Media Storm - S5E5 Maternity and paternity leave: Why parents are so angry at politics

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

This week, Media Storm delves into a vastly underreported topic - and one of the biggest potential barriers to gender equality, child welfare and family security. The UK has the least generous paternity leave entitlement in Europe, currently set at a measly two weeks. On the surface, maternity leave looks generous in length - but compared to OECD countries, the rate of pay is one of the lowest. As the government and media put culture wars over real-life policies, spread muddled misinformation about benefits that are designed to be difficult, and gender equality faces major cultural setbacks.... we ask young parents campaigning for change: why? (And how they're doing it while 5 months' pregnant?!) Joining us this week are the founders of Dope Black Dads - Marvyn Harrison, and of Nugget Savings - Katie Guild.  The episode is hosted and produced by Mathilda Mallinson (@mathildamall) and Helena Wadia (@helenawadia)  The music is by @soundofsamfire Support us on Patreon! Follow us on Instagram, Bluesky, and TikTok Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Happy birthday, dear Matilda. Happy birthday to you. It's my birthday. You're turning 30 today. 30. Am I supposed to be freaking out? No, I don't think so. Okay.

I actually freaked out when I turned 31, rather than 30. Because then you're in your 30. Yeah, when you're 31, you're like in your 30s, but when you're 30, you're just 30. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Anyway, before we get on to anything else about 30s,

I've got your present. No. Yeah. Oh. You go, happy birthday. This is so cute. Open it off. Should I open it here?

Yeah, open it out. It's been really fun for the list. Guys, it's got metallic purple green raffle paper. You've got to read it out. It is called the Mighty Mug. The mug that won't fall over. Oh my God. So you can protect your laptop now.

So basically this is a mug that does not fall over. You are spilly-tilly. You are the spittiest person. A couple of weeks ago, you threw a whole glass of water on your laptop. So open it up. Show us that it works. It should be called the Matilda mug. I know it should.

Okay. Oh my God, what? Now imagine you're flailing. arms about like you always do. I'm flailing. I'm flailing. I'm literally whacking it. I'm literally beating this mug.

Wow, it's like a punchback. It's not falling over. Isn't it insane? But when I pick it up, it doesn't. So when you lift it straight up to take a drink. There's no resistance. There's no resistance. But if you want to, if you accidentally like hit it sideways,

it doesn't fall over. What is this dark magic? Isn't it amazing? I literally did so much research. so much research to find this mark. Investigative. All the investigative skills came out. Yeah.

So you're getting older. 3030. So what happens that is very relevant to our episode today when you get into your 30s? Oh my God, I have to have a baby now. Right? That is the rule.

Yes. I must have a baby now. According to the world and society, you must have a baby. Although, according to my Indian mother, I probably should have had a baby about 10 years ago. Like apparently I'm practically a spinster.

So, but you know, there is a lot of baby pressure, especially for women when they get into their 30s. For me, some friends are starting to have children and friends who do have children are complaining more and more about terrible maternity and paternity pay. Right. That's really what sparked us to do this episode. And I want to give a shout out to my friend Rory for suggesting this episode. episode topic and shout out to his really cute little baby Maggie. I know she's so cute. But when Rory told me about the state of his paternity leave, I was shocked.

Parental leave is a vastly underreported topic. And when we do read about it in the media, women are often questioned. Why aren't they having babies? If they are, why did they give up work? Why did they return to work so quickly? Why didn't they return to work at all? Plus, the financial rules are complicated and not set out well. in the media at all. What happens if you're self-employed? Could we carry on media storm and get

maternity pay? I literally have no idea. Me neither. So let's speak to some people who do. The issue of cost is probably the biggest argument against bringing in a more generous maternity leave. Kenny Baddark has made comments on maternity pay. For years, two things have been true. The world's population is increasing and its birth rate is falling. We're seeing more and more women not having children. Women are pushing it later, pursuing careers. Welcome to MediaStorm, the news podcast that starts with the people who are normally asked to last.

I'm Helena Wadia and I'm Matilda Mallinson. This week's Media Storm, paternity and maternity leave. The biggest barrier to change? Welcome to the Media Storm studio, joining us now are two very special guests. Our first guest is an entrepreneur and the founder of Dope Black Dads. a digital safe space for fathers who wish to discuss their experiences of being black, apparent and masculinity in the modern world. He is also the author of Dope Black Dads, Life Lessons on Fatherhood.

Welcome to the studio, Marvin Harrison. Thank you. That was a beautiful introduction. Thank you very much. Thank you. Our second guest is the co-founder of Nugget, a financial community for new parents. Their goal is to completely transform maternity and paternity pay for the better and help new or future parents understand and plan parental leave policies.

Welcome to the studio, Katie Gilt. Hello, thank you so much for having me. Right, let's start with you, Marvin. What are the current paternity leave laws in the UK? Well, the current paternity leave entitles eligible employees to one or two consecutive weeks of paid leave within the first 56 days of a child's birth or adoption. This is paid at currently at 184 pounds and three pence a week

or 90% of the employee's average weekly earnings. Whether whichever one is lower is the one that is accepted. And then some employers offer obviously enhanced paternity pay, but this is legally not required. So sorry, can we just, did you say one to two weeks? Yes. Okay, just wanted to establish that. One to two weeks, less than 200 quid a week.

Yes, which is less than minimum wage. That's basically, yeah, not paid leave. It's less than half of minimum wage. Oh my God, I'm so sorry that my German husband move to the UK. Yeah, he's going to be screwed. Did you take your full paternity leave of two weeks? No, so I didn't even bother to apply

because at that rate, it's less than a day's worth of money than I was earning a week. And so I just went back to work. There was so much cost and expenditure that actually when it came down to just doing the paperwork, the mental gymnastics of the paperwork, I just chose just to go back to work to cover the cost because it wasn't going to scratch the surface in what we needed

related to the amount of time that it was going to take for me to fill this thing in. And so I did a week off and then I did a day of the second week. And then I literally remember that night just sitting there panicking and just being like, I'm going to go back to work. And I called my mum, her mom, my sister and said, could you please just rotate being here so that I can just go back to work and just make it easier. How did that feel leaving your newborn baby every day in the morning? Well, it's interesting because I think a lot of men are like, I just want to get out of here.

I was the absolute opposite. I was like, how do I get deeper, more involved, more useful, more connected? And so my mission to be super present was just being impacted with the stress of expense. And it's part expense, but there was also this sort of experience that I was having around what role do I? I play here, those two questions left me on a slight outside of the kind of parenting journey and there was so little information insights to how to best navigate it that only by creating my own community and my own space did it make any sense that I started to get a bit of insight as to what men were actually doing and basically just running at a deficit.

And we'll definitely be delving a bit more into fatherhood and those kind of roles and how potentially plays into all of that in a moment. But Casey, let's bring you in here. Can you try and help us to understand some of the current maternity leave laws in the UK? So for statutory maternity pay, you need to be employed by your employer 41 weeks before your due date, which means you can't be pregnant when you start the job to be eligible for statutory maternity pay. And then what you get paid is six weeks at 90% of your average wage or 184 pounds three pence, whichever is higher for those first six weeks. And then for the next 33 weeks, it switches.

So it's 184 pounds, three pence, or 90% of your average weekly wage, whichever is lower. If you're not eligible for statutory maternity pay, so say you did start the job whilst you are pregnant, then you might be eligible for maternity allowance instead. But, I mean, it's half of a national minimum wage. It is very difficult. 26% of women fall into debt over their maternity leave. So it's very hard to survive on that amount of money,

particularly when you've got all the new costs coming in, baby classes that you want to do, all the things that you've bought for a baby, just surviving. For most people, it doesn't cover their rent, let alone all the other bills on top of that. Yeah, the term leave sort of implies it's a time, a holiday, a peaceful time or an opportunity for you to bond with your baby,

being so strapped like that. How was maternity leave for you? So I was self-employed. I had a nightwear brand at the time. Businesses don't wear. for babies. And when your business starts to take a dip, you just, I didn't really have a choice apart from leap back into the business. So I was working from hospital. My baby was in Niccoe for the first couple of days of his life. And I was sending emails to my ads team. And I didn't

really have a maternity leave in the traditional sense, which really like I felt the effects of mentally for a very long time after that. And eventually, you know, that led to all sorts of things like delayed postpartum depression. And it made me realise how financially unprepared I was. And I think I just was really naive. The UK is the sixth richest nation in the world. So you go in with that expectation that we have some sort of vaguely good parental leave pay. And it's just not the case.

Yeah, well, let's talk about that. So how does the UK's paternity leave compare with other countries? So in Sweden, you get 16 months paid leave, which is obviously fantastic. 16 months paid paternity leave. Yes. Wow. And then in Germany, you have parents have 14 month paid leave covering 67% of earnings.

And in France, there's 16% longer for multiple births as well. It does include multiple births, which is super important. We're 100% salary paid by social security. And obviously, in countries like the US, there are none. So having the worst paternity leave in Europe is not. not a great standing, particularly for men who, you know, from all tense purposes, we created this system. We benefit the most from this system, but we haven't considered what that does for us and our families, which just means that the load is not just heavier on mothers, but it also

means dads are completely estranged from their children, because the economic choice will always lead for the man to go back to work faster to provide. And I think that's a massive part of the broken system that we have at a moment. And maternity leave? I mean, We've just had maternity leave as the worst in Europe, let that linger. Where are we with maternity leave? So we have quite a long maternity leave, which is where I think people get a bit confused and think that it's good because we've got a year off that you can take three months of those are unpaid.

39 of those are paid very abysmally. Even though places like France have shorter maternity leave, I think it's about four months in France, they are getting paid a much higher percentage of their salary. So the rate of pay when you compare it to the OECD is one of the lowest. Lots of people always bring up America to us whenever we do videos on TikTok or Instagram about how low our pay is. And the argument is always, always should be grateful that you're getting paid at all. And I think it's important to remember America is one of seven countries out of over 190 that don't pay maternity pay by the government.

So I don't know why there's an obsession to focus on the very minimum and the people that are performing truly at the bottom of the table. It's not a good benchmark and I don't think we should focus on it. You mentioned also that you were self-employed. I think it's very difficult to find accurate information about maternity leave if you're a freelancer or you're self-employed. So can you try and just help us out a little bit with that? Yeah, please God. We need that. Yeah, unfortunately it is super hard for self-employed parents.

Self-employed dads get no paternity leave or pay at all. There's nothing there for them. and for mums you can apply for maternity allowance. The difference between SMP and maternity allowance is you miss the first six weeks at 90% of your average wage. So it's just a flat rate. But the other bad thing about maternity allowance is that you can't work on your business. You get 10 kit days, which means you can work in your business and make money. But aside from that, you can't.

Whilst on statutory maternity pay, you are actually allowed to do self-employed businesses. So that's why you see lots of women doing side hustles on their maternity leave. but you can't do that if you're self-employed. Yes. So it feels really restrictive. I think we're starting to understand how much of it is not only anti-family but also anti-business. It's like normally if you're anti-family, you're like really pro-business. We're really bad at both.

And I think often when we think about paternity leave, trying to say to men, like pay attention to your own relationship to your family, your children, your partner. Sometimes the conversation kind of goes over the head of men. and we're not taking up the leave that we need to. We're not doing the things that we need to because we're just still not seeing ourselves in a lot of these policies. Yeah, so research from March 2024 by the organisation Pregnant Than Screwed

revealed that three and five fathers took two weeks or less paternity leave following the birth of their most recent child. And over 70% of fathers who only used part of their paternity leave entitlement revealed that it was because they couldn't afford to stay off any longer. Is this the main reason why some men would choose not to take their paternity leave, you think? Yeah, look, there's a social stigma also, as in like you're just at home. It's like, oh, you're not really working. And it's almost like you're a sub-man as a result of doing so.

There's also a workplace stigma as well because I think one of the big four accountancy firms, I don't want to name one, one of the companies just in case, but they got sued for ending somebody's contract after they took shared parental leave. And he directly correlates it to the fact that he asked to, specifically take that time off. What is shared parental leave? Just quickly. So share parental lead is that there's actually, it's introduced in 2015 and it allows parents

to share up to 50 weeks of leave with 37 of that 50 weeks being paid between them. So basically you can transfer some of your maternity leave to your partner. So as a couple, we could say of that I want to do 25 or 25. I could do 30. We can actually split it. And so your job is protected. But only 37 of those 50 weeks are. are actually paid. But the uptake is still very, very low. It's actually less than 2%

around about the 2% market people are uptaking this. Right. But presumably a factor in that is that men tend to make more. We have a gender pay gap. It immediately reverts back to that inequality and the house is needing money and most people just dividing that labour based on money. And I think that's a part of the institutional shift that needs to happen for DAZ where we look at the issue from about our own connection. This is why I always speak specifically that it's about men's connection to their children, not just about money and, you know, entrepreneurship and all those other things. You know, when we look at men in their 60s and why they're experiencing loneliness and isolation, why families break down, why their children don't come and visit them,

it's because of their overall disconnect at really important times. They don't know their children. And so then as a result, we're seeing men dying early. That's why things like suicide is higher for men. There's so many societal things that feed into it. And I'm really. really trying to raise the alarm to men about their self-interest, which serves family, rather than just like look after your family, which every man has kind of been programmed with from the beginning. It's not working. Should paternity leave be mandatory? I mean, you've just mentioned all these really, really relevant social issues, men's mental

health issues, isolation, these come up in so many of the stories that we cover at Media Storm. You know, if a lot of this is to do with connection and family and better work-life balance and less pressure on men to be the sole provider. Is paternity leave a way to do that? And if so, should paternity leave be mandatory? In an ideal world, it will become mandatory, but we have to look at the context in which we'll be forcing men to stay at home in. If they're not actually equipped emotionally to be a net positive in the house,

that actually can wreak havoc on families in a different way. So we have to make sure we're awakening their own ideas of themselves and what kind of person needs to be at home and what they can do. As I said, I was deeply passionate about being at home, but still found being there. I felt like I was in the way and not particularly needed directly. And that created something for me where I had to go find a community. And many men would just sit in the house becoming a nuisance or a negative impact in the house, which is probably worse, most people would agree.

And so it's really important that we awaken men to understand what the actual challenge is and what they can create by being there in the right frame of mind. So we need botanity leave, but we also need. We need a societal shift. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, because we need that cultural shift because what is spring into my mind right now is like there's a really common thing

where women say about their male partners like, oh, I've left the baby at home with him, he's babysitting. And it's like, he's not babysitting. Like, that's his child. It's parenting. Like, literally. And look, I think those, that languish

sometimes when I used to get with my children, I would be the one that's at the park and people leaning in and being like, oh my God, I'm so happy that you're with your child. And it's like, where else would I be? No, these are my children and I'm comfortable being here. There is nothing. I don't need any help.

I know what I'm doing. And I think I want more men to be that confident in their ability to parent publicly as well. Is that why you created Dope Black Dads? And can you tell us about making that space? Yeah, look, I think I created it because I was stuck. It was such an emotional place. I couldn't sit there and be like it was a strategy. There is no, it's not a brand.

It's not a strategy. It's a space for me to speak. into a place that has healthy-minded men in it, that's a very rare space. Now, we know mothers have these spaces all the time. The kind of mothering WhatsApp group is definitely not new. But from a father's perspective, when we launched in 2018, I wasn't invited into any space. And it was literally me just being like, what are my friends doing? Because this is a terrible experience. This is not what I envision. This is not what I saw on TV. This is not what I heard about fathering. So it became something that I wanted to keep alive for every man to come in and ask really simple questions,

get healthy answers, be curious, but also to try and keep families together. Like it seems to be, you know, there doesn't seem to be enough energy in focus in keeping families together. And the divorce rate, the separation rate, the parental alienation rate, all these things are increasing day on day and nobody seems to be developing any form of answers, which is deeply worrying for me. Katie, I'm wondering what your views are on paternity leave. You campaign for better maternity leave. Do you also campaign for better paternity leave?

And do you think that could be really helpful for women, not just for economic inequality, but also for the reasons Marvin's just associated with family and family security? Yeah, absolutely. I think when I was in the depths of maternity leave, and when we first started Nugget, I was very much like, this is about maternity pay and focusing on women.

And I very quickly realized that actually, it is a problem for a family to fix and it is important helping with the mental load, helping with equal parenting. And I think what Marvin was saying about how at the beginning like of the maternity leave, you've got a small baby. Actually, dads aren't that useful sometimes, and particularly if you're breastfeeding, you can feel a bit lost and you're like, what am I doing here? Share parental leave could be great or paternity leave that you can take in different blocks

because dads can come into their own when the kids are a bit bigger. and that might actually work at the point where mum's feel ready to go back to work anyway. The thing about share parental leave is so confusing. HR teams don't understand it. Employment lawyers don't understand it. It makes it very difficult for it to take, practically. It's kind of like if you decide to become a parent,

you're slightly inconveniencing or capitalist society. You're just a bit of an inconvenience on the natural running order of things. And also, I think every few months in the news cycle, will kind of like see articles along the lines of the UK's birth rate has fallen and women aren't having children anymore and financial reasons will always be given as like one of the many possible reasons

but a lot of blame is often placed on like women being too independent to want children. Why do you think women aren't having children anymore in inverted commerce? I mean there is a real myriad of reasons and having choice is really important but the problem we've got is the people who want to make that choice

feel like they can't because of finances, because of housing. So lots of people that we speak to in our community have one child would love to have a sibling, but have just been financially decimated by their first maternity leave, or they've had really poor experiences, or they had terrible births because let's not forget that maternity care in the UK is also at crisis point. We talk a lot about the motherhood penalty. Currently, your pension suffers when you have a child, your career suffers, you potentially take up a lot of debt.

you go through a period of having really sustained low pay into then catastrophically high child care costs. So you don't catch a break. Like there's no chance to build up your wealth. And in that environment, are you then meant to save for baby number two? And it's very difficult if there's no support system, which there isn't in the UK.

And dads aren't, you know, enabled to support. Employers often have a really poor attitude. Like new statistics came up from pregnant and screwed last week that 74,000 women a year are fired or have pushed out of their jobs as a result of pregnancy or maternity discrimination. That's 74,000 women in the UK. In the UK and it's increased. You're in a very vulnerable position when you're pregnant and when you're on maternity leave.

If you're experiencing pregnancy discrimination, you might want to just brush it under the carpet so that you can get some maternity pay because otherwise you're without a job, pregnant, trying to get another job, trying to claim maternity allowance, trying to find a job and say to employ, I'm actually not going to be, here for the next six months to a year. It's a very tricky environment to stand up for yourself. We don't see raising children as a social investment. Apparently, we see it as a social burden. Yeah, we hear it all the time getting paid to stay at home and like maybe colleagues feel like

you're leaving them in the lurch and then someone has to pick up the slack and there isn't kind of equating how important that is as a society and also how productive you are on maternity leave. like looking after a baby is incredibly productive for society you're raising the next customer you're raising the next taxpayer and you're raising the next worker so it is incredibly productive use of time but it's always framed as kind of some sort of holiday or just a break from conventional work which it is but we have to still i think there's a job to reframe it as something that's very useful and it's work just of a different kind Did you lock the front door?

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I want to dig into how the media covers these topics a little bit more. And I wonder, Marvin, what are your experiences with the media? You know, you being kind of campaigning and talking about masculinity for a long time and talking about fatherhood. And I wonder, do you think the media are asking the right questions about paternity leave about fatherhood? I think there's been a welcome. I think this is the least confrontational topic I've taken into a media landscape at any point. I get more support for the idea of men being more active, present and loving.

But when it comes down to the practical steps of actually bringing it into action, there's a lot of resistance. And the first question is, how do we pay for it all? And you end up doing this sort of debate and argument with people who should never be discussing what parents need anyway. And I think if you get platforms next to somebody who, hasn't had children, has never had children, has never give a birth, not actually present in their children, like, you know, being quoted by Boris Johnson to me, it's just like bizarre in

a quest to look about parental equality. And that happens so often that it removes the authenticity, it removes actually the power for us to actually hold everybody accountable for what we need as parents. And so when I talk about a limited landscape, it's a incorrect platforming of the issue alongside people in things that don't make sense and who also deeply reject any form of idea of equality. They just see it as all this one big lack of accountability from people who want ease, like women just want it easy or men want to stay at home. And it's some of the most frustrating things to be on there and having to explain that actually this helps people and actually you contribute more. It actually helps the tax base more than not. So yeah, it's a shame,

but I'm really here for the fight. You mentioned Boris Johnson there and pointed to the culture among our leaders in society. I remember some months ago, it was during the Tory leadership contest, Kemi Badenok made headlines for apparently saying maternity leave has gone too far. There was outrage from the media

and she said actually she'd been misquoted and of course she didn't mean maternity leave had gone too far, she had gone too far. But what was interesting was her rivals in the leadership contest. Two men, Robert Jenrick and Tom Tuganat, they sort of jumped on it and were like,

we stand with women and working moms and parents and we want to be on their side. Used that rhetoric, used that bandwagon to try and get ahead in the political race. But did any of them ever proposed any actual policy to turn those words into action? And I think this is where politics is very reactive at this time

and it doesn't actually lead for what the country actually needs and planning for, we don't have a five-year strategy for Britain. We have what makes the most noise, what's going to get me political points. And it's just a circus at this time, which is why for me to have a government that at least takes meetings on these issues is really important regardless of how you feel. We've been able to sit down with quite a lot of MPs who are really passionate about supporting this, develop a strategy about how we get this through short, mid and long term and what does it look like in the end?

I cannot explain to you how different the culture is to be able to go into a government and get some sort of answer and accountability. Even their nose are clear as to what it is and why. I just never had that historically. So yes, it is a bit of a circus and I try not to get lost in the game of just sound bites and going back and forth.

I'm so glad to be here to have a really powerful conversation about something that's super important. Also to advocate for men's rights, which sounds bizarre because it's like, men have all the rights and the platforms, but not good men. Good men don't have those platforms. We don't have an equivalent to Elon Musk talking about, you know, stay at home and look after your kid. You know, Elon Musk has 13 children and doesn't speak to half of them. Apparently 14 now. 14 and probably a mysterious 15 that we don't know about. So I can't use those

men as leverage to anything. Then they don't speak for me and I have no relationship to anything, including their values. What you point to just there? I'm so glad you just that. I'm so glad you just said that and how you said that. Because a lot of the topics we cover here are really, really heated debates, demonising, targeting minorities, end up being cultural wars. But actually what that means at the ground level is that these real day-to-day issues affecting everybody are just not getting dealt with. They're just not a priority in our political climate. So yeah, thank you for just explaining that like you did. I want to delve into a very particular headline that we saw recently.

This is that last month, the University of Tennessee's women's basketball coach returned to work one week after giving birth to her son. Now, this was the subject of much media attention. A headline from The Guardian read, A college coach returned to work a week after giving birth. Was it too soon? Articles like this debated her decision, getting the input from health professionals and psychologists on her decision.

Now, while the coverage was not necessarily negative, you know, a lot of people were praising her decision to go back to work. Was it asking the right questions or useful questions? I think the problem that we have with maternity leave in general is that as soon as you have a kid, everyone has an opinion. And everyone says you're doing it right or wrong. You're going to be sure that someone's going to say, oh, I wouldn't do that, did you know, that's not safe, la-la-la-la-la.

It seems to be a blanket rule for everyone. With this story in particular, I mean, you're making an assumption that this woman doesn't want to return to work. And I think when you dig into the detail of it, she's just got a passion for her team, and she wants to carry on seeing them do well, and she feels able to, she's paid three quarters of a million dollars.

So it's not a financial reason. If it was financially that she had to go back to make ends meet, I would potentially say that points to a structural issue. But if it's not that, I think we should stop trying to prescribe how people should take their maternity leave. But I think those types of questions are there to encourage a pylon into someone who's made a powerful decision about their career. I just think it's incredibly problematic from an established platform right out

to pose such a question in that way, rather than explore the actual amazing feat of giving birth and going back to work in that context because they're really passionate. And it shows the duality of what women can be in both ways. Like the way my mum raised me is such a fierce defender of the freedom of choice. And the freedom of choice is taken away if you don't have the equity, the financial ability to take the time off or to go back to work at your own choice. If you're forced into a choice, then that's when the problem exists. So we really want to encourage mothers to be flexible in their mental approach of like, how can I go back?

Because some people have villages raising their children. Like I was very fortunate, the mother of my children had about nine people who were willing to slide on their needs and carry the baby at any point. We're fighting over this child. So in that case, she could have gone back to work earlier under particular arrangements and I think that should be celebrated and I think that's more of a global south, global north difference. In the global south, your village raises your children with you

and that's just normal. It's not even a question. But I know in Europe and North America it's kind of like my household is the household, but that's not how it should be. And I think there's a lot of customs that can be transported from Africa, from South Asia, from East Asia and how we build family

because this current way really isn't working. And, you know, you both just listed reasons that sometimes people are forced to go back to work. We don't have those support systems in place, financial pressures. If that was the case here, I could actually see why this was maybe a public interest story, but not in the way that the Guardian asked it. When Helena, when you read the headline, a college coach returned to work a week after giving birth, the question they ask is, was it too soon? shouldn't the question have been

why did she have to if she had to if she didn't have to and she just wanted to then who the hell is the right to an opinion on that you're right it is just asking for a pile up and queuing a really unhelpful type of conversation

so it does point to something that parents face that is a non-story but everyone feels like they have a right to comment and how other people parent which is a weird phenomenon 100% definitely Another recent story I want to talk about is that in late January, Ian Murray, the Scottish secretary, made headlines as the first cabinet minister to take full paternity leave.

Murray said the biggest impediment to paternity leave is culture and that from a wider policy perspective, I think it's really important for dads to know that they can take it. What does it say that a policymaker makes headlines by not improving paternity leave, but simply taking it? It just shows how far we are and behind and I think because of the type of work he does he would be encouraged to go back to work and that would be really normalised if he attended back in Parliament two days later it would be like oh good to see you

nobody would ask why are you even here changing policies to allow those things to happen and make them normal will go a really long way and this is where the frustration lies it takes so long for the policy shift to actually happen to make it so that it's either mandatory or it's encouraged or actually equitably afforded

to do so, that by the time we get there, we end up taking steps backward and the view starts to change and the momentum starts to disappear for that change. So it's incredibly important that while we have the attention of the world, we get this paternity change really put into place and then we start how we build upon that. There's a phase two to it immediately that needs to be started so that in 10 years time, my son, when he decides to have children, has a much better view in terms of how we can do it. You can see from politicians and the reactions around parenting as a politician like there's always been a friction there

if Kier Stahmer in the election saying it was going to take every Friday night to spend with his family people were like what with your family every Friday and it was like if I can if there's no you know world dramas going on people had a very strange reaction to that being a politician

and an MP is incredibly difficult balancing that with a family you've got like House of Commons hours which finish at like 10 o'clock at night and you're not necessarily living in your family home most of the week and it is difficult to raise a family in that context. I think there's a lot of work to do, particularly for MPs and for Parliament, to make it more family-friendly workplace. Right. So until we actually make the policymaking space friendly

for young parents, we're not going to see policies brought in that are friendly for young parents. Yeah, and it is quite confusing because government obviously does see the benefit in things like good maternity and paternity leave because in their civil service they offer typically like really good enhanced policies. So you'll see a lot of like the Department of Justice and Department of Education offering like 26 weeks full pay. Yet their teachers don't have very good enhanced maternity pay. So if they're understanding that it's important in their internal running

of their organisation, it's important in terms of a talent acquisition tool, it's important in terms of retention and quality. You know, they see the benefits of it working within their own department but they're reluctant to roll it out, then you can see there's a disconnect there. In the case of this Scottish politician, Ian Murray, his decision it was partly to promote the Labour Party's new Make Work Pay Agenda, which aims to make paternity and parental leave available from day one of starting a new job. Is this a sign of good progress or is it lip service? I think it is progress, but as I said, I'm not sure how many more people will be aware.

And we spoke earlier about employers not necessarily understanding the laws that are being put in place. to even advise people and what's the best practice. So how many people are generally taking that out? We'll only have to know when the figures come out next year. But I think overall, because the cultural isn't even to inquire, I wouldn't even think to ask. And actually, I didn't even consider asking. Somebody told me that I should look into share parental leave and paternity leave.

I didn't even know the concept exists. I was just mentally prepared to take time off. When I investigated, I was like, this is so bad. it will do me a disservice in mental space trying to find the answers in this than it is just to go back to work and call my village in. And I think constantly trying to find strategies to navigate what just isn't there

is a part of the problem. There's a bare minimum that I think a really good government should be able to put in place to encourage these types of environments for people to be present and active at home and it's not being done. The government should just make very clear and make it as universally accessible

and easy as possible. They're so worried about leakage and the idea of some sort of benefit fraud that they're not willing just to do what's actually best for the country and put the right things in place. Benefit fraud gets so much news headlines. Whenever I do a breakfast TV show, it's like people will call in and it's like if people aren't literally walking through landmines to navigate life, they're like not happy.

It's like, oh well, in my day, we never had anything. So nobody should have anything now. We cannot listen to that part of the electorate. people who are genuinely in their 20s and 30s who are family planning aren't considering families because the actual logistical nightmare of trying to raise a family in this time is a treacherous environment it's like nobody wants to navigate that yeah we we have this really low birth rate aging population and all those questions why why aren't people having kids and yeah you just put your finger on it katy what do your thoughts on this new policy actually the media on this particular

change aren't helpful because they spread a lot of disinformation or they don't understand what the new laws that are being brought in are. So parental leave is a concept from day one to lots of people sounds like statutory maternity pay from day one. That's how I read it. And then it was reported in the Guardian on the BBC as you can get maternity pay from day one. That's not what parental leave is. Parental leave is 18 weeks of unpaid time that you can take for your child up until the age that they're 18. It's got nothing to do with maternity leave, paternity

leave. It's something completely different. And because it was been so misreported, people were getting really, really confused. We fell for it at Nugget and we did a video on it and it was completely wrong. We had to retract it and it was really embarrassing. But, I mean, I checked three national

newspapers. Right. So if that is what we're dealing with, the lack of clarity in this whole space, is really a huge problem. And that's what we're here to try and solve and just try and take complicated ideas with all these different eligibility requirements

and make it really, really simple. And from a media storm perspective, something I'm hearing you say is if there are actually policies there, there is some progress being made, but it's not being seized because there's no awareness. Yeah.

People don't know it exists and even if they do, they don't understand it. And what is a media's job, if not, if not, that. Just as an exercise, imagine if the mainstream media, all of the articles, all of the coverage that they dedicate to issues like whether trans people can use bathrooms, if they actually dedicated that to explaining, covering policies and laws that actually affect people's lives. How different the situation could be. I have a very strong view, but I'll please go

I was just going to say on that, like, if they had taken the time to actually understand what that new law was coming in, they might have a time to actually properly analyse it and put some rebuttal in, i.e., you've introduced paternity leave from day one, but it's got no pay. So how useful is that really to most people? If the biggest problem for people not taking paternity leave is the fact that it pays pennies, now you're saying you can have paternity leave from day one, but we're going to pay nothing, is that lip service. What we're missing is that criticism, because they're not analysing. the change is coming in enough. So they're not explaining it

and then they're not giving it the proper critique which is needed to push the change. I think the actual shift of media has come from what we have done with the concept of an opinion and we've taken opinion from being something that an expert would have based on something that they know to just anybody in the world can have an opinion and whoever says it the loudest, funniest

gets platformed equally with somebody with 20 years' experience. And so as a result, they're actual someone to decipher a government press release. on a policy to actually read it, be able to understand it and interpret that into language for everybody else to understand doesn't actually exist. And you will find a cool blogger who will just quickly take the information and come back with what they think it means and now we're all being misinformed. I think the other thing is that if you're driving and focusing on ratings, your objective is to equally platform two opposing ideas and have them argue for entertainment

rather than to genuinely share ideas about what's best for the country. And as a result, in the last 15 years, I think we've seen some of the worst decision-making in the history of politics be able to go pretty much unchallenged because we don't have experts. But that's why these environments, these spaces, with actual people who have lived experience, sharing their views to guide people into healthy outcomes. And I think that's where platforms like this will probably grow much faster

than traditional media platforms. Yeah, exactly. Couldn't agree with that more. And by the way, that is exactly where we do what we do at MediaStolm, where we only invite people whose lives are actually affected by the debate to have the debate.

I just want to stand up and clap. Let's wrap there. I just have a message to Dads. I think it's incredibly important that you awaken to the idea that you as you are, as is a valuable ad, to your children's lives

and your family does need you but not just need you to provide and protect from this sort of imaginary Liam Neeson type danger. It's actually we need you and your actual, your spirit, your values, your consistency, your discipline. We need you, we need masculinity

in the world in a healthy way and I think there's so much going on that could be solved with present men being there and actually taking a really strong stand against other men who are doing things that are absolutely outside of our values. And I think the more that you are aware and you lean into it,

the greater quality of life that you will experience. So I really do hope men awaken to the challenge of parenting on an ongoing basis. You can find me at Do Black Dads Anywhere or at Marvin Harrison anyway also. You might come away from this conversation thinking, oh my God, how am I going to do it? And it seems like an unsurmantable task.

But if you think you want to have children in the future, You can make it happen. It just requires planning and it requires knowledge. Don't be afraid to negotiate it. You're actually in the strongest position to negotiate your maternity package when you're not even pregnant. Make sure that you know your rights. Make sure that you're aware of what happens to your pension, your student loan when you're on leave. And just talk to your partner about how you're both going to mitigate that

and how you're both going to make sure that if one person takes a longer leave, that person isn't financially negative as a result and try and work as a team. And we are on at Nugget Savings across TikTok and Instagram. Thank you for listening. If you want to support MediaStorm, you can do so on Patreon for less than a cup of coffee a month. The link is in the show notes and a special shout-outs to everyone in our Patreon community already. We appreciate you so much. And if you enjoyed this episode, please send it to someone.

Word of mouth is still the best way to grow a podcast. So please do tell your friends. You can follow us on social media at Matilda Mal, at Helen Awaddiya, and follow the show at Media Storm Pod. MediaStorm is an award-winning podcast produced by Helena Wadia and Matilda Mallinson. The music is by Samphire. Just to let listeners know, next week, things will be a little bit different. Instead of our usual news watch and deep dive, we're bringing you an investigative. that we've been working on for some time about sexual misconduct in universities,

specifically sexual misconduct by staff. That'll be out on Thursday 13th of March. Calling all book lovers. The Toronto International Festival of Authors brings you a world of stories all in one place. Discover five days of readings, talks, workshops and more with over 100 authors from around the world, including Rachel Maddow, Ketourou Isaku and Kieran Desai. The Toronto International Festival of Authors, October 29th to November 2nd. Details and tickets at festivalofauthors.ca.