Henrietta Hay's Column

The perils of parenthood are universal.

Ask Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain. She has had a hard year. She has kept a stiff royal upper lip, but recently she did make a gentle statement of protest. At a luncheon she said, in her unqueenly voice, "1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure." That has to be one of the great understatements of the decade.

She has suffered from some most un-royal behavior on the part of her offspring, coupled with vicious tabloid coverage of their every breath. The heir to the throne, Charles, married a most beautiful future queen, but their rocky marriage has been front-page gossip for years. Tapes of their torrid telephone conversations - not with each other - have furnished the British with some very juicy entertainment. We do not have a very positive picture of either Charles or Diana, but one sympathetic story, says that, "The Prince of Wales is not a tiresome cad, and the Princess of Wales is not a crazy witch." OK. Although divorce is unlikely, a formal separation seems inevitable.

The Queen's only daughter, Princess Anne apparently likes horses better than people, and has finally been divorced from Captain Mark Phillips. The second son, Prince Andrew and his wife Fergie are separating for reasons fairly obvious to anyone who can read and look at pictures. Prince Edward is living the life of a happy bachelor and showing no signs of producing another potential heir to the throne.

And you thought you had troubles with your kids.

The inability of parents to control their children, or even advise them seriously, is not a new phenomenon. In the third century B. C. Socrates commented that "Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food and tyrannize their teachers."

Perhaps Queen Elizabeth is remembering with some understanding, the story of King Lear. Lear was a divine but shadowy figure in the mythology of the ancient Britons. He too had quite a bit of trouble with his kids, some of whom wanted to get rid of him and take over his kingdom. He is the King to whom Shakespeare gave the immortal words, " How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child."

For that matter, Adam and Eve had a little trouble with their sons.

To most of us Americans royalty is an anachronism anyway, but as parents we can certainly sympathize with the Queen. This year the soap opera behavior of the "royals" has kept us entertained more than usual. Here we have a Queen of impeccable reputation who has represented her country with dignity for forty years - who can't control her kids. Since hers are all heirs to a throne, her troubles probably exceed any personal parenting problems that leaders in America have had. They do tend to make us quite thankful that we decided to go our own way in 1776.

But we have not been without some problems of our own. Theodore Roosevelt's daughter, Alice, kept the White House in an uproar for years. At one point a friend asked, "Isn't there anything you can do to control Alice?" Teddy Roosevelt replied, "I can do one of two things. I can be President of the United States, or I can control Alice. I cannot possibly do both." More recently we have had Patti Reagan Davis and Neil Bush but I think they have been outclassed.

The final straw for Queen Elizabeth did not involve her children, but he tragic fire in her beloved Windsor Castle polished off her awful year. Still the upper lip was stiff as she suggested that criticism might be "just as effective if it is made with a touch of gentleness, good humor and understanding.

But she still has to figure out what to do with her children, as do we all.