Woman's Hour - Anne Longfield, children's commissioner for England; Family secrets; Pelvic floor

Episode Date: January 24, 2019

Are children missing out? The National Audit Office and the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health have raised concerns about services for children this week. Anne Longfield, Children's Commissioner for England joins us to discuss what she thinks is happening. We hear about why incontinence affects fifty per cent of women during their lives and what they can do to improve their pelvic floor. With Burn's Night tomorrow, was Robert Burns an early feminist or an old sex pest? - we debate. And, we hear about Christine's discovery in our series on family secrets.

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, Jenny Murray welcoming you to Thursday's edition of the Woman's Hour podcast. Today sees the launch of the hashtag pelvic floor challenge. So start the exercises now if you know them and if you don't, you will learn how to. You know it makes sense. The second in our series of family secrets, Christine made her shocking discovery when she was 74. Tomorrow night is Burns Night when the haggis will be addressed.

But what about his reputation with women? Why did a man with the reputation of a sex pest write a poem about the rights of women. And the death of Diana Athill are memories of her. Now this week, two major reports about the way in which children are looked after have been published. The National Audit Office has pointed to the growing pressure on child protection services and how counsellors in England are having to overspend their budgets to try and meet their statutory responsibilities. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health says the

care that children receive in the UK depends on whether they live in England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland but wherever the child lives funding is a problem and more needs to be done about child poverty. Well Anne Longfield is the Children's Commissioner for England. The National Audit Office has concluded that the Department of Health and Education has made poor progress. What would she put that down to? I think simply there hasn't been enough positive proactive action to reduce the risks of a group of children that we know are very vulnerable. There's been an increase in children going into care and receiving child protection significantly over recent years. But against the backdrop of reduced budgets, now there isn't the money there to be able to put the early help in place to prevent those crises developing. So it's a very negative spiral

where more and more children are falling into a very difficult position. And the government, not just the DfE, but the government overall, aren't ahead of the game, which is what needs to be. Now, the report expresses concern at the increasing cost of the most serious cases. How much were predictions that the closure of Sure Start and other early interventions would cause such problems? Absolutely correct. Well, I think, you know, you're driven by short term decisions around budgets for one year, two years. And I've been a long term proponent of of Sure Start and I seriously believe that you can offer families that joined up help early then you give them the kind of resilience and the helping

hand they need to really be able to tackle problems as they arise. Now councils have been in a difficult position they've had really significant cuts to their budgets but I've always argued that you know it was a it was a false economy to take away that early help. Having most councils now really been having to cut by 60% plus that amount of early help. I think now central government has to take action to rebalance that help because local councils just so often can't do it themselves. But you see, the Department of Health told us this. They said the NHS long-term plan has committed to prioritising prevention so children can live well in their communities,

increasing funding to give 345,000 more children and young people access to NHS-funded mental health services as well as earlier detection and cutting-edge treatments for major illnesses. So that must be helpful. Yes, so the NHS 10-year plan, as well as earlier detection and cutting edge treatments for major illnesses. So that must be helpful. Yes. So the NHS 10 year plan with serious money behind it is a really positive step. We've worked really hard with Simon Stevens and the team.

Children now have its own section, which may seem a small thing, but actually it's not been there before. And there are good targets now about actually meeting all children's mental health needs that are necessary over a 10 year period. I'd like it much quicker, but over a 10 year period. That said, that's an aspect of children's lives. And what is inconvenient to government departments, of course, is that children don't live their life in pigeonholes. They're not pupils, they're not patients, they're not, you know, even prisoners in custody. They are children growing up. And actually, until we get that joined up appreciation of their needs across government and a really serious and significant plan to reduce the risk of vulnerable children,

there will be probably about 20% of children who will have serious failings in what they could achieve. And, you know, those figures are significant. We're talking about children who will achieve less than half of what their peers will by 16. Now, that can't be right in a situation where we know we could help. I know that these are very expensive services. Well, some are. And the later they come, the more expensive they are. Well, that's what I was going to say. Referrals have gone up by 7%. Children going into care has risen by 15%. And there are more than 75,000 children in care, according to the report.

How are councils finding the money for that? Well, they are having to overspend because that's a statutory requirement. They have to do this. The number of kids in care have gone up by 15%. Naturally, now half of the budget they have for children's services is being spent on those children in care. And if you add in the ones on child protection registers still in crisis, that's about 87% of the budget. So you can see 13% left for everything else. Now, it's just unsustainable. While you've got councils that are increasingly saying they're in difficulties, they've got a predicted budget for children in care going up year on year. Now, you can spend a fraction of that amount early on and start to rebalance and give those kids who at the end of the day

have every right to you know expect a decent childhood from us the help they need to be able to flourish especially if we get them early before school. To what extent are some children falling between the cracks? A huge amount so there is a very vulnerable group of children about 20 percent and I produce an annual vulnerability study. And the numbers are big. I worry sometimes about talking about the numbers because, you know, everyone gets kind of phased by some of the numbers. We're talking about two million children there that are living with parents with significant difficulties themselves. They're addicted to drugs or alcohol, serious mental health conditions, or indeed domestic violence in the home.

And the government's own figure shows there's over a million children who are defined in need. Now, those are the children, they're often invisible until they hit the headlines, and they often fall through the cracks. We've seen big concerns about children who are excluded from schools. We've seen real concerns about children who've been groomed into gangs. These are all the group of children who need help to get on and stay in the mainstream. How positive, though, are promises of £410 million for adult and children's social care and another £84 million to support vulnerable families across 20 councils. So I'm always going to welcome more money to help. I mean, it's not all about money. It's about how you do, but I'm always going to welcome more investment there. However,

what we're talking about here is a seismic shift. Children haven't been at the centre of debate in this government. Clearly at the moment, there are lots of distractions elsewhere. But vulnerable children haven't had that centre stage debate, which I think they need. So those are real figures. And I'm sure there will be useful things that come out of them. But what we're talking about is the potential to really invest wisely in early help for children, get them ready to start school, which we know is the most important bit, and help them, especially through those tricky adolescent years.

Now, we know that these questions are devolved in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and England, and you're responsible for England. The Royal College report praises Scotland and Wales for their policies on obesity, poverty and mental health. Northern Ireland is said to be rather poor on progress in child health. England has invested in mental health. So as Children's Commissioner for England, how much are you in contact with commissioners in other parts of the UK and all working together? So I have counterparts in all those countries and we do have regular dialogue.

We meet regularly. I think what it shows most of all, first of all, that you have choices as a government. You can make change and you can do things that help improve children's lives. In Scotland, we've seen a very significant focus on poverty. We've seen a real focus on reducing serious violence and knife crime. And we're all now looking to what happened in Glasgow

and how that can be replicated. In Wales, very much an emphasis on well-being, I think, well-being within schools and public health. And those are things that, you know, often they're not instant, but they are an expression of what's important within a country. And I think actually, society in England believes that children are important enough to put them very much on the high priority. The Royal College says it wants to stop any further cuts. How realistic is that? Well, it's a tough one. I've said myself in terms of welfare

reform, which is the other part myself in terms of welfare reform which is the other part of it and universal credit which is adding additional hardship that actually i would like universal credit to be halted and the government can guarantee that no child will be worse off as a result um i think it is doable but of course with all these things it takes will and it takes that determination that these issues are not only as important as other issues but more important to put them top of the list and clearly that's something that I think is absolutely necessary. Anne Longfield thank you very much indeed for joining us and we would like to hear from you on this one let us know if you've been having the

kind of problems we've been discussing. Now you probably don't need me to tell you that urinary incontinence is a very common problem. Some 50% of us are affected by it, and there is a simple way of trying to improve it at home without having to resort to some of the questionable surgical treatments that have been on offer. And it's not confined to women. One in nine men is said to suffer too. So, today sees the launch of the hashtag pelvic floor challenge. 30 days in which to try and improve matters yourself. Now, Elaine Miller is a psychotherapist who also works as a stand-up comedian

and we've spoken to her on the programme before. Wendy Powell has set the challenge. Wendy, why did you decide to launch such a challenge? Hello, hi. I decided to set it because pelvic floor weakness and urinary incontinence is an issue that's just not being talked about. If it is being talked about, it's being joked about, as if we're just supposed to put up with it and it's just the way things are.

Or it's not being discussed at all, with our doctors not even with partners or friends so it's to get the conversation started and to help women to understand that there is something that we can do and we don't have to just put up with this. Elaine why is this a subject that comes up time and time again I mean we've discussed it before on the programme I've discussed it a number of times and yet it continues to plague us. Well because it's so common I think the stats are really damning it's one in three women will wet themselves if they laugh or cough or jump and there's a myth as Wendy says that this is just part of life and it doesn't matter if you've had kids it doesn't matter how old you. Your pelvic floor can always be improved with treatment and with doing your pelvic floor exercises. Now, Wendy, a six minute video of exercises is being made available for free, endorsed by the NHS.

What sort of exercises are in it? So these exercises is, as you say, a free six minute video we've put together. It's at mydoctorsentme.co.uk and they are exercises that start with the foundations because very often what the problem is is that women are jumping to crunches or planks or more intensive exercise and they haven't literally reconnected with their pelvic floor so we start with breathing and reconnection with the whole of the core system or your pelvic floor your stomach exercises all of that and then kind of gradually moving forward to incorporating that into actual exercises.

Now Elaine I seem to remember you have a somewhat straightforward saying to remind us of the need for exercise what is it? We won't pee with a 10-10-3. So to, as Wendy says, if you're doing your pelvic floor exercises, you need to start from the very, very beginning. And lots of women aren't even sure where their pelvic floor is and what it does. Go on then, explain. Where is it? What does it do? If you imagine a pelvis, like you would see in a Halloween outfit,

it's got a hole at the bottom. It's just a circle of bone and your pelvic floor fills in the hole at the bottom. So it's a series of muscles that hold your guts up. They stop your liver from falling out, which is generally quite a useful thing. And they've got an important role in your continence. So they keep all your holes shut when you want them to be shut. And they have to be able to relax to let pee or poo or gas out or to let anything in that you want to go in. So they're a responsive set of muscles. It's not all about getting them to be tighter and stronger.

They have to be able to relax as well. All right. Go on then. Give us the exercise. Tell us exactly what we should be doing. And we will all sit here and do it, won't we? The whole nation should be clenching. So to get the muscles to work, you have to first of all sort out your breath, like Wendy says.

They move up and down as you breathe. So if you sigh out, it's much easier to get your pelvic floor to contract. So first of all, take a deep breath in and then sigh out and then imagine that you're trying to hold in a fart. There's lots of evidence that this is the best command. This is science. Think about if you're in a lift with people that you really, really don't want to embarrass yourself in front of. So your boss, your mother-in-law, your secret crush, it doesn't matter. And you know that what you've got coming is going to be horrendous.

What you feel in your bum is a squeeze and a lift when you imagine that you're trying to hold something in, and that's your work on your pelvic floor. So we get you to take a deep breath in, sigh out, squeeze and lift and hold it for a count of 10 seconds. But you've got to keep breathing at the same time and that's the tricky bit. Yeah, don't forget to breathe. That's not good for you if you forget to breathe. And then you have to do 10 quick flicks. So that's like a quick contraction and then relax and you do 10 of those in the row because your pelvic floor has to have strength to so that you can hold on if you're needing to go for a pee and there's nowhere

to go but it also has to contract quickly if you laugh or cough or sneeze to support the neck of your bladder. Wendy how often would you say that we've both been sitting here trying to breathe and do the exercises how often do you reckon they should be done we need to be doing it daily really i often i often compare it to cleaning your teeth it's not like we clean our teeth and then go okay that's me done my teeth are clean don't need to do that again it's something that we need to do daily and keep doing throughout our lives um but it's literally we're talking about a few minutes, a few minutes every day, and just taking that time to reconnect with the breath and how the breath coordinates with those muscles.

It's remembering to relax too, like Elaine says. It's not just squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. We don't want to be on all the time, tight all the time. It needs to be up to let go. What's the minimum, Elaine, you would say you can get away with? Well, the research says that you should do a hold for 10, 10 quick flicks three times a day and if you do that for about three or four months then a massive number of women will be dry in that period of time about 80 percent 70 to 80 percent and it's the adherence of like Wendy Wendy's saying, you have to do it regularly. But clinically speaking, what I see is that if women are doing nothing and they start doing something, then they will see an improvement.

We don't actually know what the optimal level of exercise is at the moment because they just haven't done the work. So like Wendy's saying, using cues like when you brush your teeth is really important. You can get, if you've got a smartphone, you can set reminders. There's apps you can get. Squeezy is NHS and Dorsen is very good. So it's just finding something that will remind you to do your exercises. Wendy, how useful do you reckon pelvic floor exercises are to men? Because, I mean, they haven't gone through what I always assumed had caused it in so there's there's certain vaginal cues that aren't going to work so well for a guy um but if you imagine that you're walking into a super cold ocean and

you're trying to suck everything up out the way it's if men do that at the same time as breathing out like elaine says it works much better to breathe out as you contract um but yeah it's important for all of us to be doing el, just one other point about the actual exercises. How do we know we're doing them properly? How should it feel? If you remember what it was like when you were a little kid and you were bursting for a pee, you know when you see young girls, if they're really desperate for the toilet,

what they do is they cross their legs, they put their hand into their crotch and they squeeze really tight and and that's the sort of feeling that you're looking for when you're really really bursting and you're trying to hold on um if you're not sure because a lot of women are so weak that they can't quite initiate a decent contraction um so if you have a look you can see the tissue change you can see your vagina sort of winking at you if you if you do your pelvic floor contraction while you're looking in a mirror but if you're absolutely and if you pop something

in there to give it a squeeze that you can get some biofeedback if you put your well you could use your own finger or get a willing volunteer um and if you're absolutely not sure then come to physio come for a referral and we can show you exactly what you're supposed to be doing and elaine just briefly what do we save the nhs if we take care of our pelvic floor yeah that's a really good question and the answer is we don't know um there are no statistics on how much incontinence costs the nhs in the uk um which is a bit of an oversight. We don't even keep figures on the number of people who move into residential care because of bowel and bladder problems. It's a real oversight. Now, the only figures that do exist is in Australia,

they did a study in 2010, which they looked at all the costs of incontinence. So they included the secondary effects, which are the really important things, like people who have problems controlling their bladder and bowel have very high incidences of depression. It's associated with sexual dysfunctions and falls. So older people that run into the toilet in the night, they slip and they land up with hip fractures or other injuries. So Australia collated all of these secondary effects and the figure that they land up with hip fractures or other injuries. So Australia collated all of these secondary effects,

and the figure that they came up with was that it cost their government $43 billion a year. Okay, so it's definitely worth us all doing our pelvic floor exercises. Elaine Miller and Wendy Powell, thank you very much indeed for being with us. Thank you. Now still to come in today's programme, Robert Burns on the day before his night is celebrated with an address to the haggis. What of his reputation as a womaniser? Was he a sex pest

or maybe something of a feminist? And the serial episode four of The Misunderstanding. And don't forget we're on Instagram. We've nearly reached 50,000 followers. You can find photos and videos with our guests there, including a video with Lorraine Kelly, who was with Jane on Monday. We also like to hear your comments, of course, you know that, about the subjects we cover, so do keep them coming. Now, you may have

heard in the news this morning that Diana Attil has died. She was 101 and a frequent contributor to Woman's Hour. We loved her. She was an editor in publishing for 50 years and worked with authors such as Margaret Atwood, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Rees, Philip Roth and John Updike, and of course became a hugely successful writer herself with memoirs including Instead of a Letter, Stet and Somewhere Towards the End, which won the Costa Prize for Biography in 2008. Well, Jane met Diana at her care home in November of 2016, and she reflected on how much things had changed for women in her lifetime. I think it's very much the same, isn't it?

But it's awfully difficult to tell, because the changes have been so slow and so gradual. So you think men would still expect to dominate conversation? Oh, they do. They do? They do, I think. And, I mean, there are so many situations in which it's taken absolute difficulty

that this will be the man's thing, not a woman's thing. And when I come to think of it, you see, publishing would have simply not existed if it weren't for the women. It was run by women and started women. I think hardly any of them were the bosses. Are there men living here?

There are now three old boys. And we're very pleased to have men. You see, men are much fraer than women about getting old. They sort of collapse in old age much more.

On the whole, women don't. Well, do you think that's acknowledged, really? Because I agree with you, but I don't hear that discussed very much. I don't think it is discussed very much. I think it's perhaps because men invest so much of their lives in their jobs that once the job is over, I mean, my darling, beloved nephew, who is my favourite person in the world, is very rare. He's turned 60 and so he is now

doing less in his gallery and planning lots of fun things to do. Well now he's very rare because he's got in his head lots of things that he wants to do now.

Well perhaps he's watched your example and learnt from that. He has, partly. We are very close. Diana Attil, who died last night. Now, a little while ago, we asked you if you had any family secrets that you'd discovered and that had a profound effect on you. Lots of you got in touch, and Christine told us about what she had found out

in her 70s she's now 74 and sat with joe morris in her living room covered with family photos to share her secret That's my grandmother. She was the one who looked after me after I was born. She looked after me for eight months after I was born. Did you always know that? I knew I stayed with her for eight months but I didn't know why. Did you wonder why? No. You don't wonder why when you're a child. That's how it was.

I grew up with my mum and dad. We lived in a flat, a little block of flats. Just an ordinary childhood. Went to school locally. That's about it, really. That's my childhood. And what was your family life like? What were your mum and dad like? Very secretive.

Really? Yes, very secretive. We weren't encouraged to speak to neighbours. My mum always thought neighbours were going to be asking us questions and we were always told never to speak to neighbours, never to answer any questions. And children weren't really welcome to play in our house, which I was always quite unhappy about.

Didn't understand why, but that's how it was. So what would your mum say then? What sort of things? Your dad doesn't like people coming into the house. And that was it. It's only as I got older that I realised that not everybody was like that. One of the things they didn't want us to talk about was that my, which I didn't realise at the time, my mum and dad were never married.

Oh. Which at the time I imagine was quite... Well, they didn't want anybody to know that obviously there were even more secrets that i i didn't know about far more secrets did everyone get on in the family mostly there was just my mother's younger sister jean who we didn't get on with. Nobody much liked her. Even her own mother didn't like her very much. Your granny? My granny, yes.

How did you know that? The way she used to talk about her. She didn't look after her children. She neglected her children. How many children did she have? I think she had about eight children by different men. My mum was her main support financially. My mum didn't have a lot of money.

We didn't have a lot of money. She was like... My mother looked after Jean her whole life. My mum and I used to go and visit her and take her stuff, which she would then flog. We'd take clothes for the children. We'd take bed linen because the children would be sleeping on beds with no bed linen. We were always having to deal with her and get her out of scrapes and things.

So you contacted us and you've recently discovered a family secret. I don't know why. It was about January, February 2016. It came into my head. I wanted to see my full birth certificate. I'd only had a shortened version. So I sent off, I decided I was going to send off for my full birth certificate and honestly Jo I do not know what prompted me to do that nothing had happened can you remember

where you were and you suddenly thought that sitting here sitting where we are now on the sofa in the living room yes had you ever wondered up to this point where you'd only ever seen your shortened birth certificate no so what did your birth certificate, your shortened version, have you got that to hand? Shortened version says that I was born 1944 and that my grandmother registered me. Doesn't say anything else. So no mention of who your mum was?

No. No mention of who your dad was? No. Do you want to know what my greatest fear was? After I'd sent for it, it suddenly came into my head. What could I possibly find out that would be really awful? And what I could possibly find out that would be really awful would be that Jean was my mother.

The auntie that nobody liked. And when the birth certificate arrived, I opened it, not expecting to see anything like that. But there it was. Name of the mother, Jean Elsie Louise. And name of father, unknown. So that was the secret. And my mother's whole family, they all knew. All her brothers knew. And my dad knew. All her brothers knew.

And my dad knew. Everyone knew. Everyone knew except me. Even my dad's sister knew, evidently. Can you remember how you felt when it was in your hands? How, you know, how didn't I know for the whole of my life? How didn't I know? And one of my step-grandchildren was here at the time.

What did you say? What did you say to them? I'm not sure I can say it on the air. Jesus! She said, what, Granny, what? I said, I've just had a big shock i told her i said the person i thought was my mother wasn't my mother and i don't know who my dad is and she just laughed that's what teenagers do don't they and most people i've told after they got over the shock because i've told um i've told, after they got over the shock, because I've told my kids

and I've told a couple of very close friends, and after they got over the shock, they've just gone... ..and laughed. And how do you feel about that? Well, the next thing they say is, and how do you feel about that? Well, the next thing they say is, and how do you feel about it? And my answer to that is, I'm so lucky.

I'm so lucky that my mother rescued me. And we don't know who my dad is. How do you feel about the fact that people laugh? Here you are, you've lived 74 years. Yes. Thinking two people were your parents. You suddenly discover they're not. It's a big, big thing that you've discovered.

I know, and people expect me to be completely flattened by it or something. But it's actually quite a relief. I don't like secrets. And maybe other people who think there's things in their families that they can't say, maybe they'll be able to tell somebody about it. Everything in my life wasn't perfect. My childhood wasn't perfect by any means,

but it was a darn sight better than it would have been. Do you think somewhere there was a sort of inkling or something? I never felt anything towards that woman apart from dislike. Never felt anything towards her. I didn't feel any connection. Jean showed no interest in me. She showed no affection, no interest. My very close friends have said, yeah, we've always known there must have been something weird

in your background. Why? Look at you. Perhaps that's why I went into psychiatric nursing, I don't know, to find out about people. There's always a story. Families will kill to keep secrets they don't want known. It's a very strong thing.

So what do you think happened, though? Do you think your mum agreed to take you on straight away? She would have. she would have she would have I was never adopted I've only just found this out I've only just found this out in the last 18 months how did that work in those days could you just have any old child to live with you and also you obviously then don't know who your dad is no I don't know who your dad is. No, I don't know who my dad is. I mean, there are huge bits now that I don't know about my medical background, obviously.

And for your own children and your grandchildren? Yes. Are you curious? Not that much. Supposing I found out something even worse, what would be the point of that? Has it changed how you feel about your mum? As well as having loved her, I'm very grateful to her. I don't remember being grateful to her before.

Not grateful to your mum, are you, basically? Just your mum. And the other thing you have to know is my mum never managed to have she never managed to carry a baby to term she never did she had several pregnancies when i was a child but she never managed to carry them to term which was terribly sad because she was she was you know she had a huge maternal instinct what What is a mum? A mum is somebody who looks after their children, who loves them for their foibles, for their good bits, for their bad bits. And that's who she was.

Christine was talking to Joe Morris, and you can hear last week's Family Secret if you go to BBC Sounds. Now, tomorrow night will be Burns Night, when the haggis will be addressed and eaten, together with tatties and neeps and probably a drop of whiskey. It's an annual celebration of Scotland's most famous poet and was first held in 1801 on the fifth anniversary of his death. But who was the man who is so revered? Well, the former Macca, the national poet of Scotland, Liz Lockhead,

described him as a sex pest, and he's known to have enjoyed a number of women with whom he produced three illegitimate children, in addition to the nine he produced with his wife, Jean Armour. One of his lovers featured in a poem called The Fornicator. Ye joyful boys who love the joys, the blissful joys of lovers, home called The Fornicator. Before the congregation wide I passed the muster fairly, My handsome Betsy by my side, We gat our ditty rarely. But my downcast eye, by chance did spy What made my lips to water, Those limbs so clean, where I between Commenced a fornicator. With rueful face and signs of grace

I paid the buttock higher. The night was dark and though the park I could not but convey her. A parting kiss, what could I less? My vows began to scatter. My Betsy faith, la la la, da da da da I am a fornicator. But then he wrote a poem called The Rights of Woman,

arguing that a man's job was to protect the tender flower that lifts its head. Well, I'm joined from Edinburgh by the journalist and critic Stuart Kelly and the actor Keira Murphy, who read that extract from The Fornicator. Keira, what was your response to Liz Lockhead calling him a sex pest? Well, you know she's not necessarily wrong. I think, you know,

we're looking, if we go back 200 and odd years, he already was called a fornicator. So I don't know if sex pest is worse than or better than fornicator he already stood up in the church with a sackcloth with that word fornicator on his back

with his community around him and was shamed after his girlfriend Lizzie Payton had given birth to their first illegitimate daughter. So he's already had that in his lifetime. So I don't know why we're, you know, we know this. Stuart, I think she was referring to a letter in which he seemed to imply that he had forced himself on someone. What exactly did he write about that?

Well, it's when he returns from Edinburgh and takes up again with Jean Armour. And he writes to a friend, and it's a very peculiar letter, in that the first thing he states is that he convinced Jean that she should never claim to be his wife. And then says there was a nearby pile of straw for the horses, and he launched a thunderous scalade on her which electrified the very marrow of her bones. Now, scalade is a very odd word. It's a military term and it means to take a town by force. In the context of this,

I should say, regardless of how representable his private life could be at times, he is a great poet. And the more we know about his life, the subtler our interpretations of the poems can become. But it sounds here as if we may be talking about a rapist. So really to be celebrated in the way that he is, Stuart? Well, I mean, if you take something like A Fond Kiss, which is an incredibly beautiful poem, which was written for Agnes McElhose, with whom he was trying to have an affair. She was leaving to go to the Caribbean. He at the same time is trying to seduce her lady's maid. And he comes back to Jean slightly with his tail between his legs. I mean, the word is very strange, and either it is an accurate representation of what happened there,

or it's a piece of braggadocio, of him showing off to his friends, which is also pretty unpleasant behaviour. But let's not forget that the man who wrote A Man's a Man for All That seriously considered going to the Caribbean to be

an overseer on the plantations. And I don't think he was going round there taking them glasses of lemonade. He'd have had a whip in his hand. Ciara, what about the women with whom he had illegitimate children? What would have been their fate? I mean, not romantic for them at all.

No, definitely not. They would be servant girls of one rank or another, but very much the lower rankers, he would sort of hit on them, chat them up. and also Lizzie Payton, I think that they were kind of like, you know, he was wooing them, and particularly the May Cameron, who, you know, lost her job. She was destitute. She wrote to him and told him about her predicament. He did, you know, send some money,

but he wasn't quite sure that that baby was his. But yes, and generally he was hitting on young servant girls and, yeah, abusing his power. Stuart, who were the audiences for his poetry? Well, I mean, there's different sets of interlocking audiences because you have the Kilmarnock edition with the kind of great poems that we remember and then the later Edinburgh edition,

which includes things like Tam o' Shanter. Again, quite a problematic poem in that the only women in it are either witches, lascivious witches, or termagants. There were also privately circulated manuscripts, which, I mean, people have used the word pornography, it's really just smut and he wouldn't be the first writer to have produced sort of these smutty little poems for friends. I mean, T.S. Eliot did it. So there's different interlocking audiences and then, of course, you've got the whole section about song as well with the scots musical museum that thompson uh put together and you know that's an astonishing work and that

takes him slightly outside of scotland um you know we shouldn't think of burns as being this thing which is solely for scotland i mean the scottish songs were put into music by Beethoven, by Haydn, by a huge number of European composers. So there's that kind of audience as well. Stuart, what do you make, though, of people claiming him as a feminist for his poem, The Rights of Woman? I think it's absolute nonsense, frankly. I think it's a very patronising poem in that he says that, you know, the first right that a woman has is to be protected by men. That the second right that a woman has is to make men less swaggery and rude. And that the final right that a woman has is to be admired. a line here that are where he talks about smiles, glances sighs, tears, fits, flirtations

airs, against such an host what flinty savage dares. I mean it's not exactly Mary Wollstonecraft is it? Just briefly Ciara the Scottish Parliament was opened with a rendition of A Man's A Man For All That school children I know learn his work

by heart. Why is he so loved and respected in Scotland? Well, I think everybody loves a love story. He did have a love story with Jean Armour. He also, you know, he wanted, well, I think he wanted sex with Clarinda, as we call her, her codename Clarinda, who's Mrs. McElhose, whose husband was over in the slave plantations and she was sort of abandoned. So we love that story there, that narrative. Quite honestly, I think, you know, I mean, she was a poetess also. So he, you know, he considered her his equal.

Keira Murphy ending Thursday's edition of Woman's Hour. We had lots from you on the pelvic floor. Kate tweeted, lovely to hear Gussie Grips on Woman's Hour this morning. I'm sure the whole nation is clenching. Anne tweeted, just check the Squeezy app. It's £2.99. That's as bad as paying VAT on tampons. Helen emailed, hi, I've had eight kids and three miscarriages. I'm 53 and can go happily on a trampoline. Other than the standard post-birth pelvic floor exercises, I think to connect the exercises to a satisfying sex life

really helps. And someone else emailed, I had a baby 12 years ago and ever since then I've had dreadful pelvic floor issues despite doing exercises every day and the problem would be exacerbated when I was very tired so the exercises never really helped me. Hilary emailed, Never mind save the NHS money. Average use of three to five pads, best known make, per day, more if ill or travelling, costs around £1, £1.50 a day. That's £350 to £500 a year.

Imagine what you could do with that, especially as many users are on a pension. And then someone else emailed, what has not been mentioned is that although men have not given birth, one in seven face the prospect of prostate cancer. The effects of surgery can be devastating as removal of the prostate means that continuous urine incontinence is a reality for many men. Well, thank you for your comments. Tomorrow, Jane will be talking to Claire Chapwell, who's a founder of the theatre company Spare Tyre, and they'll be discussing where are we now on the question of women and weight. That's all for today. Do join Jane tomorrow, if you can, from me for today. Bye-bye. Hello, I'm Tez Ilias, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast, Tez Talks. It'll make you laugh,

cry, and even question the cultural choices you have historically made. You can subscribe to Tez Talks on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake.

No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.