From ‘agony columns’ to Dear Abby, advice columns have long helped readers confess their secret problems | Canada Voices

Long before Reddit threads, relationship podcasts or virtual therapists, there was the advice column. Often tucked between a newspaper’s classifieds section and the comics, it was a place where readers could confess secret troubles they dared not tell their spouse, their neighbours or even good friends.

In the early days, around the Second World War, these so-called “agony columns” focused on homemaking and etiquette quandaries and were a way for print publications to attract more female readers. By the sixties they’d evolved into public forums where readers (using pseudonyms) felt comfortable revealing problems and fears they were too ashamed to share with anyone else.

They tackled taboo subjects such as sex or family dysfunction that church and government were happy to avoid. And in the process, the humble advice column – often dismissed as fluff or filler – helped reshape not just journalism but the way readers understood their private lives.

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As New York-based historian and author Julie Golia writes in her book, Newspaper Confessions: A History of Advice Columns in a Pre-Internet Age: “There was a misogynistic dismissal of the ‘soft news’ genre … but in decades where people did not discuss things like sex and other personal relationship issues, the advice column was an invaluable resource.”

Golia argues the genre created a vibrant cultural dialogue in the pages of mass circulation newspapers. “They tackled everything from Depression-era budgeting to modern child-rearing.

“They invited participation. And they built loyalty,” she wrote. “And they instilled in generations of readers, the importance of confession and catharsis in solving problems.”

Far from frivolous, these pages were shaping public discourse. And at The Globe and Mail – like most major newspapers – advice has been part of the editorial fabric for nearly a century.

In the 1930s, The Globe ran Dear Neighbors, answering questions about manners, gardening and food. By the 1940s, the column Among Ourselves, signed simply “The Homemaker,” continued to tackle domestic issues in a no-nonsense, practical way.

But by the mid-1960s, something shifted.

Mrs. Thompson Advises, written by journalist Margaret Jean Armstrong Brydon Brien, moved beyond table settings and into personal issues – marital collapse, child estrangement, even same-sex relationships. Readers, protected by anonymity, didn’t hold back. One column from 1976 stands out.

The reader explained she would never have had children, had she known the “physical and emotional wear and tear” that being a parent demands. “Having a child is like a 20-year sentence.”

She went on: “I can truthfully tell you my children have not given me one moment of joy … although they have on occasion amused me.”

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Her reason for writing? Her married daughter was considering having kids – and she desperately hoped her daughter wouldn’t make her a grandmother.

Mrs. Thompson’s response was measured, but firm. “Good parenting can be learned,” she told the reader, implying the daughter might be a better parent than the mother. Honesty is a hallmark of the genre.

The person who invented the advice column as we know it was John Dunton, a 17th-century London bookseller who came up with the idea for a magazine composed of questions submitted by anonymous readers. He formed a committee of so-called experts (men he knew) who answered questions ranging from why there are spots on the moon to how to have an affair without your spouse finding out.

The magazine, called The Athenian Mercury, caused something of a sensation, lasted six years and then quietly disappeared.

But it left a mark, becoming the template from which the modern-day advice column evolved, including the long-running syndicated columns Ask Ann Landers and Dear Abby (Abigail Van Buren), penned by twin sisters and advice-giving rivals. The genre continues to thrive today, with popular columns such as Dear Prudence (Slate) and Ask Polly (Substack).

New York author and columnist Lori Gottlieb, who writes Ask the Therapist for The New York Times, says the advice column endures because it provides answers to problems that are timeless: How do I repair a relationship with my estranged mother? Why don’t my children listen to me? What do I say to my best friend who has cancer?

Gottlieb laments that people often think of advice columns as peripheral, as afterthoughts that don’t have the same heft, say, as political writing or daily news. “But I think our lives are the news,” she said in a phone interview from New York. “There is a place in major publications for looking at how we live our lives, and how we live in the world.”

Gottlieb receives thousands of letters each week from people who feel they have nowhere else to turn. “We live in an era of constant digital connection and a steady stream of advice on social media. Yet, in some ways, people seem to feel more disconnected, more confused and lonelier than ever,” says Gottlieb, whose memoir, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed, was a New York Times bestseller.

She says the essence of all the questions that come pouring in to advice columns is the same: “How do I connect? And do I feel seen, heard, understood, valued and respected?”

Gottlieb believes that there is something deeply comforting about writing to another human being for advice, that it fosters a human-to-human connection too often missing in our tech-focused world.

“An advice columnist can be both compassionate and candid and there often aren’t people in our lives who can provide both of those things,” she says. “News reports what is happening in the world. Advice columns reveal what is happening inside us.”