Dear auntie whoever

Agony aunts are a dying breed. In their place, a growing army of two-bit celebrities and opinionated amateurs. Suzie Hayman fears for our sanity

Question: "I'm juggling three men at the same time. Now I'm pregnant and I don't know which one is the father. None of them knows about the other two, though it's been going on for a year. I've always said that if anything went wrong with the condoms we use, then I'd have an abortion. But now I'm not so sure. I've been broody ever since my best friend had her baby. The truth is, I'm 29 and ready for motherhood."

Answer: "If you really want the baby, you should have it. Single mothers make this decision all the time. Tell each of your lovers that you are pregnant, then judge them by their reactions. You may find that two of them don't want to know, while the third is over the moon. You then have the rightful father, a case of natural selection."

This advise comes from Molly Parkin, agony aunt at TV Quick magazine. Her qualifications for the job? "She's had two children, four grandchildren and one hell of a life. Who better to advise you on your problems than Molly?". Dr Crippen, perhaps?

I am an agony aunt. I've been one for 10 years, initially with Essentials, the monthly women's magazine, and for the last five years for Woman's Own. It's a job I take seriously, which is why I don't take kindly to having my profession seen as a bit of a giggle. Nor do I like the belief that readers prefer to get whatever it is they do get from an agony page better from true-life stories or the opinions of soap, pop and film stars or from someone who only shows a talent for penning a snappy phrase or mouthing off on moral issues.

Sadly, a lot of editors don't seem to agree with me. There is a definite trend away from serious problem pages and both the celebrity agony aunt and the I've-lived-so-I-know breed are on the increase. One national newspaper had Diana Dors writing its problem page, and the Spice Girls have offered their own brand of in-your-face advice to lovelorn teenagers in their magazine. Anne Atkins gained her position on the Daily Telegraph after a controversial homophobic rant on Radio 4's Thought for the Day, and Eve Pollard held the post on the Sunday Mirror for the best part of a year, with no more going for her (and her readers) than the fact she had been a Fleet Street editor. One of these days some newspaper is going to give Jeremy Clarkson or David Mellor an agony page, and I'll be neither cheering nor laughing. I can take being seen as a bit of a joke, but having my job seen as something anyone can do is quite another matter. And before you accuse me of self-aggrandisement, arrogance or job protectionism (all of which may be true) there is more to it than that.

I'm not the only one who thinks this. Piers Morgan, editor of the Mirror, has said, "We get a huge response from readers. Hundreds of letters come in every week. They've got serious problems they want resolved. The right agony aunt becomes a lifeblood for readers. Agony aunts are probably the few people on a paper who can save relationships and even, at times, lives." Claire Rayner, now retired from the field but still the best known agony aunt, agrees. "If you are going to do an agony column it must be treated with respect. People do listen to what you say, you do have an enormous responsibility."

An agony page has to be a mixture of entertainment and information, advice and reassurance. The skills I use when counselling are the same as those I bring to my problem page. Counselling is two-way and dynamic and answering letters means you only have one shot at one side of a story, but the nature of what you should offer (respect, attention) and what you should do (listen, help the client explore their options, be non-judgmental and non-directive and give them the confidence to act) is identical.

I strongly believe that those who write these pages need to have signed up, if only implicitly, to some form of ethical code. Journalists have a code: get a good story and make it as juicy, controversial and exclusive as possible. Celebrities have a code, too: hit the headlines and stay in the public eye. Neither is compatible with the promise a professional carer makes, to be objective, respectful and to use their skills to help the client. Experience is valuable, but expertise more so.

It's a view shared by Suzy Powling of Relate: "There are people in great distress out there and they deserve a professional response and a professional response is a trained response. You're not just replying to an individual, what you say has a much more far-reaching effect and the well meaning amateur can get it horribly wrong."

Most letters don't come with a clear presenting problem. A query about an argument at work may actually be a cry for help with sexual problems; a complaint about a neighbour may really be about troubles with in-laws. I don't feel that my life, on its own, gave me the insight to discern the problems and possible solutions clearly, I needed training for that.

Tricia Kreitman, agony aunt of Mizz and Prima magazines, sums up the problems. "The way I regard what I do is that people send me what are often long, confused letters and it's like getting the jumbled up pieces of a jigsaw. I sort out the corners and some of the edges and give them some idea of what the picture might look like."

Not having training can be dangerous for all concerned. When the Spice Girls tell a reader whose boyfriend is boasting she had sex with him, that she should spread the counter-rumour he was a lousy lay, it's not assertive "Girl Power" advice, but confrontational and very risky. One journalist-turned-agony aunt totally missed the point in the letter from a woman asking advice on attracting the attention of her bank teller. "I've fallen in love with him but don't know how to tell him. I'm not very good at relationships since I was raped when I was 16 and have avoided men since then." What she got was the suggestion that she should slip him a note. What she needed was to have the significance of her choice - a man safely hidden behind a pane of glass - pointed out and the gentle suggestion that perhaps the rape was still affecting her and she might benefit from some help on that score.

Agony Atkins was asked: "As you suggested, I threatened my son with a smack if he kept on throwing Buzz Lightyear at his little sister. He did it anyway. What now?" She replied tersely, "Smack him." So much for logic and so much for the latest research that has led all the children's charities to say that hitting children is harmful and - most important - ineffective.

We all have our own moral agendas, but we don't have the right to foist these on readers who look to us for informed and unbiased suggestions. Tricia Kreitman, who has a training in psychology and a professional qualification in psychosexual counselling, says, "If you're making a guess on your own experiences and problems only, you may not be able to be objective. I do think some sort of counselling training is important, both for getting the objective view and for being able to step back from the very real and awful dilemmas we deal with day to day."

"The need for agony aunts" says Christine Webber, a qualified psychotherapist, "is greater than ever and it's therefore important that the people giving the advice are responsible and trained. Readers, listeners and viewers look to us when their doctor is not sympathetic and they haven't got a friend." It's such a pity, then, that TV Times, for which Webber was agony aunt, recently decided that they could do without such a column altogether.

Ninety per cent of people who see a woman's magazine read the agony page, and each issue of Woman's Own may be read by up to 4 million people. My readers tend to be young mothers on a low income but with more and more publications - the Independent included - now carrying some form of "reader's queries" pages, the fact is that most people see, read and enjoy an agony page of some sort regularly.

There's a fascination in problem pages. We read them voyeuristically, to peep, wonder and laugh at other peoples difficulties. We read them for reassurance that our lives aren't quite as chaotic, nor we quite as incompetent. But secretly, we also read them looking for the quick fix for our own particular dilemmas.

You don't have to be a psychiatrist, an accredited therapist or a counsellor of 10 years standing to write an agony page. Of course there are some people who have the nous, the insight, the understanding to have got there just from the university of life. But there are some klutzes out there and there are some who are downright dangerous, to themselves and their readers.

Suzie Hayman is an agony aunt and a trained Relate counsellor