Woman's Hour - Talking to your children about knife crime

Episode Date: March 6, 2019

There appears to be rise in knife violence among young people, and it’s happening right around the country. Parents are asking themselves how to keep their children safe, especially when some of the recent stabbings appear to be so random, have happened in open spaces and when other people have been around. So what should parents tell their children when they go out, and what do they need to be alert for?‘Runaways’ is a new novel by Fatima Bhutto. Set between Pakistan and the UK, it tells the story of three young people drawn to radical forces. She joins Jenni to discuss the themes of poverty, alienation, class, technology and the West’s lack of understanding of radicalism.And we return to the series ‘Bump, Birth and Beyond’. Last week we heard from the dads and one gran as they had frank chat about dad guilt, dad privilege, sex and feeling like a spare part. In the latest edition we catch up with the mothers – it’s been a whole year since we last spoke to Charlotte Dore, Jen Barratt, Rowan Lawton and Laura Horrocks. Abby Hollick, who also had a baby at the same time, sits down with them to find out how they’re doing, how they’ve coped with the unexpected and going back to work. Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Laura Northedge Interviewed Guest: Fatima Bhutto Interviewed Guest: Yvonne Lawson Interviewed Guest: Rachel Webb Interviewed Guest: Elaine Donnellon

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to Wednesday's edition of the Woman's Hour podcast. Fatima Bhutto is a member of one of Pakistan's most famous families. Her grandfather and her aunt were both prime ministers who suffered violent deaths. Why then has she written a novel, The Runaways, about young people who become radicalised, in which she asks us to understand them? And the series Bump, Birth and Beyond, we hear from the four mothers whose children are now a year old. Now, as I'm sure you've heard in the news, two young men have been

arrested for murder. The first for allegedly killing Yusuf Khalid Marquis in Greater Manchester and the other for stabbing Jodie Chesney in East London. There have been calls for the proliferation of knife crime to be regarded as a national emergency and the Home Secretary is today meeting the Chief Constables of seven forces in areas considered most high risk. And there are constant discussions about what's causing so many young people to carry knives and be prepared to use them. Sarah Thornton, the Chair of the National Police Chiefs Council, gave one of her theories on the Today programme this morning. One of the things that my colleagues have talked to me about over the last couple of weeks is the concern, for example, in terms of education and schools.

We see in a lot of our cities a lot of young people roaming the streets during the day who are vulnerable to recruitment. The numbers of exclusions have been going up. Apparently it's an average of 40 children a day excluded from school. We have children in pupil referral units where maybe they do one hour a week. And we also have higher levels of truancy, which because of cuts are going unchallenged. So we've got a real need to work with schools, with the education department, say what can we all do about this to reduce the likelihood of these young people

getting involved? Well, whatever the reasons behind the crimes which have taken the lives of 285 people in the past year, it's become a matter of deep concern to parents. The recent stabbings have happened in open spaces where other people have been around and not necessarily in areas associated with brutal violence. So what can parents do to try to keep their children safe? Elaine Donnellan is a youth worker in North London who specialises in violent crime. Yvonne Lawson's son, Godwin, was stabbed and died in 2010. Rachel Webb's son, Kyron, was killed in Manchester in 2017. Another son was stabbed in Manchester in 2017.

Another son was stabbed in London but survived. Rachel, what were the circumstances in which Kyron was killed? We believe that a group of individuals in Manchester, they were a music group, had made a song and it was alleged that Kyron didn't like the song. And I think on Snapchat he said the song was rubbish allegedly. We have no evidence to sustain that that was correct because the Snapchat videos are not kept. On the day in question he was at home playing his console

and it's believed that they reached out to him via Snapchat and asked him to come and meet with them. He left his home in Moston and went about 10 minutes away. The CCTV video just shows him speaking with the young boys. There's no violence. There isn't any sort of altercation, nothing to be suspicious. The individual was texting on his phone at the time. He looks up from the phone, stabbed Kyron in the chest,

went back to texting on his phone and then just silently walked away Kyron sort of staggered around a bus walked around a car, sorry and leaned on the wall and then they came back stabbed him again in the back and then ran off And then not soon after

your other son was attacked What happened there? That one was a case of mistaken identity so he was on his way to collect his younger brother and sister from a party. It was three o'clock in the afternoon and he got off the bus and two boys approached him believing he was somebody else. He kept trying to tell them that he wasn't who they thought he was. They said to him, come around the corner. He was pushed around the corner and then a boy just pulled out a Rambo knife and then started to attack him with the knife. Yvonne how did the attack on Godwin happen? So Godwin at the age of 17 had a scholarship

to play football in Oxford so he would come to London every fortnight to see friends and family. On that particular night he came, he went to Stanfield area because that's where we used to live before for him to visit his friends. And Godwin would usually call that, that's my catch-up time to find out information and things that are happening. He met the friends, and these were boys that Godwin were used to. He had attended primary school with them and secondary school. And as they were walking down the Stamford Hill Road, Armistead Park Road, which is very close to the train station,

four boys saw Godwin's group. They ran after them. One of the boys had a knife on him, started to attack Godwin's friends. Godwin did run away from the scenery. However, for unknown reason, he decided to come back and stop the fight. And as he was trying to stop the fight, the boy that had a knife actually turned and said, Bruv, this has nothing to do with you, and stabbed him straight in his heart once. And within two minutes, Godwin had just lost his life. Elaine, what do we learn from these incidents? I mean, for instance, Godwin ran to help friends who were being attacked.

What should you do in circumstances like that? I heard the police saying yesterday, just run away. I wish I had a simple, clear answer for that. I think we all would like to raise our children, our own children and the children within our communities, to try and help someone in need when possible but also I mean I would hope that we would look up to if a stranger is that we could use our voice intervene somehow however as a mother we always always tell our children

keep self safe first whenever you can because primarily there are concern and you know there are children we give birth to them I don't think there's really easy advice that we can look back on and say retrospectively this is what Godwin should have done when you get to this type of of state situation that he's in it's um adrenaline it's fight flight freeze and godwin or any other similar child is going to do absolutely whatever they assess really quickly in a matter of seconds to either try and save their friends or save themselves now rachel i know kyron you discovered later was actually carrying a knife at the time although not opened and he certainly hadn't used it but what had you said to him about knives and the danger they present to what extent

was he trying to keep himself safe so um growing up as Elaine said I've always taught my children about self-preservation um they know about violence I'm I'm the mum that would tell you if somebody stopped you because they wanted your mobile you hand over the phone and you just run you know you don't stop and fight we don't need to be the superhero because in real lives superheroes do sadly pass away which we've seen in godwin situation um i i always used to check my knives i always spoke to the children about knives if one knife went missing my house was on lockdown until we found that knife it wasn't something that we encouraged it wasn't something that you perpetuated it was very difficult growing up as well because for for me is I never really saw any

of my children to to think okay you didn't have enough love or any self-worth or self-respect that you would even think to carry a knife so the continual dialect about knives and carryings and murdering things, you didn't really have. We spoke about breaking the law, being upholding citizens, and what to do if they were ever faced in a dangerous situation. And Yvonne, what conversations had you had about safety? Well, I remember sort of never having a conversation about knives with Godwin. We would talk about safety, not walking with strangers and always trying to support and help and just talking about your because as a mom i kind of just thought gangs i think i was naive as a mom i you know knew about gangs but i never thought it was close to my

house i never thought my children were at risk i would look at my children and i would say they're on track they're good citizens, they're doing the right thing. Never did I imagine that knife crime was going to hit my doorstep. What in your experience, Elaine, is the reason why a youngster carries a knife and is prepared to use it in what now often seems to be almost a random fashion. I think there's a lot of academic research out there. So if we look at the violence reduction units in Glasgow, Strathclyde, which has been proven to work, the public health multidisciplinary approach, that's come from the World Health Organization research into violence

and social economic violence. Underline it is a complex web of intersectional factors. We do know, and we are being reported back, that a lot of young people now are carrying knives because they fear that by leaving the house any day that they could lose their life, and they don't feel they can take fists, they can use their fists against a weapon.

There's a lot of peer pressure going on. It seems like some of it is inadvertently glamorised within the media, a lot of images of knives. And it's a really complex picture. Some people do pick up knives with the intent to go out and cause harm and maim. OK, I'd suggest they're the smaller group. I suggest there's a lot of people carrying knives who don't think about the consequential behaviours that life could be taken off them.

They could be killed or they could end up in a conflict and kill somebody else. Now, you have daughters. We've been talking about sons so far. How do you talk to your daughters about keeping safe? That might be different from the way you talk to your son. OK, so my oldest daughter is 24 and my youngest daughter is 16. Traditionally, I've always raised my children in regards to evidence. Things that are likely to harm them most in London is traffic, okay? Being hit by a car, being more likely to be hurt by somebody other than a stranger,

but I've always taught them to safeguard themselves. Unfortunately, particularly for men, adult men, and this is the way I've taught them to be. I've always taught my youngest daughter, particularly because the climate has changed the last few years, to kind of think like a ninja, so to be aware of her circumstances. Don't walk down the road with your headphones on.

She's quite, she's over the dream world. Be very aware of your surroundings. Know what's going on. And I think that's a high state of tension that we're now asking our children to actually be in to protect themselves and i think it's drastically changed now none of us are prepared and i'm talking to bereaved mums every day who never ever expected to be in this situation rachel what in retrospect might you have said or done to keep your boys safe? The hard thing for me is the only reflection I can ever have,

because the only thing that, even through the whole of the court proceedings, there was no evidence that Kyron had actually got engaged in any antisocial behaviours or anything. So the only change that I could really do from that whole situation is just never have allowed him to go to manchester in the first place there wasn't anything more because it wasn't it was unprovoked he hadn't provoked it in any way and i agree with what you say with when you're growing young boys it is a thing where as parents we're quite naive because if your child doesn't fit the narrative that the media perpetuates then you don't think your child is at risk but then your other son it happened in london in broad daylight

at three o'clock in the afternoon i i always think you know my fear is the dark i always think that everything's going to happen when it's dark when people can't see when it's secluded so you warn them about those things how do you what dialect can you give a child to what you're looking out for at three o'clock on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of, you know, a spring morning? Yvonne, what might you have said? Call for help. I mean, if Godwin was alive now, I would have said to him, safeguard yourself and call for help and never put your life at risk. And that's

exactly what I'm saying to my children. And that's exactly what I'm saying to other children when I go and do presentation with them. Safeguard the environment, keep yourself safe and call for help. Call for the right help. You have to run and not never put your life in danger what's the one thing elaine that you would say a parent could say that might help a child um i think sometimes there is a small opportunity to pre-empt that something's about to happen, and particularly if you're with other young people. So it's really just to remove yourself as soon as you get the slightest inkling something's about to get wrong,

and I'm afraid that, yes, running is sometimes the best option. Elaine Donnellan, Rachel Webb and Yvonne Lawson, thank you all very much indeed for being with us this morning. There are links to charities and organisations who might be able to help if you've been affected by knife crime of course on the Women's Hour website and

we would like to hear from you. How are you talking to your children and what advice are you giving them? Now still to come in today's programme Bump, Birth and Beyond. We hear from the mothers a year after they gave birth. And the serial, the third episode of A Small Town Murder. This week's podcast for parents is now available through BBC Sounds.

The topic is boys and eating disorders. We were joined by Samuel Polland, who became anorexic when he was 12 and has written a novel for teenagers explaining what it's like to suffer from the condition. I also spoke to Professor Sandy Brunot, a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist. There's also an article rounding up their advice on the Woman's Hour website. This week, you may have missed The Times columnist Melanie Reid, who spoke about the accident she had when she fell from her horse and broke her neck. And on Monday, we heard from parents whose adult children have gone missing.

You can catch up on them by downloading the BBC Sounds app. And don't forget, there's also a Woman's Hour Instagram account. Now, Fatima Boucher's grandfather, Zulfiqar Ali, and her aunt, Benazir, were both prime ministers of Pakistan. Both died in violent circumstances. Her father, Murtaza, opposed his sister's government and was assassinated when Fatima was only 14. Well, she's now a writer, and her latest novel, The Runaways, has three main characters. Sunny is the son of an immigrant who set up home in Portsmouth.

Anita Rose is the daughter of a poor woman in Karachi who massages rich women for her living. Monty is the son of wealthy parents who divide their time between London and Karachi. Here, Anita is talking to her elderly Marxist neighbour, Osama. I want to be seen like you are. Osama held his head in his hands and shook it softly. I want to be free like you.

This city, Anita, it'll take your heart if you let it. Do you hear me? It will eat you alive. You don't fight in retreat. You fight by standing exactly where you are. And if you bend, even slightly, out of fear, it will destroy you. But how do I stop it? How do I stop the city from eating my heart?

Osama sat back in his chair and lifted his glass of sharaab from the floor. He drank from the smudged glass and then placed it on his knee, leaning forward to meet Anita's eyes. You fight. You take theirs first. Fatima, it's clear from your writing that you

have a love-hate relationship with Karachi. What do you actually love about it? Well, I love Karachi. Karachi is a city that taught me to survive, to be brave, and to face the world even when I didn't feel brave. That's what I love about it. I love the people. I love how warm they are. But it is a hard city, and it's a dangerous city. And growing up, it was a place of a lot of uncertainty for me and a lot of violence. Now Anita lives close to a rich home in Clifton which sounds to me rather like the Butoh family

home. What angers her about living so close to such riches? I think what angers all of us that we live in a city where extreme burning inequality is visible to us every single day. The fact that some people have no drinking water and others have swimming pools, you know, with filtered spring water. It is a city of many contrasts. But I think the extreme poverty and the way in which the rich are comfortable living alongside it is incredibly disturbing. Now, Sonny's father raises him in Portsmouth. Why Portsmouth? Well, it's interesting.

When I started writing the book back in 2014, there were two cities in the United Kingdom that ISIS had recruited from that had people running away to join ISIS. One was London, and the other was Portsmouth. And those were the only two cities mentioned in the United Kingdom. And that got me thinking. There were several young men, I think about eight or 10, who eventually left Portsmouth to run away. And I wanted to know more about what a small town would do, how much more isolating it might be than a big city, and how that would feed into runaways. Now, Monty has a very different background.

He lives near Harrods when he's in London. He goes to the American school in Karachi. What is it that draws them towards radical Islam? Because none of them comes from a particularly observant home. No, and I think that there's been an industry that has suffocated the conversation on radicalism, in the West at least, and it's a willful suffocation. So Richard Dawkins wrote an article just days after 9-11 saying religion is the problem. But it's not.

Actually, the problem is belonging. It's pain. It's humiliation, anger, impotence. That's what drives people, I think, to take up arms against the world. Religion is a very small part of it. And we see that even in the recent cases of Shamima Begum and Huda Muthana in America. Both these young women said quite clearly that they only became religious just before leaving. And it was a kind of Chinese whispers version of religion. Someone told them something, someone else, you know, instructed them about something, but it wasn't religion as we know it as a text. What's been the role of social media, would you say, in radicalization? I think social media has been incredibly dangerous. I would say overall it's a pretty

dangerous medium. But what's different with this breed of radicals compared to the elder breed, Al-Qaeda, for example, required some level of secrecy in order to operate, some level of discretion. But today's radicals are like millennials everywhere. They want to go viral, they want to be famous, they want likes, and they want to be reposted. And they've used social media to those ends. So from the research you've done, how is the radicalization of young men and women different? What appeals to each? I think in a way it's quite similar. Again, Huda Muthana, the Alabama woman, said something incredible. She said that she had a very conservative upbringing in America and her parents were quite strict with her and that she ran away because she wanted to be free.

Now, that's completely counterintuitive to me or to you and many of your listeners, but I think what it offered them, whether they're men or women, was a place where they're seen, where they belong, where they can exercise their power in a way that they don't need to apologize for. So how can young people be given some sense of belonging to the culture in which they find themselves?

I think it's essential. I think if you do not offer a vision for your youth, if you do not give them a place in which they can help construct the future of that vision, then they will be vulnerable to someone else's vision. And they will follow another vision, however badly constructed it is, that includes them, that doesn't isolate them. And I think that's what's missing, at least it seems to me, whether we're talking about England or France or America, is that so many people from immigrant families, again, as we've seen, are told, be careful, or we send you out, you know. Where do you feel you fit in? I sort of fit in, I guess, everywhere and nowhere at once.

I grew up in Syria. I'm from Pakistan. I'm half Afghan. I was born in Kabul. And I feel I fit into all those places, but I can't be in all of them at once. So I'm always missing a part somewhere. It's obvious from reading this book that you want the reader to feel some empathy towards these young people, which seems surprising when your family has experienced so much violent trauma.

Why do you want us to feel sorry for them in a way? Well, I don't think it's the same thing. I want people to view each other with compassion, and especially as a victim of a lot of violence, I know from experience that anger is a burden, anger is a blindness that obstructs you not only from living, but from engaging with the world around you in a constructive, positive way. It destroys you.

And it destroys you by cutting you off from other people. So the only response to me, to violence, has to be understanding. It has to be asking questions. It has to be acknowledging that pain is behind a lot of hatred. Pain is behind a lot of anger. And I think we have to approach it much before people do violent acts. We have to be compassionate much before they feel alienated enough to turn against each other. You wrote recently about the India-Pakistan question,

that you'd never before seen a war played out between two nuclear-armed nations. What did you mean by that? Well, on Twitter, because Pakistan and India have perennially been at war with each other, occasionally at war with each other. But this was the first time in my lifetime we saw it played out on Twitter, on Facebook, with the hysteria and strangeness of social media. And that was very disturbing to me as a young Pakistani who doesn't want Pakistani soldiers to die, who doesn't want Indian soldiers to die. We're a generation that has never lived at peace.

Fatima Buta, thank you very much indeed for being with us this morning. And the novel is called The Runaways. Thank you. And now to the series Bump, Birth and Beyond. Last week we heard from the fathers and one grandmother. As they discussed guilt, the privileged position of father can have sex and sometimes feeling like a spare part.

In the latest edition, we catch up with the mothers. It's been a year since we last spoke to Charlotte Daw, Jen Barrett, Rowan Lawton and Laura Horrocks. Abby Hollick, who also had a baby at the same time, sat down with them to find out how they're doing, how they've coped with the unexpected and going back to work. Thank you guys, Women's Hour Group, for coming back. We've survived the first year.

The last time I remember we were all really surprised that motherhood was a 24-hour job. Jen said that doing the washing up was like being in heaven because you were still and Charlotte you said you had to make a decision every morning between whether you were going to brush your hair or brush your teeth I've done both this morning you'll all be pleased to hear but yeah it's still touch and go some days so going around the table just kind of quick fire I played this game with my kids it's called best thing worst thing what is the best thing about the first year of motherhood and what's the worst thing Jen best thing getting to know your kid obviously that's delightful worst thing is just the chores Rowan best thing agree with jen seeing their kind of little personalities develop but also realizing that you can cope with more than you think worst thing that moment where you turn

off the light to go to sleep and you're like oh finally and then they wake up seeing everything through these fresh new eyes and the worst thing is never being on my own. Laura, the best thing is you've got this new little best friend for life that you absolutely adore and you can't imagine life without. The worst thing is never really having a break or no child on your hip. What would you say the babies are like now? Would you say it's got more interesting, Rowan? Yeah, absolutely.

I think it's got kind of more and more you say it's got more interesting rowan yeah absolutely i think it's got kind of more and more fun as it's gone along and seeing everything through her eyes um whether that's kind of her delight at book or the hairdryer going on or kind of trying to make conversation with you i feel like it's getting better and better in terms of the kind of engagement with them and what you feel you're getting back as well i mean everything kind of changes when you start getting smiles and hugs and stuff would anyone go as far as to say it's it's easier now Jen no I don't think so Rudy's not anyway when she was first born and people said oh how is she I always used to say she's really sweet and and quite serious I think because she was when she was born she was like quite pretty and she had

these little rosebud features and I just started saying that she was sweet to everyone and actually she's a menace she's just like even as a mom I think just because somebody's kind of pretty you you mistake them for being sweet and I've only just kind of stopped doing it because actually she's really determined and quite a persistent you know if you have to say no to her she'll give you grief for it for like 15 minutes and obviously giving birth and becoming a mother for the first time

or Jen with you second time it does have a huge impact on our physical and mental health how would you Laura say that Ruby's impacted on you? You are emotional you've given birth to this amazing little girl and you just love her to bits but at the same time it's desperately lonely at the beginning until you establish your mum friends and it can't not impact you your life's changed forever you've got to come to terms with the fact that you can't do what you did before you can't go to shows you can't just toddle off and do a bit of shopping. I think you described it as suddenly becoming the life support machine for somebody

and that at times gave you real anxiety. Can you talk a little bit about that? I think it was more breastfeeding because I felt like I couldn't leave her with anybody else and that went on for the entire time that I breastfed, which was like nine ten months and I just feel like she was an extra limb. Jen how have you been because it's been a stressful year for you do you feel comfortable talking a bit about what's been going on this year for you? So pretty early on in mat leave my mum got diagnosed with lung cancer. And she actually is fine now.

She got the all clear. So a lot of mat leave was, like, dealing with that. And your mum's in Manchester? Yeah. And she's got no other family either. She's an only child, and my brother lives in Australia. She had surgery and has been there for it through that. And then chemotherapy afterwards and stuff

so it was a bit different to what I'd kind of imagined and then just before Christmas so I got um told that I've got cervical cancer which again is going to be fine because as long as it I mean as cancers go like it's it's the best one that you can get because as long as it hasn't spread as long as you get it early enough then it's 100% treatable and 100% curable and as luck would have it like that's my scenario um but there is whenever anybody gets cancer of any type you do have a period of a few weeks before you know like the extent of it so I think in that period of time you are dealing with like questions of your own mortality in like a very real way that you know you've never never done before and

especially like when you've got kids because you know you can, you kind of care about them so much more than you care about yourself, don't you, really? So, yeah, it was, like, crazy year of, you know, amazing highs of getting to know Rudy and becoming a family of four, which has been amazing. But then, against a backdrop of backdrop of like a lot of terrifying stuff essentially i think there's that thing of you know you become a mother but it doesn't stop the rest of life yeah continuing and you know life can be brutal i mean i can't imagine my mum was really ill quite a few years ago and i can't imagine having dealt with that with two children.

And then your own health compounding it. I mean, you cope with a huge amount. How do you feel now? Because you do know that you're going to be okay, and that it's treatable. How did it change things as a mother? You know, when you get told that you've got cervical cancer, you're glad that you went and got the smear in the first place.

But there is an element of, I think particularly if you've got kids of feeling a bit guilty that it's got to that point you know I would have probably had abnormal smears for quite a few years before I had the smear when it came back that I had cancer and I didn't actually have a smear test until after I'd had Annie and I think it wasn't because I was too embarrassed to have one and it wasn't because I was worried about pain or anything like that I was literally just one of those people who just was like oh yeah no of course I'll have a smear but I'll do it tomorrow it's pure laziness but at the end of the day when I got told I had it felt really guilty on the kids because I thought, you've really messed up and you might have messed up

in a way that you cannot take back. Thanks, Jen. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. And you're an absolute warrior for dealing with it. Yeah. Has anyone else around this table had health anxiety? There is something about having a child where you do feel like, I have to stay here, at least until you're 18 that

is an overwhelming yeah feeling and I personally walking home you know in the dark at night have a new I need to be okay and just gonna head down and get home quickly has anyone else dealt with that anxiety definitely I have a trike and I'm a bit of an adrenaline junkie but since having Ruby I think now you knowing your mother something might happen and you just need to be there for them so yeah make sure you have a different outlook think safe yeah I definitely have I think um when I first had Kit I was surprised by how anxious I was about the usual things I suppose but I don't know why I thought I'd in any way be exempt just something about my character I didn't anticipate how anxious I

would feel in those first few weeks about keeping her alive and like now you know we go on a in a car journey on the motor and I'm quite a confident driver but I always have that moment of thinking okay you've got to drive carefully now hits in the car I mean she would be an orphan if I something happens to me and like that just I just well I don't go there very often I almost tell myself I'm not indulging it I mean mean, I've done a will. That's something I did before I went back to work. So Rowan, last time we met, you made that important point, which was that you chose to have a baby on your own.

So you're not mourning the loss of a relationship. But has it felt lonely at times? Very rarely, if I'm honest. I mean, have there been moments in the middle of the night when she's been ill and just vomited everywhere? And I think, oh, my God, what am I going to do? But also just the practical side of it. I would say I'm struck by the practical element of being on my own with her. The loneliness that I suppose I would associate with the emotional feeling of being a solo parent has not been something I would say preoccupies me or has I have spent a lot of

time thinking about and everyone apart from Laura has now returned to work full-time or part-time and Laura you go back in March so thinking about identity did going back to work kind of make you feel like your old self again Jen yeah definitely because I think there's kind of two halves of your brain and one of them is dedicated to logic and thinking and finding solutions to problems and think creatively and stuff. And the other side of it is kind of just this instinctive reaction to emotion. And I think when you're with a kid you know when you're on maternity leave you start off in the logic kind of work this is me side and you gradually start to kind of slip into

just this very instinctive almost like animal you know don't cut that piece of toast in half she'll go mad she wants a whole piece of tape but you you know you know what they want and when they want it even if it's a completely logical thing because you are just

reacting emotionally and by the end you're in that side so much that to come back out the other side and think about

branding is something I'm in marketing but but something like that, all of a sudden it's really exciting because you're using this side of your brain that is almost like a pleasure to go back to. And it's deeply satisfying to do work that you can tick off. Like, I have to do that email.

I did that email. Tick. With a kid, there is never a tick. The nap didn't happen happen I cannot tidy the kitchen he doesn't want his food he's thrown it in my face like he can't there's nothing to control how about you Charlotte did going back to work feel kind of like oh I've got the old me back a bit yeah it was sort of liberating I remember listening to other women say oh I only come to work for a rest and now I'm like yeah no I do come to work for the rest partially I go to work so I can wee with the door shut and nobody's gonna bother me

that's lovely that's really nice and it is nice to interact with adults and to interact over things that are not my child because I had a great support system while I was on maternity leave had you know great mum friends in inverted commas but mostly you talk about your children because that's the thing overwhelmingly you have in common so talking about things that nothing to do with him have been love it's been lovely and Laura what do you miss about your old life I was a freelance model and I went to burlesque shows all the time and it was always exciting it was never in it weekends and now it's just totally different it's just what you've not taken ruby to a burlesque show not yet no it's really tiny tassels I've taught her to dance she can dance all right but it's just totally different and I've come to accept that actually I'm quite happy

doing nothing, I don't need to live life at a million miles per hour I quite enjoy sitting watching Saturday night telly it's refreshing And Rowan, you've got a full on job great childcare with your mum who we loved meeting last week how have you balanced the two roles? Yeah, it's not easy

I've had to deal with the kind of guilt of needing a lot of help I lived I've always been very close to my family but I'm incredibly independent and I am at this phase of my life need my parents a lot more than I have done since I was about 16 and that has taken some getting used to one of the things I found difficult about that is just as Jen it's experienced with her mum being ill I think as you get older you're so aware it's ever present that the natural order of things is that our parents will go before us and I faced that you know relatively young in my 20s when my mum was really ill for a while and I think some of

the struggle to get used to relying on them more again is that the relationship had started to take more the other way actually for a period of time and now we're finding our way again that isn't to do with like my mum kind of mothering and gram mothering both of us but is a kind of more balanced adult relationship but where I do have to rely on them heavily so yeah boundaries are really key well if you want to find out the nine things the mothers say they've learned in the past year, there's an article on the Woman's Hour website. You can also listen to other episodes of Bump, Birth and Beyond when we met our mothers at 33 weeks pregnant and then again with their eight-week-old babies. Earlier in the programme, we discussed the rise of knife crime and what parents can do, perhaps, to try and protect their children. Elaine on Twitter said, It's absolutely heartbreaking to hear the stories of these young people dying from stabbing.

It would be good to hear from the parents of the boys responsible for these crimes. What made them that way? Judy Chadaway tweeted to say, It's always victims' parents that are interviewed after knife crime, never the perpetrator's parents. Wouldn't talking to them give us a greater understanding? Roberta sent an email and said, I am a supply teacher in primary school. I would also like the gaming industry to get on board and take responsibility for the violence it's exposing our children to.

I would go so far as to say it's an addiction, and this among children far younger than 12. This is what needs to be addressed. At a time when social media is facing new stringent guidelines, surely the same should be expected of the gaming world. And then on the series Bump Birth and Beyond, Megan emailed to say, I'm pregnant and due in April.

I've shared so many episodes of this series with my husband. We've both found it great to listen to. Pregnancy has opened my eyes to a new level of just how truly amazing a woman's body is. And I call pregnancies, it has had its ups and downs, but overall, I think it's amazing. But what's also amazing is how people change the way they speak to you when you're pregnant. Why do people feel they can ask you the most personal questions about your body and your choice and life when you're pregnant? If I want to eat three hash browns and a Mars bar before 9am, I will, but I don't need you to comment on it.

In tomorrow's programme, I'll be talking to Michelle Kirsch. Getting clean has been a theme of her life, from scrubbing other people's showers to winning herself off the prescription medicine to which she'd spent her life addicted. She joins me to discuss her memoir, Clean, which brings together her own experience with the stories she's found in her clients' homes. And I'll also be speaking to Kristalia Georgieva, the Chief Executive of the World Bank. Join me tomorrow, two minutes past ten, if you can. If not, there'll be a podcast. Bye-bye. Hello, I'm Greg Foot and I'm hosting a new Radio 4 podcast called The Best Things Since Sliced Bread. Have you ever wondered what's fact and what's fad

when it comes to wonder products? Face creams, activated charcoal, kombucha, turmeric shots. That's what I'm trying to find out with the help of leading scientists and special guests. If you want to separate benefits from bunkum, subscribe to The Best Things Since Sliced Bread on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered.

There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this?

From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.