Woman's Hour - Abandoned babies, Adventurer Alice Morrison, Being a 'BoyMum'

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

A newborn baby found earlier this year in East London is the third child abandoned by the same parents. That’s the story being reported by the BBC’s Sanchia Berg, who has been given permission to share the details by a judge at East London Family Court. Sanchia joins Nuala McGovern to tell us more about the story, alongside freelance journalist Louise Tickle, who has previously reported from family courts.Following on from our special phone-in on boys last month, author Ruth Whippman speaks to Woman’s Hour about her new book, BoyMum, which looks at what it means both to be a boy, and to raise a boy. Ruth joins Nuala to discuss what she’s learned from investigating masculinity and boyhood, the impact on girls and boys, and how it’s changed the way she is raising her three sons.The ongoing war in Ukraine has led to a significant shift in the local job market, with more women now doing roles traditionally dominated by men, such as mining. After more than a thousand male workers left their jobs in a coal mine to fight Russia’s invasion, the energy company DTEK allowed women to work underground for the first time in its history. Nuala is joined by Ukrainian journalist and BBC World Service Europe editor, Kateryna Khinkulova to discuss this transformation and what it means for women in Ukraine.Arabian Adventures: The Secrets of the Nabateans is a new two-part documentary on BBC iPlayer that looks into a culture who had women in leadership roles in the 4th century BC. Alice Morrison, adventurer and author, joins Nuala to talk more about what she has discovered about Nabatean women, and what modern-day Saudi Arabian women make of them.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2. And of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, this is Nuala McGovern and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. Good morning and welcome to Woman's Hour. Well, coming up, the BBC has been given special permission to report that a newborn baby found earlier this year is the sibling of two other babies found in very similar circumstances in 2017 and 2019. We're going to hear why this case and its details were considered to be in the public interest. Also, we'll hear how women in Ukraine have increasingly stepped into roles in the workforce done by men before Russia's full-scale invasion.

We'll also take a look at a place that had gender equality in the 4th century BC. Are you familiar with the Nabataeans? Well, you will be by the end of this hour. Also, Boy Mum. It's a new book, but it's also an ongoing conversation about raising boys in a post-MeToo era. Ruth Whitman calls herself

an overwhelmed feminist mother of three boys. She will share what she has learned and also as we speak about parenting boys, I want to know, is there a difference between you and your partner in how you do it? I'm asking, is one of you stricter

than the other? How do your parenting methods differ if at all? You can text the program, the number is 84844. On social media, we're at BBC Women's Hour, or you can email us through our website. If you'd like to send us a WhatsApp message or a voice note, that number is 03 700 100 444. 0300 444. But let me begin with the story I mentioned. A newborn baby girl found in East London earlier this year is the third child abandoned by the same parents.

That is information that we can now report thanks to special permission given by the court. DNA tests presented to the East London Family Court show that baby Elsa, as she has been called, is the sibling of two babies, a boy and a girl, found abandoned in similar circumstances. The BBC and PA Media were given permission to report the sibling link and that all of the three children are black. Joining me now is the BBC's Sancha Berg, who broke the story this morning, and journalist Louise Ticklele who we have spoken to before about reporting from the family courts. Let me begin with you Sanche and welcome to Woman's Hour. How was baby Elsa as we're calling her found? She was found by a dog walker on the coldest night of the year and she was taken to hospital and medical staff tried to care for her there.

Initially, they struggled to take her temperature because she was so very, very cold. But she recovered. She is in good health now. And the family court has been busy with the question of what should happen to her next. She has been in foster care, of course. And in the course of those hearings, the information presented to the court included DNA tests, which the judge had requested. And they showed that she was, as you said, a full sibling of two other babies who had been abandoned in very, very similar circumstances, literally barely an hour after being born, abandoned and found. And those two babies were given names Jack and Roman. Those are not the names they are known by

now. And Elsa is not known by that name either. So that was the information that we wanted to publish because we said it was very much in the public interest to spread this, to report this, because that might help identify the mother and critically give her the help that she may very well need. We know nothing about her circumstances, but to give birth three times, to have those babies taken away or to leave them somewhere, just such a short period after birth, it does beg many questions about her circumstances. And you talk about the mother there, and of course, physically, if she had abandoned these babies so soon after the birth.

But the father is the same for all three as well. The father is the same for all three, yes. But, I mean, just the sheer practicalities of giving birth and giving up that baby, whether she left the babies or someone else left the babies. It's an extraordinary and very, very unusual thing, as the judge acknowledged. Judge Carol Atkinson in East London Family Court, who was very supportive of our application. She said that the case of one abandoned baby excites great public interest because it is very unusual. And where you have a situation where you have three newborn babies born to the same mother and father, all abandoned.

She said it was of enormous interest to report this and help understand how it could have come about. So what was the process in the court to be able to tell this story? Because you got special permission. So this court, East London Family Court, like the other London family courts, and now almost half the courts in England and Wales, are part of a transparency pilot, which means that we as journalists can follow cases, we can report them in a much more meaningful way than we were able to before if we get a transparency order, which PA and the BBC got in this case, you have to request it from the judge. And I had been following the Baby Elsa case and I had a transparency order for it.

And that's how the issue of the DNA tests came up. This sort of story is very sensitive, of course, because there are families involved. There are limits to what can be made public. But who didn't support this story being made public? Well, it was not supported by the local authority. And it was only it wasn't supported by the Children and Family Courts Advisory Service, CAS. But as you say, there are limits to what I'm able to report. I'm not permitted to give any more information about that.

What I would say, though, is that the judge was very supportive of our application and we went through several hearings. We were present, I was present at four hearings. Our application was considered at two of those. So the court took the time to listen to all sides to consider all the elements of this before making a decision. And the judge intends to make her judgment, her full judgment, her legal explanation public in the near future. I understand. Just before I let you go, Sanjana, I know it's a very busy day for you.

Will those children have any contact with each other? Do we know? Well, the family court said there are plans for them to have contact in the future and to know all of them, that they are all full siblings. And this is one of the important functions of the family court in a case like this, to try to encourage that sort of relationship. But as I say, it is a very unusual case for this country. In fact, the ONS, which was counting, recording abandoned babies up till 2015, several years, there were no babies at all recorded as being abandoned. Some years there was just one.

Sanja Berg, thank you very much for spending some time with us here on Woman's Hour. And of course, we can't speculate exactly on why there were objections to this story being made public. But I want to turn to my other guest, Louise Tickle, the journalist who we've spoken to before about matters like this. Welcome back, Louise. Hello. So your reaction first off to this story? Well, it's obviously a really disturbing and tragic story. And I think the questions in my mind are what has compelled a mother, at least a mother, maybe and a father to abandon three children. Now,

we can't know. But I think the points that Sancha made about this being a story in the public interest, not just about the public being interested, but the need and the right for the public to know what is happening in a family court when it makes decisions about this kind of, you know, this kind of abandonment, but also the fact that these abandonments are happening at all, could tell us a lot about society. And so yes, we do need to know that a mother of three consecutive newborn babies has abandoned her children. Let's talk in the wider sense about other cases somewhat like this. We do talk about an actual abandoned baby being very rare. But the transparency pilots that mean that this was actually able to be reported, Sancho referred to them there. How do you think they're working? So the transparency pilot switches the presumption when the journalist goes to court from the presumption being that you can't report

unless the judge gives permission to the presumption being that you can report. That's operational in nearly half of the family courts in England and Wales at the moment. And in terms of how it's working, well, I think it's mixed. You still get, and the judge can always make restrictions that limit your reporting. And so it's not just a simple matter of assuming that you can no matter what. And I have myself had experience and other journalists have had experience of going to court over several hearings and still having opposition from usually the local authority and CAFCAS, much more rarely, but occasionally from parents to anonymised reporting in detail of what's been going on

in the case. And so although the presumption is, you know, in reporting terms, it's really excellent, it's not always panning out in practical terms, it's really excellent. It's not always panning out in practical terms. And so a lot of time is still needing to be invested in some cases by journalists, their editors and their news organisations, where they think it's necessary in the public interest to report in opposing and essentially fighting to be able to give the public that information. But I suppose, and you talk about it not being a complete solution, but I'm just thinking about these sort of cases, would they not have to be a case-by-case basis

because the details can be so sensitive around them? All cases are incredibly sensitive in family courts. I have never been to one in a decade's reporting where that issue has not been raised. They all matter tremendously to the families involved. I think the thing that I find slightly wearying is the often reflexive and automatic opposition of state authorities to reporting of details which may not show them themselves in a particularly good light. I have no idea of what the reasons were

in this case for the local authority in Kafkas not wishing Sanctia and PA to report. But I do know in cases that I've attended, for instance, where teenagers who have severe psychological and emotional difficulties being locked away on deprivation of liberty orders in unregulated placements, which repeatedly break down at vast cost both emotional and financial literally destroying children's lives as they grow up in state care. I have had a very mixed experience of local authorities being willing for me to report the name of that local authority and one local authority which I still can't name went all the way to appeal to prevent me from doing so.

Yes, of course. And I don't have a representative of local authorities, either that one or others, that you may be speaking about to respond. And we did do quite a big report as well on the deprivation of liberty orders the other week on Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for speaking to us.

That is Louise Tickle, the journalist who has been following stories like this one and others when it comes to family courts and also to my colleague, the BBC's Sancha Berg. There is more as she has been writing her report also online.

You want to get in touch with us? 84844 is a place to do that. I'm going to be talking about boy mums. boy moms, as it was called in the States, boy mums in the UK. And, you know, I want to know if parenting boys, do you and your partner have different takes on how it should be done? There's all these questions about raising boys in a post Me Too era, in a culture that can be construed as having toxic masculinity.

Is it different? Maybe you have boys and girls. Maybe you've just girls. Maybe you've just boys. I want to hear it all. 84844 is the way to get in touch with us on text at BBC Women's Hour, or you can email us through our website. Now during World War II millions of women who were barred from combat kept the economy going and crucially helped behind the scenes to make D-Day which is marking its 80th anniversary this week possible. So it's not a new phenomenon when a country is at war that the job market shifts and more women pick up roles that were traditionally dominated by men. It's what's happening now in Ukraine. In fact, last month, a new bill came into effect in Ukraine.

So that lowered the age of compulsory conscription for men from 27 to 25. So as potentially even more men are drafted into the army, what is the impact on women and society? To discuss this, let's discuss this even, I'm joined by the Ukrainian journalist, Kateryna Kinkalova, who is the editor of the Europe Hub for the BBC World Service. Kateryna, welcome to the Woman's Hour studio. Hello, Nala. Good to see you. Now, tell us a little bit about the main development in terms of military draft and where Ukraine is in terms of men and women and the war effort,

this new mobilization law brought the age down to 25 years. And it's in an attempt to replenish the army at the front, who we don't know the exact Ukrainian government isn't giving the exact information about the losses, but we assume they're quite heavy, especially in the recent months and weeks. And as you said, this means that women have to step up in various spheres, in various areas of work, of society. Ukraine more broadly is, as a country, as a society, understandably is in a flux. There are a lot of displaced people who've been moved from not just refugees who left the country, but refugees internally displaced. But this situation, which on the one hand has been dramatic and tragic for many, has also provided some new opportunities. And Ukrainians, as we have seen in these past two and a half years, are resilient, but they're also incredibly entrepreneurial. So there have been a lot of sort of new opportunities emerging, including for women.

But women are serving as well in the military. Yes, they are. There are over 60,000 women serving in the army. Again, with a sort of in terms of how big the armed forces are, we don't exactly know. They're estimated to be between six and 800,000. So it's between eight and 10% of the armed forces are women, but they're not obliged to serve. So there is no compulsory military service for women, but many volunteer to serve.

Yes, indeed. And one of the industries that has brought more women into formerly traditionally male roles is the mining industry. After more than a thousand male coal miners were conscripted to fight Russia's invasion, the company DTEK, so that's Ukraine's largest private energy company, allowed women to work underground for the first time in its history. Tetiana was one of them. Before the war, Tetiana worked above ground, measuring methane levels in the mines. But now her working day is quite different. I get to the mine at six in the morning and go to the office to get my instructions for the day.

Then I go to the women's sauna and change my clothes. I pick up a helmet and lamp and my emergency kit. Then at 6.40 I go down in the lift to the mine. I take a little train, we call it a carriage, and I go to my spot and take over from the girl whose shift has ended. It's what I've always wanted to do, right from being a little girl. I used to see my dad and my granddad come out of the mine all dirty and used to wonder why? What's it like?

My dad is really proud of me, and I know my grandfather would be proud of me too, but he is no longer with us. But yes, he would have been proud because I am a machine operator like him. That was Tatiana there. So one of around 500 women employed by that energy company, a DTEK, to work underground. I mean, for many, Katarina, this would not sound like the most appealing job.

Obviously, Tatiana loves it. But were women pushing to go underground and work in the mines? I didn't expect they would be pushed. I expect that in many cases they would be, well, there was no way to push them, you know. So, yes, I mean, I would, previously women couldn't go underground. So for many, for, you know, for decades.

What was the reasoning for that? Under the Soviet Union, there was a long list of, you know, around 500 jobs that women couldn't do. And that included usually was either working underground or being a firefighter or something that was sort of involved physical, some kind of physical effort. And it was believed that men are more suited for that kind of work. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, most post-Soviet countries either changed those lists or cancelled them altogether. In Ukraine, that list was finally wiped out completely in 2017, i.e. way before this invasion. So as of 2017, in Ukraine, women can do any job they want to do. But of course, traditionally, there are certain jobs that women do and don't do or do less of. So what other areas or industries are you seeing where women are going into the workforce

where they haven't been before? So primarily, it's just blue collar, everything to do with work in factory and kind of heavy duty, heavy industry industry sort of factories in agriculture. Again, it's sort of where physical labour or driving heavy machinery is involved and different types of tradesmen like plumbers, electricians, they tended to be men. At the same time, many, you know, white collar and many jobs like doctors or university professors or all sorts of teachers, lawyers. There were plenty of women there.

So I wouldn't, you know, the statistics, but it's at least, you know, the women were well represented. And also, interestingly, in Ukraine, for some strange reason, women run a lot of the media companies, a lot of the TV channels. And always did. They have done for, I would say, for a few years, for a good 10, 15 years. If you look at just across the main TV channels, they're run by women. But it must be such a shift, I'm thinking, because A, you have this sector that is becoming more female dominated because the men are away but the men are away so what about the children like even that issue of child care which is an issue I think in just about every country in the world but for people who are going out to

work that perhaps didn't work before well as I said Ukraine is in a in a big flux so I think in in many cases it's it's a sort of case by case situation, really depends on the region, what sort of arrangements people would have or women would have. And yes, so in many areas, you know, there are maybe whole villages where there aren't many men left and there are women having to sort of have these either rely on their families or rely on wider community to help them if they have to go out to work to help them look after the children. So but it's that there are these networks, family networks, community networks that are coming into play, coming into force to to help do that. It's it must be bittersweet, though, to have opportunities open to you that weren't there before, but the reason they're there is because men are away

and at times being killed. Yes, no, very much so. And it's a very, bittersweet is a very good way of putting it. As documentary film director, Mstislav Chernov, who just a few weeks ago got his Oscar

for his documentary, 20 Days in Maruupol. And as he received it, he was saying, I wish I could exchange this for Russia never invading Ukraine and never occupying our cities. So I think it's the same for many women and even for Tatyana, who sounded very excited, as we just heard, to be able to go down into the mine. I think she would have exchanged

that as well. But at the same time it's almost, I think Ukrainians have now accepted this voice, this sort of inevitability and they're just dealing with it. It's not about kind of this endless naval gazing. What if it hadn't happened? It has happened.

They're dealing with it. They're stepping up to it hadn't happened it has happened they're dealing with it they're stepping up to it and for them it is an existential you know battle it's literally a question of survival because if we looked back to World War II before I let you go Katerina

a lot of women went into the workforce in the UK and did jobs they hadn't done before but then had to return to the home when the men returned. Absolutely. That could be, well, obviously, we don't know when and how this war will end, but in a way, yes, we could almost predict some sort of, you know, feminine mystique sort of crisis

where if women are pushed back from some of their roles, either back into the home or into more traditional roles, some sort of pushback. So it's possible, but at the same time, because Ukraine up to now has had this experience of women kind of comfortably occupying many roles, which in other societies perhaps would have been taken by men, I think that this would be this kind of transition

in some sort of post-war scenario, I expect would be fairly harmonious. Katarina Kinkalova, editor of the Europe Hub for the BBC World Service. Thanks so much. Thank you. Now, if you are an avid Woman's Hour listener, I hope you are,

you might remember our special programme live from Glastonbury last year. Well, there is some exciting news as we are heading back for a second year. On the 28th of June, Anita will be live from Worthy Farm, bringing you the voices of some of the extraordinary women at the music festival, both on stage and off. And we'd love to hear from you if you are one of the lucky ones who will be going. Get in touch. Tell us why we should come and chat with you. We'd particularly like to hear from you if you're going on your own. How are you planning for a solo Glasto?

That could even be a hashtag, couldn't it? You can text Women's Hour 84844. You can find us on at BBC Women's Hour on social media, on email. Maybe we'll see you there. And of course, you can get in touch with any of the stories that we are discussing on this morning's programme as well. Many of you are on my next guest. This is something we've talked about before.

Last month, Women's Hour had a special phone-in programme all about boys. Anita spoke to Catherine Carr, creator of the Radio 4 series about the boys, and Richard Reeves from the American Institute for Boys and Men. And we heard from many of you, our listeners, about what it's like to raise a boy, to be a boy, and about how society is shaping our future men. Kirsty, one of our listeners, spoke to us about her experience as a parent and trying to navigate raising her daughter and also her son. I've got

two children my eldest is a daughter who she's very forthright and not afraid to share her thoughts and she does a lot of things that might be thought of as stereotypically male and that's been very much easier for her to manage than my youngest who is he's just I mean he's just naturally a more sensitive and quiet and he displays a lot of things that I think we would call traditionally feminine traits and I think it's been it's definitely been harder for me as a parent to unpick all the learning that I had about what boys and girls should be like exactly what they should do and to see them all as real humans. But it's so great to hear these conversations because the damage I think that we do to boys

by denying them the access to their feelings is actually harming women and girls as well as harming the boys and the men. That's Kirsty there. Well, if you missed that phone in or you want to hear more, head to BBC Sounds. You can listen to the full programme. But today I'm wondering if you've heard the term boy mum.

It can be a negative stereotype used online about mums overly favouring their male children. It is something my next guest has thought a lot about. She has a new book. It's called Boy Mum. Ruth Whitman has been thinking about what masculinity and boyhood means today, how she raises her sons and also what it means to be

a boy mum, navigating all of it. I have to say, Ruth has got up very early or very late? What should we call it, Ruth? I don't know. You are... Yeah, I don't know. A bit of both, really. It's 2.30am here. Listen, we appreciate it. We appreciate it. Again, a bit of both really, yes. Okay. It's 2.30am here. Well, listen, we appreciate it.

We appreciate it. Again, the title of the book, you're so welcome, is Boy Mum. And you're in Berkeley, California, just to let our listeners know, which I can talk about that in a moment as well, differences or similarities. But why did you choose that title for the book? Well, so this hashtag online, the boy mom slash boy mom thing, it's really taken off it. Even since I wrote the book, it's like gathered this huge momentum online. And I think it just captures

this kind of tension, you know, this idea that there's conflict built into it, this idea that, you know, a woman gives birth to a child who's like fundamentally unlike herself. And it kind of packs, that hashtag packs quite a lot of different sexist tropes into one little word. So, you know, on the mom's side of it, there's, you know, as you said, this idea that moms like favor their sons, and something almost Oedipal, you know, that there's the mom who's kind of almost in love with her son, and she's jealous of his future wife. And she's, you know, she wants to be his first kiss and his first love. And then there's this also, you know, on the boy the boy side of it there's this very sort of sexist essentializing

thing you know the boy is this like naughty little rowdy scamp you know but he's and he loves mud and he loves fart jokes and and those kinds of things but it's also you know he's very uncomplicated and loving and the subtext is kind of unlike those scheming's also, you know, he's very uncomplicated and loving. And the subtext is kind of unlike those scheming, devious girls. So I think there's lots of different things packed into it. So I wanted to be kind of in conversation with all of those different stereotypes

from the mom's point of view and the boy's point of view. And very much in a post, or is it fair to call it post? I was going to say post Me Too era, but of course that era continues. Let's say post the explosion of Me Too and that era. Yeah.

Well, so the book opens when I'm about to give birth to my third boy and that was in late 2017 and the Me Too movement was just exploding online. And, you know, it was this really conflicted time for me, you know, because as a feminist, I felt quite exhilarated by the whole Me Too conversation. And it felt like, you know, finally women have a voice

and people are listening and this is wonderful. But, you know, as a mother of sons and just hearing this relentless, terrible news about men, it kind of felt like for a moment that sort of every man on the planet was a sex offender. You know, I'm raising these three sons and I felt quite conflicted and almost quite defensive and protective of them. So I really wanted to dig into all of those kind of complicated feelings and sort of report on what it's like to grow up as a boy in the shadow of that whole

conversation. But you talk about growing up as a boy, but as I mentioned, you are in the US, in Berkeley, California, where, of course, the Me Too movement particularly took hold to begin with. But it is a rarefied environment. I mean, does what you see, what you hear or what your boys experience growing up really reflect what's happening elsewhere in places like the UK? Well, so this is why, so Berkeley, you're right, is this very liberal bubble. And I was very aware of that when I was writing the book.

So I decided to, rather than just sort of write about my own experience raising my boys, I did a lot of reporting across the United States. I talked to boys from all different kinds of backgrounds, all different walks of life, all different political views. And, you know, I talked to, you know, some really kind of toxic fringes. I talked to incels and I talked to kind of regular boys. And so I really wanted to kind of break out of that bubble and see what people were saying. And then when I brought the book to the UK, you know, when the UK edition was coming out,

I thought, you know, will it be a really different story in the UK? But actually I found that all of the same issues were just coming up. You know, the same things that I was hearing in America, boys and their mothers were telling me in the UK as well. You write, if guilt is our internal police force,

then for me, motherhood has been been living like living in a police state explain that for me well I think that there's something about the conditions of modern parenthood and especially modern motherhood that really pushes us to feel guilty I think that we have this sort of narrative that, you know, we can build and mould the exact child that we want. And if we don't manage to do that, then it's our fault. And I think that feeling is particularly acute for mothers of boys in this moment, because, you know, there's all these memes, I don't know if you've seen them online, where it's like, protect your daughters crossed out, and then it will say teach your sons. So it's this really clear message that we have to fix this you know toxic masculinity exists and it's on us to kind of

to fix this problem and I think that you know mothers are already like primed to feel a lot of guilt and I think you know especially in this moment raising sons it can feel like such a lot of pressure. So in, I suppose, briefly, what did you try and do to, and I put this in inverted commas, fix your sons? Well, I don't know about fixing my sons, but I think that what I started to notice was that we have a lot of blind spots when it comes to the ways that we socialise boys. And I think we put a lot of pressure on them to be masculine. And it kind of comes through in all sorts of really subtle ways that we haven't really unpacked. So you see in the kind of TV programmes and the kind of books and the kind of movies they watch,

they get this view of human relationships, which is really combative and competitive. So there's all these battles, boy stories, you know, the ones that are marketed to them are always about fighting, about winning and losing, about heroes and villains. Whereas the kinds of stories that are marketed towards girls are often about relationships and emotional labor and taking care of other people's feelings. And I think, you know, in our culture, we've talked a lot about how women take on too much of that kind of work and it's quite burdensome. But I think that I realise that we're just really fundamentally not teaching those skills to boys. We're not exposing them to those kinds of role models.

What about some listening who think that's all very well, but my son wants to play with trucks. He doesn't want to watch the friendship dramas on telly. He wants to run around pretending he's a superhero fighting baddies and making a lot of noise in the process. mother was a feminist, she very much didn't want you to go into a traditionally female, gendered role. And some could say that you were a political pet project, because you don't want that for your sons, either. Yeah, so I think, you know, ultimately, I'm really glad that my mom, who was a second wave feminist, she, you know, she was of the sort of 1970s, 1980s variety where it was like no Barbies, no pink, no, you know, and it was more about sort of taking things away, I think. And, you know, overall, I'm really glad that she did have that project and that I did grow up with

a strong sense of self and strong feminist values. But with my own sons, I thought, I think it's not so much about forbidding them things. I don't want to take their things away. And I don't want to make them into some kind of project, you know, to sort of enact my agenda, but I want to kind of add things in. And I found that, you know, so my sons are very boyish in stereotypical ways, you know, they love all that stuff. And it's, you know, and I don't want to battle with them over it it's not that I want to stop them liking what they like but I think it's about not censoring myself and thinking oh they won't like this and not giving them the options and actually sometimes they've really surprised me and things that I thought they wouldn't like and that they actually really have responded to. That's it we were also asking whether people parent differently to their partner

when it comes to their boys. And I'd be curious for your thoughts on that as well, Ruth. But here we go. Let me see. And also ones on just being a boy mum, quite simply. On parenting boys,

my husband and I had quite different roles when it came to parenting our two sons. He decided to revert to boyhood and join our sons. I became a single parent with three boys to care for. I can see you pull a face there.

Here's another one. Boy mums. I was a girl mum for seven years before I had my son. He's now four and I still do not identify as a boy mum. There's nothing inherently different about him because he's a boy rather than just being a different person. But with my girls, I always tell them they're strong and brave and clever and can do anything they want to achieve. I don't really give that same message to my son, which may be a problem. Thoughts?

Yeah, well, that's really interesting because I think we've reached this really strange moment culturally where we talk about girls in this really kind of expansive, inspirational way. So it's like, you can be anything, you're strong, you're tough, you're brave, break those stereotypes. But we kind of tend to talk about boys, and even people who are quite liberal and progressive, tend to talk about boys in these quite essentializing ways.

So I hear a lot of, you know, boys are like dogs. That's one that people keep saying to me, you know, all they need is exercise and food and just, you know, wear them out. You know, and there's sort of a grain of truth in it, but it's also, you know, it's very limiting. And, you know, boys will be boys and just, you know, boys can't sit still. Boys don't like reading. Boys, you know, boys only want to play with trucks. And, you know, and I think a lot of girls go through a princess phase where they really only want to play with princesses but nobody's saying oh well they're just like that that's just what they're innately like and so we should not try and expose them to anything else. Do you think it makes a difference when it is all boys in the family like when they don't have a

sister? Yeah and there's lots of really interesting research on that that shows that having sisters really benefits boys and helps them learn these kind of relational and emotional skills and it sets a different kind of tone in the family. And I think with three boys, you know, they kind of boy each other, you know, that you're really doubling down on that boy energy and boy sort of boy tropes. And they don't get exposed to so many things just by kind of natural, organic osmosis. Because you talk about boys might learn and benefit from girl culture.

Also, again, in inverted commas. Give me an example. Well, I think it really is about this idea of having access to your emotions and also about building intimacy and friendships. A lot of the, you know, I interviewed lots and lots of boys and, you know, I've heard this thing that, you know, male friendships aren't worse. They're just different. But a lot of the boys I spoke to felt like they really couldn't talk to their friends about anything kind of emotional or vulnerable or personal and they actually really wanted to they weren't happy with the situation and they wanted to have these deeper and more emotionally close relationships but they felt like they didn't have the kind of social permission to do that and I think girls just get absolutely bombarded with all these kind of friendship and relationship stories and narratives and role models and they can see themselves in those roles and so it's just much easier for them to access that so when I say girl culture I'm not talking and relationship stories and narratives and role models, and they can see themselves in those roles.

And so it's just much easier for them to access that. So when I say girl culture, I'm not talking about putting on a dress or, you know, being a princess. I'm talking about these very sort of deeper things to do with emotions and relationships. Just another comment that has come in, Ruth. Let me read it. I'm a mother of two much-loved teenage boys, coming from a family of three sisters,

a mother and a very strict and emotionally switched-off father who himself came from a family of boys. Raising these guys with my husband, who has two sisters and divorced parents,

has been the singular most soul-destroying experience of my life. She goes on to say, I'm not a naturally negative person, but our clash in parenting styles

and expectations of and for our children has caused a huge and irreconcilable rift in our relationship as a married couple. I have come to realise that I've had to focus on my own parental and personal improvement to be the best that I can be for my boys and critically for me and the others in my life. Now, I find that interesting because you have people in a couple that have a totally different take on what it means to raise or to bring up a boy. Yeah, I mean, I've been really lucky. That does sound really, really hard. And I've been very lucky that my husband and I generally tend to see eye to eye on parenting things for the most part. You know, obviously, there are some differences. And, you know, in a way, sometimes I feel quite de-skilled in parenting boys in comparison to him,

because all the things that they like, you know, he was so used to, he played with those toys when he was a kid. He knows how to talk about Star Wars in the right way. You know, I always talk about it in the wrong way. Or he knows how to, like, fix the, you know, the video game when it breaks down. And so I think, you know, they, they look to him, but I think also, you know, there's this kind of narrative in a lot of the parenting literature when you read about boys, that boys need male role models and really mothers should just kind of back off. And, you know, it's like boyhood is this very momentous thing that women couldn't really

possibly understand fully. And I think there's a lot of really good research to show that the strength of a boy's relationship with his mother is one of the most important factors in his wellbeing throughout life. Let me see, here's another woman's there. I felt I had to counter my ex's stereotype of parenting our children. He would only take his son out for bike rides and his daughter ought to stay home

and bake cookies with her stepmother, says our listener. But you know, you talked about how much boys wanted to express their feelings when you spoke one-on-one with them but felt that they couldn't do it with society at large. And of course we've talked before about Andrew

Tate and others like him that has been an influencer online at the moment. Of course there's a court case going on about trafficking people. But people have wondered about his popularity and why it happened. But without getting specifically into Andrew Tate, I know you've also spoken to boys who describe themselves as incels. So these, well, maybe you'd like to describe, Ruth,

who they are and what you spoke to them about. Yeah, so incels is this movement online, it stands for involuntary celibates. And it's these often like quite adolescent boys and young men who basically are not having sex, they want to have women and they can't get them. And it encompasses quite a broad spectrum of different types of people. But the sort of fringes of that movement are extremely violent. There have been a lot of violent murders, mass shootings that are associated with the InStyle movement. So there's some really horrific things in there.

You know, they're misogynistic, there's hate speech. And so I was really interested to talk to them because I think they represent, you know, a very extreme version, but, you know, a sort of almost a logical conclusion of some of the trends that we're seeing in more mainstream society. So, but what was really surprising to me, so I spent time on their message boards, and they really are some of the most absolutely toxic, horrifying places imaginable. There's racism, there's misogyny, there's violent threats, there's all these horrible things. But what really shocked me as well was that there's also this real sort of sense of emotionality and sharing and almost tenderness and like brotherhood between these guys. And I went in depth interviewing them.

And a couple of the guys that I spoke to said that they actually felt that they were more able to kind of express their emotions in those intel spaces than they were in other parts of life, which was a real paradox for me. Yeah, it's so interesting, isn't it? As we continue to kind of learn more about some of the various fears that people are

also worried about. I want to read another message that came in. Thea here, mother to two boys three and a half and twelve months. From a family of mostly girls they were obviously disappointed when I had boys. They often talk as though having a boy is a bad thing and that my boys are really naughty.

My boys are obviously very different to their female cousins, but one of the starkest differences to me is how emotional my young boys are and how much emotional support they need. In terms of parenting, my husband finds this really difficult because although he's a very liberal-minded and progressive, he was parented to suppress his emotions. He's having to do a lot of unlearning here.

I'm so keen for my boys not to lose their innate desire to express their emotions. Just tying on a little bit, Ruth, with what you were saying there. But before I let you go, because I know you've dealt as well with a lot of what we call rambunctiousness or energy of boys fighting.

You found yourself exhausted. That's something that's been echoed by some of our listeners as well. What tips or solutions do you have for our listeners on raising boys I think that really is just trying to um to bring out that emotional and relational side in them and I think that you know there's lots of research to show that parents in general like project all these really masculine qualities onto boys right from babyhood so when boys cry they tend to see them as angry rather than sad

whether whereas they see their daughters as being in distress and they handle them more roughly they wrestle them they you know they um they parent them in a slightly subtly but slightly different way and i think what boys really need is a lot more emotional nurture and like talking about their feelings you know there's lots of research that parents don't talk with boys about their feelings as much as they do with with girls and so I think it's trying to correct for that and really to see boys as these fully complex emotional creatures and really try to nurture that side of them and do it in a way that's that's generous you know we'll keep the conversation going her new book is called boy mom that's ruth whitman who has been thinking all about masculinity and

boyhood thank you so much for joining us today on women's hour and go back to bed now. Let me turn to a group of people in history that my next guest describes as the biggest civilization that nobody has heard of. I'm talking about the Nabataeans, an ancient civilization who built Petra in modern day Jordan, which is now one of the seven wonders of the world. My guest is Alice Morrison, an adventurer and an author who's made a documentary for the BBC called Arabian Adventurers, The Secret of the Nabataeans. Here is a clip of Dr. Suliman Al-Tib, a specialist in ancient Arabic, speaking to Alice outside one of the tombs in Helga, which is now Saudi Arabia. This is a very famous inscription related to the Nabataean period. The amazing thing is that she didn't say she is a daughter of her father. She said she is a daughter of her mother.

So what can we learn about women in Nabataean society? A woman wrote the inscription, she built the tomb for herself and her daughters. What does that tell us? As a matter of fact, the women at that time they were free in trade and they they were working in high positions and religious positions so they were really involved in a napatian society at that time yeah do we know if the women were involved in trade were they merchants did they buy did they buy? Did they sell? What did they do? Yeah, I think the same as men.

So is it too much to say that the Nabataeans were feminists? I think it's too much, yeah. So that was Alice speaking to Salman Al-Tib. She is in Morocco, Alice. We're actually having a problem just connecting to her. So I do

hope to reconnect to her in just a couple of minutes time so bear with us on that but while we try that I want to go back to the bank holiday programme on the late May

it was all about muses how did muses go from the fiery ancient Greek all woman collective to passive models posing for male artists who are the inspirational muses and

why are they nearly always overshadowed by artists and also what's in it for the muse well i got to speak to the novelist and 1960s muse penelope three all about her life as an iconic 60s muse to a very famous photographer i met david bailey and um as uh the first time that I worked with him, there was this very sexual, very electrical communication between us. And that really informed the photographs that we did together. And we then became a couple and we traveled around the world. We had a wonderful couple of years together. And then the relationship started to change and he was working with other models as well

of whom I was very jealous. Pellipi Tree there, I have to say, fascinating lady, as were the others on the programme. It's May 27th. If you want to go back and listen to it, it is on BBC Sounds. Right, good news. We've connected with Morocco and we've connected with Alice Morrison.

I can see she has a huge smile and the most beautiful backdrop behind you of the Atlas Mountains, maybe? Well done. Yes, I'm right in the heart of the Atlas Mountains in a village called Imlu.

Well, lovely to have you on Woman's Hour. I was watching your documentaries. You've totally piqued my interest, I have to say, for the Nabataeans and also all that they achieved. An ancient civilization thought to have lived around the 4th century BC,

between the times of ancient Egyptians and the Romans. Tell us a little bit about Nabataean women, because this is Women's Hour after all. Well, I think what's interesting about the Nabataeans is their congress with the Romans and the Egyptians. They built the fantastic city of the dead, Petra,

and another fantastic city, Al-Ula. And yet nobody's ever heard of them. So in this program, we kind of delve deep into their secrets. They didn't leave written records. They left us one of the new seven wonders of the world in Petra,

but they didn't leave any records. But we literally had to dig out every piece of information about Navati and Wollan. And I think what is fascinating, this is an Arab nomadic people who made their money through trade, who seem to have been relatively peaceful and very cooperative with people, very collaborative. And women held the highest roles in their society, including as their queen, and that could be passed on in the lineage from mother to daughter. That is really quite something.

You found, was it coins? Tell us a little bit about the evidence that you got to tell us these stories. Okay. Well, there's lots of rather fabulous evidence, actually. And the good thing at the moment, this is so much international research going on. So we're finding out more and more. But for the actual kind of like the monarchy thing, there's two sets of really good evidence. One is on coins and there's two special coins. And one of them shows a woman and a man's face on the same coin,

i.e. giving them equal status, and another one shows the queen and then going into the next coin to her daughter. So it's that kind of like chain of history where women ruled and then could pass on to their daughters. Sadly that it went missing somewhere along the line, somewhere from the fourth century BC. But you do also look at, and this is fascinating, a reconstruction of what a Nabataean woman may have looked like. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about her? Oh, well, this was really emotional. So if you can imagine, I've been like researching and delving and digging in sand and finding shards and all sorts of things. And then what the very clever people at the Royal Commission for At Lula have done is they've reconstructed. It's like silent witness. I was channeling silent witness.

They've reconstructed the face of an Abatean woman from her skull and from, you know, from her tomb, from her remains. So they could see what height she was etc and apparently one of the very important things is they have to you know think about skin depth and and how much fat you'd have on your face and apatians wouldn't have very much fat so they've reconstructed this rather delicate beautiful woman who they call haina and you come face to face with her in the museum and she looks a bit like the old i'll tell you what she looks like she looks like the very old-fashioned depictions of mary in the museum. And she looks a bit like the old, I'll tell you what she looks like. She looks like the very old fashioned depictions of Mary in the stable. Because yeah, she has like a head covering.

It's got very fine features. And she has these, I know this sounds weird because it is a reconstruction, but she has these soulful eyes. And I think after all that research that I'd done, I genuinely was like looking at this woman thinking, oh my goodness. And one more really interesting thing.

She had an abscess in her tooth and they could find that out from the dentist. No way. I know. And she was wearing a necklace maybe made of dates. So there were little stones left. So how cool is all this? I loved the story you had about dates as well, that you might survive crossing the desert if you have a box of dates and be able to eat them well i mean it's a lovely story but it's actually true it is you would get very i could do this it could be the new atkins i could get very very thin

forget paleo but you can actually exist on seven dates a day because they are a superfood absolutely brilliant but as you learned more about the Nabataean civilisation and particularly this issue of women within it, how would you describe it to our listener, what it might have been like to be a Nabataean woman? Oh, blimey. Obviously, we are still finding out as much as we can, so there are only like snippets of details, but for one thing we know that the Nabataeans as a whole, actually the higher up

people lived a very luxurious life. We're talking Nuala, we're talking ostrich filled cushions, ostrich feather filled cushion which just brings up this marvellous image. We also know another very, teeth, teeth are the clue to everything. We also know that they made bread and that to grind their wheat, they used the flat grindstones that people still use here in Morocco, just a flat stone. And then you grind your wheat

either on another flat stone by hand or on compressed sand. So that's why their teeth all got ground down because little granules went in. So we know details like this. And I think the final thing that's really interesting to me, they didn't use slaves. As far as we can see, slavery was not a part of Nabataean culture. So, you know, if you look at rich societies, the Romans, the Egyptians to take those to, they all use slaves. So our Nabataean women, I reckon, would have been doing their fair share of the housework. Tell me why, if we probably don't know this yet, I didn't see this, I don't think,

of why the civilization died out? Oh, it's so sad. Oh, no, we do know. They were swallowed. We do. They were swallowed up by the Romans. Honestly, I mean, I want to meet that Mary Beard and talk to her about her favorite civilization. They were swallowed. We do. They were swallowed up by the Romans. Huh. Honestly. I mean, I want to meet that Mary Beard and talk to her about her favorite civilization.

Maybe we can make it happen on Woman's Hour. Yeah, I would like to do the Arab's versus the Romans. I really would be into it. No, they got swallowed up. And I think because they weren't a particularly martial society, they lived through trade. That was their raison d'etre. They kind of faded away. So even after, for example, one of their cities, Alulu, was conquered by the Romans,

they were still there for like a century, but they just faded. Let me turn to you just in my last minute or so, Alice. You live in this world of exploring. You call yourself an Indiana Jones for the girls. so it's a very male world i imagine that you live in but you sometimes say it's an advantage to be a woman why i do live in quite a world a male world i mean we just did this research the traffic travel that found out that even though adventurous women are like the fastest growing demographic travel men dominate if you like our communications so like we looked at 101 travel and adventure programs on telly and only 26 were presented by women so that's the kind of so thank you for this opportunity because i want to get the word out that women we adventure

differently from men but we're doing it you know i've just walked across morocco the sahara for seven and a half months for camels we are doing amazing stuff and we bring a different view but the male gaze and the female gaze are different. What is the advantage in my last 30 seconds of being a woman when you go into certain societies particularly some that are patriarchal like strongly patriarchal societies where men very much dominate? It's completely a superpower because the men treat me as an honorary man and the women will talk to me, take me into the kitchen,

share their stories, which is something that no male explorer can access. Well, thank you so much for joining us. That is Alice Morrison. And of course, if you'd like to watch the first episode of Arabian Adventures, The Secrets of the Nabataeans, it's on BBC iPlayer now.

The second will be on this weekend. Thank you so much, Alice, for joining us all the way from Morocco. Thanks also for all your messages that have been coming in on being a boy. Remember, we're talking about parenting styles.

My sister battled with her husband over the boys. He insisted on reinforcing his own bad eating habits with them. Boys don't eat greens, apparently so said the boys. He insisted on reinforcing his own bad eating habits with them. Boys don't eat greens, apparently so said the husband. Right, we've been talking about boys. Tomorrow, I'll be speaking to the comedy powerhouse Tina Fey about her stage musical coming to London, Mean Girls. Don't miss that conversation. Join me at 10. I will see you then for another edition of Woman's Hour.

That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. I'm Dr. Michael Moseley, and I want to let you know about my new immersive BBC Radio 4 podcast series, Deep Calm. It's all about how to tap into and activate a remarkable system that we all have hardwired inside of us, our relaxation response. And it's been developed to be listened to at any time you want to really unwind. We'll discover simple, powerful, scientifically proven techniques to activate this relaxation response.

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