psychologist
Section of Perinatal Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny
Park, Denmark Hill, London SE5 8AF
London and New York: Routledge. 1998. 207 pp. £14.99 (pb). ISBN:
0-415-16527-X
The masterly way in which the authors of Wednesday's Child have
woven together the quantitative and qualitative data of their series of
research projects, carried out over a period of 20 years under the
directorship of George Brown and Tirril Harris, must be the envy of
researchers investigating the psychological and social influences of childhood
experiences on adult life. Although the book often makes disturbing reading,
the women's poignant accounts give meaning to the bare statistical fact that
as many as one in four ordinary women in the community have been subject to
severe neglect or abuse in childhood. This doubles the likelihood of their
suffering from clinical depression in adult life, independently of other
adverse family circumstances such as parental loss, parental conflict, poverty
or parental psychiatric state. Furthermore, the greater the number of abuses,
be it neglect, physical or sexual, in childhood, the higher the risk of
depression in adulthood. 
By asking the women to give detailed descriptions of their childhood
experiences, corroborated in a novel way by independent interviews with their
sisters, it has proved possible to identify the factors that link neglect and
abuse with later depression. The authors found that women's experience of
neglectful parenting, including role-reversal and antipathy, and physical,
sexual and psychological abuse extinguishes their sense of self-worth and
damages their view of human relationships. Social support, along with coping
strategies, are two of the main factors identified as protecting women from
the effects of adverse childhood experiences — and yet the very nature
of the legacy of these experiences makes it difficult for them to establish
supportive relationships, leaving them vulnerable to feelings of isolation and
depression.
As we come to the end of the century of the child and the dawn of a new
millennium, the authors stress the importance of providing a safe, nurturing
environment in which parents and children feel that they are valued and can
develop a sense of trust and in which as adults they can adopt a meaningful
role for themselves. This is a duty for society as well as for families
individually and as such has implications for social policy. We owe it to the
women whose innermost secrets have been chronicled in Wednesday's
Child and to the women, men and children whose stories have gone
untold.
