Woman's Hour - Caregivers, What do we know about Queen Charlotte, Ukrainian musical prodigies

Episode Date: May 2, 2023

There are two new books about the experience of caregiving: Who Cares: the hidden crisis of caregiving and how we solve it by Emily Kenway and Mothercare: on ambivalence and obligation by acclaimed American novelist, Lynne Tillman.   Both Emily and Lynne cared for their mothers.  There are differences in their stories, but also many shared experiences, experiences that apply to vast swathes of populations around the world who undertake unpaid caring for spouses, relative and friends. Lynne and Emily join Nuala in the studio. When Sheilagh and her husband offered to house a mother and her daughters fleeing from Ukraine little did they realise that the girls were musical prodigies and that their music would stop passers by in the street. Sheilagh and 17 year old Khrystyna join Nuala to tell their story. On Thursday the another series of Bridgerton will be available and focusses on Queen Charlotte. Described as a spin-off, it goes back in time to chronicle how the young queen at just seventeen finds herself married to the new King George III. Dr Olivette Oteli, research professor at SOAS explains who she was, what we know about her life and if there is any credibility to the longstanding speculation that she was the first woman of colour in the Royal family.Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Lucinda Montefiore

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.

Hello, this is Nuala McGovern, and you're listening to the Woman's Hour podcast. I'll have a question for you this morning. For those of you who are caring or have cared for a loved one, what did you learn? What do you wish you had known setting out on what can be such a long and emotionally intense journey? It can be, a lot of us know, caring a tough job. It can be a privilege. It can be a labour of love. And none of those things, of course,

are mutually exclusive. But we do have two women with us this morning who have written about their experiences, both caring for their mothers. And they have dedicated their books to you, if you were a carer. And it is a job, we know, that often falls to women.

If you'd like to share your story, do get in touch with what you've learned. You can text the programme 84844 at BBC Woman's Hour is how to find us on social media or for WhatsApp or a voice note. That number is 03700 100444

84844, the text however. So I'm looking forward to hearing your stories and I'll share them with my guests that will be coming up this hour. Also today, an unexpected musical treat. A reward, perhaps, for taking in a Ukrainian family. When a Northumberland couple took in a mum and two daughters, they really didn't expect to have

extraordinary musical talent in their midst. But it is what happens. So you're going to hear that story and also some of the music that filled their home. How lovely. And let me see. Also today, you probably saw lots of birthday photos of Princess Charlotte. It's in a lot of the

papers. And she's hit eight years of age. But we are going to go back in time to Queen Charlotte, who married King George III in 1761. And there are lots of questions at the moment being asked about the former queen because Netflix has a prequel, a Bridgerton spin-off, and it's about to be released this week. And one of the questions which is asked is

whether she was the first woman of colour in the royal family. Well, we have a historian to talk us through what we know. That is all coming up. But let me begin with politics. The Cabinet Office is expected to update MPs today on their investigation into the circumstances around the resignation of Sue Gray. Sue became well known after she was the top civil servant who was chosen to look into the Partygate scandal last year. She's now due to become Labour's Chief of Staff.

That's after a cooling-off period. Tory MPs, they've expressed anger at the job offer with allies of the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, saying it undermines Gray's report into Downing Street lockdown gatherings. Labour instead has insisted it did not approach Miss Gray until after her report was published. The Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, spoke to BBC Breakfast this morning. Firstly, I had no discussions with her

while she was investigating Boris Johnson whatsoever. I don't think anybody is suggesting that that is the case. I'm confident she hasn't broken any of the rules. Whenever a senior civil servant leaves the civil service, there's always a process they have to go through before they take up another job. That's the process she's going through, quite rightly to, process I would expect her to go through. I'm afraid with 48 hours to the election, what's going on is the government is trying to sort of resurrect a story about Sue Gray,

mainly because they don't want to talk about the cost of living crisis, which actually is the thing that most people are most concerned about. So that's Sir Keir's opinion this morning. I'm now joined by the BBC's political correspondent, Helen Catt. Helen, welcome to Woman's Hour. So what is expected to happen later today? We're expecting a written update to come from the Cabinet Office on an investigation they're doing into the circumstances of Sue Gray's resignation. So she resigned from the civil

service in March and the following day it was announced that she was going to become Sir Keir Starmer's Chief of Staff and that raised quite a bit of controversy, quite a few questions about how long she'd been talking to labour and whether it was within civil service rules because there are rules that say that civil servants if they are going to have contacts with leading members of the opposition parties that should be cleared with ministers there is also that process that civil servants of her seniority are expected to go through which sakir stama was was referring to there which is that they are supposed to go through, which Sir Keir Starmer was referring to there, which is that they are supposed to approach the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, ACBA, when they are leaving and they want to take up a new job.

And ACBA then decides if there's any potential conflict and if there should be a cooling off period and how long that should be. And they're supposed to approach ACBA before any job offer is announced. So these are the sort of things that the cabinet office has been investigating and we're expecting an update on that today probably not the final thought on it. Right but no I suppose documentation that has been talked about about those talks so far we have to wait until that report? Yeah, I mean, we don't know very much about those talks so far. We know what Sir Keir Starmer has said, which is that he has said that he did not speak to Sue Gray, particularly while she was drawing up that Partygate report into

Downing Street lockdown parties, and that he is confident that she hasn't broken any civil service rules. But the sort of details of when and how talks and discussions took place, we don't yet know. That's still to come. And I suppose some might be wondering what, if any, if it's possible to predict the implications this is having on public opinion and Partygate.

They were lockdown gatherings in Downing Street. I mean, some calling it sour grapes. Some senior conservatives are raising concerns about Miss Gray. And then people within the Labour Party saying it is more about sour grapes. There has been that suggestion, yes.

And that is because when Sue Gray, it was announced that Sue Gray was intending to take up this appointment, Boris Johnson's allies, some of those had suggested that it discredited her report into Partygate. Mr Johnson himself, when he was asked about it, had suggested that he might have invited her to reflect whether she was really the right person to do it

if he had known now, he said, and known then what he knew now. However, it is worth pointing out, of course, that Sue Gray's was not the only report into Partygate. There was an entirely separate police investigation which issued more than 100 fines, including to the former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and to the current Prime Minister. So I think it's quite difficult to make those accusations perhaps stack up. There is another concern, though, that's being raised by conservative MPs, apart from things relating to Partygate. And that is that part of the reason for the civil service guidance is that ministers need to have the confidence that they are speaking to the civil servants are dealing with them impartially. So there's that concern in it, too.

Uh-huh. And there is also some other concerns saying that instead, it too. There is also some that raise other concerns, saying that instead it's a political witch hunt against Sue Gray in the way she's being investigated. How much do we know about the investigation? Again, we don't know an awful lot about the investigation because this is an internal investigation being done by the Cabinet Office. Really, not much of that becomes public. And you're right right there are suggestions from

some uh some allies of sue gray that this is being a some kind of witch hunt they suggest that it's very unusual if not unprecedented for a civil servant to be investigated in this way after they have left the civil service and the suggestion that they are making is that it is in some way to try to influence akbar to put in a very long cooling off period which would stop Ms Gray from taking up her post for perhaps they can advise up to two years so I think that is the the allegation that's being leveled from that side it's also worth saying that the Aqaba recommendations they are not actually binding but Sue Gray and Labour have said they will abide

by whatever ACBA recommends. So that would be the a potential concrete result of this report if in fact it went in that direction is there anything else that's been floated? In terms of concrete consequences shall we say of this report? Not at moment. I think we will have to wait to see what we get today because it is just an update at this stage. We'll have to wait and hear what this investigation has found and then that might then give us some sort of sense of what the implications might be. Okay, really. Do we know what time?

I don't. Yeah, no. These things are often very, very hard to know and they're often delayed as well. But thank you very much to the BBC's political correspondent, Helen Catt, starting us off this morning on Woman's Hour.

You know, I gave out our text number 84844 a moment ago and so many of you have already gotten in touch. Thank you for that. About what have you learned from caring? Let me just read a couple of them here. As a carer of my elderly mother living with me

and now involved with the care of my father 200 miles away, I am learning that I am here not to be supported by the social services care team, but to be bled dry by it with substantial impact on my own health and ability to earn a living and my finances. As a carer of an adult child with schizophrenia, I wish I had known that the stigma would not go away for them or even for me as their mother. My well-meaning openness in an attempt to educate did not always work. My mum, or our mum as Julia says, had Alzheimer's for 13 years.

I wish I had been even more flexible. If dinner is ready, it doesn't matter. We can still dance or listen to that bird song or just sit in the garden a little longer. Dinner can wait. Those memories last forever. Very evocative, Julia. Thank you for getting in touch. 84844, if you would like to share your story. I'm asking, what did you learn or what

are you learning uh from caring because i think it's something that so many of us are going to go through whether it's being cared for or caring for another um that we can share some of those stories and some of the lessons i know some of them probably hard ones uh this morning so keep them coming thanks for that, I want to turn to the musical reward that I mentioned. So when Sheila Matheson and her husband, Chris Roberts, offered to take in a Ukrainian family last year,

they had not banked on sharing the house with two musical prodigies. They had been told that their houseguests, sisters, Christina, Sasha, and also their mother Natalia, were musical. But it was something of an understatement. What the couple did not know was that 17-year-old Christina Mihalychenko and her 12-year-old sister were very musically gifted, which has now resulted in them being accepted in two of the most prestigious music schools in the UK.

Sheila joins me alongside Christina from Corbridge in Northumberland. Good morning to you both. Hi. So good to have both of you. I love this story. Let's start with you, Sheila. Why did you decide to become a host? We had seen the need for, you know, need for helping refugees in syria and then in afghanistan and each time we just thought oh you know like everybody who watches it on television you think oh god i wish i could do something to help but there doesn't seem to be any channel to

do it so when um the government announced the homes for ukians scheme, we signed up immediately. That proved to be an absolute waste of time. And it was pretty useless. But through a friend in Poland, we wrote to him and we said, well, if you come across any Ukrainians, anyone at all, who wants to come to England and needs a home, we'd be glad to put them up. And I think two or three weeks passed, and then he got back to us, and he said, are you still up for this? There's a, I found out about a musical family. And we said, yeah, yeah, sure, no problem.

And it was as simple as that. And then it wasn't until a few days before they arrived that they sent me a video of Christina playing Tchaikovsky's first piano concerto when she was only 14. And that was a shock. And I thought, oh, my God, we're going to have to up our game here. And that's how it happened. Well, thanks be to goodness. It was a good shock, right? Just to let our listeners know that i mean gosh how do you um begin to start preparing then for somebody who is so talented to come to your home well we'd already sorted the accommodation out um which that was a shock as well having to do with housework and

clean clean the house up a bit. But then I thought well what they're obviously going to need is a grand piano so I just contacted anyone I could think of that might know someone who had a grand piano and in fact quite a lot of people came forward. The best piano at the time was one at a private school. I had no contact with this private school until then. And they were incredibly helpful, Macford Hall. But that was quite difficult to get to. And now Christina practices on a grand piano that belongs to a piano teacher.

So that's how it worked out. But I have to say that the musical fraternity in Northumberland really rallied round. They've been an absolutely fantastic support to us. and I could see you as that piece was playing. What do you think when you think back to that time that you were making your way to be with Sheila? It was very excited and a bit stressful at the same time because we were going to live also with people who we don't know at all. But the man whom we met in Poland, who is a friend of Phil and Chris, if he said that they are incredibly beautiful family,

we thought, okay, these people are great. So, yeah, we were very excited and we are incredibly happy and grateful now for the whole this year that we've been living here. Yeah. And I know you've had quite a journey, even from 2014, from when Crimea was annexed, you moved and then obviously had to move again when the most recent part of the war broke out. Did you worry about not being able to play piano? I didn't worry because I knew that I would not stop playing piano. I would find any possibilities to find an instrument and play music. But I stopped going on stage for a few months when the full scale war began because of the just psychological state I couldn't do it but I probably was more stressed and afraid of losing my own piano my own instrument

at home because when Russians occupied Irpin the little town near Kiev where we were living. Our apartment building was also under attack. So I was not sure at all if it would be safe or not. But thanks God it's safe. So only the windows of our flat were broken.

But yeah. Because your brother is still there, right? Yes, he is still there. He's living now there. And, yeah. How is he doing? It must be a worry. It is.

It is a constant worry. Yeah, but he's doing great. He's volunteering a lot. And he's doing everything for the country to help and support as much as he can. How has your playing changed, if it has, from when you were playing in Ukraine to now playing in the UK? After the war began, I started playing pieces that I played before and I realized that I feel them absolutely different. The stories that go in my mind while I'm playing were completely different and they were all connected to the war stories to the relationship between mothers and soldiers between wives children soldiers and all the things um so um yeah it is a big part of my

personality as a person as a human being and as a musician now uh so i think it changed my interpretations and performances a lot. And playing now I'm just wondering you know how you see it going because you have been accepted as I was telling our listeners there to one of the most prestigious schools, music schools in the UK. It's amazing. It's amazing because it was my dream and my goal for many, many years to enter one of English conservatories. So when I was doing auditions, I still couldn't believe that I'm doing it. And before Christmas, when I got all the official results

from all the conservators, and especially the Royal Academy of Music, which I'll start in September, it's just amazing. It was a big shock, and it was a big relief, and it was a big happiness. Your mother must be so proud of you. Yeah, I think she is. And the big smile that you have. But let's talk about bringing Sheila back in, Christina,

because what was it like to all of a sudden be like a conservatoire in Northumberland, your house? I believe that people would come by and kind of stop and be entranced by the music coming through the open windows. Yeah, it was it was just incredible. We're lucky we've got we've got a spacious house here. And so, well, Sasha would be upstairs playing Sibelius in the top of the house in the attic. And Christina would be downstairs playing Brahms.

And then we're not a musical family at all, but I have been trying and failing to play the bagpipes for the last two years. And that's absolutely excruciating. And it's so bad I have to wear earplugs. So the whole thing is utterly bizarre. But it's just been the most extraordinary turn in my life. I would never have dreamt that this was going to happen. And I just, I'm so grateful.

I mean, I know it's in terrible, terrible circumstances, but I'm so grateful that this Ukrainian family came to live here. And I've learned so much. Were there any difficulties? I mean, living with another family can be tough. We've all got our own ways, right? Even if they're the nicest people in the world. I'll start with you, Sheila, and then ask Christina. Well, for me, it hasn't been a problem. I can't, you know, offhandhand I can't think of anything really but I have to say

that Chris and I are both I would say we are both pretty laid-back people and we have had other people living in the house before um you know people for whatever reason they've needed somewhere to to shack up for a few weeks you know or actually a year but um so that wasn't a problem nothing has been as difficult as the situation now which is one i think a lot of ukrainian families find themselves in which is what do you do when you want to move on so now that both girls are moving down to london and near leatherhead obviously natalia wants to be close to them and they want to be close to her because the last thing they want is to be split up now and trying to find somewhere to live you know preferably independent accommodation is just about impossible so we're constantly that's our

preoccupation at the moment that's the difficulty at the moment but but also I mean it's not exactly empty nest Sheila but you're going to miss them I'm going to really miss them but I but they're not going to get rid of me that easily because I will be getting on that train and going down south to listen to them playing in concerts and things like that I really do feel as if we have made lifelong friends here let me turn to you Christina what was it like that. I really do feel as if we have made lifelong friends here. Let me turn to you, Christina. What was it like? I mean, I know you have adapted to change before, as I mentioned, you left Crimea and then Irpin in this latest iteration of the battle. But did you find it hard to adjust to living with another family?

I think the biggest change and difference was that when we were living in Crimea in 2014, we were moving to Ukraine, to a different part of Ukraine, to people who we know, to people who we belong to. So it was a different kind of change. So now, of course, it's a completely different culture and a completely different people, place, food and everything. So during this year, we were learning a lot,

learning about people's habits, about just way of life, how people live here, which rules do they have, laws and everything. What was the biggest surprise, Christina, do you think, about the UK that you didn't expect? I don't want to sound silly, but the biggest surprise for me was the railway system here. In a good or a bad way? Unfortunately, in a bad way. Because the trades in Ukraine run much better than here in England. And I really hope that this problem will be solved

soon. Why I am having this problem because every weekend on Fridays and Saturdays I'm going down to Manchester because I'm in junior department in the Royal Northern College of Music during this year. So every week I have to travel

from Corbridge to Manchester and back. And when there are rail strikes, of course, it's a bit of a problem. Right. So the Ukrainian trains were running better. And we want Sheila to come down and see you in London, of course, as well. Yes. Well, listen, you have been a delight to talk to. I wish you and your sister Sasha and your mumalia, all the best in the coming months.

I feel it's not the last we've heard of you. And Sheila, thank you so much also for sharing your story and how you opened the doors to this lovely Ukrainian family. Thank you so much for inviting us on. It's been a pleasure. Yeah, thank you very, very much. How wonderful. So many of you getting in touch, you know, Christina and Sheila, they're telling us about everything that they've learned.

Well, you are telling us about everything you learned about caring for someone, which is going to be our next discussion. I just want to read a couple of the messages coming in. So many. It has touched a nerve. I cared for my wife with MS for 10 years until her death at 53.

I was lucky to have good support over an increasingly hard journey. What he's learned, and I could be a man, I could be a woman, you can only do what you can do. You have to make time to look after yourself to be able to look after someone else.

Kids always know more than you. Always know more than you tell them, forgive me, even if you try to protect them. Even if you tell children plenty, they often feel that nobody tells them anything. You do some of your grieving in advance. Number six, it's good to talk. Thank you for those. And I'm not sure who sent it in, but thank you for getting in touch. Here's another. This is David. Cared for my darling mother until she died in 2020. It was a struggle at times, but I had very great privilege.

I've learned that grief is much more demanding and that you only have one mother and mine was one. 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. Wonderful. So I mentioned that we have two guests that are sitting in front of me here in the Woman's Hour studio.

They have both written books. One is Who Cares? The Hidden Crisis of Caregiving and How We Solve It. That's Emily Kenway. Also Mothercare on Ambivalence and Obligation by the acclaimed American novelist Lynn Tillman. Both Emily and Lynn, they cared for their mothers. There are differences in their stories, but also many shared experiences,

as I'm hearing from some that resonate with you as well. If you've undertaken the unpaid caring of a spouse or a relative or a friend, the numbers are astronomical and they're also growing. So in the UK, there are about 9 million such caregivers. In the States, approximately 56.4 million. And as I mentioned earlier, both my guests have dedicated their books to caregivers. Let me begin with you, Emily.

And I want to read the dedication. To caregivers, paid and unpaid. Let me see, for the overlooked, the unseen, the exhausted, for those of us who carry this brutal gift for the caregivers. And Linz is to the caregivers, paid and unpaid. Emily, what made you want to write a book about caring? Well, so as you say, I looked after my mother who had cancer and passed away in 2020. And it was through that experience that I sort of felt like I was living in a parallel universe, right? Because obviously care is completely normal in a human life. It's part of the human condition. We live in these breakable bodies.

And yet it was as if it was the most abnormal thing in the world, a kind of aberration, which wasn't, couldn't fit into our work world, couldn't fit into our social lives, had no financial support. And so I really wanted to illuminate this for people and awaken this kind of realisation I'd had that we've forgotten that care is natural right we've forgotten that we will have to give care we will receive care and to make our political arrangements on that basis and I particularly felt that because I was living through it I felt this viscerally you know every day that it was something about the lived experience that was being missed and we can see there's this you this wealth of knowledge out there from carers who are sharing it with us.

And in all the kind of conversations about the care crisis and social care, no one was talking to the people doing the majority of care, which are the unpaid carers, right? And so I wanted to create a book that could kind of pass on this awakening and say, look, here are these real stories of carers from around the world and here's the hard data as well. Let's put them together and then let's think creatively and practically and make a better way forward.

And I wanted to make sure that nobody could come away from the book thinking the same way about care as they started. Why do you think it has been, I don't know, hidden away or that we try and hide away from it? Because I often think about, particularly some of it is end-of-life care. Of course, there's lots of different situations as well. But that is so different to the beginning of life. Like when you're caring for a baby, the way that is portrayed in the media

is just so different to the way caring for a baby, the way that is portrayed in the media is just so different to the way caring for a beloved parent is depicted, for example. Yes. So this is one of the things that I'm sort of very strong on and almost confrontational about in the book, right? We talk about parenting, the guilt of the working parents during COVID, you know, the strain on parents all the time. And when you're a carer, obviously those things matter. But it's really frustrating because you just feel like nobody can see you, even though there's millions of us. And even though it will be everyone in the future, right? It's not really about the 9 million, it's about all of us. This is why in the book, I deliberately included a chapter on psychology and how it relates to care, which is not the normal fare for a book on care, right?

Because actually what psychology tells us, loads of really interesting experiments, is that we fear disease and impairment. You know, we avoid it. We stigmatize it. And by proxy, we do the same to those people who are standing alongside it. We live in an ableist society because we fear those things. So we're not capable at the moment. We lack the literacy in care, in having these very difficult conversations, you know, and I'm sure people out there listening will recognize this. Like carers, we know that because we don't get asked at work, you know, how is the loved one that you look after? Because it's not our kid necessarily. Right. And so I think, you know, I'm very clear in the book at school we teach about sex and relationships and maybe financial management and all these things.

But we don't teach about need and dependency and care and death. And that really has to change. Like it's not going to go away. It's going to come to everyone. Yes. And particularly many families living further apart, at time less children and a growing ageing population. Lynne, your mother was dependent on other people for about 11 years. So it is a long time. And you write that in the opening period of your mother's illness, your sisters and you existed in an atmosphere of persistent worry. And I think persistent worry, that phrase will resonate with our listeners. What do you think that was due to? For one thing, lack of knowledge about what was going on with her. Also, dealing with her medical condition and being not expert,

but dealing with so-called experts who some were good, Some were not good. I think one of the greatest shocks for me, which I write about in Mother Care, is learning that the MRI was not a legible text, was not something that every doctor would agree upon. And that really threw me. I didn't realize that there could be many different interpretations of what was going on in the brain. I think it was four different doctors that had four different outcomes. Or three different outcomes. And so you don't know. You're looking for the right diagnosis in a way for the patient the most important thing is to get a correct diagnosis that's where it starts and if it's not a correct diagnosis the patient will undergo tests that he or she doesn't need and the family or caregivers

will be even more confused and so on so there's all these different parts to need and the family or caregivers will be even more confused and so on. So there's all these different parts to caring and the medical chunk of it, and it can be a big old chunk, but that is just one part of it, even though there are emotions tied into that. That perhaps is also one of the places that we have very little control. Yes. And to go up against doctors, some of whom are reasonable human beings who understand that there could be doubt in the decision. And those who are arrogant and say to you, you have no right in some sense, even to ask for this. You have to, as an advocate, let's say, for your patient, for your friend, you have to go up against them and challenge because they may not be right.

And in some cases, in the case of my mother, who had a condition called normal pressure hydrocephalus, which when she was diagnosed, it was an unusual diagnosis. I think it's now known much better than it was 30 years ago. There was a neurologist dealing with her who refused to believe that her shunt, which was the gizmo that helped her continue to live okay, that it wasn't working. We thought it was working. He said, it is working. You just have to accept that she has an aging brain. Finally, we took it to a different neurologist who said, well, has she had the shuntogram? We said, what's a shuntogram? He said, it's the test to see if the shunt is working. The next morning she had the test and the shunt wasn't working.

So there are, you basically, depending on who you come, encounter, depends what the care can be. But you know, you said something there that struck me, Lynne, as well, you know, an ageing brain. I think sometimes the care that people get can also depend on what society's attitude to ageing is, about what sort of a life somebody is meant to be having at a certain age. I want to turn back to you, Emily. You mentioned that you spoke to different carers and drew on your experiences. Tell our listeners a little bit

about what you found about love and obligation and everything in between. Thank you. Yeah. So one of the things that became very apparent to me is that when we discuss care, we seem to be assuming that loved ones, family or friends only provide care today because there aren't enough paid services to replace them. Right. And actually, of course, that's not the case because people love each other. Right. And also illness is very unpredictable. So, you know, someone can be terminally ill, but you don't know how many weeks or months that's going to be. Or years. Right, exactly. So the fact is, you know, if you love them, you're probably going to want to be around them quite a lot, maybe not all the time, but a lot. And that's going to be unpleasant and repetitious and incredibly hard, no matter what arrangements we have. But it is the necessity of loving someone

right and so although we don't want to say okay you know we don't want to descend into women should be in the home providing care of course not which is the kind of historical assumption we need to be careful that we don't get rid of the idea that when we love people we will also have to do things that are unpleasant at times, just like we do when we're parenting, right? And that we will need to be there with that person. And then what do you do at a political level? So if you accept we have breakable bodies and we love people, therefore care, therefore how do we arrange things? Well, clearly everyone can't be at work all the time. That's one thing that's very obvious. And we have no arrangements to address that, right? We don't have paid carer's leave.

We don't have a livable caregiver's income. We don't have any of these things. So it's like coming down to this very base level of the human condition and then kind of legislating from there. Because I think at the moment, a lot of people muddle through and do what they can do. And I want to turn back to Lynn, particularly because we're talking about love and obligation with Emily, because you write, Lynn, that you did not love your mother. And it's a brave thing to say. Yet you also chose, as we're hearing with your sisters, to be very involved in her caring. Why did you do that? I think I have a conscience and I think that obligation to me care of my mother. Though I did not think she was a good mother,

she was not a loving mother. She did care for me in many ways, maybe not emotionally the way I would have liked. And so I did it primarily out of obligation. But I think obligation is not just a chill, cool thing. I think it does involve conscience and an ethical position in the world and toward others. And I had that kind of feeling for my mother. And so the caring you did, the years you gave, does that give you peace of mind? Well, I can feel that I didn't do the wrong thing. But I also feel that I wish there had been a better system. I mean, what Emily is talking about, I think, is incredibly important. How do we change the way in which we deal with these broken bodies or the fact that we are going to get sick, we are going to die, these things that are not wanted and not dealt with. And in the United States, the youth culture there is unbelievable. I mean, what's so funny to me and ironic is that

there's a lot of plastic surgery, I think there is in the Western world and in South America. And you see elderly women who are walking poorly with unlined faces. And I think, do they think they look young? And what is it in their minds that says, my face looks this way, but I can barely walk? It's so peculiar to me. Well, it sounds like it's kind of that protection that Emily was talking about at the beginning from admitting disease, death, deterioration, really, in these breakable bodies. And you've written, Emily, that caregiving needs to be seen as a species activity.

Yeah, so species activity, it's actually a phrase from a couple of feminist theorists. And this idea that care, we talk about it as a sector. So it's kind of separate to us, right? I'm not a carer, I'm not paid carer, therefore, I'm not a carer, a bit like hairdressing or law or something. And of course, it's not that, right? It's in our homes, it's kind of a paradigm shift right from this distance thing that other people carry out to this fundamental infrastructure in our daily lives and part of that is about accepting death right and as you said earlier we're okay we're talking about birth and raising children and i think this is the core distinction that that conversations about care do tend to focus on that because it doesn't mean it means we don't have to talk about death. You know, so many people are getting in touch. I'm going to try and do justice to some of them. I'm sorry if I don't get to read out your comment in advance. Just H as they signed off. Good morning. At last, a helpful conversation about carers from having a busy life and career.

I'm now a full time carer. My life has changed completely. My husband, a helpful conversation about carers. From having a busy life and career, I'm now a full-time carer. My life has changed completely. My husband is a good patient, but there are times when I feel as if my life is over. I'm nearly 70 and can't see a future. Often I am in despair, and although people around me are kind and offer help, I feel very alone. I also feel very guilty that I am so unhappy. My husband does the best that he can. No one can help,. No one can help really. I just have to deal with it. Oh, that's heartbreaking. And it's very true. I think people do feel very alone.

Often you're in an apartment or house with this person and it's just you and somebody who's not feeling well and is not going to get better. And one is alone with that. And I think a human being in our species faces that sense of aloneness. if you have a different idea of caring from a very early time, then that sense of alienation, which I felt enormously taking care of my mother whenever I was with her, might really be diffused or different. Yeah, and you had your sisters as well. And I know lots of our listeners will have families that pitched in, but it still can be a lonely job yeah

i remember i remember whatsapping a friend when i was um in the last maybe six months of my mum's illness saying like it's the loneliest experience i've ever ever had and i i just it's i can remember it was like something gnawing inside you that depth of loneliness um and there are kind of practical things to say about this in In the book, I talk about needing to reimagine family structures, right? Because as you said earlier, people are having fewer babies and people are further apart. And we need to learn the art of kinning, right? To kin, to create kin, a kind of intentional creation of people with whom we can have kind of reciprocity and those bonds so that we're not continuously alone in these situations.

And it's something we don't have as a skill. You know, you've just made me think of something, Emily, because you would ask a friend to babysit, but you'd never ask a friend to care for your mom or dad for that night, for example. And I cannot tell you how glad I am you said that because, you know, I'm in my 30s, so I have lots of friends with small kids. And then I had a mother who was dying and I noticed that shall we say like it's so apparent when you're in that situation um and you know we can change that we can have like collective care networks in our neighborhoods where someone's popping in and helping with something like that the other thing

I just want to say is you know when you read out that very compelling and unfortunately, extremely recognisable story, is that I feel that when people hear that who haven't been carers aren't currently carers, they think it's not about them. And what I really tried to get across in the book is that it is about them. It's just not happened yet. But it's coming. And that is why we have to pay attention to this topic. Yeah, so many should we read a few more that have come in. And my mother died when I was 10. After Yeah, so many. Should we read a few more that have come in? My mother died when I was 10 after years of bad health. My father had a full-time job and cared for us both. I would give anything for her not to have died,

to have grown old and to be responsible for her in old age and to have that. Just on the flip side, please don't forget about all of us unpaid carers of relatives with severe mental illness Have been a carer for my daughter She puts that in inverted commas Who suffers with severe depression, anxiety

And an eating disorder for over a decade I had to leave my job as a teacher Also became ill myself as a result of the constant battle To get her safe care Christine says I cared for my darling mum who had Alzheimer's She died in 2021 My biggest learning

is that we so easily disempower people by helping them to do things that it just takes them longer to do that's interesting as well because you're put in the position as carer of trying to understand what the person you're caring for needs, what they can and cannot do. Yes. Yeah, go ahead. My mother needed patience because sometimes her brain worked well and sometimes it didn't. And anyone who takes care of someone who has memory loss,

problems such as that, will deal with hearing the same story or a certain kind of anxiety, putting on their clothes hours before they actually have to go to the doctor, and learning patience. Well, I just want to say one overall thing, which is when this happens, and you are very surprised suddenly, and as Emily says, we shouldn't be surprised, but you are surprised, you feel entirely unprepared. And in a way, unaccepting. You resist. I found myself resisting. But everything in my life changed in some ways because I had to constantly be aware of how my mother was.

And if she needed to go to the hospital or see a doctor, were things okay with her paid caregiver? It was an utter change in life. And there is a lot of resistance to it, I think. I'm struck by the fact you said when it happens, not if. Emily? Yeah. It brings to mind, one of the people I got to interview, she's a carer for her husband in Sweden. And she had this great preferred word than carer which is a Swedish word which I won't try to pronounce but it translates as possibility maker oh so she saw herself as her husband's possibility maker right and it's beautiful right and it really captures the kind of the two sides of caring you know it's this huge responsibility you are trying to cultivate independence and autonomy and support

that person's dignity and create those possibilities for them. And through that, we're also learning very important lessons as humans, I think, which often gets ignored. So caring is so hard, too hard today. And there's lots of things we could be doing to address that. But we also don't want to perhaps, you know, fully jettison it to kind of technology and things like that, because actually, we learn so much, you know fully jettison it jettison it to kind of technology and things like that because actually we learn so much you know patience as lynn says there's lots of evidence that carers learn how to be more empathic how to understand people better to be less ableist um you know i certainly feel that i know what matters in life a lot better now and i'm sure

any carer does you know know, if only we had the practical circumstances to be able to realise that, which most carers don't. So it's really about, I think, understanding what care gives us as a species. Yes. Just as a species, I would say in New York City, about 15 years ago, they changed the buses so that people with disabilities could get on the bus. The stair would come down and so on. And at first on those buses, there was other people, the so-called abled people, would get annoyed. I remember that. I used to live in New York and they'd be huffing and puffing and grunting. Yes, but not anymore.

That's amazing. It's as if the whole city has understood that these people not only should be allowed but encouraged to leave their home. They should be able to go places on buses

and so on. There should be more elevators in the subway and there's much more patience. I used to, I have this theory that any mayor who wants to get elected in any

city around the world, if they just fixed all the elevators on transportation, like not just for people in wheelchairs, but people that are some, you know, have mobility issues or a push chair or whatever it is. Powering a suitcase. Exactly. It could be an

electable reason. It's been such a pleasure to speak to both of you. And I think our listeners will really have taken away a lot of what you've said as well. That's Emily Kenway. Who Cares is her book and Mother Care is Lynn Tillman's. I'll just read another few messages as we finish the discussion. Lizzie in the New Forest. Caring is hard. I will never regret caring for my father until he died of cancer. But the financial hardship caused by not being able to do my self-employed job meant we're still paying debts three years later and will be for several years.

I look after my two parents. I gave up work and spend as much time with them as possible. As I know, they are both on borrowed time. Time spent with them now is so precious. That is Linda. Hello. While caring for my beloved dad, this is Amy, before he died, I learned that it all comes down to one word. Love. He called me from hospital one day to tell me his cancer had spread and he had two weeks to live. All

I could say was, I love you, dad. He lived for another three months in which I spent many hours with him. I also learned that I'm a good nurse. I'm able to anticipate what he needed from the tiniest cue. The simultaneous privilege and horror of watching someone die in front of your eyes brings home how much the small

things matter from changing his hearing aid battery to holding his hand while he slept. A beautiful one actually to end on. Thanks Amy and Lewis getting in touch. And thank you both for coming into Woman's Hour. Thank you so much. Thank you. Now, I'm going to move on

to something I was watching last night. This is the way it opens. It is not a history lesson. I'm not even going to try and impersonate her. It is not a history lesson. It is fiction inspired by fact and so opens that latest series of Bridgerton but it's the dulcet tones of Julie Andrews I should

say who is the narrator. But on Thursday it's going to be available on Netflix. It focuses this time on Queen Charlotte described as a spin-off prequel. So going back in time from the Regency period to the of the first two series if you're a fan to now the mid-18th

century to chronicle how the young Queen at just 17 finds herself married to the new King George III. Well, to talk all about Queen Charlotte, what do we know about her? Dr. Olivette Otelli, research professor at SOAS, University of London, and also author of African Europeans, An Untold Story. You're so welcome. Once you begin to watch this Netflix prequel, she is of African descent, Queen Charlotte, but there has been this debate

for a long time. Was she the first woman of colour to be a member of the royal family? I know the writers of Bridgerton ran with it, but how likely is that, Doctor? Well, thank you for having me. It's unlikely. It is unlikely. And in fact, the fact that people have talked about her being of African descent is based on a few people.

So you have the politician Horace Walpole who mentioned her saying that she had a large nose and large mouth. And you have a physician, Baron Stockmark, who talked about in his diary about her mulatto features. And you have in 1999, actually, a researcher who took the story and made his own research and came to the conclusion that she might have been the descendant of somebody called Madrigana, who is the mistress of Alfonso III. The thing is, we don't know if the mistress was actually of African descent. And even if she was, if let's say for a minute that we agree with that, there are five centuries between Madrugana's birth and Queen Charlotte's birth. So genetically, it seems unlikely. But, you know,

it's still interesting to talk about that. And no doubt this series will kind of get those conversations starting again. I mean, I think Charlotte in the United States, I'm talking about in the Carolinas, they kind of talk about that a certain amount as well. I know there's even reenactments of that particular era that even take place in Charlotte. Yes, all over the place, all over the country, actually. I mean, there are cities named after her. Last month, I was in Rutgers University, there's a Queen Charlotte's College, Queen Charlotte's Buildings in honour of her. And there's the reenactment, you have the Queen's Ball in LA that I saw last month. I mean, it's extraordinary number of people who attended the ball, you know, in full regalia,

wigs included, because they just love the story of her being possibly of African descent. Yes, it's shown or portrayed very much as a love story. And she gave birth to 15 children, 13 of whom survived to adulthood. Was it a love story between them, do you think? I think so. I think so. I mean, they were quite young when they married. That was not unusual. But from what we know, they spent a lot of time together. They didn't remove themselves from court, but they spent time in Windsor, Frogmore, Kew Palace. And they were really lovers of the countryside. And they spent time with their children away from the court intrigues and all that.

So, yes, I mean, before he was ill, I think they had spent maybe 26, 27 years together. And a lot of people do focus on his illness. Why do you think she has been ignored or misrepresented, perhaps, by history at times? I think his illness took over the story. But let's not forget that she was German. When she arrived, she didn't speak English. And she was quite timid, naive, came from a rather small Dutch in northern Germany so many very few people knew about her and she didn't she didn't seem to have been a people's pleaser as well because she surrounded herself with people she knew or people who spoke German or who had

a keen interest in arts, music, botany and things like that. So I think she has been misrepresented, ignored really in many places, many cases, at least in the UK. Dr. Olivette Otelli, thank you so much for joining us. And as I mentioned, Queen Charlotte of Bridgerton's story is on Netflix from this Thursday.

Tomorrow, we are going to be talking about rejection. Why does it hurt so much? What are the coping mechanisms you can use? We're going to be talking about rejection why does it hurt so much? what are the coping mechanisms you can use? we're going to talk about all of that but I'm going to give the last word, well I don't know the name of the person but thank you for texting about caring, it's such a relief to sit here listening

to your guest's description of fulfilling her obligation to care for her mother with corresponding emotions I feel the same about mine and my situation sounds very similar. Thank you for giving me the permission to admit it to myself. I will talk to you tomorrow. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time.

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