Woman's Hour - Edna O'Brien, Christmas Traditions, Women In Law, Joanna Scanlan

Episode Date: January 7, 2020

Having to leave a child's bedside when they're being cared for in hospital can be a huge wrench. To help reduce the separation anxiety, a third of neonatal units in the UK are now using an app that helps parents stay in touch with their premature babies 24 hours a day. Doctors and nurses can send photos and video updates to parents when they can't be with their baby in hospital. So far, around five thousand families have used the service. Emma Barnett talks to Katharine Da Costa - a reporter for BBC South and Consultant Obstetrician Dr Maggie Blott.This year saw an unprecedented number of women winning major awards and prizes. What does being a winner feel like, and is it always good to win? Jenni Murray hears from the writer Edna O'Brien who won the David Cohen Prize for Literature. The award celebrates a writer who has broken down social and sexual barriers for women in Ireland and beyond, and moved mountains both politically and lyrically through her writing.Christmas is steeped in all sorts of tradition – but it’s not just trees, tinsel and turkey. Many families have their own festive rituals and the mere idea of doing things differently would make it feel… well, just not like Christmas. But why do we get so hung up on doing Christmas a certain way - even if it doesn't make us happy? What is it about human psychology that makes tradition so attractive? And if your family festivities make you want to run away and hide, what’s the best way to break the cycle? Jenni Murray talks to Dr Cristine Legare from the University of Texas at Austin about why rituals are an inevitable part of being human.We mark the centenary of women being able to enter the legal profession. Andrea Catherwood speaks to Cherie Booth QC, Dana Denis-Smith - founder of the First 100 years, Abi Silver, a former associate at a city law firm and now a legal consultant, Beth Collette, who's a barrister in her second year of tenancy, and Mari Takayanagi - a Senior Archivist at the Houses of Parliament.The actress and writer Joanna Scanlan is known for Thick of It, Getting On, No Offence Puppy Love and most recently The Accident. Her latest role is as Mother Superior in the BBC’s new adaptation of Dracula. She joins Jenni to discuss.Plus, the Glasgow-based close harmony quartet The All Sorts perform.

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 and welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour. Edna O'Brien first made waves with her books The Country Girls 60 years ago and the tales of Kate and Baba have delighted and scandalised people ever since. She joins us to discuss her year of winning and how she coped with the cold reception she faced to her writing in Ireland. The people in my village were ashamed. Bishops, archbishops, politicians, friends, nuns, family. My poor mother was the most ashamed of all. And that hurt me.

But I suppose principally, I should say, I got through it through my own determination. In this period between Christmas and New Year, you might be observing or suffering through some of your annual family traditions. But what's behind the desire to do the same thing every year? We explore the psychology of ritual. And this week marked 100 years since the Sexual Disqualification Act was passed and women were finally allowed to practice law. But did the act grant them equality in the profession? We hear from female lawyers about their experiences and why coming back after a family in particular hinders progression. It was awful. It was this, give me a job, I can do anything.

And I couldn't even get into a job interview. And Joanna Scanlon gets us in the mood for the new BBC adaptation of Dracula, set to begin on Wednesday. Having to leave a child's bedside when they're being cared for in hospital is a huge wrench. It can be even more dramatic and difficult to do when that child is just a baby and a premature one at that. To help reduce the separation anxiety, a third of neonatal units in the UK are now using an app that helps parents stay in touch with their premature babies 24 hours a day. Doctors and nurses can send photos and video updates to parents when they can't be with their baby in hospital.

So far, around 5,000 families have used the service. Catherine da Costa has been looking into it, and we were also joined by Dr Maggie Blott, a consultant obstetrician. I've heard from several mothers that they feel this overwhelming sense of guilt at having to leave their baby in hospital. They say, you know, it's hard enough being a new mum, but then having to leave a child overnight can be really difficult. And it can make it harder for some parents to bond with their baby. This app allows them to be sent pictures and videos 24 hours a day, and that gives parents a real sense of reassurance that their baby's in good hands and is doing well. Now, I met Victoria Redido. She and her husband had triplets at the Princess Anne Hospital

in Southampton in August. Now, the boys were born nine weeks early, and the youngest to Oscar, the smallest, he was one pound and nine ounces, less than a loaf of bread. Now two of them were able to go home five weeks later, but Oscar had to spend an extra month at the unit. This is what Victoria told me about how the app helped her. I remember getting the first photo and I was up at three in the morning expressing. And so you're awake all the time

and you're looking at your phone and then an email comes through and you get this lovely picture. And it usually has a message saying, hi, mommy, hi, daddy, having a lovely evening. You have to leave your babies and you feel so guilty leaving them. And to know that they're in such safe hands and with people who care enough to take a picture and just send it to you to make you feel so guilty leaving them. And to know that they're in such safe hands

and with people who care enough to take a picture and just send it to you to make you feel good is amazing. Why is this technology needed then? Because, of course, people have their own phones these days, don't they? Yeah, well, I mean, lots of reasons why parents can't be with their baby. Victoria was able to stay in family accommodation on the hospital site, but she wasn't able to be there at the bedside overnight. Other parents might have older children to care for at home. I also heard a story about one mother who had heart problems during birth, and she was under the care of a cardiac team while her baby was

in the intensive care neonatal unit, So they just couldn't physically be together. And it's not just parents because grandparents and extended family might not be able to get to the unit. And they want to know that everything's OK. So basically staff can take photos and videos. As you heard there, sometimes they attach little messages and it might be the baby's having a bottle or, you know, it's having its first bath or being taken off the ventilator for the first time just little updates and the idea really is to help reduce separation anxiety and many feel it helps boost mental well-being not just for the

mother but for the whole family and it's got the potential to help many families because we know around 60,000 babies, that's about one in every 13, are born prematurely every year in the UK. Now, I was also speaking to Fiona Lawson. She's the matron in charge of the intensive care neonatal services at the Princess Anne Hospital. We've always felt that that moment where the family have to leave us for whatever reason, and there's lots of reasons that might happen, that that is a wrench for families. And we do all we can to prepare them for that. But to be able to soften that blow by sending them videos, sending them photos, little messages, is really lovely for us to do. Let's bring in Dr Maggie Bloss at this point. How important do you think this service could be? I think this is a very important service. Separation of a mother from her baby at birth

is one of the worst things that can happen. A sick baby being taken up to the neonatal unit and the mother being left down on the labour ward. And I've seen the faces of many, many women as their babies are taken away from them. So anything that's going to bring them closer will improve outcome for mum and I'm sure for the baby, but better bonding, better breastfeeding, better family bonding as well. So I think this is a very important initiative. I suppose also though it brings to mind that you're so busy in what you're doing and you and your teams, the idea that you're then also going to have to take photos and send these things. I mean, should it just be seen as part of care? This is definitely part of care. And we know now that the evidence is very strong in support of this type of initiative. In the old days, we used to take a little Polaroid picture that used to come back down from the neonatal unit,

and that would be all that the mother had to look at. So anything now that is relevant and can keep women and fathers in touch with their baby much more often is very important. To come back to you, Catherine, in terms of this being funded and how likely it is to be picked up by other hospitals, what do we know? Well, it's not an NHS-wide app. Individual hospital trusts can choose to sign up to this and it's paid for through sponsorship. So hospital charities would agree to fund it. And it costs roughly three to five thousand pounds a year per unit.

And it means that it's then free for families to use. As you say, it's already live in 66 units. Another 25 are expected to launch it over the coming weeks. And I should say that the difference between just using your personal mobile and sending it on your personal email, this is a secure app that's used on a hospital iPad. Pictures are encrypted, so they're not stored on the device. They're all stored on a remote server. And there are systems built in to improve security. So staff have to scan a barcode at the baby's bedside.

And it means that the pictures will only be sent to that family. And it is supposed to be quick and easy for staff to use so it's not taking up lots of time. Now so far it's helped 5,000 families and the company behind it hope to be in nearly half of all units early in the new year. And Dr Maggie Block would you say to parents now just as any advice as well about how to kind of mentally cope with being separated from your baby anyone who's listening now what would you say to parents now, just as any advice as well about how to kind of mentally cope with being separated from your baby? Anyone who's listening now, what would you say? I would say get as much information as you can.

Don't feel guilty about it. When babies are separated from their mothers, mothers often do feel a sense of guilt that they've done something that caused their baby to end up in the neonatal unit. And of course, that's not true. So a lot of reassurance about that and just trying to keep in touch as much as possible. It's just such a different experience, I imagine, from the one that you see on the films of bringing your baby home. Yes. And the other thing is leaving. So going home from hospital and leaving your baby behind is another very, very traumatic event for women. That's why I think being able to keep in touch like this

would be a very good initiative. Yes, Dr Maggie Blott and Catherine da Costa, thank you. The end of the year often prompts the opportunity to look back on what we've achieved in the past 12 months. On Boxing Day, Jenny was joined by several women who've been winners this year. One of those extraordinary women was Edna O'Brien. You might have heard her early works on Radio 4

this year, first The Country Girls, then The Lonely Girls, and then Girls in Their Married Bliss, the three novels which launched the Irish author in the 60s. This year, as she approached her 89th birthday, she won the David Cohen Prize for Literature. It celebrates a writer who has broken down social and sexual barriers for women in Ireland and beyond and moved mountains both politically and lyrically through her writing. In September, she published her most recent work, Girl, which was inspired by the Nigerian schoolgirls who were abducted by Boko Haram. Jenny started by asking her what it meant to be awarded the David Cohen Prize for her entire body of work. I love writing. I don't always love the act of writing,

but I love literature, reading it or attempting to write it. I have, in various moments of, shall we call it, soul-searching, wondered why so few prizes came my way in 89 years. I look at the back of many people's books in my favourite bookshop. Everyone seems to have won prizes. In short, I felt it had come from heaven. So how much do prizes really matter? They matter a lot.

And one of the reasons is very simple. There are so many books in the world, there are so many authors and their publishers and their publicists at all is trying to get the attention of the buyer. And the word prize on a book on a bookshop shelf or window is the lure. The book of Prize, for which I was not either long-listed, short-listed, or any other listed, does draw an enormous amount of attention because of the money spent on it, and the bookies, you know, have bets on hooties. They've made it very, I won't use the word popular, but they've made it certainly very well known about.

What it means to the author personally and what it means to the author in the public sense overlap. I feel that it wasn't nepotism. We didn't know anyone in the David Cohen organization. I felt that the seven judges whose appraisals was given to me and their deliberations

had not only read Girl, but had written a good few books. Over 20. 25, I think, by now. And they had read very carefully and, of course, I'm, by now. And they had read very carefully. And, of course, I'm delighted they were on my side with their deliberation, as I call it, and the depth to which they went

to really see what was within those books that would maybe allow them to stand the test of time. Because a book sometimes that's very popular, the month it comes out or even the year it comes out, doesn't stand the test of time. What it meant publicly was surprising to me, the number of people, eminent and otherwise, who wrote to me, which suggested to me

how prizes influence a reader. They influence it because, I suppose, it's like a horse that wins lots of times, or even one time. So I'm delighted to have got it, and I'm also, I feel vindicated. It's said to be a precursor to the Nobel. How hopeful are you that it is? To tell you the truth, I wouldn't embark on that conversation. It would be unwise, 4 in the last year, and they are still every bit as popular as they were when I first read them quite a long time ago.

But how conscious were you when you were writing those early books about Kate and Bubba? How conscious were you of breaking down social and sexual barriers? I wasn't at all conscious. It would have freaked me because I wouldn't have been able to do it then. I didn't know that it would cause such furore. I knew that as a woman and a young woman in her 20s in Ireland, that I was treading danger water by writing a book at all, even if it was a book about, I don't know, gardening,

because there were no women writers. There was Kate O'Brien, and she emigrated to Spain wisely. There was no tradition of women writers. There was no room for women writers. And above all, there was no respect for women writers. But if I had really known the brouhaha that would happen, then that would have definitely throttled me. I wouldn't have been free.

To write a book, you have to feel it's for everybody and nobody. You have to keep with it in your own skull and be true to it as far as you can. Any other opinion

or possible opinion is not only a waste of time, it just stops you. So I was lucky by being ignorant. But the other day on my little radio, I don't listen to all the versions because sometimes I think, God, did I write that? And they've done a wonderful adaptation. It came up on the screen beside the top of the radio, wild and subversive. I don't know who said wild and subversive.

I didn't say it, but it was some comment. And if I had read those two words while writing those books, I probably might have thought twice about it. It's a long time ago. I mean, it's nearly 60 years ago. It is 60 years. Since Country Girls was banned, burned in your hometown and described, if I remember rightly, as filth. How did you cope with that reaction?

It's interesting how you cope with fear and shame, both of which applied, because I felt ashamed, even though I didn't think I had done anything to be ashamed about. You do it, it's a bit like sleepwalking. It's a bit like people in shock of a kind, in that you get through it, but without, you're hurt by it, but you just get through it like somebody driven. It's a kind of instinct. And I got through it, but privately I felt very wounded. The people in my village were ashamed. My bishops, archbishops, politicians, friends, nuns, family. My poor mother was the most ashamed of all.

And that hurt me. But I suppose principally I should say I got through it through my own determination. I am a frightened person. I am fearful of many things. But I do have a strong will. And I had a will to write from the moment almost that I was born. My youngest experience of what words were, were in a cloth book.

I had a cloth book that was lovely and soft, a soft cloth. And there were a few words written on it. It may have been the words of a fairy tale, I do not know. But I remember thinking that these words were, forgive the word, it sounds highfalutin, that these words were luminous and magic. They were words that were there forever. In this instance, on a piece of cloth,

and later on, on a piece of paper. The way in early days people wrote on the barks of trees and long before that some wrote on caves. Mainly paintings but also language. How do you regard Ireland now and the position of women there now? They're flying high. I think they don't feel at all as cowed or as frightened or as beholden, a very relevant word, as I did, and not only I but the women around me. I once wrote a story, A Scandalous Woman, and it ended with saying,

ours was indeed a land of sacrificial women. It is not the case now. It is more braver.. It is more braver. It's also more brazen. It's more modern. By it, you know, it's a generalization because there are still some quite lonely people living in lonely places

that might listen to this and think, well, I haven't seen a human being for a long time. But Ireland has, it has changed for the better in many ways. It's not as critical, things are not banned, etc. Where I think, like the whole world, it has changed, maybe not in a better way, is the actual love of and immersion in literature. That is true of the whole world. People read books now, I don't think, with the same utter immersion, concentration and gravity that I know I did when I was young. What are you working on now, Edna?

I have a seed of an idea, but I would be, well, I not only won't say it I would be reluctant to because books they're like babies they just have to start in that most unknown way and make it clear the gestation is long but when it comes it

comes like I had written slightly a version of girl in a short story called Plunder it comes. Like I had written slightly a version of Girl in a short story called Plunder of a girl who was plundered by men and followed into the wilderness to find some of her own kind

who would recognize her by the poppies of blood, as she calls it, on her apron dress. So that theme was in my mind 12 years when I wrote Plunder before I actually, the book appeared. It's the same with this book. So I would like, as they used to say in the country where I grew up, I'd like to be spared in order to write that book. Edna O'Brien talking to Jenny. Now you might have spent the

last week doing the same things you always do at this time of year, following exactly the pattern our parents created for us, or something may have happened, the loss of a loved one or the arrival of a new baby, which makes us start a whole new thing. But why is breaking a family tradition often quite traumatic? Why can it cause such an issue if one parent insists presents should be opened before lunch and the other thinks it should be afterwards? Why does tradition matter? And how, if you have to, do you cope with change? Christine Laguerre is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. And Jenny asked her why we're so keen to observe tradition at this time of the year.

A lot of the aspects of a ritual, a lot of the components of different ritual practices are not about achieving a particular outcome or goal. A lot of ritual is what I would call opaque. So it isn't clear from a causal perspective why all of these different components of preparing a recipe, for example, are required. But in many ways, that's kind of the point. It's not so much that all of these things are required for achieving a particular causal outcome. It's that all of these things, activities bind us together as a group. So what rituals do is they give you a shared set of activities to do together. In some ways, it doesn't matter what those particular activities are, as long as everybody does them in a particular way. This creates the high fidelity transmission of these activities over

time, it creates continuity. So there's something very comforting about doing the same things together every year. This is true in the context of something like Christmas. This is true in the context of sports teams, of all kinds of different organizations, having these shared practices that we do together over time, bond groups together. And that's really what we're craving. We're craving a sense of shared identity, a sense of shared purpose over time. So in many ways, it's not a problem that some of these activities are not strictly necessary. But how does he keep on continuing year after year and babies picking up on them right away? Rituals have been designed by human cultures to perpetuate the longevity and the practices, I mean, in some cases, the power

of groups. So the whole point of ritual, in fact, is high fidelity, transmission and conformity. You see this in the case of organized religions. You see these practices that have been transmitted and have been perpetuated, in some cases, for thousands of years. So rituals all about high fidelity transmission, imitation, in many cases, you mentioned young children, even babies picking up on these things, and resisting individual level innovation and change. What about when the rituals change? We had an email from Karen who said that she and her husband will be in Australia for his work this year. And she feels like a bad parent, even though their children are in their 20s and are perfectly

capable of doing it themselves. Why do we all find that kind of change so difficult and feel so guilty about it? Because rituals associated with Christmas, for example, are synonymous with family identity. And not celebrating those rituals is a symbolic of changes in the family structure, which are both exciting and novel. Her children celebrating, not celebrating, but embracing new professional opportunities. But it also means that they're not, you know, young children anymore, that they have their own families. So changing those rituals is associated with a change in family structure, which there can be loss and sadness associated with that. What role do women tend to play in the maintenance of traditions and rituals? We had one email from Maddy who said she'd read that women's family traditions always tend to dominate and men's get set aside.

I think the reason for that in the context of something like Christmas is that women tend to be tasked with much more family caretaking in general than men. You might have noticed that. there's a lot of expectation that women take care of family-related things, and it would follow that rituals associated with family. Christmas would be a great example of that. It's very much about togetherness as a family. In some ways, it's not surprising that women would be tasked with maintaining a lot more of those traditions and have a lot more of those responsibilities. I think it's exclusively because of the association with family. There are other types of rituals that men tend to be more responsible for. The more associated with the family it is, the more often it's associated with

kind of women's responsibilities and roles. Jenny talking to Christine Laguerre. Still to come on the programme, the actress Joanna Scanlon. What it's like to go from playing an inept civil servant through to Mother Superior in a new TV dramatisation of Dracula. Quite the change. And just want to use this point of the programme to remind you, you can enjoy Woman's Hour any hour of the day

if you can't join us live at 10 o'clock during the week. Just subscribe to The Daily Podcast for free. Come on, you know you want to, via the BBC Sounds app. You may have missed our Boxing Day programme, which features some of the winning women from 2019. On that programme, you'll hear some wisdom from Khadija Mella, who won the Magnolia Cup at Goodwood and is now the Sunday Times Young Sportswoman of the Year, and the disability activist Sinead Burke. And for a video featuring

all these wonderful women together, head over to the Woman's Hour Instagram page. And it is that time of the year, well nearly, where we vow to be better versions of ourselves. On Monday the 30th here at Woman's Hour, we want to talk to you about habits. How do you build healthy habits, as well as breathing, of course, that you actually enjoy? How do you undo habits that have been bugging you perhaps forever? Phone lines will be open from 8 o'clock on Monday morning. The number that you need, 03700 100 444. That's 03700 100 444. But you can email your experience now via the Woman's Hour website. And if like me,

you've never managed, despite those New Year's resolutions, to stop eating bread, go to bed earlier and get into unbelievable shape, Heather McKee, a behavioural change specialist, is going to be on hand with evidence-based strategies and advice. I think I need her in my life day to day. A hundred years ago this week, women were allowed to enter the... I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more

questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.