Mother Kind Podcast explores how to feel happier, more confident
and empowered in your motherhood, even in our world of
pressure judgement in comparison, I'm your host, Zoe
Blaski, and every week I speak to an incredible expert to share
actionable steps and powerful lessons to living your life as a
mother with more joy and unapologetic confidence.
Listen wherever you get your podcasts, just search Mother
Kind. We have a very special episode
for you today, our first Live to Be a Boy podcast recording live
from the Working Dads Summit last week.
The summit was hosted by my company, Parenting Out Loud, and
it was all about how we support dads to be loud and proud about
their care and responsibilities at work so they can be.
Equal parents at home. We heard from business leaders,
we heard from dads, we had real life men in the in in the
audience on stage talking and we had Stella Creasy and Baroness
Penn talking about parental leave reform.
It was a incredible day. The recordings will be available
soon. There's an article on the
Guardian which you can check out as well, which is incredible.
We spent a lot of time at the summit, of course, rightly so,
talking about dads, talking about men and talking about the
ups and downs of fatherhood, about dad's mental health, about
the impact on the well-being of dads when we are supported to
spend time with our children and balance work with care.
But it was also really important that we use that opportunity to
talk about the motherhood penalty.
And of course, there's no one better to talk about the
motherhood penalty than our own Jodie Brady.
So for this live. Recording.
I interviewed Jodie and asked her a few tricky questions about
the state we are in right now when it comes to working dads,
working mums, the intersection of our experiences and
ultimately why Supporting dads. The parent out loud has positive
benefits to the motherhood penalty and what that means for
boys. So how does a motherhood penalty
impact boys? Well, first and foremost,
finances. We already know that 31% of
children in the UK live in poverty and the motherhood
penalty makes that even worse. So we need to make sure we can
address the motherhood penalty to make sure households have the
finances they need to be able to focus on parenting their sons
and their boys and their children.
But it's not just the money, it's the stress.
Parenting, as you know, is really bloody hard and the
motherhood penalty and the stress that creates in the
household impacts the well-being of both parents, which of course
impacts the way we parent our children and importantly, gender
roles. The motherhood penalty
reinforces those traditional gender roles of the dad as the
provider protector, mum as the homemaker and main caregiver.
Now if that's a choice that you make, that is fine, but if you
are forced into those roles, it can be quite damaging to the
family unit. And of course for the boys
growing up in their household, seeing their dad playing a
particular role, seeing their mum playing a particular role,
and that is shaping how they believe the workplace works,
parenting works, relationship works.
And that can have. A detrimental impact on them
growing up and being equal parents themselves and working
to redefine masculinity and working to adjust the motherhood
penalty and create really inclusive workplace and
societies and communities. So this was.
An incredible conversation. It was our first live to be a
voice recording. Let's get into it.
Our next session is a special one.
This is very, very exciting. Ladies and gentlemen.
We have seen that parenting out loud can have a ripple effect
through the home, through workplaces, and importantly,
with the women that they parent with.
For far too long, the pen, the parenting penalty has
disproportionately affected mothers.
But as we've seen from our panels and everyone here today,
when dads fully step in, when they parent out loud, that
discrepancy can be decreased and hopefully the parenting penalty
can be completely eliminated. Do we want to eliminate it?
Yes, I think we do. Exactly.
Well, that's exactly what our next session is all about.
We have a special podcast recording of the To Be a Boy
podcast. This podcast have graced
billboards across Leicester Square.
It has reached #7 in the Spotify UK Podcast Charts and it's the
leading podcast in the UK for all things boys, masculinity and
modern parenthood. It is Co created and Co hosted
by our very own Elliot Ray and also by the formidable founder
of Pregnant Then Screwed and the new initiative Growth Spurt,
Jolie Braley. So please give a work in Doubt
summit. Welcome to Elliot and Jolie.
We recognize we have the legend. Jolie Braley, please people ask
me or like, why did you start the podcast?
And I say when Jodie really asks you to do something, you just
say, you know, your parents say to you like, would you jump off
a Cliff if your friends did? And I'll be like, well, if Jodie
was going to the yeah, I'll jump off a Cliff.
Jodie, this is not like this is our first live podcast reporting
and our. First live podcast.
So you normally we would interview a guest.
Look at we had the episode dropping today actually.
Yeah, we're beyond equality. We did.
We were here. Are they here?
Ben is here. We got Ben incredible episode
beyond equality, do incredible work supporting boys are going
to schools and it it's it's amazing.
So thank you again for being here.
Normally. We interview a guest, but today
we're going to mix it up. I'm going to interview.
You. Yeah, that's going to be a bit
weird. It is.
Should do our intro welcome back to to be.
A boy podcast. With me, Elliot Ray.
And me, Jolie Brilly. And today we're mixing it up.
We're going to talk a little bit about the motherhood penalty.
We're coming live from the Working Dads Summit.
We've spoken a lot about the dads experience and that's all
good, but we need to really make sure we make space and touch on
the motherhood penalty, what this means for working mums.
And I don't think there's anyone better in the UK to be speaking
about. So Jodie, first question, where
are we right now? What does the picture look like
for working mums in the UK when it comes to the motherhood
penalty, the barriers that exist in accessing the labour market
and. Accessing poor.
Good mental health and just being happy and healthy and
having good well-being. OK, I don't.
I mean, this is going to sound really doom and gloom, but on
almost every metric, things are worse.
So pregnancy discrimination has increased.
It used to be 54,000 women a year got pushed out of the job
for getting pregnant. That's a woman.
Every 10 minutes, one in nine pregnant women lose their job
for getting pregnant. So we thought that was bad
enough and then we did the research and found that actually
it's increased again. So it's now 74,000 women every
year get pushed out of their job.
We also know that mothers have really bad rates.
Mental health at the moment, probably because I would say the
stress, the financial stress as well as the fact that we're
working longer hours, the cost of living crisis, we're poorer
than we were 30 years ago. We're financially worse off.
We have worse rates of mental health, pregnancy, maternity
discrimination is increasing. Meanwhile, the motherhood
penalties then stubbornly the same as it was 10 years ago.
So we did some research recently.
We found that the pay gap between mothers and fathers over
a week of earnings is 33%. Mothers are only 33% less than
dads over a week. So I'm afraid things are a bit
shit, but I'm trying to give, I'm trying to enter the hopeful
message, which, you know, the hope is this room, right?
It's everybody here, the men who I've met so many nice men today
who just really flying the flag for equal parenting who get it,
who want things to change. This whole room full of people
who are here to advocate for better for working parents and
and Elliot, who's managed to bring this room full of people
together who we're all you know, you're not all the same.
You will different people from different backgrounds with
different life experiences who all want to go out there and
create change. And so I mean, let's see, I just
want to give it a. I was going to say we can drown
our sores at 5:00 PM, there's champagne and Prosecco.
But I think you're right to reflect the reality.
You know, there is, there is hope, but at the same time we
can't sugarcoat things. Lots of people go through lots
of stress and working mum's have it have it really, really tough.
As you mentioned, there's so many different people in this
room and in design this event that that was on purpose.
You know, the the experience of motherhood is intersectional.
What would you say is the different experiences for
mothers when we take into account class and race and
disability and other characteristics?
I mean, there's not enough data on this, but the data that we
have shows that things are worse for black and brown women and
they're worse for disabled mothers and mothers with
disabled children. There was a brilliant report on
Mud Forces Society about two or three years ago, which found
that black women face a more significant motherhood penalty
than any of the demographic didn't look at disabled women or
or women with disabled children because the data just didn't
exist. But it found that black women
face this intersectional discrimination because of the
ethnicity pay gap as well as the motherhood penalty and the
discrimination that you the bias that you experience in the
workforce. So we know that black Caribbean
women are 11 percentage points less likely to be employed when
they have children than black fathers are.
For white women, that's only 5 percentage points compared to
white men, and Bangladeshi women are 17% more likely to be
unemployed when they have children.
Black women are also the demographic that are most likely
to be rejected for a flexible working request.
So there, there definitely is intersectional experiences and
it's far worse for black and brown mothers, the demographic I
would say that have it the hardest, and mothers of disabled
children, and they are being systematically ignored by
everything that we're doing, the whole system.
It seems to be getting far worse for mothers of disabled
children. But we just don't have the data
to tell you what that looks like because nobody's bothered to
collect it, which I think speaks for itself.
But yeah, things are things are shit.
Sorry, this is really depressing.
Can you ask me a nice? Question song would you play
today to your children the sums up motherhood.
Oh. God, Ben Nicola asked.
What song sums up your motherhood?
The first song that came into my head was Thriller by Michael
Jackson. Do you do the dance?
We did debate. Should we come on to music and
do the dance? Maybe later, maybe later.
We'll see. But I think that's an important
point too often when we're doing inclusion.
Work regardless of. The focus we don't go into that
intersectionality. We don't focus.
On different groups and what I've loved in your work through
Prank and Scrooge and now in the work that you do is that you've
always looked at that. You've always looked at the wide
range of. Motherhood and I just want to.
Really encourage everybody in the room that does this work to
make sure we're going to that level of detail, to make sure
everyone's included in the conversations.
So we've spoken today about Dad's parenting out loud and
being equal parents at home. What impacts?
From your from your perspective does that.
Have on the lives of. Of mums and what?
I mean, I'm not going to say anything that's going to shock
anybody in this room, but we, we, I mean, we know that if dads
take time out to care for their kids, like a decent chunk of
time, that it reduces the bias in workplaces.
Of course it does. Because if both men and women
are equal risk, then there's no point in having a negative bias
towards women. And that negative bias is really
well researched. So we know that mothers are seen
as 10% less competent than women without children. 37% of
employers say they would advertise jobs for men only if
the law allowed it. It's one of my favourites.
And the government equalities offers found that women are
mothers are half as likely to be promoted as any of the
demographic. I mean, you know, it doesn't
help when we have like we have people going around saying
things like the children of working mothers are more likely
to mug you. Anybody know who said that?
Boris Johnson and the, you know, the most powerful man in the
world. The president of the United
States said in an interview. I think that for the most part,
mothers are better off staying at home looking after their
children. I mean, we're seeing from
America as well this whole see change in the way we talk about
women in the workforce and it's very much, you know, you really
shouldn't be working because your job is to be at home.
And that's really scary. I've gone off on a bit of a
tangent though. But the the point being, the
point being that if we have a system like Sweden where
paternity leave is ring fenced and properly paid, then you will
see men take time out in their droves to look after their kids.
Because it's not that men don't want to, they're desperate to
spend more time with their children, but the whole system
prevents them from being able to do it.
And once they take that time out, then we know that the bias
towards women reduces. The gender pay gap starts to
close. We found in some research we
didn't close our gender pay gap by 4%.
If we gave dad six weeks potentially, but 90% of salary,
that is massive. And we, you know, kids would be
happier. Everybody would be happier.
We'd all be happier. Dads would be happier, Kids
would be happier. Marriages are 40% more likely to
stay together. If men take time out in those
early days to spend time with the kids, that everybody will be
better off and women's careers would flourish.
So why the hell we don't have a system that enables that is
beyond, I'm sure, any of us in this room.
Thankfully we have people like Baroness Penn and Stella Creasy
who are fighting the good fight inside Parliament.
We're. Going to hear from them shortly
as well. One thing that's very
interesting is today we've been talking about dad's parenting
out loud and I'm very aware that the bar is so low and if a dad
does the basics, changes a nappy, leaves early, then
they're praised. They're like a fantastic day.
Congratulations Heather Medal. Often for women, expressing the
same is penalized. So how do we encourage dads to
parent out? Loud without.
Reinforcing that idea that dads need to be praised for it and
when women, the mothers do the same thing they are.
Penalized. I mean, I think dad's a praise
for it in the general public, but I don't think they are in
the workforce. I think if dads try and use
flexible working or take extended parental leave, they're
often viewed with suspicion. Like why would you want to spend
time with your child? This is insane to me.
Surely you want to just be at work?
And we know that dads are much more likely to have a flexible
working request tonight. And I've heard some shockers,
some really awful stories about men requesting to take extended
leave and the things that their employers say to them, like, oh,
shall I buy you a dress while you're at it?
Or a guy who told me that his boss used to e-mail him while he
was on parental leave and start the e-mail.
Hello nanny. You know, all sorts of sexist
crap. And so I think in the workplace,
she's very different to external.
But you know, anybody here will know that when you see a dad out
with their baby. Oh nice, that's so nice that
you're doing that and mum's like staggering behind and gets
nothing. It's.
Even better if you've got a puppy.
If you're out with a puppy, by the way, it's crazy.
Everyone thinks of this great human being because you've got a
little puppy. So it's so you've spoken quite.
A lot about a lot of the. Like where we are and the the
the negative impacts. On us not.
Sharing care and and and stuff like that.
What do you think would be the changes?
Like what do you think would make the most impact to work in
Mum's experience? Six weeks, potentially 90%
salary, like if there was one thing that would radically
change everything, that would be it.
I mean the companies are doing that and they're seeing changes
in their workforce as a result. We've got we've got the data.
We know that that is going to make the biggest difference.
In addition to that, because we've talked a lot about
potentially the other policy that I know changes things
radically is kept paid carers leave.
So companies that have up to 10 days paid carers leave not only
see that it's good for the bottom line though Eccentrica
did some research on this. They implemented 10 days pay
carriers leave and they found that it contributed 3.2 billion,
no million, not billion million to their bottom line in terms of
increased retention, improved recruitment, increased
productivity. So the, the, you know, it's good
for businesses to do this, but we all know, like if you, when
you put your kids in nursery, they're going to get sick
because they all go to nursery and they start licking each
other. And then like they come back
with like all these insane diseases that we thought had
died out in the Victorian era, like ham foot and mouth and slap
cheek. And what's the other one that's
yeah, like scurvy and stuff. And that's it.
You just have a call constantly. And so to know that your company
has a policy where not only are they saying that's OK, we expect
this and that's fine, you take that time off, but also you've
got not going to lose out financially because we've just
come off trying to lose. So you have no money radically
changes things as well. So many people, I'm sure
everyone in this room knows you from your incredible work at
Printman's school. I never forget that image in
Trafalgar Square giving it to the government with about 10s of
thousands of working mums and dads surrounding you.
Incredible work. Now you are leading growth
sperm, a new company. So my main question is the name.
Where did the name come from? I love in a new Mende growth
spit, like you talk about kids having a growth spit.
So I thought, well, also the whole point of this is for
parents to grow. Like this is a growing period
for humans when you have a kid. So yeah, it came from that.
And talk to us about the the transition.
So I understand the the initiative of the business is
all about supporting parents back into the workplace.
Talk to us about you think that transition into the workplace
looks like and why do so many mothers at that point?
Just not enter the. Workforce or find it really
difficult and ended up leaving. Yeah, this is a big question.
I'll try and not waffle on too much.
We talked about this a bit before when you had the employer
panel and there were loads of companies doing these really
great policies. But actually, when you go back
to work, you feel a bit like you've lost your mind.
And I did. I had a really supportive
employer. The man, he didn't have kids.
He was dead nice though, when I came back and really told me
it's fine. We expect it to take a while for
you to get your head back into work.
I just thought when people talk to me, it was like, you know,
I'm Snoopy when he's down the phone.
I didn't know what anybody was talking about.
And I cried in the toilets every day for three months.
And, you know, I was desperate to get back to work actually
after my time to leave. So the fact that I felt like
that means that the vast majority of people are really
struggling when they go back to work.
And the data shows that they are.
We did a research project with five and a half thousand parents
who've returned to work in the last three years. 89% of them
said returning to work is really hard.
And they, the vast majority, more than 3/4, said they didn't
get the support that they need. Only 30% said that they felt
their employer understood what it's like to be a parent.
Only 30% and one in four left their job as a result.
So this is an it's an economic problem as well as a problem for
parents. So I just, I just think this is
really solvable. Like, I don't understand why we
haven't solved this. And so that's what Grace Vert is
trying to do. And I think it's not about, you
know, you can have great policies, but this is about
support. It's about giving parents that
support that they need when they return.
So it's career coaching. She talked about being like, it
really changes things. And it's also peer-to-peer
support. So companies do try and do
peer-to-peer support programs internally and they do work a
bit. But the vast majority of
employees that I've spoken to say there are power dynamics
that interrupt that ability to have to feel like safe to
support each other. So it's peer-to-peer support.
And then there's a course that goes through pregnancy right,
the way through to when we returned.
So we're testing it at the moment and it rolls out next
month and I really want it to be used by people who really need
support on it for it to change the way they feel about
returning to work. I know it will.
Hope.
Let's talk about hope. You're a hopeful person.
I'm a hopeful person. That's why we do our work.
If you have to have a. Ideal scenario.
In five years. We not go 5.
OK, two years, let's say 2 years.
Yeah, we've we've done the work. We've implemented 6 weeks at 90%
paternity leave. We were doing more.
Career coaching. How?
How would you want to see the world?
What would be your? Vision for the world when it
comes to equality for mothers. How I would want to see the
world and where I think the world will be might be slightly
different. I'll be on it, but I the
employment might still well change a lot of things for the
better. So within the employment rights
bill you have miscarriage leave, you have changes to flexible
working laws that I think will genuinely make a difference.
We will enhance protections for women when they're pregnant from
redundancy and while they're on parental leave and parents when
they return from work. So that will be a real game
changer as well. We will have the parental leave
review, which we're going to come on and talk about in a
minute, which should say what we're all saying repeatedly over
and over again. I don't know why we need a
bloody report and more investigations because we all
know what needs to be done. We believe that will conclude
that we need six weeks potentially, but 90% of salary
and then we'll have that in the world will be wonderful.
That's the ideal. I also think what gives me hope
is the fact that we're not standing for it anymore.
We've now got men, you know, used to just be women shouting
about this stuff. And now we've, we're seeing more
and more men join with us to fight for changes.
And that will, will make a big difference because I hate to say
it man, but you are more listened to than we are.
So you need to keep shouting, please and supporting these
changes. I'd love to hear from people
here actually what gives them hope about the future because I
think we don't talk about that enough, particularly at the
moment. And.
We've. Got time for a?
Question the first time on To Be Able.
It's our first live recording and we're going to hand it over
to you. Do we have a question for Tony
or for me or for both about what we've spoken about today and the
motherhood penalty experiences? Kelly's hand went straight up in
the background there. She's not shy and.
Spent. The last 18 knocking.
Small businesses, I didn't quit being like a sense of 600% of
the workforce work in businesses under 250.
And in my experience, if stuff is, but it's not easy, but it's
been together in larger businesses, a powerful thing can
reach that's 16% of the oldness of the world.
There are companies with less than 250 staff that are doing
some amazing, amazing things. Companies that don't have a
gender pay gap, they they implement really great policies.
I think it's really about priorities.
And then there are company, massive companies there.
I cannot mention any names of companies because I'm legally
bound not to, but companies that win awards for being gender
equal. But behind closed doors, you get
pregnant and you're out and you're really signing a non
disclosure agreement. They'll be banned next year, non
disclosure agreements. So we'll be able to expose that
basket. But I think it's not just about
policies, it's about care and it's about having a leader who
gets it. And that does filter down and
makes a big difference. One last question, Agnes.
I'm talking a lot about interceptionality and he's also
spoke about the law that are coming in, but how does that
still protect black and brown women?
And because oftentimes what happens is.
New laws and new policies fell in.
Place but actually end up widening the inequities for
people that are already disproportionately more likely
to experience than what? So what can we do around that?
I'd love to hear from you, what you think because you, I feel
like you've got something you're not saying that there's like
something that's that you have thought through that you're
like. A lot of policies come in and
they sound really great, fancy slogan and so forth, but
actually a lot of worthy fluff within a lot of environment
don't get to benefit from those policies and become kind of kind
of a washboard on the outside. Yeah, we've done this thing, now
let's. Do bond.
And people are still feeding the bond.
So I think we've just, I wouldn't be saying there's an
answer, but I think if it's really important for people in
this room who are working in this basis like what you said
earlier to really understand that there are unintended
constants sometimes in sick, have probably gotten sick.
It was the problem. But the people especially who
are facing the front of these issues just are not.
Are not. I mean, we saw that with Shep
and to leave, didn't we? When Shep and to leave came in
and we've looked at the data now.
Dads who are from low income households are much less likely
to use SharePoint to live. It just benefits people well for
your families. The childcare system benefits
well for your families. It doesn't benefit lower income
families. I think the way that you is
should design policy and the way that you test policy is about
firstly data and analyzing the data as you go.
And then, you know, changing policy if it's not working, but
also having people round the table when you're designing
policy to input on it. So like what you're campaigning
for with children with special educational needs, having a
group that the government listened to of parents who are
experiencing this stuff day in, day out to input on how that
policy is designed means that you won't end up in a situation
where it's just not benefiting the right people.
Thank you, Agnes. Agnes is incredible.
There's incredible work, so make sure you talk to her afterwards
as well. We've been to be a boy.
I'm gonna say a massive thank you to everyone that listens in,
tunes in, encourages, shares the episodes.
We've been overwhelmed by the the feedback.
It's been really incredible. And I love doing it with.
You because we just have we have a lot basically.
So thank you so much everyone and thanks so much.