Woman's Hour - Child abuse & VAWG, Novelist Miriam Robinson, Taylor Swift's engagement, Private midwives

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

Ten child protection organisations have written an urgent letter to the home secretary expressing concern over the omission of child sexual abuse from the upcoming government strategy on violence against women and girls. A draft version of the strategy, due to be published in September, was leaked to Sky News's Mollie Malone, who first broke the story. She joins Nuala McGovern, along with Anna Edmundson from the NSPCC, one of the organisations that signed the letter.Miriam Robinson’s debut novel And Notre Dame is Burning tells how Esther, a mother, tries to pick up the pieces of her life after a miscarriage - while her marriage falls apart. It is written in short bursts, in fragments of notes and letters. Miriam joins Nuala to talk about the female experience of losing a baby, betrayal, break-ups and moving on.It's a love story, Taylor just said yes! Pop superstar Taylor Swift is engaged to her American footballer boyfriend Travis Kelce. In photos, which have been liked more than 18 million times, the pair are surrounded by roses, delphiniums and hydrangeas. Taylor's love life has been the inspiration for a huge amount of her music, and the subject of tabloid speculation for years. What does this moment mean and how could it impact her music? Joining Nuala to discuss is freelance journalist and author Olivia Petter and Guardian Deputy Music Editor Laura Barton. With maternity services stretched across the UK, a new startup called Kove aims to address some of the problems in midwifery by providing a pay-as-you-go service at £180 per hour. But why are women opting for private care, and is it a good idea? Nuala talks to Kove co-founder Alakina Mann and NHS midwife and author Leah Hazard. Presenter: Nuala McGovern Producer: Louise Corley

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Ever feel like car shopping is designed to make your second guess yourself? Is this a good price? Am I making the right choice? With car gurus, you don't have to wonder. They have hundreds of thousands of cars from top-rated dealers and advanced search tools, deal ratings and price history. So you know a great deal when you see one. That's cairg-g-U-R-U-S.ca.cagurus.cagurus.ca.cagurus.ca.

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Nula McGovern and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Just to say that for rights reasons, the music in the original radio broadcast has been removed for this podcast. Hello and welcome to the programme. Well, romantic love is splashed across the papers and social media as pop star Taylor Swift announced her plans to marry NFL player Travis Kelsey. And yes, billions and millions. of people do care very much. But why?

Is it that the heartbreak that we know from her songs can end in happiness? And what about that much viewed picture of the couple? A traditional fairy tale setting with an enchanted garden vibe, an expensive diamond ring, and Travis on one knee. Is that aspirational from someone

who not so long ago very much celebrated being a childless cat lady? Well, I'd like to hear your engagement stories. Did you decide to get engaged before getting married, was it elaborate, minimal or non-existent, and why? Or if you haven't taken that road, is an engagement something you want or wanted? You can text the programme. The number is 84844 on social media where at BBC Women's Hour,

or you can email us through our website for WhatsApp message or a voice note. It's 0-3-700-100-444. But today we will also talk about when love breaks down. and Notre Dame is Burning is a stunning debut novel by author Miriam Robinson will explore betrayals, grief and miscarriage while parenting in a marriage back coming up. Also today, 10 child protection organisations have written an urgent letter to the Home Secretary expressing concern about the omission of child sexual abuse from the government's violence against women and girls' strategy. Molly Malone from Sky News, who reported on that strategy will be with us,

as will the head of policy at NSPCC. And how much would a private midwife be worth to you during your pregnancy? Does £180 an hour sound about right? Or we're going to hear about a new type of pay as you go and why some women are choosing this route and what it means for midwives in the NHS. But let me begin with that letter that I mentioned written to the Home Secretary of Ed Cooper

over a leaked draft off the government. violence against women and girls' strategy. It was seen by one of my guests for this item. Sky News's home news correspondent Molly Malone. She broke the story. The draft strategy, which is due to be published in September, said that child sexual abuse and exploitation is not explicitly within the scope of their strategy.

Well, I'm going to be joined by Molly in just a moment and also Anna Edmondson, who's head of policy at the NSPCC. Molly is just taking her seat right now. You are very welcome. Often a woman on a deadline, pop on those headphones. Right on cue. And let's get down to it.

Because Molly, you are the woman who broke this story. And I'd like to know a little bit about what was revealed in this document that was leaked to you. Yeah, sure. So we've done quite a lot of work. We've devoted quite a lot of time to the subject generally at Sky News. And so kind of speaking to sources about the violence against women and girls strategy coming. up, which we expect at some point in September, these kind of fears started to emerge about, well, actually, a number of people were saying, you know, there's the possibility that girls

are going to be excluded from the strategy, which was completely new to me. And I think after a little bit of digging, it was then that I realised it was actually child sexual abuse and exploitation that the government weren't, in their words, explicitly going to include as part of the strategy. And then a source sent me a leaked document, which was presented to a number of kind of stakeholders in the sector, as they'd been discussing the strategy. And I think then it was quite clear that it was written down. It was on kind of paper in black and white to say that it wasn't explicitly going to be included. And that's not, look, the government's position on this is that they're not excluding it. It will have a mention. It will have some focus. But

they're clear that they think they need a distinctive strategy. Let me throw that over to Anna Edmondson, as I mentioned, head of policy at the NSP. C. Your response to the government's point that child sexual abuse needs a separate strategy. I mean, some people might see that as a positive. Yes, and it's absolutely vital that child sexual abuse affects all children, so boys as well as girls,

also has a really clear focus. But the reason that once Molly came to us with this information, the NSPC and our colleagues at nine other children's organisations and internet specialists wrote the Home Secretary is because we know from our day-to-day work that children, especially girls, are disproportionately affected by sexual abuse and exploitation, whether that's online or whether it's offline in their lives at home, at school and in their communities. And to be able to deliver on their very welcome promise

to halve violence against women and girls, we know that that strategy absolutely has to tackle all forms of violence against children, particularly girls experiencing sexual violence. And that's why we were so concerned when these reports started to emerge. Molly, with that, because we know the government has this commitment to have violence against women and girls in 10 years. It's sometimes called Vag as well, just as an acronym. Why do they have a separate strategy for it? Have they explained it? To be honest, that's the big question. I don't think anyone knows the real answer to that.

But I think there's lots of upset within the sector, but also with victims that I've spoken to about, you know, the government came part of their winning ticket was to hire violence against women and girls within a decade. It was a big part of their manifesto commitment. And certainly from the perspective of victims, they say, why can you not treat child sexual abuse and exploitation under your big kind of umbrella revorg,

but also have a separate strategy given the scale and the significance of it? They feel that the two, I guess, aren't mutually. exclusive that you can do both. But the numbers, I suppose, are very different if we put it all under one umbrella or two separate umbrellas to continue with that analogy. Anna, what are we talking about when we speak about child sexual abuse, the numbers? Well, our colleagues at the Centre for Expertise on Child Sexual Abuse have estimated that around half a million children in England and Wales will experience some form of sexual

abuse each year. But when you drill down into some of those figures and look at the wider picture, we know that girls are being disproportionately affected. So, for example, when you look at the Home Office's own figures on the number of sexual offences recorded against women and girls, 16 and 17-year-old girls make up for about 10% of those reports, even though they're only 2% of the female population. And that's amplified when you look at what's happening online. So the NSPCC's own research, looking at police figures, showed that last year, four in five of all victims of online grooming cases were girls.

And that's a staggering number. And that's why it's so important that to get this, to deliver this commitment, which we all welcome, It's got to have a focus on tackling sexual violence against girls. Have you got a response, Molly? Yeah. From the government. So both stories.

So one in response to the letter when 10 bodies put their name to signatories and then the initial response has been largely similar. They've said, look, we recognise the issues in their words overlap. We recognise, you know, we've got to reference and include action within the Vogue strategy. But they say that they feel it needs its own distinctive strategy. And again, I guess I would just say that for victims, for the sector, they feel that the Vorg strategy is coming now, the kind of separate in September at some point. And yes, the government have done a number of things in terms of Alexis J's following up on her recommendations, Baroness Casey's, the same. They'll have this national inquiry into grooming gangs.

But I think they feel they don't want it to be kicked kind of further down the line and actually want it to come within the strategy itself. You have spoken to victims very movingly, which are on your report on Sky News as well. Can you tell us a little of what they said? Yeah, we spoke to an incredible woman who very bravely told our story. She's now 20 years old, a woman called Poppy Air. She was four years old when she was sexually abused and raped by her grandfather who lived in the family home. Now, he was convicted and he died in prison.

But from her perspective, she just said, look, my message to the government is fine. If you want to, you know, afford it, the scale and the significance that she feels it deserves and separate it out into a separate strategy, we want that now. We want to see the parameters of that now. And she didn't really understand why, and we don't yet fully understand why they're looking to kind of separate it out in that way. But she wants to kind of, I guess, see it address kind of here and now rather than kicked further down the line. And her mother, Miranda, said that she was shocked and appalled by the news and she was really upset by it, as I think a lot of. a lot of people in the sector have been. Anna, the letter, do you think you can tell us a little bit more about what you put in it

and do you think it will actually make a concrete difference? Well, we know that the government are really committed to making this work and that's why we wrote the letter because we think there is a golden opportunity for them to really shine a spotlight on child sexual abuse and exploitation in a way that will help them to. to turn this around, to turn around some of those shocking figures that I shared. And this is the chance to do it. As Molly says, there is a, there is a, there is, the time is now.

There's no reason why you can't also in a strategy about violence against women and girls, where the root causes for both that and child sexual abuse are so inherently connected and relate to inequality, misogyny and power imbalance. If you are going to tackle this effectively, you do need to have clear objectives and targets that drive the kind of change and action that is long overdue. Sorry to interrupt you, Anna, but what would those steps look like in a very tangible way, whether it's inequality, misogyny or power imbalance? So one example that all of us who wrote the letter want to see in this strategy is a real focus on prevention and prevention looking at this from the earliest possible opportunity

and there's some really powerful evidence that high quality, age-appropriate, relationship, sex and health education is a key tool for tackling violence against women girls. So there's some studies that have shown that it has an impact as much as 17% on bringing down instances of sexual violence. And so for us, we want to see in the strategy some clear targets, backed up by investment, to make sure that that high quality relationships and sex education is available in all schools. Teachers are equipped and confident to teach about consent and healthy relationships and that schools have the tools

they need to think about, well, what does this mean in our environment and community? How can we make sure that this is a space where we are not perpetuating inequality and misogyny and we're tackling this head-on? And that's just one

example of the things that we think could really concretely be put into the strategy to drive the change that's needed. But some might wonder what is the harm in having some of the things that you outlined there are some of the steps under trying to prevent child sexual abuse as opposed to under the violence against women and girls, a bucket of money to be quite frank or umbrella?

I'd say two things in response to that. First of all, it's a really practical, pragmatic argument. We want to see this succeed, but because sexual violence is such a significant, problem for girls. You can't tackle violence against women and girls without tackling sexual abuse and exploitation. Secondly, I would just echo, and Poppy, as Molly has said, is phenomenal. And I think she hit the nail on the head when she was talking about her experiences to Sky News. And it's clear to us from talking to her and other victims and survivors that they don't experience this as, oh, well, this should be covered by a violence against women and girls strategy and here are the measures that I want to see to tackle

this bit of the harm that I've experienced or this bit relates to me being targeted as a child and so I want to see measures taken under a child sexual abuse strategy. That's not how this is experienced in real life by girls and young women and for this strategy to really make a difference as we know the government is committed to. It absolutely has to reflect that lived reality where it's not divided into neat little boxes between different departmental strategies. This is about tackling the problems as they're experienced by victims and survivors and those girls who are bearing the brunt of this violence day in, day out. Is it harder, though, I wonder, Molly, in the way that Anna describes and also

the young woman you spoke to Poppy, the way they would like it addressed. Is it harder for for the government to give evidential results on how far they've come in tackling something? I mean, it's a good question. I think it's probably one for ministers, really. Yeah, and for the charities. But, I mean, certainly some have suggested that the reason that they want it to be part of the strategy

is for metrics is for, you know, it's 500,000, that's just an estimate every year. And any target to halve violence against women or girls needs to include those 500,000. And I'd also say, just to kind of add to Anna's point, from a policing perspective, they define their critical threats when it comes to violence against women and girls

as domestic abuse and stalking, online and tech-enabled abuse, sexual assaults, and CSEA, which is child sexual abuse and exploitation. And that is how they sort of tackle it. The way policing does. Exactly. That's their kind of framework. And so, I guess, from the perspective of the police, going forward, I think it's probably

fair to say that they'd want a kind of clear framework of what they're tackling and they already see it as laid out by the National Police Chief Council last year as sitting within that framework. We did reach out the Home Office. A spokesperson has said, as we've repeatedly said, it is categorically

untrue, categorically untrue that child sexual exploitation and abuse has been omitted from the government's fog strategy. It's deeply disappointing that this continues to be suggested. In reality, child sexual exploitation and abuse will not only be an important part of our forthcoming violence against women

and girls' strategy. It is also the subject of its own distinctive and transformative work streams specific to those horrendous crimes. That includes acting on the recommendations about the KC&J reviews into the evil of grooming gangs in child sexual exploitation and abuse and introducing new programs and new laws to overhaul

the policing and criminal justice response to them. The government will get on with tackling all the appalling crimes of violence committed against women and girls, including child exploitation and abuse. When can we expect the strategy, Molly? They've said September. That was delayed slightly.

We did expect it before the summer recess, but they seem to be suggesting that it's September at the moment. I'll continue following it. I want to thank both of my guests starting our programme this morning. That is Molly Malone, Sky News's Home News correspondent, and also Anna Edmondson, the head of policy at the NSPC. Lots of you getting in touch about your engagements. We're going to be talking with Taylor in a bit.

and Kelsey. I suppose I have to say both names now. Quinton texts. We got engaged on our third date after meeting for the first time just a week earlier, then married five months later. Celebrated our golden wedding anniversary shortly before my wife died earlier this year. I'm really sorry for your loss, but lovely that you had the golden wedding anniversary together. Elian Leeds, my partner and I have decided to get married. I really didn't want to be proposed to it smacks of women waiting around until someone else decides they are worthy of marriage. I feel society still views me as unromantic and business-like. Good for Taylor, though, if that's what she wants. 844, if you would like to get in touch. So we're going to talk romantic love. But as I mentioned at the top of the programme,

we're also going to be talking about when love breaks down. We want to talk about betrayal, serial infidelity, a miscarriage, grief, and wrestling with indecision about whether to end your marriage or not. further complicated when you have a child together. It is all in Miriam Robinson's first novel and Notre Dame is burning. We will have a reading coming up from Miriam

which is very honest, might call it graphic, somewhat explicit as the main character Esther tries to describe her miscarriage when I was joined in the studio now by Miriam. Good morning. Morning. What a book. I loved it. Oh, thank you so much.

Yeah, I said stunning at the beginning, trying to capture exactly how it made me feel. Just I felt I ran through the book so quickly. How did it come about? I mean, it came about in a number of ways. I was actually working on something else. I've been, as many writers will attest, trying to write something for a long time, but life often gets in the way. And I was working on something else. And it was very tidy.

It was very composed. It was very organized. It was sort of ten interconnected stories, all back to back. They all sort of linked together with something nice, a little painting. I still very much like that book. And then life happened. I, like Esther, encountered divorce. I encountered miscarriage.

And suddenly I sort of couldn't write like that anymore. And I spoke to a writing coach, which felt very indulgent at the time. but I did. And she sort of said, look, you're not in this book that you're writing. There's nothing of you in it. And she said, try rewriting it, but write it as a letter. And I didn't really know what that meant, but I tried it. And I sort of recast the entire thing, which was this big sort of multi-generational novel as a letter, as a long letter. And I had a friend read it. And she told me really honestly that it was terrible, and I needed to read to it. Good friend. It was a very good friend. I was very grateful.

And so what I found myself doing was essentially pulling out the bits of the old novel. I kind of rested them away from what ended up being a woman trying to figure out what the heck was going on in her life. And it ended up in pieces. And it ended up in short sentences and long sentences. And you're talking about the book now, not the marriage. Or maybe you're talking about both. Which is fascinating. So you'll fly through some pages and then kind of have a longer read in other pages.

Why don't we hear reading? This is where Esther, your protagonist, tries her best to describe her miscarriage, referencing the unborn baby. She calls her baby, Noah Lynn. She does. Okay. I should say it could be distressing to some who've gone through this also. We do have an action line to support and help and links for anything that you've heard in the program. Thank you.

I'm not certain died is the right word for what happened to Noah. Sometimes it feels correct. It's the word most people use when this happens, I think, even in the very early stages, even when there are not much more than a few cells and a lot of expectations swimming around in there. But somehow died feels like something else. The only other thing I can find,

and this is still not quite right, is disappeared. It feels like she disappeared. She was there. We did not yet know that she was a she, but that was how we all imagined her. We didn't entertain anything else. And then she was just not. People say we lost the baby,

like we might find her again if we look hard enough. It's not as though I didn't see her go. I watched bits of her fall into the toilet and into the two thin pads and the towel in my leggings, all of which soaked up some of her or the lining made for her, which feels like it must have been infused with her because nothing can really be separate inside you, surely.

In which case, I can't be certain she left entirely that a part of her wasn't absorbed into me. Did a bit of her stay inside? Maybe that sense of disappearance is part of what's so disconcerting about miscarriage. There's something fundamental that you're certain was there, and then you can't find it. It feels slightly like you're losing your mind. Like perhaps if you were just a bit more organized, a bit of a better woman, you'd have managed to keep hold of it. It's a bit like the feeling of losing your house. keys. I could have sworn I left them on the table.

It's so powerful. It's so personal to Esther, but anybody who's been through a miscarriage may, it may resonate with them as well. And I kept thinking afterwards about the word lost versus the word died or disappear. And I was wondering, you know, we use euphemisms in so much of life, but perhaps it's almost an attempt to minimize or make it easier for everyone involved, even though in the long run it's not. Yeah, and I think with miscarriage, it's such a weird kind of grief. It's so, it's so intangible. And as you say, I mean, people like to either minimize or sort of assuage or smooth over grief, right? It's messy. Nobody knows how to deal with it. It's literally messy. Literally. And so,

I think I think I didn't get in. I think that's part of why I was doing the writing. I didn't understand and I didn't understand the difference. I didn't understand why people said glib things like lost or I didn't understand why people said things like you're not grieving the baby. You're grieving you could have heard. You're grieving the life you could have heard, not the baby. Yeah.

What do you think of that now? Oh, I have I have so many thoughts about it. I think like anything, there's some good in there and there's some nonsense in I think it's part of what you're speaking about, which is the sense of, you know, people don't really know what to say. And so they try to say something. And I remember at the time that I lost my own second baby, somebody saying that to me and just finding it maddening. But not, again, not really understanding why. Because my brain sort of went, okay, fine, that's correct. That's correct. It's a story. I'm grieving a story, an idea of something. thing. And yet there's this visceral feeling. And I think as many women who have experienced miscarriage can tell you, it doesn't go away. I mean, I, you know, it's been seven years. It still comes back. I still have moments where it pops up, you know. And I, I think as women are sometimes made to feel when they, you know, want too much, I feel greedy. I already have a daughter. She's

extraordinary. You know, and yet, and yet there is this sadness there. So I think what I tried to do, I think originally I was trying to understand, so I was trying to write through it and understand. And I think what I ended up doing by writing these letters to her, to other people, was that I gave some shape to it. And I think that when people say lost, it's because there's no shape. There's nothing there. There's nothing to grieve. And Esther in the book, she writes about her sort of confusion at these women who she reads about on forums who do rituals. They put the tissue in a Tupperware or they bury it or they do something like that.

And she doesn't understand that. It doesn't make any sense. But I think this is her version of that. This is her ritual. This is her way to give shape to something so she can grieve it. I think also if we think about the verb and the action, like lost keys or lost a baby, like the onus is on the woman, for the example. Yes.

Yeah. I think it is. And I think, you know, many women report feeling a sense. of failure, you know, that piece in there, not a good, if I was just a bit of a better woman, I could have held on to it sort of thing. And I think so much of this book, I was thinking about the ways in which women are made to feel responsible for things, or like they have failed at things that really are either out of control or somebody else's responsibility to hold. And I think miscarriage is a really, really big one. And motherhood in a way is a really, really big one.

the guilt that mothers feel for things that, you know, are not theirs. Which we feel throughout the book. I mean, there is a light of your life in the protagonist Esther, whose little girl is called Annie. But all these experiences of womanhood are happening on two tracks of one that's been the mother to Annie and then everything else, part of which is miscarriages we've explored, but also infidelity. So Esther's husband, Ravi in the book, cheats numerous times, as we find out trickle by trickle.

But the other women are called Eves. Talk us through that. So the Eves, Eve came quite late in the process. I mean, this book was a real kind of layering. It was figuring things out, taking things out, putting them back in, moving things around. I had like the kind of mad scientist sort of wall of joy with scraps of paper moving all over the place. And for a long time, the women were just called woman number one, woman number two, woman number three. And part of me liked that.

It was angry. It was, you know, the evil other woman. It was, you know, good woman scorn stuff. But part of me didn't. Part of it felt empty. Part of it felt like this thing we're talking about. about women being blamed constantly for all sorts of things that are at least shared responsibility, if not somebody else's entirely.

So I had been thinking about this a lot. I'd been thinking about the way that women hold blame and hold responsibility for society's ills and have done back to the time of Eve, essentially, right? Original sin, you know, maddening. You know, they both ate the stupid apple and yet, you know, Eve is our person. And Eve's our person who caused the downfall of everything and caused us all to lose our innocence. So that was sort of milling in my head. But I hadn't, again, I hadn't quite gotten there and I was quite close to needing to deliver my manuscript.

And I encountered a book called Eve by Cat Bohannon, which is a phenomenal, I mean, like mind-boggling something like 800-page tome on the evolution of the female body. And it was so unexpectedly amazing. And her genius is that she writes this in a way that is not just palatable, but fascinating. And she charts, you know, the female body back from, you know, when we were tiny rodent-like creatures, up through developing a womb, getting a placenta, you know, coming in a tree. Living in a tree, fighting off tree panthers. The tree panthers are my favorite book in the entire book. You know, protecting our children from said tree panthers, all of the things. And suddenly I had this image of a much more dynamic, bold, brave, powerful woman than Eve.

And a woman who is fixed and changing all the time, right? That's what evolution is. We take what we want. We leave the rest behind. We take some more of what we need. We leave the rest behind. And so it was at that moment that I was like, oh, my gosh, they're called Eve. They're called Eve.

And if we get down to nitty gritty off infidelity and. a man having sex with another woman and then coming back to his wife, there can be seen almost emerging of all those bodies in a way, which Esther describes kind of being consumed or inhabited by the other eaves, which is quite kind of mind-blowing

when you're reading through as well and kind of thinking about it in that way. But I was also struck, I know we're not going to have enough time to get into all the aspects we could with your book. But I, you know, this is Woman's Hour. I love that Esther was telling other women and that kind of gave her a sense of relief. Her woman friends or girlfriends at that time. But then it goes to next level.

It's like the neighbours, not the men, just the women, telling all and sundry and somehow the rage over the infidelity or betrayals is lightened even by these women that she doesn't know. yeah I think so what Esther does is she kind of almost yeah she basically just says I have all of this rage I have all of this anger and I can't hold it all I don't know how to hold it all and I think um something I'm certainly coming to in my 40s I think a lot of maybe women around the same age are too is like oh we haven't really we don't really know what to do with anger we we tamp it down we suppress it we make nice we make nice we say everything's okay. And suddenly it's kind of, you know, oh, no, like this is, this is too big. It's too big to hold and it's hard to know what to do with it. So, you know, Esther calls on the commune essentially. You know, she hands out her rage. She tells people and she kind of says, hold on to this for me for a bit because I can't deal with it all at once. And I think it's like that for rage and I think it's like that for grief. You can only, it's like, I don't want to say It's like swallowing an elephant.

But it's, you know, you can kind of only deal with it in pieces in a way. And I think that's something that people don't understand about both anger and grief is that it doesn't just go away. It doesn't, you know, and it's, again, going right back to your initial question, it's why we can't handle it very much, because it just takes a long time to get through these things to process. You reminded me of another interview that I did for Women's Hour with the actor Anna Maxwell Martin, who was on,

and she had a loss of her partner. and she talked about the, what I call it, the gift of being in your 40s and a woman is that you will have a network of friends that should be able to hold you up and that is the plus side of being a woman and that they will be able to sustain you in the way that we see with Esther, for example,

with that network or commune, as you call it. There was another line that that struck me in the book, which was from Esther. When do you tell your girl, Annie, about the world of men? Yeah. I actually get emotional thinking about it. I think, again, the thing I was thinking so much about this. And my editor said something interesting when she was sort of working with me on it. She sort of said so much of this book is about women trying and failing and trying again to communicate something to each other.

And, you know, when I write about betrayal, when Esther experiences betrayal in this book, to me it's about that kind of wider betrayal of women that we, you know, continually have been, you know, had our testimonies overwritten, have been made to doubt our intuition, you know, somehow we are all walking around writing no worries if not. at the bottom of our emails, you know, it's sort of this, you know, all the way through to the horrible, horrible erosion of rights that we're seeing at the moment and the violence that is sort of constant in our lives. And what do you say? What do you say when you want to raise a daughter? And it's a, I'm sure, a similar calculation for sons, but what do you say as a woman when you want to raise a daughter to be brave and fierce and bold and confident and go onto the world and do things? But in order to do that, you have to tell her what to look out for.

You know, I do not want, you know, I want my daughter to be able to ride public transport so that she can see the city and explore and grow up. I don't want to tell her what to do if a man touches her. I don't want to tell, you know, I want her to be able to go out at night with her friends. I don't, I'm dreading the day when I have to explain to her about how you put your key between your fingers so it pokes out on the other side just in case, you know, or how you always have a girlfriend on speed dial. I don't want to have those conversations. And I think it's infuriating, and I consider it a great betrayal, that that's something that we have to navigate as parents, that we can't just send our girls into the world to explore it.

We shall leave it there for today, Miriam Robinson, whose first novel is, and Notre Dame is burning. A great podcast as well, The Unlived Life, which I was listening to some episodes where she explores the life that, the sliding doors moment and the life we didn't take, which you might want to take a listen to as well. Thank you very much for coming in. Thank you so much.

Right. We are going to keep talking about love. It's a love story. Taylor just said. Yes. It's the engagement, of course, so many people talking about this morning. She is engaged to her American footballer boyfriend,

Travis Kelsey. You've probably seen the photos. Some of them liked over 18 million times. If you saw them, there's like roses and hydrangeas and lilies and an arch and moss and a lot of love. Taylor's Love Life has been the inspiration for a huge amount of her music

the subject, as you'll know, of tabloid speculation for years and years. So what does this moment mean? How could it impact her music? Well, joining me to discuss is freelance journalist and author, Olivia Petter. Good morning. And also a writer and broadcaster specialising in music.

Laura Barton, good morning, Laura. Good morning. Right, Olivia. How are you feeling? this morning, your reaction to the news? I mean, I gasped very loudly when I saw the Instagram post in my flat last night. I feel very happy for her.

I have to be honest with you. I feel like it's like she manifested her perfect love story. I mean, it has all of the components, the American singer with the high school jock and she's kissing him on the football field when he wins the Super Bowl. And, you know, they're in this gorgeous floral garden.

She's in this beautiful Ralph Lauren dress, this enormous engagement ring. I mean, all of it feels like it has been manifested from her songs. It's almost too good to be true, but I don't want to be too cynical, but it feels very fitting for Taylor. Let's take a moment to be cynical, however.

It doesn't appear contrive to you or so stage managed. Well, I think they've been quite clever by releasing the podcast episode that Travis and Taylor did not that long ago on his podcast, New Heights, and it was a two-hour-long interview that really gave fans the first insight

into their relationship and their dynamic. and I think we actually got a sense that these two people are genuinely very happy together and very good for one another. You know, both of them were sort of joking and jibing the whole time, but you can tell that they both have so much admiration for one another and there are actually a lot of parallels in what they do. You know, they're both kind of stadium-level entertainers and Taylor even jokes about how, you know, for her it's the dressing room,

for him it's the locker room, for her, it's the stadium, for him it's the football field. there are actually lots of sort of comparisons between them. And I think, you know, he embodies a lot of what she's been looking for this whole time that she's told us that she's looking for in her songs. Even the way that they met, you know, he went on his podcast after going to one of her shows in Kansas and said that he tried to meet her to give her a friendship bracelet with his number on it. Which is the thing for Taylor fans. Yeah, and he couldn't get in.

And then he declared on the podcast how much he wanted to date her. And then I think it was his coach, Andy, who is friends with Taylor Swift's dad, who ended up setting them up. And Taylor said on the podcast, you know, it was the equivalent of him standing outside her room with a boombox shouting, I want to date you, which is what she's kind of wanted to happen to her and has been singing about in her songs since she was a teenager. That's literally what she said on the show. So I think it actually makes a lot of sense. So it's almost like this rom-com that's playing out, Laura. What do you think about the imagery of the fiancé, you know, down on bended knee, the massive sparkler?

Does that fit with her feminist credentials? It fits with her songs, as Olivia said, with her feminist credentials. I don't see why it doesn't necessarily. You can still be married and still tick all those boxes as a feminist. I think what's more interesting is the dynamic between them in terms of, I think she's found someone who lets her be the bigger person and be the bigger star.

And I think that that is a rarity between men and women's still today. I remember years ago, I interviewed Matty Healy, who was another person who was involved with Taylor for a while. And he talked about how he didn't want to be known, basically, as Taylor-Swiss boyfriend, that it would be emasculating.

And I think Travis Kelsey is willing to be emasculated. There is a piece in the Times today looking at how likely marriages are to end in divorce when the woman out earns the man. Taylor, I think last I checked, is worth $1.6 billion with a B. Any thoughts on?

that, Laura? Oh, good for her. And God knows that generation can catch up. I mean, I'll be honest, I earn more than my partner and I've never been happier in a relationship. So, you know, it can work. You know, we're asking people, I mean, obviously this engagement thing does touch a nerve of people, as we've seen with the reaction to it. And I threw it out to our listeners this morning. Nicole, I've just proposed my partner on a walk to our local cafe. A place for some them might seem unromantic, but a place I knew we would always remember. By the way, she said yes. Congratulations, Nicole. Another, my engagement ended up being what I wanted thanks to an unfinished ultramarathon. Back in 2019, I was supporting my now husband during his 200 Hardmoors

Ultramarathon across North Yorkshire. He did not finish the grueling 153 miles. So after we slept in the support van and checked in at a hotel, we had a lovely meal and during a whiskey in front of the fire, he proposed sitting as he couldn't kneel. He had planned to ask me at the end of the race in front of lots of people, which I would have hated, but ended up being only us, and it was perfect. Can I ask you about the red string theory that Taylor is a fan of, Olivia? Yeah, so she has a song on her folklore album called Invisible String,

and it taps into this kind of folkloric myth about two people being connected by an invisible string and everything that happens in your love life and all of those disappointments and breakups and heartaches, they're all about leading you to your one sort of soulmate and special person. So I guess the sceptic in me would point out that that song was largely thought to have been written about Taylor's ex-boyfriend Joe Alwyn. And obviously they then did break up after six years together.

So I suppose there is a level of cynicism that we can attach to some of these grand romantic gestures and these big theories about love and fate and destiny. But I think at the moment Taylor's fans just want to be very happy for her. Do you think, Laura, they want to live in the fairy tale a little longer? I guess so a little bit I think it's interesting that do you mean Taylor and Travis or the fans? I don't talk with the fans

because it's such I mean when we look at the pictures I mean it's almost like a painting if you know like a snow white painting at that you know everything just so and arranged and obviously the whole thing is stage managed I think he proposed a couple of weeks ago but I suppose I find it interesting

that people are almost ready to take it at face value even though it is something that obviously is part of a not multi-million, but billion-dollar industry. I think they do like the fantasy. I mean, it's the part of it. I hate those voters. I'm going to be honest with you. That makes me recoil at a rather they run off secret themselves for them.

But I think they do. I think every, you know, she, as you say, she's a multi-billion dollar earning artist. Everything is show. Her new album is The Life of a Showgirl. or it is performance. She's just on 150 or whatever it was shows on her tour. But in terms of the fairy tale, you know, I don't think, I think with the fans, she's allowing herself to grow with the fans.

She's putting distance between her and the new sort of pop upstarts. A lot of her fans will be getting married around this sort of age. She can step into that world. There's a whole realm of other material when you're married or settle down in any kind of capacity that gives just new songwriting material. So it's a different kind of fairy tale, different kind of fantasy she's stepping into now, I think, as a songwriter. Ha-ha. So what might we expect? Hard to know, Laura. Who you can say? I mean, I was thinking I'm doing this project about Bruce Springsteen,

and he really became a very different songwriter when he got married and wanting to get married because he knew there was a whole other world he could write about, or that he could tell different stories about that weren't about himself in a different and a different a new way and so as a music fan and critic I find it exciting that Taylor could be writing about things that aren't just sort of the peak and trough of dating as interesting as that has been. I mean we kind of did a very deep dive just before the two of you came in and when a marriage and all the difficulties and conflicts that that can be within it. But Olivia, what are you thinking about when you think of her music going forward? I mean, well, I'm a big fan of Taylor's more

melancholic music. So I really got into her in her folklore era, which is in 2020. And that album and her follow-up, Evermore, they were all rooted in kind of storytelling and, I guess, more of a more of an overarching sadness. And that was certainly the case for her last album, the Tortured Poets Department, which was largely thought to be inspired by her breakup with Matty Healy. But then again, if I go back to her sort of happier popper, more sort of poppy era like in 1989, which she worked on with Max Martin, who, you know, she is now working on the Life of the Showgirl album with. I feel like there is something very exciting coming. It's just going to be a very big tone shift to her last couple of albums,

which were a lot more, I guess, yeah, like I said, melancholic. I'm just thinking, what can we expect from the wedding if that was the engagement? Well, there's been a lot of talk about that already online with people comparing it to a Bezos wedding. So it could go one of two ways. think if we're judging it off of the engagement photo and the photo shoot, it's likely to be a performance in and of itself. I think, I don't think these are two people that are going to get married quietly. Laura? Oh God, I agree. I mean, I think it's going to be, I think

American is a bit of a hope right now and I think it's going to be a big sort of, a bit like a royal wedding focus for a lot of the country. Although life of a showgirl, the life of a showgirl, which is the new album, maybe she should just go to Las Vegas and, you know, a lope. maybe so let's not rule anything out at this point that could be a clue or an Easter egg as they call it thanks for joining us we shall see the next iteration of Taylor Swift

and Travis Kelsey Olivia Petter whose book Gold Rush is out now and we also have the writer and broadcaster Laura Barton thanks to both of them thanks to you for all your messages coming in just recently got engaged and everyone has asking me how where did it happen I find it a bit awkward that most people think it should have been a surprise

and driven by my male partner. The truth is, we talked about it, we decided to get married next year, we went to the jewelers together to get a family heirloom ring repaired. I'm happy with the arrangement, but can't help feeling a little awkward having to tell people

there was no down on one knee moment. Isn't that interesting that that is still there? Here's another. I made a comment to my boyfriend along the lines of, do you think we'll ever get married? He said, yes, I think we will.

That was my engagement. We've never been married 25 years. he's not one for the grand gesture of romance but he does make me coffee in bed and my favourite meals oh come on that's good enough right one more from Jane I met my husband at university in Bradford

we're both born again Christians and we decided when we started our relationship that we'd call it being betrothed rather betrothed rather than being engaged and spent this time praying and thinking about and planning on whether God wanted us to be married or not

but they are married now 84844, if you would like to get in touch as we talk about engagements, whether you did or whether you didn't, whether you want, whether you didn't. But let me move on 84844 if you'd like to still get in touch on that. But I want to turn back to an issue that we've spoken about a lot on women's hour. And that's about the crises that are facing maternity care in the UK. It's understaffing, a lack of continuity in care, at times traumatic births, and even tragic debts.

But there is a small startup company. It's called Cove. They say they're hoping to address some of the issues, which they call a new model of maternity care. It's promising pay-as-you-go personalized support from the same midwife throughout the pregnancy. How much is it? £180 an hour, which is a huge cost for many people.

And so I'm asking, does this risk then creating a two-tier system where only those who can afford it can get continuity? of midwife care that many desire. Joining me to discuss how it works, also what's prompting people to seek private care and the challenges that face midwife provision more widely are the Cove co-founder that's Alikina, Mann,

and Leah Hazard are practising NHS midwife who's written extensively about her experiences and has been on the programme. So welcome back to Leah and welcome Alikaena. Alina, let me start with you. Why is Cove needed? Great question and I think you touched on a lot of it already. we've seen that despite so much research,

the NHS really wants to give continuity of care. The World Health Organization says it's the gold standard. Most of Europe has at least postnatal and antinatal continuity. New Zealand has full continuity. So I think just that frustration, and I would love to see it in the NHS, but we just really wanted to do something that was within our control. So this is, you would have a midwife from your, I don't know,

after your pregnancy test, whatever you're pregnant, right the way through to the birth and postpartum. Essentially, yes. We cove connects families to independent midwives who provide this gold standard care. And yeah, you could either have the full continuum package or you could contact them and see if there's some pay-as-you-go or want-off support a lot of families from that really early stage

because we know there's not very much support until three months in the NHS, which can be a really anxious time for a lot of people. You can also have your midwife as a birth partner during labour if you want to go into hospital and then also that postpartum care for context. I think we have about three health visitor visits to home and then one six weeks postpartum checkup. In Germany you get a midwife visit every day for the first 11 days

and then 20 more hours home midwife visits until nine months. And so, I mean, you can just only imagine which woman's going to be healthier. And perhaps allaying some of the fears that we have spoken about as well. I think I saw some of the figures where for the UK, a woman would have about six hours with the midwife. That's 41 plus in Germany. And you connect families to midwives. You're not responsible for the care, so to speak. $180 pound, why that figure?

Great question. And ultimately, it's a benchmark. We just wanted to give families some figure to sort of hang their hat on so that they could see. Maybe this could be something for us. But essentially, we wanted to really respect the value and the skills of these midwives and take into account their travel time, the admin costs and, you know, being a freelancer. But Cove takes a cut, I imagine. We do take a small fee, yeah. Can you tell me how much?

I wouldn't want to say exactly now. we're still kind of testing what works for us as a business model and is not prohibitive to the midwives because ultimately we really want independent midwifery to thrive. We think they do really crucial work. You don't have a specific percentage even in mind? We have some thoughts, but I would hate to lock myself to something. Let me bring in Leah here.

What do you think the introduction of a service like this tells us about what women and also midwives are facing us? at the moment in the NHS. Hi, Nula. Well, ultimately, I think women and midwives both want choice. I think women want to have the choice of a model of care and ideally of continuity that we know, as Alicayna has said, is the gold standard of care.

And midwives also want to be able to work in a system that supports them to provide the excellent care that they've been trained to give. I think that it's a bit of clever marketing, because it's not actually a new model, you know, to say it's pay as you go is something that's actually existed for a long time. We've had independent midwives in this country for many, many years working kind of alongside the NHS or outside the NHS. And while many of them offer sort of full packages that would take you all the way through pregnancy, birth and

postpartum, and many of them are quite happy to give women a one-off appointment. So it's great marketing. You know, absolutely. Congrats to the founders for coining the terms of and pays you go, but it is something that has already been available. What about the risk, however, Leah, that they could take, in a system like this, take good midwives from the NHS, which is open to all to work for those who can only afford that type of care, as we heard, 180 pounds an hour? Yeah, well, I don't think we really need to sort of look at the company as, you know, an organization that's going to be poaching good midwives because

the good midwives are leaving already. I mean, we know that midfrey in the UK has a massive retention issue. Each year, many, many midwives are leaving the NHS because they're burnt out, they feel undervalued, demoralized, just absolutely broken by trying to provide good care within that system. And so there are increasing numbers of independent midwives who are leaving the NHS of their own volition. I think companies like Cove are just sort of providing a conduit for that passage. But what about that risk of the two-tier system, which I understand is there already, but perhaps becoming more magnified if in fact there are companies like Cove or others that are enabling it? First to you, Leah, and then I'll come to you, Alikina. I mean, again, I'm not sure risk is the right

term, although I see what you're saying, I think it is, you know, just giving choice to the people who can afford it. And 180 pounds an hour, it's a lot of money. It's going to be way out of reach of most families in the UK, I would imagine. So I think that there will still be a very small number of people who are taking up this service. But it does raise a good point of, you know, why people would be willing to invest in this kind of thing.

Alikina? Yeah, I agree with everything Liz said so far. I think also there is a huge already demand and market. Families are already paying to plug up the gaps that they're not getting through the NHS through doulers, lactation consultants, mommy and me, mommy MOT, sorry. And so I think just having independent midwifery as one other option because they really speak to that emotional support, holistic care, that women want as well as the medical care.

In my last 30 seconds or so, Leah, I mean, is there a plan to have continuity of care? Does that happen for women? It's absolutely something that midwives have been pushing for over the last few years. The government has endorsed it in the various nations, and there have been attempts to introduce continuity, but by and large they haven't been adequately funded. So the intention is there. The government just consistently will not put its money where its mouth is.

Yes, when I was researching this morning, I did see that it was on the cards. It seemed to be before the pandemic up until about 2021, but not as robust since then. Thanks very much for joining us, Alikina Mann and Leah Hazard, with us on Women's Hour. And we don't have a response from the government, I should say, on those particular issues with the NHS. Do join Anita tomorrow. She'll be joined by Anne Ming, a mother who battled the double jeopardy legal system for over 17 years. after her daughter. Julie was sadly brutally murdered. That was in 1989, you might remember. Also, we have the knitwear designer, Justin Lee. Join us then.

That's all for today's woman's hour. Join us again next time. Attention, animal lovers, haters and undecideds. A little birdie, a tit, told me that you're looking for a podcast just like evil genius, but without all those stupid humans. I'm Russell Kane, waddling onto your feed and squawking about my show, Evil Animals. Every episode, I'm joined by two human guests, or as I like to call them, ex-monkeys, passing judgment on all the creepiest crawlies and the biggest elephants in the room. Are vampire bats, terrifying giant mosquitoes, are bottlenose dolphins, sex-obsessed savages. And we're going there.

Domestic cats. Evil or genius? Pig out on evil animals in the evil genius podcast feed. First on BBC Sounds.