The Netmums Podcast - S17 Ep4: Navigating parenthood and politics with Stella Creasy

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

In this episode of the Netmums Podcast, Stella Creasy, a Labour MP, discusses the challenges of balancing her political career with motherhood. She reflects on personal milestones, the importance of maternity leave, and the need for better childcare support.  Stella also addresses the motherhood penalty, online abuse faced by women in politics, and advocates for changes in policies related to special educational needs and period poverty. The conversation emphasizes the importance of amplifying the voices of parents in political discussions and creating a more inclusive environment for all families. In this episode: Navigating Parenting and Politics The Transition to School Life The Reality of Being an MP and a Parent Campaigning for Maternity Leave and Representation The Motherhood Penalty and Workplace Equality Flexible Working and Parental Leave The Impact of Online Abuse on Parenting and Politics Special Educational Needs and Early Intervention Childcare Accessibility and Universal Systems Encouraging Future Generations in Politics This episode is proudly sponsored by Aldi UK. Stay connected with Netmums for more parenting tips, community support, engaging content: Website: netmums.com / Instagram: @netmums  Proudly produced by Decibelle Creative / @decibelle_creative

You're listening to the NetMums podcast with me, Wendy Gullidge, and me, Alison Perry. Coming up on this week's show, it's just a nightmare. There's so many things I've failed to do because you're just trying to keep going, because you thought you knew what you were going to be able to do that week, you thought you knew what time you were going to have, and then, as I say, somebody changes the hours or, like, they tell you've got to be in a different place at once. So the main thing for me is that my kids don't suffer as a result of that, because I just think, for my constituents, if they don't see me fighting for my kids,

How can they know we'll fight for that? But before all of that, this episode of the NetMum's podcast is brought to you by Aldi Mamia. One of my favourite things about being a parent is when clever people come up with genius solutions to problems we have. Oh my goodness, me too.

Like, can we please give a dame or a knighthood to whoever invented those little syringes for kids' medicine? It makes it so much easier to look after a poorly little ones. They also make great water squirters in the bath, don't you know? But I digress.

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Oh my goodness, love that. I'm also a big fan of the leak lock pockets to help contain poo blowouts and the 360 degrees leakage protection. And the nappies are really comfy and a flexible fit. They are. Plus, they're dermatologically tested and suitable for newborns. Brilliant. They've thought of everything. Get your Aldi Mumia Nappies in store now. Hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the NetMum's podcast, Wendy. How are you doing this week?

Well, today is one of those days that as a mum is always a bit weird. It's my daughter's 14th birthday today. It's it. And so I did that thing last night. I got back from a work trip and I was a bit tired and it had been a crappy train journey. So I was a bit emotional. And I sat there with the baby photos. Tell me, I'm not the only one who does this, who sits there and looks at the day she was born, kind of going,

Do you do that, Alison? Please tell me. It's not just me. Do you know what, birthdays always make me feel so weird. It's that thing, isn't it, of like, flashing back to when they were, you know, when you were giving birth to them, but also the passing of time and like 14 is such a big age. My teenager turns 15 next week. It's big. So I'm with you. And I think you need to be kind to yourself this week, Wendy. Well, I'm going to have a glass of champagne. Have a glass of champagne. Because 14 years ago today, I was in hell. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Tell us who we've got today. Well, today we're joined by someone who has been shaking up Westminster for years. Stella Creasy is the Labour and Cooperative MP for Walthamstow,

known for her campaigning work on everything from affordable childcare to fighting for better maternity cover for MPs, as well as her push to end period poverty. She's also a mum of two and the host of the Mummifesto podcast, where she explores the big issues affecting family life and how we can all be part of the solutions. Stella, a warm welcome to the NetMum's podcast. Hi, guys.

My kids are a lot younger than yours, but I still cry and drink champagne on their birthdays anyway. I don't know if that's allowed. You don't need an excuse. I've got six-year-old twins, so I feel like I'm not that far ahead of you in terms of, because I think are your kids like four and five right about age? Yes.

So, yeah, not that far ahead of you. Well, you've had a big parenting milestone this week, haven't you, because your son started primary school, which is another reason for champagne and weeping over baby photos as far as. I'm concerned. How are you finding it? I had, I mean, it's been like a really quiet time in politics as well and a really quiet time, but yeah, nothing going on. And then also that sudden moment where you realize that like both of my children are with somebody else and that's

allowed. And it's, and it's like, what do we do? We've spent so much time kind of being institutionalized into, okay, who's got to do pick up, who's got to be in which place, what do they need? Like, what happens if they ring and you've got to collect them? And suddenly you're like, they're in school and that's for the next 15 years wow you know I didn't know what to do does it feel like your life has shifted gear a little bit

like your past preschool years like you see all that juggling I mean it's not that you have less juggling to do now it's just a different kind of juggling isn't it I do you know what I think I judge it by is like the size of the bag I get to carry because when you first have kids you're carrying like you're basically carrying

around a rucksack of because everyone's told you have a horror story like you need 15 changes the clothes and you need like 20 nappies and you need all the wipes and you need spare food and snacks and like you need toys and books and then it kind of the stuff you're carrying shrinks and shrinks and shrinks and like that feels the most liberating thing of all like I've started looking at you know cross body bags with excitement because suddenly I don't have to carry when they get to 14 it's a phone and a tampon at this stage no I think I think I'm a permanent convert for carrying wet wipes with me because those things are magic I wish I had

invested in them. I wish somebody had explained to me that the sheer joy and power of what those things can do. When my eldest was a baby, we bulk bought wet wipes. And when she was eight, we still had the original packets kicking around the house. And I was like, this is all good. This is all good. We're still using them. No, I'm literally like, every moment, every time, I'm just constantly shouting, why? Because there's something, like, I feel like I could save my sofa because also we've got cats and like the cats seem to even worse than dogs in terms of bringing like live animals in and so a wet wipe is the answer to everything dead mouse yogurt like it just goes so you've spoken before about the practicalities of being an MP and a parent what

an earth does a typical week look like for you see your problem though is the word is typical right there is no typical i found out yesterday evening that i would be in parliament again tonight until 10 o'clock So that's me missing two bed times now, which means double the amount of kinder eggs I have to provide as compensation to my kids because I've not been there. Your ability to plan as an MP for like real life just goes out the window. The honest truth is I'm more scared of the people who run my kids' school than I am of our whips in Parliament because the people who run my kids' school find you by the minute if you are late collecting them. Like what's the worst that's going to happen to me? I'm going to get deselected as an MP. If I look at the cost of the

fines if I'm like more than a couple of minutes late collecting them. No contest. So your ability to just plan for life is really restricted. And that's really bad because you want in my job people who are living the lives of the people they're trying to help, right? You want some element of people getting what the challenges are. I'll never forget being heavily pregnant during the pandemic and listening to people talking about how important it was. We invested in the roads and we tackle potholes. And then it was like, oh yeah, let's give parents a pat on the back for all the work they're doing. You're like, you have no idea what you're asking of people because we didn't have that variation of voices and that experience in the room. And you don't

have that because it's really difficult. Like, nobody's winning. I'm not juggling. I'm not succeeding. There's so much, like, please never come around my house. It's a total, like, it's a mess. It's just a nightmare. There's so many things I failed to do because you're just trying to keep going, because you thought you knew what you were going to be able to do that week. You thought you knew what time you're going to have. And then as to say, somebody changes the hours or like they tell you've got to be in a different place at once. So the main thing for me is that my kids don't suffer as a result of that because I just think for my constituents, if they don't see me fighting for my kids, how can they know I'll fight for that? I'm guessing. I always think as well,

you know, with someone like you who's got like an important job, you know, but you must have, I'm guessing someone at home who can pick up the slack, your partner. And so many of us have those conversations where we're like trying to like if the kids are sick but you know what that's like the reality of this job was built for let's be honest a white man of a certain age with a nanny and a wife who would pick up like like yeah it's not just on having families so when they try to put security and they were like well we need to speak to your housekeeper I was like look I call my partner many things but I just don't think that's going to go down well there's a presumption that people will have staff and a like that's just not how people real

people live. And B, also, why should my kids never see their parents because of the job that I do? Like, that's not fair on them either. So I've always believed you have to change the system. That's why I thought when I had a really bad experience of trying to get maternity leave, so I fought to fund a lot more mums to stand for selection and election so that in this parliament, I wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb being the person going, actually I want to go and see my kids or I want to be able to balance this better. Like, we have to fight to change it because the expectation is that you just have, my partner, we are 50-50 in the work that we do, but we both have jobs that we really enjoy and are passionate about as well. Why should he have

to give that up because of what I do? And why should there be an expectation if you elect somebody that they've got like a minion or that their kids will never see them? Like, I don't want my pet, my kids to refer to me in the third person. They're not enough as it is. Wait, wait until they're older. The things they call you, honestly, you don't even want to hear. My five-year-old, I came down the stairs. My five-year-old said to me, Mommy, Are you wearing that? I mean, you weren't wearing an Elsa dress. So, to be fair, you know, I can see why she wasn't impressed.

Well, if I had been, I probably would have passed the test. Exactly. No, you mentioned campaigning for a proper maternity cover for MPs. And that image of you in Parliament, baby in sling, is so iconic. And I feel like it's stuck in so many women and mum's minds over the years. What has actually changed since you've been campaigning? Do you know what has changed? They've banned babies from the House of Commons Chamber and they've banned us from being able. So I wasn't the first. I wasn't the first MP who took their children. Under the previous speak, it was pretty common that people were trying to balance because we do late nights. And like you have a proxy vote until six months. But the day one after my six months proxy vote finished, we were voting until one o'clock in the morning in Parliament. And I had my son with me because I was still feeding him. Like nobody else could do that. So it's a kind of hard stop. It doesn't really make sense for the the reality of trying to bring up very, very small children.

But the reaction of Parliament was to ban babies. Now, even in America, people can bring children. Like, from my perspective, I've never wanted to particularly breastfeed in public. I wanted to be able to have proper maternity cover so that I wasn't letting my constituents down and I wasn't letting my kids down. Without that, what I felt I was doing was a keep in touch day. It was like there was an important debate on something I'd been working on. It was time sensitive.

I needed to be in there. I fed my children until they were at the point of collapse. Like, literally, you know, we need. you see a baby and it's milk drunk. That child isn't going to make a single noise because I wanted to be heard speaking about the issue. But still the reaction of Parliament was to ban baby. And basically if you ban babies, you ban the people holding them. So that's mum. We've gone backwards in this place. And it's going to take pressure from outside and pressure from inside to change that. Now, as I say, we work really hard through the Mother Red project to get more mums because mums are

the big missing gap in Parliament. Like there are dads here. And there's lots of dads here who miss their kids. Like, I really want to be clear. This is not a mum. versus dad thing. It's not working for anybody. But there's also lots of brilliantly talented women who all say to me, oh, I'm going to wait until my kids get older or, well, I've got children so I can't do this at all. And you just think we're missing out on your contribution because we've not changed this system, not because you can't make a contribution. So it has to change from both sides of we're ever going to get this right. And you've talked a lot about that motherhood penalty and how it holds women back in the workplace, not just women in Parliament,

but all of us, if you could make one change that you think would make the biggest difference to mums at work, what would that be? Better paternity leave, better pay. Is there one? Or is that too me and the answer is absolutely the second parent in all of this? And one of the things I need to be really honest with you guys, like last night we were here until midnight voting because we were voting in the employment rights, but it's a great piece of legislation, but it's got one big gap in it that I'm really worried about, which it doesn't offer paid parental leave, that second parent, the non-birthing parent. And so what I worry about is, A, we're kind of reinforcing the message that it's moms who do childcare. And I think for a lot of dads who really want to be

involved in their kids, like we've got to normalise their right to be with their children, but fundamentally, they can't do that at the expense of their family. So it needs to be paid parental leave. Now, I'm campaigning across Parliament and with people in the House of Lords like Baroness Jojo Penn, who's actually a conservative, we're pushing for six months paid paternity leave because actually one of the ways you tackle the motherhood penalty is basically you make employers discriminate equally against anybody who's about to have a kid. Because what happens is even if you don't have kids, employers go, well, you might, so you're risky if you're a woman. We need to make sure that every employer is looking at somebody in their 20s, 30s and 40s and going, this could be a

challenge. Either we lose them or we work in different ways so that we can keep their talents in our workplace. And the answer to the motherhood penalty is to tackle the fatherhood premium is to bring in paid paternity leave so that dads face absolutely the same barriers about people judging them, but also the same opportunity to be with their kids. The thing that breaks my heart is listening to dads here who feel like they can't even get a hearing because people expect childcare to be what I call a lady's issue. It's a baby's issue, not a lady's issue. And we have to get dads as part of the conversation and also second parents. Yeah. And looking more generally, if you could just wave a magic wanders, I'm sure you, you know, quite often want to,

what are a couple of small but realistic changes that workplaces or the government could make that would support parents right now? Sleep would be the thing. I don't know about you, but like, I'm so tired all the time. Oh, I bet you are. I bet you are. I fall asleep on the train. Like I struggle sometimes I sit down at my desk. The thing is like flexible working.

I really hate when people talk about working from home or somehow it's less effective. Like, actually, the most organized people I know are the people who freed up all the time they would commute. And now they're using that time to work more effectively. Like, the genie is out of the bottle because we saw during the pandemic how much possibility there was in those ways of working, of balancing all those concerns. I am really worried because I hear people here talking about going back to the offices somehow the way that we get more productivity. There's no evidence for that. In fact, the evidence is the reverse. So we need to speak up for the reality of people's experiences that actually, if you're not sat on a train for an hour, one way,

in one way out. You can do a lot more and you can also do the school run. Like, employers, good employers get that. They need more support to be able to do that. And again, that's the thing I think we can do with the next stage of the employment rights agenda. So on the podcast Mammapesto, which, by the way, I think might be my favourite name for a podcast ever. It's such a bad pun and every time I say it, I really regret having picked it. No, it's good. It's good. It's great. But you said that potholes get more attention than parents. And you said it earlier as well. So I set up the podcast because I wanted to capture all the conversations. I think we're all having in everyday life, but the honest truth aren't necessarily happening

here in Parliament. And so I know a lot of my colleagues do listen to it. And I wanted to give them the opportunity to hear some of those conversations. It's about how parenting and politics combine in the broadest sense. So whether your parents influenced you or whether becoming a parent or not being able to be a parent or choosing not to be a parent has influenced your political life or now like that balance between finding the space to try and change the world but also bring up your kids and the things that you learn from it. So we've had incredible people who are working on women in the prison system. We've had the five more campaign obviously because black maternal health is such a challenge. But we've also had the dads who are campaigning

for better parental leave. Elliot Ray's the most incredible man you'll ever meet. You should get a knighthood as far as I'm concerned. What I'm trying to do is show all those conversations are happening. Because my colleagues in Parliament want to help families, right? Don't get me wrong. It's not the people here don't care, but sometimes connecting the dots on that and hearing what people's experiences are. Like I say, that was the thing that was so powerful during the pandemic. It was like people thought it was easy to homeschool. And you were like, I can hear and I can see people literally climbing the walls, like the parent who was self-isolating in the playground just to scream because they were going to go great. And you were like, that's the point of politics.

When we get this right, it's not actually to sit in a big fancy room making long, boring speeches. It's to change the world. In order to change the world, we have to understand where the world is at and what's going on in it. And if we're missing those voices, because the way we work doesn't allow them in, then we need to find spaces and places to hear them else why. Just a reminder that this episode of the NetMams podcast is brought to you by Aldi Mammaia. As well as award-winning nappies with P-Zones that enhance absorption, we love Mammaeer wipes. Plastic-free and gentle enough to use on your little one from birth.

They make nappy changes so much easier. Head to your nearest Audi store to check out the entire Mummy arrange. Have any of the conversations from the Mammapesto particularly stuck with you? Because you mentioned a few there, the really important guests and issues that you've covered. But have any of them kind of shifted the way that you think about policy or what your constituents need? well particularly the issue of the lost mothers really strikes a chord with me the fact that we've got women giving birth in our prisons and having their babies taken away from them i think nobody can hear that and not feel their hearts breaking whatever the difficult circumstances and the fact that we're in that position that we don't have a better solution or if somebody is pregnant and they have committed to it's not to say that we shouldn't deal with women who commit crime who are pregnant but clearly the way that we're working with those women and so many of the challenges that they face it's just extraordinary and also i I just think to Newquay and what she's doing with five more. Like, it's such an extraordinary thing.

For anyone who doesn't know, just give us a little synopsis. So just explain five more a bit for anyone who doesn't know. Women from black communities are five times more likely to die in childbirth. And actually, what was so powerful. So I spoke to her and I went back in my day job and raised that and raised what was going on with my local NHS. And they came back with all the work they were doing on maternal mental health. And I was like, no, no, this is things like thrombosis. This is actually

like looking at physical things that are happening to black women. It's like we haven't even talked about that as a country. And that's what I would say to the people listening to this. You know, never underestimate the power of your voice and the power of your experiences. Because I get it. Like, my workplace is so weird. We use so many weird acronyms. You watch it you think it's really, it is really boring. We have so many meetings that could have been an email. But changing the world only comes from people using their experience. and using the power of their passion to do it. So when I meet incredible people like Toneikwe and Laura doing this work and Tina Miller,

who's done this, she's brilliant, she's been studying the relationships between moms and dads for generations and, you know, plot twist. Mums are still having a really rubbish time, but dads are coming into the picture. Like, it's really fascinating research. When we hear that, it's life-changing. And absolutely, politics will live or die by people being able to bring those stories to us and use them to say, well, this is what we should be doing in the world. world. So opening that up, I would love us to use less weird language in parliament. It's so

strange that nobody can call me Stella when they're trying to debate with me. They have to call me the member from Walthamstow. But more than that, I would love for people to feel like it was their parliament and a place where they could bring their ideas and be part of working with other people to make change happen, because when they do, it's extraordinary. I mean, look at all the work that's been done on female gentle mutilation. That's come from campaigners who didn't take no for an answer to be heard, you know, Leila Hussein and Nimco Ali and Hebo Wadari, incredible women. Like, our political system was not set up to hear them, but when it does, it's extraordinary. And it's the same for the mums out there. The mums can change the world, but we need to make sure

they're hurt and not as tired. You've been really open about the other side of being the member from Walthamstow, which is the online abuse. You've even had false social services reports made against you, haven't you? How on earth has that affected? you as a parent but also as an MP? Well, I mean, look, it's heartbreaking to me and frankly it's still going on because my local authority is refusing to delete the record because they say, well, I am a risk to my children because of the job that I do. And I would defy any parent to be told that they are a risk to their children by somebody who didn't like what they stand for. It's so sad. Politics right now is really divisive, but we can all agree to disagree, right?

But when you weaponise somebody's children against them, I'm afraid the mama bear in me comes out because my kids have suffered directly as a result of that. And the fact that my local authority stands with the person who harassed me rather than saying absolutely this is unacceptable is a real challenge. It's why I fought to change the law. And the law change will come in early next year so that people can get records deleted.

Because I think everyone understands the concept of no smoke without fire. But if people who disagree with you can start using social services to attack you, I'm not the only woman who's had this happen where someone's made a false allegation. You know, it's heartbreaking and it's a massive misogynistic approach because it's about trying to say that your ability to be a mum

is directly connected to not being in the public eye. And again, it's another way of silencing women. So we have to fight it, but also I wish my local authority would understand the damage that they are doing by siding with my harasser. Absolutely. Now, a big talking point with parents

in the Net Mums community you right now is the proposed changes to the send system. Loads of parents we're hearing from. They're really worried about the impact that it might have on their children. What would you like to see change with the provision? Totally. One of the things, so I actually have a real skin in the game in this because my mum was a special school head teacher. So I grew up all my life in a residential special schools working with these kids, seeing what my mum saw, which is their potential. My mum thought tooth and nail for children with special educational needs to have an education and to be supported as seeing as needing just a different

type of education rather than being written off. The thing that breaks my heart now is the numbers of parents who have to fight because actually when you get that diagnosis, what you want is to move to the next stage of your kids getting the education and getting that different way of teaching. Too many parents have to wait almost until secondary school to get that support. When we see those challenges arising in primary school or even in nurseries, I mean, actually one the things I'd love to see is to see the speech and language therapy services restored properly in nurseries and to get that properly funded, because the earlier that you intervene, the more chance you have of a child being able to develop a way of working that works for them in the

mainstream sector. And I always believe there's going to be a case for specialist provision, but I also think we can if we get that support right early on, change the way in which people are able to access the mainstream. But yesterday we had a debate about this in Parliament. And frankly, the first thing I wanted to do is make sure that parents absolutely knew, that when people are to be political about this, like reform have come out and said, oh, well, special needs is being hijacked, it's being abused. It's the most ill-informed prejudicial kind of conversation. And when people have so little faith in politics right now,

I just felt it was really important to say, no, they don't speak for politicians, they don't speak for us. We understand the system isn't working. There's a lot of cross-party work, a lot of people who want to get this right, who understand the value of early intervention, who totally get the nightmare that is when you apply for an ECHB, and how long it can take and the arguments people can have and that that isn't the way to do this.

But you have to understand that there's people here supporting you and speaking for you because if you see all of that, I don't know a parent who hasn't got a child who needs a statement who isn't wrung out from just the experience of doing that. And when you hear politicians speaking like that about you, I'm so ashamed by it because it turns people off from the idea that there's anybody who wants to hear their story and find a better way of working.

You mentioned childcare there as well. And it's another thing that all the NetMum's parents are talking about. And even with the rollout of the 30 hours of funded childcare, many parents who need it most don't meet the minimum – can't say the sentence. Don't meet the minimum salary threshold. So the Education Secretary has said it will be looked at in the future. But how important do you think that is? Do you think it's going to get addressed?

For me, it's like one of the things I keep banging on about because I really want us to move to a universal system. I don't understand why we suddenly go, you look after your kid until they're five, but before they're five, who cares? Like, it's up to you when there's such an interest for all of us in investing in childcare

and investing in that early years sector. There's a couple of things. Like, at the moment, the thing I'm really, really keen on, you know, it's not just a 30 funded free hours, it's tax-free childcare. They don't talk about that in the job centre. Do you know there's a million women in this country out of work right now?

And a lot of them say it's because of caring commitments. Now, some of that will be parents, but a lot of that is kids. Why on earth aren't we helping people with, actually, there is some support out there. There is some money out there that you could get that could make this a lot more manageable when you're looking for work. So we're cutting women out of the conversation to begin with. And the thing about childcare is actually, if you invest in it, it pretty much pays for itself

because you get more people into work and more people able to pay in taxes that cover the cost of it, to pay those brilliant people who look after our kids at an early stage properly. Because we know the difference it makes. It's so striking at that point when your kid goes to school about the kids who can speak and the kids who are potty trains and the kids who actually are ready for learning, that's coming from brilliant nurseries and brilliant childminders. So for me, look, absolutely. We don't want to crash the system. So we have to try and work with what we've got at the moment. But I want to ultimately move to a universal system. And I want to make sure all the different

pots of funding that are out there are put into one pot so that we're not missing stuff out. Like, the numbers of people who still don't know they're entitled to 20% off their childcare if they claim it through the tax system is extraordinary. But that's your money. Yeah, and also it applies to after-school clubs and it applies to holiday clubs and all sorts of things as well. So it's definitely worth looking into, isn't it? If I had my way, I would also reconfigure the entire school year because it's bonkers to me that we ask you to use up all your school holiday time. It was trolled. I wrote a piece for Netmums about how I think that the whole school calendar should be overhauled. And people came for me, Stella. They were like, they were not happy that I was suggesting this.

but it makes no sense to me. But I'm like, fundamentally, it makes sense to me that we would be a more productive, happier country with our kids getting more out of the education system and more out of life if we reworked the way that we worked around family life rather than expecting one person to never see their children

and the other people to never have the career or the life that they want. Like, nobody's winning in this scenario. I didn't come into politics to sit on the sideline and watch people lose. I came in to fight. Sometimes you have those difficult, conversations. When I first talked about the motherhood penalty, I got so much abuses. If I was saying

I didn't enjoy being a mum, I love being a mum. I adore my kids, but my kids also need to see that other side of me. And I think that's for everyone, isn't it? The world that we're living in right now isn't really working for a lot of people. A lot of people have too much months at the end of their money. A lot of people are really struggling. I mean, the guilt, it's not just a guilt when you drop your kid off at school for the first time. It's like the guilt about whether or not they're getting enough time with you. There are answers out there that are actually benefit everybody. They do grow the economy, do make people happier, do deal with some of the challenges and inequalities we have. We've just got to start talking about them and not be afraid of them and not be silenced by

some weirdo on Twitter who's been there in their bedroom with like five different fake accounts writing, well, you should never have had kids then. It's like, go away. It always comes down to you should never have had kids. If you don't want to look after them or pay for them, you shouldn't have had them. It's always the same. Now, something you have campaigned for is period poverty. It's, you know, it's fighting against period poverty. And the importance of talking about menstrual health and that becoming part of the conversation. And, of course, it's a parenting issue as well as a women's health issue.

What changes would you like to see happen before your own daughter hits puberty? Well, let's be frank about this. If periods were happening to men, there would be tampons and towels and all sorts of things in public toilets as there would be in any other toilet. Like, it's crazy that we don't. see this as an equalities issue. It's the same also with the menopause. I really want to pay tribute to brilliant colleagues of mine like Carolyn Harris, who've really opened up those conversations about basic women's health care issues that, of course, hold people back. I remember the period education at school where it was like, there's a secret, terrible thing that's

going to happen to you. And the worst thing that could ever happen is that you have an accident and you have to change your clothes. And you're like, no, no, we need to change this conversation. But we also need to recognise just how expensive these items are and that that's a tax on being a girl. That's mad. We wouldn't accept that in any other circumstance. Why don't we change it? Absolutely mad. In Scotland, am I right in thinking they have different laws around period products and more free products available, I think, in public toilets and that kind of thing. It's changing. It is changing. I would like, like, if a restaurant didn't provide you with Lou Role, you'd probably be pretty cross with them. Why we say, oh, but it's not okay to provide

this. Like, I don't think most businesses would think it was an onerous thing to do, but it's just getting over, I mean, probably one of the things people may know me for was refusing to let Bill Cash. He's now left Parliament speak in a debate until he said the word tampon, because it was like, mate, you have to be able to talk about it if you're going to tell me that you don't want to fund it properly. Sometimes with these things, it's just having the conversation because then you realise how crazy the situation is. So before we let you go, I just wanted to ask, if one of your kids, when they were older to say they want to work in politics, what would your advice be? Would I be like my mum? My mum genuinely, when I said I was thinking of standing

for Parliament, said, have you thought about being an estate agent? It would make you more popular. A traffic warden, maybe. My goodness. Not wrong. My mum is never wrong. She's like my But the worst thing in my life now is when my mom and my daughter get together, I've got no chance. You must be popular in your constituency, though. I see you out on the streets of Walthamstow fixing problems and talking to people all the time. Like, your local constituents must love you, surely. What I've always wanted for everybody, right, is to find their passion. Because the reason I'm in the political party, Emma, is I've always believed that if we get the best out of each of us will benefit all of us.

And the thing that makes me so sad now is when I meet like brilliantly talented I mean, Waltham Stowe is full of talented people. You'll know about the bandies 17, you'll know about Harry Kane, you'll know about Fleur East. We have got talent pouring out of every single street, every single young person, but they don't always get the chance to realize it.

And I went into politics to be able to change that because I think the world will be a better place. Like somewhere in Waltham Stowe's a kid who can cure cancer, I absolutely believe that. We change the education system. We tackle poverty. They do that. Our lives are better.

Actually, it's not just in Walthamstow, there are people like that. What I would love for my kids is to have the opportunity to find something they are passionate about to and get involved in that. Now, if it turns out to be a state agency, you know, if that's what makes them happy, because isn't that what you want fundamentally as a parent? The thing that, you know, my children, when they're sad about stuff, and I know that you've got to help kids learn about sadness and it's okay not to be happy. But come on, there's always a part of you that just feels, you feel every moment with them. So, look, if they want to get involved in politics, that's their call. I mean, like me and my mum, my dad disagree about stuff all the time. My parents are also my constituents and I'll meet people in the street and you'll say,

I was going to come and see you, but then I met this woman and she said she'd have a word with you about this. And they've met my mum. But more than anything, I just really want my kids to be happy because when they're smiling and they're cheeky, like there's nothing that beats it, does it? And it took me a really long time to have kids. I really struggled to have kids. I thought at one point I would never be able to have children.

You know, my heart breaks now whenever I talk to anybody who's in that position because I just, that that is a pain that is indescribable and now to have these like two like lunatic children in my life and they are lunatic in the best sense in like they are, you know, like any child, they are up and down

every single minute of the day. It doesn't matter what's going on in the world. You come back to that, don't you? And so look, if they want to get involved in politics, you know, I probably don't make it look that much fun, but more than a thing, I just want them to be happy. Yeah. Well, Stella, it has been an absolute joy to talk to you today. Thank you so much for coming to chat to us at NetMums. It's been brilliant. Thank you for having me and thank you for doing what you're doing because, like I say,

I really want to see all those brilliant mum's voices being heard because I think, like, it's like people like Jolie Braley, you know, they change the world in so many incredible ways. More pleats is all I think, more, more, more, but also more sleep and more biscuits. Yes, all of the above. We've got Julie coming on in a couple of weeks, actually, but we're very excited about. She's another one. She should get a damehood. She's already at National Treasure status. I love Julie. I want her to go into the House of Lords. I think she'd be brilliant in Hermann. Yes. Thanks, guys. Thanks for having me. Don't forget, you can get in touch with us on all social channels, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, just type in Netmums and you'll find us.

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