Woman's Hour - Author Rachel Edwards, Equality in the home, Explorer Vanessa O’Brien

Episode Date: June 19, 2020

Bernadine Evaristo’s bestseller Girl, Woman, Other is on plenty of reading lists after winning the 2019 Booker Prize, but what books are getting her through lockdown? One of them is Darling by Rachel Edwards - who joins Jenni to tell her all about her debut novel. Research shows that in lockdown, in heterosexual couples, women still do the majority of the childcare and chores. However, there has been a modest increase in the time men spend on these tasks overall. So could this be an opportunity to improve equality in the home? In April we ask you to get involved with research into how lockdown is affecting the well-being of families. The team at Sussex University now have their first set of preliminary results. PhD researcher Ali Lacey discusses their findings along with Mary-Ann Stephenson, Director of the UK Women’s Budget Group and Francine Deutsch, Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Education at Mount Holyoke College in the US, and editor of Creating Equality at Home – How 25 Couples Around the World Share Housework and Childcare. You may have read in the papers this week that there are worries about the way the police are extracting and using information taken from mobile phones. Of particular concern was the use of such information where rape is alleged and there appears to be evidence that where a victim refuses to hand over a mobile, investigations are being brought to a halt. A report by the Information Commissioner’s Office argues that current mobile phone extraction practices and rules risk negatively affecting public confidence in the criminal justice system we hear from the Victims Commissioner for England and Wales, Dame Vera Baird QC.Plus explorer Vanessa O’Brien, the first woman in the world to reach Earth’s highest and lowest points, on why she wants o inspire other women to take on challenges. Presenter Jenni Murray Producer Beverley PurcellGuest; Rachel Edwards Guest; Vanessa O’Brien Guest; Ali Lacey Guest; Mary-Ann Stephenson Guest; Prof. Francine Deutsch Guest; Dame Vera Baird QC

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 the Woman's Hour podcast for Friday the 19th of June. Good morning. In today's programme, concerns about the use of information taken from mobile phones by the police. The Victims Commissioner Dame Vera Bd, explains why she is worried. The best-selling Booker Prize winner, Bernadine Evaristo, told us what books she had been enjoying

during lockdown. Darling was top of the list. I'll speak to the author, Rachel Edwards. And from Everest, the highest point on earth, to Challenger Deep, the lowest known point in the ocean. What took Vanessa O'Brien to such extremes? Now, the sharing of childcare and housework between men and women has become something of a hot topic during this period of lockdown. On the one hand, you see headlines like Back to the 50s as childcare left up to women. Then in advance of Father's Day, we see the Fatherhood Institute claims COVID-19 has led to a dramatic 58% increase in unpaid childcare being undertaken by men. Could we be facing a revolution in equality in the home or are we going backwards? In early April we asked you to become involved in research into how lockdown is affecting families with the University

of Sussex. Well they now have their first results. I'm joined by Marianne Stevenson, Director of the UK Women's Budget Group, Francine Deutsch, Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Education at Mount Holyoke College in the US and the editor of a new book, Creating Equality at Home. And Ali Lacey, the PhD researcher from Sussex. Ali, I know more than 2,000 Women's Hour listeners contributed to your research. You did only look at heterosexual couples.

Why did you make that decision? Well, we didn't just look at heterosexual couples why did you make that decision well we didn't just look at heterosexual couples actually we've uh this report is based on um heterosexual couples just because they happen to make up the majority of our sample um so we did have we have got um and we will be releasing um figures um about um lesbian couples and also we had seven um gay uh male male parents but because of the numbers involved it just it wasn't possible to compare rates of domestic labor between groups because overwhelmingly 95% of our respondents were female living with a male partner so that's why we this report focuses on that particular family set up. So what do these results tell you so far?

So what we're looking at in families with a father and a mother is that things have fallen very much down gendered lines in terms of the distribution of domestic labour and childcare in particular. And we've been looking particularly at this notion of the default parent. So which parent is it that takes up the majority of the mental load, who has to drop other responsibilities, other commitments, including work, in order to carry out childcare? And this sort of default parent we've seen has been overwhelmingly mothers. 72% of women in our sample said that they were a default parent always almost all the time and that only dropped to 67 percent when when

mothers are trying to work as well so so that's what indicates that women are really trying to juggle a second shift really um work other commitments and child care and it's all so much down those lines how wary should we be of where your results may be skewed by the kind of people who've taken part? Well there are two points I think we can make about that we've got we've got a very very big sample so in terms of you know reliability of samples this this is a very a very big sample and we should take those results, I think, at face value. But yes, of course, this is an overwhelmingly female sample, and it's also an overwhelmingly high-income bracket sample.

So actually, what we don't know, perhaps, you know, these results even may be quite conservative, given that women in lower-paid jobs are much more vulnerable in different ways. But if I could just come back to reliability later, to this Fatherhood Institute paper, which we welcome, and we welcome the aims of the Fatherhood Institute, which aims to increase childcare more equally between fathers and mothers. But this 58% dramatic increase is actually based on data that suggests that men were doing 17.4 minutes in 2014,

and that's now gone up by 10 minutes to 27.4 minutes during lockdown. So men are in the right direction, but not a game changer, I don't think. And obviously during lockdown, there is an awful lot more childcare to be done. So what would be a headline making, I think, would be if both parents weren't doing more because there is more to do marianne what do you make of these results from sussex i mean they're shocking but not entirely surprising they're in line with a lot of other research that's been done um the institute for fiscal ymdrech. Roedd y Deyrnas Ymchwil Ffiscal yn gwneud pol mawr o 5,000 o ddwyloedd heterosegol, a ddod yn dweud bod mabiau yn gwneud 50% mwy o gofal na phabiau. Roedd un o'r pethau y gwnaethon nhw edrych arno oedd amser gwaith yn ddim. Felly, lle roedd gan y rhwngau

gweithio o'u gartneriaid, er enghraifft, roedd 70% o'r amser gwaith y fater yn unigol yn hytrach na hanner o amser gwaith y mam. Felly, nid yw'n ymwneud yn unig â gofal yn arall o waith, ond yn ceisio gwneud gofal yn ystod y cyfnod, wrth i chi hefyd geisio gwneud gwaith. Ac un o'r pethau yn y astudiaeth IFS sydd wedi fy ngwneud yn fawr yw, yn gwneud cwpliau lle roedd y mam yn dal i weithio ac roedd y fater wedi cael ei ddod o'i llwyr neu wedi colli ei swydd, was that in couples where the mother was still working and the father had been furloughed or lost his job, he was doing half an hour more childcare a day than she was. So where

you had the mother not working and the father working, the mother was doing the vast, vast majority of childcare, over 11 hours a day. But where the father wasn't working and the mother was working, the father was doing half an hour more childcare a day than the mother. So working mothers have got a real second shift on their hands at the moment, which leads to the sort of results. We did some polling with the Fawcett Society and the LSE and Queen Mary a few weeks ago that showed that nearly half of mothers with young

children are experiencing high levels of anxiety and if you think about that that double shift of trying to combine paid work and unpaid work it's hardly surprising. But what did you make about the data from the Office for National Statistics which the Fatherhood Institute has publicised seeing evidence of fathers doing the highest proportion of childcare since records began. It's a move in the right direction, isn't it? I think, I mean, I think Ali's point there was very well made. I mean, two things can simultaneously be true. Fathers are doing more childcare than they've ever done before, but they're still doing less than mothers. And mothers are doing vastly more childcare than they've done before.

So there is a move in the right direction. And I also think you've got different patterns in different couples. So some couples at the start of this will have sat down, worked out a fair division of labour, and maybe sharing childcare in a way that they never have before. And in other couples, as we see from from the results Ali was discussing women seem to be doing it all. But what's the potential Mary-Anne of equality if men are stepping up their involvement? Well I think the thing with childcare is we need when we need to do three things and Diane Elson has talked

about this a lot with unpaid care where she talks about recognizing reducing and redistributing so recognizing is understanding that women are doing more Mae Diane Elson wedi siarad am hyn yn llawer gyda Gwerth Gwleidyddol, lle mae hi'n siarad am ddeall, cydnabod a chyflawni. Felly mae deall yn deall bod dynion yn gwneud mwy o gofal plant ac yn cymryd ymwneud â hynny pan fyddwch yn meddwl am ddiogelu rhag ymddygiad a'r hyn a'r hyn. Mae cydnabod yn ymwneud â chyflawni plant, yn ymddygiadau a'r hyn a'r hyn, ac mae cyflawni yn ymwneud â chael i ddynion wneud mwy. Ac mae hynny'n ymwneud â'r polisïau sydd gennym ar ein lle pan fydd plant yn dod o'r mhobl. Rydych chi'n gweld, wrth edrych ar ein polisïau materniti, paterniti a'r gwasanaethau gwasanaethol. Felly, nid ydym yn dechrau o'r pwynt ar gyfer i ddynion ddechrau'n ddynion gyntaf

gyda'r syniad yw bod gan dynion yn ddynion sy'n ddyfodol, ac ein bod yn adeiladu rhwng rhannu cyfartal o'r dechrau. Oherwydd mae dynion sy'n rhannu gofal o'r prifysgol yn fwy cyfartal equal sharing from the beginning because couples who are sharing child care more equally before the crisis are probably going to be in a better position to negotiate sharing child care equally during the crisis. Let's bring in Francine here from America. Francine, you study equal sharers, that's the term. How much might COVID-19 bring more of that about? Well, I think what COVID-19 does is create opportunity. It doesn't change, as people have mentioned, it doesn't necessarily change the average,

but there's a lot of variability within that average. And I think what's happening is there's a lot of disruption in people's work lives. Now, as Marianne is saying, this creates an opportunity for people to actually redistribute, to sit down and think, okay, now we're in a totally different situation. Is there a different way we can do things? And yes, it would be better if things had started from the time their children were born and policies were in place to promote that kind of equal sharing. But it is possible for people to change. And when there's such a disruption in the work life, I think it creates an opening. It doesn't ensure it, but it makes it possible. What have you found is essential to enabling a couple to achieve this kind of equality?

So several things I think are really important. One is very direct and open communication. So especially in this situation where everything is changing, couples who are able to sit down and really talk about what's going on. I think that's very important. Second, I think there's people's identities are very tied up with the roles that they have in paid work and at home. Men's identities are often very strongly tied to their sense of being providers or achieving at work, women's being the sole important parent at home. And I think people have to let go of some of those gendered identities in order to be able to share. One of the things I've noticed in my research is women who feel entitled to equality are more likely to get it.

And but only if they have husbands who are really committed to having a fair division. What about the role of employers and indeed government? Well, of course, both employers and government policies matter. So flexible work times can be something that promotes equality. But as your other guests have noted, right now, often people do have more flexible work situations in that they might be working from home. So again, it doesn't ensure it. Likewise, having policies for some of the countries that have policies that target paternal leave, leave when the baby is born that only can be used by the father,

that really promotes fathers staying home for a while when their baby is born, forming a bond with that baby, which promotes equality in the future. But again, fathers have to choose to use those policies. So it's a combination of the policies that the government provides and the willingness to use them. Marianne, this question of negotiating equality and assuming that you have the right to equality if you're a woman, how easy is it, do you reckon, for women to do that negotiation? Well, it very much depends on the relationship that you're in. I mean, one of the things that I often think about when we're thinking about these debates around childcare and work is that we keep them almost completely separate in our mind from what else we know about relationships, and particularly the prevalence of violence and abuse within relationships.

So we know that in the UK, one in four women experience domestic violence or abuse. Felly, rydym yn gwybod bod un o'r ddau o'r Ddeddf Cymru wedi profi ymddygiadau gwleidyddol neu ddiffyg. Felly, pan fyddwn yn meddwl am y syniad hwn o negosiad, mae'n rhaid i ni ffactor yn ymwneud â hynny, y byddai niferau mawr o ddewision sydd ddim mewn posis i negosi sut maen nhw'n rhannu gofal, a allai fod yn ddifrifol i gyflwyno'r mater hwn fel trafodaeth gyda'u partner. Rydyn ni'n siarad am y pethau hyn fel a fyddant yn rhywle gwahanol gwahanol, to raise this issue as a discussion with their partner. And we talk about these things as though they're almost entirely distinct, but it's the same situation, it's the same couple. In one case we're thinking about violence and abuse, and in another case we're thinking about sharing childcare,

and we have to factor in the high level of abuse that some women experience when we're talking about how easy it is to negotiate. Francine, how much have you taken that into account in your work? I have to say that the couples that I've worked with, because I'm particularly interested in talking to couples who equally share, that hasn't been an issue. But I agree. If you're in a situation of abuse, you're not in a very strong position to negotiate. So I think that's a point very well taken. Ali, how much have you found class matters here? To what extent is this a middle class concern?

Well, I think people that fill in questionnaires tend to be largely middle class. That has been a problem with psychological research throughout time. And I think over this period, what has been really worrying me and the people that I'm working with in our research team is actually the sheer numbers of invisible families, the families that haven't been going to school, that haven't been completing questionnaires, that have, we expect, been suffering. And I think we need to do a lot more work, a lot more to understand unpaid labour, to audit and record and manage

and really understand what families are doing so that we can work properly. Because at the moment, I don't think we have that data, and we don't understand people's situations perhaps as well as we ought to. So I think that's really important going forward. I mean, our example, like many others, is largely skewed towards middle-class families with resources and wealth. So, yes, I would expect there to be difficulties in the range of families across the country and I think we need to do more work

to actually find out what those problems are. Francine, in your couples who have made it work and are equal, how much do they manage to share remembering dental appointments, remembering somebody has to go to the doctor, remembering it's grandma's birthday or there have to be Christmas cards sent. We call the management of parenting. And I will say that management is one of the things that is

probably the most resistant to change. Even in couples that do the nitty gritty work, mothers often retain a lot of the mental work. Although I will say among the equal shares, it's different than among couples that are less equal. So in those couples, even when women are doing it, men are aware of it. They're aware that their wives are carrying this burden. Or in some cases, men take on a portion of that. But I'd like to also respond to the class issue that you raised. In my work, I don't know if this is true in the UK, but there's a large portion of the workforce in the United States that work off shifts, you know, that work an evening shift or an overnight shift.

And these are often working class couples where one parent may be working one shift and the other parent another shift. And often those couples are very equal. We have a kind of stereotype that equal sharing is an upper middle class phenomenon. But my research suggests that it is not. That in fact, there are many working class couples who do share equally. And in my book, Creating Equality, one of our couples in the United States is our undocumented Latinx couple who have very low income jobs. Well, Francine Deutsch, Marianne Stevenson, Ali Lacey, thank you all very much for taking part this morning. We would, of course, like to hear from you. If you manage to be equal sharers, do let us know how you do it.

All you have to do is send an email or, of course, you can send us a text. And thank you to all three of you for joining us today. Now, you may have read in the papers this week that there are worries about the way the police are extracting and using information taken from mobile phones. Of particular concern was the use of such information where rape is alleged, and there appears to be evidence that where a victim refuses to hand over a mobile, investigations are being brought to a halt. A report by the Information Commissioner's Office argues that current mobile phone extraction practices and rules risk negatively affecting public confidence in the criminal justice system.

Well, I'm joined by the Victims Commissioner for England and Wales, Dame Vera Baird, QC. Vera, how concerned have you been about the use of mobile phone extraction of information by the police generally? It is not only the police, it is largely driven by the Crown Prosecution Service and it is extremely worrying. So a form apparently to legitimise consent for downloads of phones was published personally by the Director of Public Prosecutions and the police officer who runs criminal justice for the National Police Chiefs Council last April, despite consultation with the victim sector, having told them that it wouldn't work. And the

problem is that they sought consent to download a minimum of a full download of a phone, which is what the form says, when it was backed up with a statement on the form that if it wasn't permitted by the rape complainant, then the case might well not be able to proceed. So we said right from the start that that was plainly not free consent. And the independent ICO has now agreed with that stance. But in the meantime, of course, hundreds of women have been in that way pressured into delivering data that was not lawfully taken, it seems. Yet some people have argued it's unlawful. Would you go as far as that, that what's happening is unlawful? I can only go where the ICO takes us, really, which is that she says that it is so, I mean, either clearly unlawful or so close to it that she recommends that the form is immediately withdrawn. And she further says that the advice that was issued by the National Police Chiefs Council about this consent as the basis for proscenes

is inadequate and it needs urgently revising. So it's in that category. And I think a very important point is not just the unlawfulness or near unlawfulness or the lack of wisdom or the need for immediate withdrawal of the way that this was being done, but that we have told, the sector has told, the PCCs asked the police to withdraw this form a long time ago. It has been made very clear that it wasn't a satisfactory basis and that women were feeling under pressure. The ICO have also found, of course, that excessive data has been being taken through this mechanism. The investigation found that data extracted and processed from device appeared excessive in many cases with little or no justification, she says at page 54.

Let me tell you what the police and the CPS have said to us. They said they must balance the need to follow all reasonable lines of inquiry, guaranteeing a fair trial with the need to respect privacy. They say they'll carefully consider the recommendations in the report. So what needs to change to achieve that balance between inquiry and respecting privacy? Well, it's perfectly clear that it hasn't been met here. There is, the independent commissioner said, a tendency toward mobile extraction being the default position and that charging decisions from the CPS sometimes place obligations on police requiring extraction and search of material that falls outside what they might have thought was reasonable. And the CPS inspectorate last year found that 40% of requests for this material were not proportionate.

And there is a phrase over intrusive. It is imperative that reasonable lines of inquiry are pursued and that data which is relevant is taken away. But it is perfectly plain, as the sector has been saying for now a long time, that that is not the balance that is being struck here. And it could not, I'm afraid, be clearer that this independent inquiry has shown what many rape complainants fear, which is that they are investigated before the police and the CPS are satisfied that they can take a case forward. The point is to look at reasonable lines of inquiry, whether they point against the defendant or in favour of it, and to stop there. But people talk about having been terribly willing, understanding this, to allow all data, you know, and a very measurable boundary on either side of the event to be disclosed. but having asked for many years of data

something like 60 percent of rape crisis frontline staff found that the default position was indeed even in a stranger rape that material was taken down so there's an urgent need for reform of that attitude but it's unlawful now to behave as the police and the cps have been doing or it's extremely near unlawful so much so that they must start again and think clearly this time how they can be fair to complainants as well as defendants well dame vera baird thank you very much indeed for joining us this morning there's still to come in today's programme, the recommendation Bernadine Evaristo made for a great lockdown read.

I'll be talking with Rachel Edwards, the author of Darling, and the serial, the final episode of The Seventh Test. And then on Monday, Jane will be discussing trichotillomania. It's also known as a hair-pulling disorder. Is this something you have struggled with? And if so, we would very much like to hear your experiences. You can, of course, contact us either on email or through Twitter. Now, it's no longer uncommon for people to decide

to climb Everest, dangerous as it is. It's rare you hear of anyone going down into the deepest part of the ocean. Vanessa O'Brien has done both and has become the first woman in the world to reach the highest point on the earth and the Challenger Deep, the deepest known point on the earth's seabed. Vanessa, what prompted this desire to go to extremes on the Earth? Hi, good morning, Jenny. How are you? I'm good. How are you? Very good. Thank you. So it's an excellent question. I think it's the desire to explore. And I guess first is to define exploration a little bit for the audience. By the time I was born, really, almost deepest oceans were already explored. So for someone like myself, there wasn't much left to do first. How easy was it to prepare for climbing Everest? Well, you do have to prepare, meaning that you have to arrive in the best physical shape that you possibly can. But what's unique about Everest

versus a different mountain is that it's the high altitude. So you really have to start to understand the physiology, understand climatization, how the body builds red blood cells, and why when you take one step, it's five breaths. That's what makes the high altitude climbing different than, say, regular hill walking or, you know, walking just anywhere up to, you know, 5,000 meters. So what was it like when you actually got there? So at the very, very top, when you become a mountaineer, there's a mindset that says, I'm only halfway. Because as much as 85% of deaths happen on descent. So it's pounded into your head, you must get down, you must get down, you must get down. So it's really only in Hollywood movies that you see this, hooray, you know, this, this, this big, like, you know, jumping on the top and, you know, these big high fives, it's more likely that people arrive and they're knackered and, you know, looking at the watch,

maybe taking that, you know, summit photo, if their cameras work. Most times the cameras don't work. What are you seeing around you when you're at the top? I mean, that must be deeply impressive. Oh, absolutely. I mean, well, if you get a good summit day, so, you know, not all summit days happen at the right time where it's that beautiful, you know, breaking dawn, but and that there's not cloud cover. Right. So that's, you know, hit or miss. But if you get there and you have that beautiful breaking dawn with no cloud cover, you are in for the most magical treat. And that is just an outstanding view of just the most magical, majestic mountains below you.

Now, having got to the highest point, let's go to the lowest point. Why did you want to go to the deepest ocean? Well, to some degree, I saw the oceans as almost the inversion of the mountains. I mean, interestingly enough, they're both created by plate tectonics. So in one way, the plates slide under each other and create this uplift we see on the top of Earth. But in another way, through subduction, they're also creating these trenches under the ocean. So many, many mountains are measured from a base that sometimes we can't see, you know, artificially, and sometimes the bases are measured from what we can see, you know, above the ocean floor. But there haven't been many manned vehicles that can actually take you down to the deepest ocean depths. The first one was in 1960, and that was one time only, and the vehicle was destroyed.

The second came in 2012, if you can imagine the difference in time between 1960 and 2012. And that was one time only, vehicle destroyed. It wasn't until 2019 that a vehicle existed to go to deep ocean depth that could actually repeat the voyages. And what was it like to be so deep? What could you see when you were down there? So first I should say that deep ocean depth that's 10,900 meters, almost 11,000 meters, deeper than Everest is tall. It's completely dark.

So that might not surprise anyone, but you can put lights on. And when we're surveying the bottom, we do have lights on. What you can see is something that looks like a little bit of volcanic sediment, but to the human eye, it looks like sand, right? It looks almost like the moon, like you've landed on the moon underwater without the craters, but just like sand. But underneath that sand, there are little tiny creatures moving. And because the pressure is so great, this is eight tons of pressure, 16,000 pounds per square inch. You know, some say 292 jumbo jets stacked on top of each other. They don't need eyes.

They don't necessarily have, you know, vertebrae. But they're still organisms that are alive and, you know, part of the seafood chain, if you will. So they're really, really incredible. It's called the Haddell Zone. And this is a specific part of science that people study just about this part of the ocean and the creatures that live and evolve down there. Well, Vanessa O'Brien, I'm immensely impressed by,

I think, your courage. Thank you very much indeed for joining us this morning and I suspect you may be doing more of this sort of thing. Thank you very much indeed. Now, I think we've all found we've had a little bit more time for reading during this period and for lots of you, Bernadine Evaristo's best-selling Booker Prize-winning novel, Girl, Woman, Other, will have been at the top of the list.

In May, we asked her what books she would recommend and she gave us Darling by Rachel Edwards. It's a thriller which charts a black woman's relationship with her stepdaughter. Here, Darling, that's the name of the mother, and Lola, the stepdaughter, meet for the first time. There she stood, the happy fairy or nymph or sprite, shifting her weight from foot to foot in a pink playsuit. The girl, his girl, with her father coming close up behind her.

As I neared them, I could see they shared the same welcoming gaze, but hers shone from grey, almost metallic eyes, eyes that you knew would not look away first. Her face was warm cream, her shoulders bare, no wings. Lola. Pleased to meet you, we said. I stepped in, Thomas stepped back, there was a hefty kerchunk of the door, and before I had stepped off the doormat, Lola had moved forward to wrap me in a surprise, a free and fluid hug. Then she stepped back and smiled up at her father. The dance of greeting, done. Father and daughter were both barefoot. Burnish floorboards stretched back into hard acres behind them. The air was so harmonious, I was afraid to disturb it. Should I take my shoes off? Thomas parted his lips. If you don't mind, thanks, said Lola.

Rachel, I know you'd wanted to write a novel for a long time. What was it that actually sparked this one? Well, hello there. This novel had, yes, been sitting me for a while. I came up with the idea of Darling, first of all, as a character, because I wanted to write about the Black British experience. And I am a half Jamaican, half Nigerian person born in Britain. And that character Darling came to me first. But actually what triggered the writing of Darling was the sense of the feel of the country around the time of the Brexit vote and how I felt the country had changed, become more polarised.

I wanted to explore what it was to be someone who'd come in from immigrant heritage at that time. And that's why I started writing Darling. There was an incident, I think, wasn't there? What actually happened to you? Absolutely. Well, I stayed up all night, like lots of people, and watched the Brexit vote. And I woke up feeling that the country had been profoundly changed. And then I'd lived in Oxfordshire now for about 24 years and always felt very much at home here. But two days after the Brexit vote, I went into a nearby town as I had

done many times before with no particular trouble but at this time just two days after the Brexit vote a man was up in some scaffolding or balcony kind of arrangement and he spotted me as I stand out I tend to do around here and he called out if I were that girl I'd leave the country in quite an aggressive tone and he was too high up for me to get to him, you know. And I was really taken aback and I felt that this was symbolic to me of a great change, something I'd never experienced before. And I went home and in all earnestness, I started writing Darling from that day solidly through for the next year until it was done, because it poured out of me from that point.

Now, you write the book in chapters which alternate between Darling and Lola. How difficult was Lola to write? Because I have to tell you, I did not immediately take to her. Well, I'm glad that you say that because Lola is not easy to take to, first of all. I mean, I wrote her... When that because Lola is not easy to take to first of all. I mean, I wrote her when I when I visited Lola as a character. She spoke to me quite strongly first off, actually. It wasn't difficult to write initially.

But what happened to her voice got stronger and stronger and she got more and more complex as I went along. And before she's a 16 year old, she's got very strong views. She has a boyfriend with um far right leanings and you think this is not a sympathetic character but as I got more into her inhabiting her character was actually a massive act of empathy for me as an author and I hope it is an act of empathy for those who read it as well you know these two characters with very opposing views when you read them I think that you have to go from one to the other and that in itself, hopefully, is a rewarding experience.

But how much empathy, really, did you develop for her? And to what extent is that connected with the fact that you are a stepmother and you know teenagers? Yes, well, I think I had some things to vent about raising teens in general, to be perfectly honest. But Lola herself, I felt, first of all, she evolved for me as I wrote her as well. So first of all, I thought she was the polar opposite of darling and that was the main counterpoint.

But as I grew to understand her, she would talk to me as characters tend to do when you're writing in a very strong first person voice and I saw other sides to her and actually I grew quite strangely protective of her maybe that's part of what needs to do me being a parent but as she evolved I've grew quite protective of her and the things that happened to her I sometimes struggled with but I thought this has to happen for the the story to be true you know so I I do care and you know it's very much for Lola. How much did you use your own stepdaughter I mean the way you use teenage language in the book is quite extraordinary hashtag this hashtag

that hashtag the other um did you do a lot of listening to teenagers? Well, I am a stepmother myself, and I've been in my stepchildren's life. I have a boy and a girl, and I've been in their lives since they were five years old. So I've raised children to the point of teenage years. They're now in their early 20s. So you do hear them and their friends talking. I have to say, and I think I need to say before I get in trouble, that my Lola is very different from my own self. Of course, of course she is.

Of course. But you do hear, as a parent, you do tune into this other world that you might not otherwise be party to. And I felt, you know, Lola, I was channeling a lot of Lola when I was writing her. I could hear her talking to me very clearly. And I think this is important to reflect some of the stresses of modern day living. So she's very much a modern teenager obsessed with school life,

but also, yes, with the hashtags to reflect what's going on social media. And there's constant pressure to have a persona. I wanted to get that across. And Lola is a character under pressure, you know, so I wanted to reflect that. There's a strong theme of nurturing or attempts to nurture and food. Darling cooks Caribbean food even though she didn't grow up there. Why? Is that something that's part of your life? Very much so yes. So one other trigger of writing Darling is the fact that my lovely stepson bought for me a birthday present, which was a Caribbean cookbook.

And he was 18 at the time, so I was in my 40s. And I was so incredibly touched by this. Now, as I say, I'm Jamaican-Nigerian, but my parents met in England. So they grew up, raised us with food that was very much of British 70s and 80s food, you know, shepherd's pie and things like that. So we didn't have a lot of what my mother might call home cooking when I was growing up. And having seen this cookbook really made me think about darling. But the nurturing side of things, I mean, Jamaican food in particular,

because it's my mother's side, you know, my mother's heritage, it's warm and it's bright and it's inviting and it is nurturing. My mother has been a nurse with the NHS for 40 years so I do see her as a key nurturer and part of that was feeding us. She was what they might call now a feeder but she really did care through food and I wanted to explore that and also the interesting stance of being a black British person in these times, a second generation immigrant, we have connection to society through what's going on in the immediacy.

But also you have this heritage, which is rich and loving and has these, you know, has the jerk chicken, has the curry goat and so on. There's a very powerful scene about hair. Darling has her weave changed to braids just before her wedding. Why is that scene close to your heart? Well, it's something I've wanted to talk about for a long time. You know, I think that... I think I talk about black hair, women's hair, being the most politicised on the planet. And I feel that has true growing up.

When I was growing up in the 80s, you know, in the home counties, my hair was seen as a real sign of otherness. Not always in a negative way, but it was strange and mysterious. And there's so many cultural and historical associations with black women's hair in particular, something that Emma Deberry has covered in her book, Don't Touch My Hair Very Well. And, you know, I felt that I wanted to get a few things off my chest,

if I'm honest. But when I had this scene and Darling's talking about exploring her own womanhood through the mode of her hair, I thought that was really important. You know, I say, how does she wear it? Like she wants to be white, like she's blacker than night. Is it real? Is she for real? Who does she think she is?

And how can we tell her that she's not it? And that's something that really touched my heart at the time. And just one more thing. Why did you call her darling? Well, I have a cousin who I've never met called darling, but I love the word darling. I mean, I use the word darling a lot. I call my loved ones darling an awful lot.

I think it's very sweet, but also it has maybe, it can have slightly sinister or edgy edges to it. But Darling is a name and, you know, I have people in Jamaica called Darling and I thought there was a sweetness to it. I was talking to Rachel Edwards. Now, lots of you got in touch about the division of household labour and childcare during the lockdown. Gabriel sent us an email. He said, I'm a self-employed man and my female partner is a key worker, so I have stopped working and have been doing all the childcare

for our three kids during lockdown. I find it rewarding but relentless and difficult. I keep having thoughts like, aren't women better at this than men? I honestly don't think they are, but it's an idea that takes a long time to get away from. Amy tweeted, it's improved in our house. It's not equal, but my time is far more interrupted. I tend to anticipate needs and step in before problems arise, whereas husband is more reactive. He's never done so much,

and it's definitely reaffirming as a couple, especially as we've had a second baby. I do have to say what needs doing in a non-blame way, and then it becomes a habit for him. He doesn't necessarily see what needs doing or doesn't look for it. Claire emailed, please remember that some mothers want to be the main parents and this is okay and doesn't make my husband lazy. In the recent pandemic I have requested furlough so I can stay home and have the benefit of extra time with my daughter and

homeschool her. It's my job. It's hard work, but I love it. I would not have let my husband take time off to do that unless I absolutely had to. My husband is a great father and their relationship is close and special, but I am the main parent and organiser, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I enjoy that unpaid labour far more than my paid day job. Well, thank you for all your contributions to today's podcast. Do try to join me tomorrow for Weekend Woman's Hour, if you can. It's at four o'clock tomorrow afternoon when you can hear Naomi Campbell. She'll be talking about how the fashion and beauty industry needs to play its part in bringing about change

when it comes to racial equality. And you can also hear the science journalist, Deborah McKenzie, talking about her book, COVID-19, The Pandemic That Should Never Have Happened and How to Stop the Next One. Kind of essential reading, really. talking about her book, COVID-19, the pandemic that should never have happened, and how to stop the next one. Kind of essential reading, really. Join me tomorrow. Bye-bye.

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 was 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.