Woman's Hour - IVF suspension; Sewing for Britain; History of Working Motherhood

Episode Date: April 22, 2020

As of last week, all IVF treatment has been suspended in the UK. What impact is this having on women, and what could the longer-term consequences be? Tina Mulhern is 41 and can’t now start a second cycle of treatment after her first attempt failed in February. Anya Sizer is the London regional organiser of Fertility Network UK.Over the past few weeks, we’ve had lots of listeners getting in touch to tell us how gardening is helping them through lockdown. Fran Halsall is one of them - but she’s decided to use her skills outside of her own back yard. In today’s Woman’s Hour Corona Diaries, she tells Jenni what it’s like volunteering as a planter and picker on a local farm, and how she’s trying to galvanise others to have a go at growing by making a series of simple instructional videos. The lockdown seems like the perfect opportunity to give sewing and mending your own clothes a try. It’s also a time when sewists have been lending their hands to help the NHS frontline. Ros Studd is a textiles teacher who’s just launched the website Repair What You Wear; Dulcie Scott is a TV costume designer who’s worked on Downton Abbey and His Dark Materials and is now co-ordinating Helping Dress Medics, a project to sew much-needed hospital scrubs, and Esme Young is a fashion designer and judge on The Great British Sewing Bee, which returns for a new series tonight on BBC 1. The things we cherish aren’t always expensive. Instead, we treasure the stuff that reminds us of special people, particular times in our lives, or which stand for something important. The writer and broadcaster Sali Hughes talks to Elen Jones about a particularly special pair of glasses. The last century and a half has seen remarkable changes in women’s lives - perhaps not least that today three quarters of mothers are in paid employment. In the nineteenth century working mothers were in a minority and, the fact that they were working was widely regarded to be a social ill damaging to their families and wider society. While the working lives of the earliest women doctors or factory workers were very different both had to wrestle with cultural assumptions that they were somehow neglecting their domestic duties. Many women with children were driven to work by economic necessity but, it also appears that many of them came to enjoy a measure of financial independence and a life beyond the home. The historian Helen McCarthy discusses her new book ‘Double Lives: A History of Working Motherhood’ and how much attitudes to mothers in the work place have changed - and how far we still have to go.

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Wednesday the 22nd of April. Tonight, the great British sewing bee begins on BBC One, just as the papers are praising the Darn Busters, an army of amateur stitchers making scrubs for the NHS. All things sewing in today's programme. Fran joins us for today's Woman's Hour Corona Diary,

keeping busy by growing her own. And Double Lives, a history of working motherhood. Helen McCarthy on the way attitudes to mothers in the workplace have changed and how far we still have to go. Now we're only too well aware of the stresses facing the NHS at the moment. Indeed there have been reports in today's papers saying thousands of cancers are being missed because patients are not going to their GP to get a worrying problem checked out. Another casualty of the virus is treatment for infertility, which was suspended in NHS and private clinics last week. What impact is the closure having on women who were hoping to

become pregnant through IVF? Well, Tina Mulhern is 41. Her first attempt failed in February, and she was hoping to start a second cycle now. We spoke earlier this morning. What does the delay mean for her chances of having a baby? Ultimately, I have to face the fact that possibly if this goes on for a long time, then I may not kind of reach the dream of becoming a mother. So, yes, very, very difficult. Now, you had one set of treatment in February which failed.

When did you expect to be able to start your second one? I would have been phoning the clinic just now to say that we are ready to go and ready to start a new full cycle again. And you are 41 now. What impact does your age have on your chances? I think it's much, much harder to find

that one egg that will fertilise and become a pregnancy and carry that pregnancy to full term. So the older I get, the harder that becomes for me. I did have the hope that we did have set aside some money that, you know,

if it didn't work for a second time, then we could at least have a few chances. But each cycle takes a few months to do and also the wait until you can maybe do a new cycle again every month or so. So every month makes such a difference to me and my chances. How did you find out that the

treatment had been suspended? I suppose deep down I knew what the answer would be with social distancing and knew that the chances would be quite high that the clinic weren't offering or weren't able to carry out treatments just now.

I didn't look on their website, didn't try and phone them because I didn't know if I could deal with the harsh reality of what the answer would be. It took me a while to adjust to the social distancing, to not be able to work, lose my income just now, before I was able to actually take a look on the website and I found the answer that I was dreading that they were unable to to carry on doing any more treatments well what was your response when you found out that you couldn't go ahead right away I cried tried the positive I try not to cast catastrophic I try I try to be try. I try not to catastrophize.

I try to think of the positives, that this isn't the end. It doesn't mean that I can't go ahead in the future. But you just try to put it to the back of your mind and not think too much about it, because that is too upsetting. And what about your partner when you told him what you'd found out? Again, he was the same. He was upset. He tried to give me the emotional support as well. So it's hard for both of us, absolutely.

Now, you're not doing this through the NHS. You're doing it privately, which means the age limit of 41 on the NHS won't apply to you. How much does that actually improve your chances then of trying again? I don't know if it improves my chances, but if I had carried on with the NHS, I would have only had one chance. And I wouldn't have, that would have been my chance gone with the failed fertility treatment that we've already had. So that would have been the end already for me. Fortunately enough, we were in the position that we could go private and I am able to do more treatment. How are you coping then with the stress that everybody's going through because of the coronavirus problem but yours is coupled with the stress of longing for a child and knowing you may have to face some very stressful treatment again i think dealing

with one stressful situation like not being able to work having no income at the moment that's tough but on top of that you know not being able to see your family, trying to come to terms with knowing that you might not realise your dream is really, really difficult. I mean, I ask any person going through IVF how difficult that is. Now, having this on top of it, it's a lot harder. But, you know, I've got the support of my family, my friends, my partner. You know, I'm trying to keep positive about it because it's not then. It doesn't mean that it's not going to happen.

I was talking to Tina Mulhern. Now, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority told us their aim is to allow as many patients as possible to resume safe treatment as soon as possible. And they say they're actively working on an exit strategy to enable fertility treatment to resume when government restrictions on social contact and travel are lifted. But of course, that may be some time away. What impact will the suspension of treatment have in the long term? Well, Anya Sizer is the London Regional Organiser of Fertility Network. Anya, how many people do you

reckon are affected by this shutdown? Well, we're talking about 54,000 people over the UK that will be affected by the shutdown. It's one in six couples that have trouble conceiving and it affects so, so many people. So this is going to be a devastating time for many people involved. What will happen to people who were about to start NHS treatment but are approaching the cut-off point they're coming up to 42. Well the problem with this is there's as with many things to do with fertility treatment there's regional variants so we have had assurances from Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland that those who were in the middle of treatment will be able to resume in the same place that they were before. However, we have written to Matt Hancock in regards to England,

because we have yet to have any confirmation that people within England will be able to resume treatment cycles where they were. And again, this is adding to the huge levels of uncertainty that people are facing at this time. So we are looking for regional parity across the board. Now, the NHS, as we all know, is incredibly overstretched and their priority is trying to save lives. How likely do you reckon IVF treatment is to start again soon? Well we are looking for a definitive exit strategy we're looking for reassurances and at the moment I know the HFEA are doing a great deal of work on this but there is no reassurance for people in terms of when it will start again and as you said at the moment the NHS is hugely overstretched. People economically are going to be facing a very uncertain time. And this means actually

that NHS provision of IVF will be restricted going forward. We're already looking at about 65% of people having to self-fund what is a medical condition and I think we're going to see an increase in the rate of people needing private care for fertility treatment and basically this will mean certain people will be priced out of trying for a family. What sort of support is available for people who are really anxious at the moment? Well there is support available. Fertility Network are inundated with people at the moment calling for support and support is there. We're running webinars, we've got online help, we've got a helpline that you can call. The HFEA are updating their information regularly.

There's quite a lot of support out there, but I would say reach out to people. We did a survey a few years ago and found that 90% of people going through infertility experience depression. And we are very aware of the mental health implications. So please do reach out for support. Anja Sizera thank you very much

indeed for joining us this morning if you're going through this we would like to hear from you you can email us you can send us a tweet and we will put details on the woman's hour website of people you can contact if you really feel you need some help now as you know if you listen to women's hour regularly we've been speaking to women over the last few weeks about how they're coping with the constraints of the pandemic with a view to creating a unique archive of the experience of women during such a stressful time. Well today it's Fran Halsall who lives in Sheffield and she's turned to her greatest love, gardening. Fran, hello, why do you love gardening so much? Hi Jenny, yeah, gardening has always been part of me.

It was something that was passed to me by my mum. I'm from a long line of gardeners and I think I've been doing it since I was about 10. And what would you normally be doing? Would you be working and gardening? And now it's just gardening? Yeah, well, I've been struggling to make time for gardening, actually, because I've got a relatively new business. It's only 18 months old and I've been leading nature walks around tree education.

And I also, funnily enough, do lead the odd gardening related workshop. And I still do a bit of landscape photography teaching as well, because I used to work as a landscape photographer. So what are you growing now? Because presumably your business is on hold. It is indeed, yeah, for the foreseeable. So at the moment I'm growing as much as I can. I've got a lot of squashes on the go, including courgettes, winter squash, crown prince, because that's the best of, I've got lots of those.

Cucumbers, which I'm doing for the first time this year tomatoes of course basil what else lots of herbs salads you name it yeah lots of spinach you're also volunteering at a local farm what are you doing there yeah I am so there's a project in Sheffield called regather and they supply veg boxes to the city, organic veg boxes. And I've been meaning to hook up with them for quite a long time, actually, but obviously being quite busy, that hasn't happened. So I've taken this opportunity to make contact with them because I'm quite worried about food security. And I think that we should be doing all we can to support it on a regional basis. So, yeah, I've been planting broad beans in the field um and i've also uh i've been planting

a hedge i'm getting a native wildflower hedge in but um due to my health constraints i've only been doing half a day at a time so it's pretty exhausting work what what do your health constraints prevent you from doing so i've got a mild relapse remitting ms which causes fatigue amongst other things so it's mostly fatigue that i deal with at the moment So I've got a mild relapse remitting MS which causes fatigue amongst other things so it's mostly fatigue that I deal with at the moment but I've got a few sensory issues related to that. I'm currently going through quite an epic bout of insomnia so that's also adding to my burden. I've got fibromyalgia and a few other bits and pieces like IBS and a few other things like that so yeah all in all there, I would describe them as sort of fluctuating conditions that, you know, some days I'm relatively well and other days I feel not so good at all.

There's been a lot of talk recently about people signing up to work on farms but not getting any kind of response. What have you found the case is in your area? So I actually only know one person who successfully applied and she was given a job but it was for such a long-term contract that she actually couldn't take the work on because she's a student and she was trying to qualify for her joinery degree or was it i'm not quite sure actually but yeah essentially it's the length of the contracts that are an issue.

There's a side issue, the fact that you're supposed to live on site, which obviously isn't very practical for people with families. It's not very easy to commute from where people live to where the agricultural bases are because, you know, they're quite far apart. And the other issue, and I know people who have applied who haven't heard anything back, and it's possibly because they're too old and also they haven't got any skills that are relevant, which is really sad. But we've been long being told in this country that fruit picking is unskilled work. But I think the truth is it's actually very hard, very skilled work. Now, I know you've been making YouTube videos about growing veg. What is good for beginners to start with okay so i mentioned salad earlier that's one of my go-tos because they require minimum efforts very easy to germinate so

things like spinach you can start germinating in the garden directly sown from march onwards same more or less with lettuce depending on the variety. So they're two things that I definitely guarantee you particularly as they tend to be a little bit expensive in the shops and have a short shelf life. I'd also recommend growing tomatoes. You'd be very surprised how easy it is to grow tomatoes in this country particularly under glass but you can grow them outside. They're practically a weed in my garden because rather foolishly many years ago I put some in my compost by accident and they do pop up all over the place because obviously I use my own compost so those are my top three I think.

How easy is it to find seeds at the moment? Yeah it's been very difficult because obviously people have been using online options and a lot of those businesses have been so overwhelmed that they've been struggling to get orders out or they've even had to shut their shops temporarily so I recommend that people try locally so originally there was a bit of a problem with local suppliers in my area because a lot of garden centres shut down so I run a gardening group on Facebook called Wildlife Gardening Sheffield and I put up a list of suppliers that I knew to be open that were willing to deliver. And other people helped contribute to that. So that's helped us locally.

And I would recommend that people get on to their local Facebook gardening group or equivalent and see what people know. Because people are, gardeners are a very helpful bunch of people. We always want to help each other grow. Well, Fran House, thank you very much indeed for being with us this morning and keep on growing thank you now still to come in today's program a history of working motherhood how have attitudes to mothers who go out to work changed and how far do we still have to go and the serial the third episode of curious under the stars now earlier in the week you may have missed a whole program about talking about and preparing for death and also the funding of

nurseries how might it put child care places at risk don't forget if you have missed the live program all you have to do is go to bbc sound and search for Woman's Hour and you can catch up. Now the front page of The Sun this morning has a huge headline. Darn busters. Never in the field of human contagion has so much been sewn

for so many by so few. It refers of course to the thousands of amateur stitchers who've been sewing scrubs at home for the NHS. It also happens to be the day on which the great British sewing bee returns to the screen. So here's to a return to that other famous wartime activity, make do and mend. I'm joined by Ros Studd, who teaches about textiles and is the founder of RepairWhatYouWear.com .com rather.

Dulcy Scott, who's a costume designer and coordinator of Helping Dress Medics. And Esme Young, who's a fashion designer and judge on The Sewing Bee. Esme, I know making new things out of old is something you try to encourage

on the show. What would be good to try right now, making something new out of something old? Well, in your cupboard, you've probably got loads of clothes you don't wear that you were going to take to the charity shop. You could make children's dresses for girls or trousers for boys. You could make children's dresses for girls or trousers for boys.

You could make cushion covers, which is what I've been doing. I collect loads of embroidery, beautiful embroidery, and I've turned them all into cushion covers. The thing about me at the moment is I don't have a sewing machine with me. I have sewing machines at my workshop, but I can't go there. So I'm doing everything by hand. So I'm mending things I've got. And I can remember years ago turning a jacket into making it upside down and turning

into, well it still was a jacket, but it was completely upside down. So it was a bomber jacket and then we used, we made a pattern from it at Swanky Modes and we put it in our production, we put it in our collection.

So if you... Oh, I also made a skirt out of a lot of shirts. So I had the button stand at the front. I sewed a seam at the back. But I didn't chop the sleeves off. So the sleeves were all dangling. And I made a waistband out of the bottom of the shirt i haven't still got that i know it sounds complicated ros not not everybody knows how to

use needle and thread let alone a sewing machine how easy is it to learn if it wasn't drummed into you at school because i think lots of schools don't drum it in anymore in the way they did in my day. No, I think if you're the generation where you were taught, you can probably retrieve some of the memories. And that's why we set up RepairWhatYouWear.com, because I was working with all sorts of people and realised that core mending skills were missing in society. I mean, in big numbers. So I met people that surprised me when they told me they threw a shirt away for want of a button. And I'm not joking. Or when the hem went on their skirt, they got rid of it. Because they couldn't do the hem up? They couldn't do the hem. And I'm not exaggerating. In fact, having a bit of a laugh one day,

I found out that the people that were most likely to know how to mend right now are people who've been in prison or in the services. And we do, some of us do have had that history, but it's not coming down generationally. And in schools, the emphasis on curriculum is on food education which is necessary and on academic subjects so hand skills are missing and it matters financially it really matters in families now. Dulcie you make a living as a costume supervisor on television shows like Downton Abbey but what started you getting people to make scrubs? Well, we were finishing off on his Dark Materials Series 2 in Cardiff. And we decided that we'd keep our WhatsApp group going for our department because we'd been a very close unit for pretty much two years.

And then when the coronavirus thing hit, we said, right, OK, let's keep the WhatsApp group going. And let's every time we make something or create something or do something we're proud of, put it on the group because we'd normally share so much anyway. And so we kept the group going. And for a week that we were sort of starting to think about doing things like that. But actually what most of us were doing were just kind of being at home and not doing very much. And then I was invited to join a WhatsApp group in London that Scrubhub had started about making scrubs. And I looked at that and thought, well, that's great, but it's all very much London based. And the way Annabella set it up was brilliant, which meant people could walk to each other's houses pretty much with the scrubs or the fabric. And it was very localized. And I thought, that's great, but we're spread around a bit.

We can't quite work like that. So I thought, I need to come at a different angle from that. Because I'm in North Cotswolds. We've got people in Plymouth, Malvern, Brighton, Kingston. But the majority of our crew are still in Cardiff because it was a very Welsh production, very Wales-based production. So we decided that we'd try and do something as a group even though we were separated and and keep the spirit of what we've been doing on the production

going by making scrubs now people have to be very careful don't they when they're making scrubs about the kind of material and the way that they're made could you just detail exactly what you need to know before you can do it yes well what we were very fortunate because we've in the way that they're made. Could you just detail exactly what you need to know before you can do it? Yes. Well, we were very fortunate because in the work that we do, we're all freelance and you're jumping around on different jobs. So you learn all sorts of information about different things. And so we had a couple of people on our team who'd done a lot of stuff

to do with medical dramas on TV and knew it inside out. Vicky in Bristol was on Casualty for donkey's years, one of our other team was on Silent Witness for years. So that knowledge that they have and don't even realise they have came into bear and we know a lot of the suppliers where the NHS buy their fabric from so we knew we were on the right fabric instantly because we're absolutely using the right spec and it's very important that you use it's going to have to be boil washed every day it's got to be fit for purpose and what we're all very obsessed with particularly is not making a short term solution that's going to end up in landfill we're trying to make them so they're going to be useful in the future as well they're not a quick fix they're going to be fit for purpose keep on going and not

be once this has over been them and also if it's a hospital where the hospital does the laundry they won't accept them if they're not of a standard that's that's quite a problem and the hospitals need to quality check them so let's go back to when you all actually started sewing. Esme, what was the first thing you ever stitched? Mine, I have to say, was a bag in which to carry my pumps, which I suspect is what a lot of people started on. Well, obviously I learnt at school, and we started with embroidery, but the first garment I ever made was a gathered skirt and it was made

by hand um so it was a rectangle gathered a waistband put on and there wasn't the placket at the side the fabric was folded back and it was done up with poppers and you hand you hand stitched it you didn't use a machine yes we didn't have machines we we hand stitched it so lots of different um stitches you know hemming tacking top well not top stitching hemming back stitch yeah rose what aboutitching, well, not topstitching, hemming, backstitch. Yeah. Ros, what about you? What was the first thing you ever made? Well, I made things at school, which we had to make, and I didn't find them very exciting.

But I can remember when I was about 12 making a smock and loving it, absolutely loving it. How difficult was it to do the smocking? Oh, no, it was more that it was a trendy smock so it had big pockets on it and gathers on the shoulders and things. I followed a pattern which you can do if you've been taught the basics so I suppose my basic learning at school enabled me to then to become independent which is why I think that if you learn to manage a needle now and just even repair your clothes simply, then if it interests you, you can use that skill to become a bit more sophisticated,

as they certainly are on the sewing bee, and we can all admire it. Dulcie, what about you? What was the first thing you ever stitched? It would probably be something with my mum when I was very small because she used to make a lot of our clothes and she also used to do there's a there's a thing to do with horse shows I grew up on a farm and we had horses and at horse shows they often have fancy dress on horseback and I remember my mum making me a fancy dress costume that I thought was phenomenal. And I was a princess wearing a pointy hat sitting on a pony.

And I thought it was the best thing ever. And I think that inspired me into the costume world. And also, as my mum would be making stuff for me, I'd be making stuff for my dolls. I'd make stuff to dress the dog up, anything like that, really. So that's the first time I ever attempted anything. And my mum would show me how to use her sewing machine and then at school probably the first thing I made was a drawstring bag which is sort of funny because everyone's crazily making scrub bags right now

that's exactly the same as my pump bag it also had a drawstring just one final question Ros to you I know you've done a video for making a mask for yourself, not for the NHS. Just briefly, how did you make it? I gave it a lot of thought because obviously none of us want to use stocks that need to be used professionally. But I also thought what would be in a household that doesn't normally sew? So no sewing machine, just a needle and thread and a bit of learning in there as well, because I think that's important. I use t-shirt material because you can easily make straps with t-shirts, no elastic. And it works. The best thing about it is you can make it to the size that fits your face.

So it can be made for all the family. You probably get about minimum of four out of one t-shirt. And providing you take, I work to the supermarket and i work to places where and the chemist places where it's more respectful to wear a mask and it changes your behavior a bit more careful and then i take it off the back of my head from the straps don't touch it put it into a pan and boil it up dry it and it again. So it could do months and months from the same thing. Roz Studd, Dulcy Scott, Esme Young, thank you all very much indeed. And I hope the great sewing bee goes brilliantly tonight, Esme. And by the way, if you missed Monday's item

on falling back in love with the clothes you already have, the stylist Emma Slade Edmondson has shared five tips to help you get started from de-bobbling to spending an idea with your wardrobe. That's in the latest article on the Woman's Hour website. And now for another in our series of objects that

may not have any great financial worth but mean a great deal to us. Sally Hughes has been talking to Ellen Jones who's a consultant on global responsibility, about her grandmother. It's a pair of glasses that she used to wear that just reminds me of her and I love them. And when did they come into your possession?

When I was 15 and she passed away after living with us for a little while and we became best friends. My sister had left home when I was 12, so she almost became like that adopted older sister. We had a lovely, lovely relationship. And going through her belongings, that awful period where you're grieving and not knowing how you're feeling and how you're

supposed to feel. And I came across her glasses and they were mine. I had to have them because they just reminded me of her and made me feel really close to her. So can you describe your grandmother's glasses for me? They're a beautiful 50s style winged sort of dark tortoise shell and they're all a little bit worn obviously and then they've got these lovely gold flowers on the side of the arm and just where the wing comes in. But they're actually quite delicate. But they really suited her.

She had big, big blue eyes and they really, really suited her. She was such a lovely, lovely, kind-hearted, quiet woman. And I almost wonder whether these were her ulterior personality. Like, as soon as she put them on, she became somebody else. This alter ego. And, you know, maybe I've got that in me and maybe that's come out in me. When I wear them, when I put them on, I almost see her looking back at me. And, yeah, it makes me giggle.

It gives me that fuzzy feeling inside. And yeah, I'm just close to her. And do you wear glasses yourself? I don't. So you just put them on purely for that reason, to be taken away? And I actually put them on. I took them in to my exams because obviously that period of 15, 16, you've got those horrible GCSEs. And instead of a pencil case, I took the little glasses case in

with her glasses in them and a couple of pens and pencils and things to all my GCSEs. I wanted her with me. So it was a really odd item to take in instead of a pencil case, but I didn't care. I just wanted to know that she was with me. Did they have a calming effect on you, having them in there in the exam hall? I guess so, yeah. That's possibly why I wanted to get rid of those horrible feelings, the anxiety. It's a nice object to hold, a glasses case. It fits in your hand really nicely. And it's got that lovely clap when you close it and snap when you open it and close it.

And I love that. And it's all worn around the edge. And knowing that it's her hands that have worn that glasses case every day touched it at least twice. And so you put them on your face in the exam hall or did you just touch them? I remember putting them on at the beginning because I was always a bit of a clown so managed to catch a few people's eyes and some shoulders going up and down. But then I took it, you know, even further. So afterwards then, people were like,

oh, did you see Ellen always fooling around? And then I used to put them on and we used to... I mean, I ended up putting them on and doing impressions and taking it to a different level. Do you think that not only inheriting spectacles from your grandmother, you might have inherited her sense of humour and her sense of fun? Very possibly, yeah. Very possibly.

I like that, yeah. Ellen Jones spoke to Sally Hughes and you can contact us through Twitter or Instagram with a picture of your treasured object. Under normal circumstances, three quarters of women who have children are in paid employment. It was not always so, but in the last century and a half, the changes in women's lives have been seismic. Attitudes to women who go out to work have changed too. In the 19th and early 20th century, the working mother was in a minority. As time went on and women began to strive to enter the professions, they were widely regarded as damaging their children and neglecting their

domestic duties. Where have we been and where are we now? As it's widely accepted that women often need to earn their own money and really enjoy a life outside the home. Well, Helen McCarthy lectures in modern British history, is a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, and the author of Double Lives, A History of Working Motherhood. Helen, what were the lives of women who worked in Victorian mills and factories like? Hello, good morning. It's lovely to be here.

So the lives of women who worked in factories were very, very strenuous. Mothers who were doing a double job, they were in the mills doing very, very hard physical labour. It was often very monotonous, but required a great deal of concentration to keep the power looms functioning properly. And then, of course, when they got home, they had their second shift to start of housework, of scrubbing the kitchen floor, of cooking dinner, of doing bedtime, bath time for their children. And they didn't get much leisure time at the weekend either. Now, there were women involved in trade unions and socialist activity, Beatrice Webb, Margaret MacDonald. Why did they tend to be more concerned with men's wages than the poor pay of those men's wives?

So in the late 19th century, the ideal, which was really held across social social classes was of the male breadwinner family. So a household that was supported by a single wage earned by the father through secure, skilled work. And most Victorians held to this vision of social, economic and domestic order in which wives would be supported properly in their work in the home, looking after the families, nurturing children, and men would be paid a proper wage in the economy. And this was very much seen as the ideal. And even women in the trade union movement who wanted to see women have more opportunity to do skilled work and to be paid properly for their work, assumed that once they were married and certainly once they had children, they would want to, they would need, it would be in their interest to step back from paid work, from waged work,

and then to focus on the labour of looking after children and looking after homes. Now you write in some detail about Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first to qualify as a doctor as a woman. Why was she reluctant to discuss being a working mother? She's a really fascinating woman because I'd heard of her before I started researching this book as a great pioneer for women in medicine. But I didn't realize that she was also a mother. She had three children, one of whom very sadly died as a baby. But she had her children fairly late in life. She was 37 when she had her first daughter. And she was absolutely determined when she got married that she would continue with her medical practice. She saw herself as an

important role model for women coming up in the profession. And she had very strong links to the Victorian feminist movement. So I was surprised that she didn't speak more publicly or write about her life as a working mother. But I think the answer is in the fact that actually, women had to tread very, very carefully in the professions in the late 19th and early 20th century if they wanted to be accepted. Levels of hostility from the male establishment ran very, very high. Women had to be very, very careful if they were trying to pursue professional careers. And I think she was aware of that. And I think she knew that she had to tread very carefully in order to cling on to her respectability as a married woman who was earning wages in a male profession. What difference did the two world wars make to the kind of judgment that was often directed at mothers who went out to work?

The periods of the two world wars, I think, had very mixed legacy for working mothers because on the one hand, government really needed, during both conflicts, to mobilize large numbers of wives and mothers for essential war work. And therefore, their contribution was talked up and they were praised for their great patriotism and citizenship by stepping forward. But on the other hand, the upheaval of the war

created profound anxieties about the stability of the family and concerns about what's going to happen when the men return from the front line and want their jobs back. So there was always a very strong sense of temporariness to mothers' war work, that this is something for the duration and that, yes, we will open war nurseries to help mothers go out to work in essential war industries. But those nurseries were closed down in 1918 and again in 1945. So what was really happening in the 50s when we assume women were simply driven back to the kitchen? What were the women thinking and doing? Yes, I actually see the 1950s as a bit of a

watershed moment for working mothers, which might seem rather counterintuitive when we think of the decade as a decade of ideal homes and housewives with their washing machines. But in fact, it's in the 1950s that we begin to see an important new trend taking root. And this is for women to return to the workplace in their late 30s and early 40s once their children are at school. And this is possible because now women are having smaller families that actually been limiting the size of their families over the course of the first half of the 20th century. But it becomes very much established for most families to have two or three children by the 50s. And this means that mothers, by the time they're in their late 30s, they tend to be in better health because of the NHS and because of better diets and because of rising real wages.

And they've got time on their hands. And the other important ingredient is the fact that it's a booming economy, it's full male employment, and employers really, really need to employ mothers in order to fill all the vacancies that they have in their shops and factories. So this creates an opportunity for mothers who do want to go back to work. And this trend then becomes established. And the working mother at that point actually becomes a rather aspirational and prosperous figure in the popular imagination. How influential were feminism and women's lib to attitudes to women who wanted to go out to work, enjoyed going out to work and really liked having their own money? I think that the language begins to shift in the 1970s because of as a result of the rather more radical critique that feminists are promoting. In the 1950s you do begin and 60s you do begin to get the language of pleasure around going out to work as something that gives women a break from the housework,

a break from children, something that can be enjoyable and sociable. But I think that what feminists add to the mix in the 1970s is the language of rights and entitlement. And they also, very importantly, begin to challenge the assumption that there are some jobs that women do and there are some jobs that men do. I mean, of course, the labour market remains deeply gendered right through to the end of the 20th century. It still is today in terms of particular jobs that women are more likely to do than men. But I think that that idea that, of course, mothers are going to be channelled into nursing or teaching or particular kinds of unskilled factory work. I think that's the point at which feminists say, you know, we shouldn't just be privileging men's jobs and men's careers.

Actually, women are entitled beyond marriage and beyond motherhood to pursue their own ambitions too. I was talking to Helen McCarthy. We had a lot of response from you on the question of IVF and everything being put on hold. Lizzie said on Twitter, I'm someone who's about to begin the process as a single person choosing to have a donor child. There are many of us in this position and without the presence and support of a partner.

Someone who didn't want us to use her name said in an email, I'm 41 and my first round of NHS IVF was cancelled at the end of February. I'd already started the first set of pills and was phoned by the clinic to say they're pausing all treatment and to stop taking them. I'm aware some women's treatment was paused much later in their cycle and some have had to have their eggs removed and then frozen instead of being fertilised and put back in the next day. That must be even worse. I'm aware that the space I free up in the NHS may help to save a life and I'm holding on to that. And then lots of response on our discussion about sewing. Jackie said in an email, at the

behest of a friendly nurse a small group of us are making tote bags about the size of a pillowcase. These are for nurses who have to do their own washing. After shift they put their used scrubs in the bag. When they arrive home they can put the bag containing the scrubs into the washing machine on a boil wash. We're using old pillowcases, sheets and other material which is okay in a boil wash. It's nice to do something hopefully useful. Sally in an email said, my first garment which I made at school was a dress made of pink material with white spots. I loved the material and was very excited about making it. I started sewing my dress aged 11 in the sewing class and left it behind unfinished when I left school at 15. Every seam we sewed had

to be checked by the teacher so the time in class was spent mostly queuing to be seen by the teacher. My class consisted of 30 children so progress with our sewing was very slow. This may be the reason that although I can sew a little I hate it and any sewing in our house is done by my husband. And then Eve said on Twitter, I was taught to sew at school, but mainly by my grandmother and mother. Now my daughters and I make dolls' clothes. It's quick and keeps them interested and lets them make their own design choices. Hopefully they'll keep up their skills in later life.

Now do join me for the programme tomorrow when I'll be talking to Zoe Ball about BBC One's Big Night in Tomorrow Night where Comic Relief and Children in Need are joining forces for the first time to entertain us and hopefully raise money for some of the projects they support. Do join me tomorrow, usual time, two minutes past ten.

Bye-bye. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who'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.