Woman's Hour - Zara McDermott & Baroness Morgan on Revenge Porn, The "Good Enough" mother, & Mehreen Baig on Covid 19 Jab campaign

Episode Date: February 19, 2021

Anita Rani talks to Love Island Star Zara McDermott about her new documentary on the growing issue of Revenge Porn and we hear from Baroness Morgan about the government's efforts to tackle the problem. Dr Angela Joyce and Dr Tracey Jensen about the idea of the "Good Enough" Mother, a phrase first coined by the paediatrician and child psychoanalyst D W Winnicott as we mark the 50th anniversary of his death and presenter Mehreen Baig talks about the new tv film campaign urging people from BAME backgrounds to get the covid-19 vaccine. Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Lisa Jenkinson Studio engineers: Gayl Gordon & Matilda Macari

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.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning, welcome to Woman's Hour on Friday the 19th of February 2021. Why is the date significant? Well, simply because it's the only one we're going to have, so let's make the most of it. Calling all new parents out there, here's a question for you. Do you feel good enough? Well, it's how child psychologist and paediatrician D.W. Winnicott says parents should feel good enough.

But what did he mean? Fifty years since his death, I'll be finding out why his thoughts and advice on parenthood are still relevant. But this morning, I'd like to hear the best and worst advice you were given as a young mum. You can text me on 84844. Let's share wisdom across the airwaves today. You can message via Twitter and Instagram. It's at BBC Woman's Hour.

And of course, you can email us via our website. And the tweets are coming in already. Aberdeen Quinney says that good enough is good enough, she says. Although I didn't find that out until I put myself and my family through several years of trying to attain impossible perfection. Don't fret about the bits you did less than perfectly. Congratulate yourself on those bits you did when you were bloody brilliant, she says. And here's a tweet from Dr. Reverend Hooleyley who says the best advice from an elderly midwife was you can't feed the baby until you've had breakfast aka look after yourself keep your

thoughts coming in now my mum had her vaccine this week which was a huge relief for me but there's still worryingly a very slow uptake of the vaccine from ethnic minority communities last night you may have seen it a tv campaign was played out across all the major broadcasters at the same time to encourage people to get vaccinated. But why the mistrust? Are you having a problem convincing your parents or grandparents? Or maybe you don't want to take it. Get in touch and tell me why.

You can text me on 84844 about that or anything else we're talking about this morning. Now, model and TV personality Zara McDermott had intimate images of her shared without her consent when she was just 14 and then again when she was 21. She's presenting a BBC3 documentary about so-called revenge porn and supports domestic abuse charity Refuge's latest campaign to make threatening to share intimate images a crime as part of the domestic abuse bill. Baroness Morgan was in office as Minister for Women and Equalities when explicit or intimate images without consent became illegal in 2015. I spoke to both of them earlier this morning. Before the incident I was relentlessly bullied for around probably two, two and a half years. And, you know, I think that that really puts you in a position, especially when you're in school and you're trying to, you know, trying to fit in. You're trying to trying to be popular, as it were, because, I mean, it's kind of the only way for me at the time to to feel happy and content in that place um and I and I and I guess a guy approached me um when I was 14 he was like in in the popular group at school as it were

and he um he asked me a few times to share an image of myself and I and I kind of guess I saw it as a bit of a way to gain popularity. I thought, oh, if this boy likes me, then maybe it will stop the bullying. Maybe it will stop how I'm feeling and maybe it will change my life. And yeah, so I sent an image and it was kind of, you know, even more downhill from there. And what happened? Well I sent the picture and then by the next morning everyone in the school had it my mum actually worked at the school at the time she was present for everything that happened there were kids that were going to print it off and put it on her car when I was in lessons there were kids that would hold it up on their mobile phones

against the glass window. So my teachers would see it. There were people sending it to my teachers, to my other friends. It actually went through the entire community within 24 hours. What does that do to a 14-year-old girl? Well, if I'm completely honest, it's all a bit misty in my head. And I think the reason for that is because I was so incredibly damaged by it. I, you know, had thoughts of taking my own life on several occasions because I couldn't face what was going on, you know. And I think when you're that age as well, my parents also really kind of struggled to understand it. And they took the lead of the school and the school actually excluded me and punished me quite severely for what I'd done,

which was obviously just another thing to add to the long part of things that were affecting me quite greatly. We've had a comment from the school and they've said that the incident was 10 years ago, the head is different and she was not at the school at the time and it's important to understand that if such an incident should occur at the school now that it would be handled very differently. What do you think about that? Yeah I mean in the documentary actually we received a statement from the school and I'd like to be reassured by that but I was quite upset at the fact that they were they didn't really say sorry um they didn't apologize for what I'd gone through you know I didn't it didn't just stop at 14 I I carried on feeling the effects of that until I was 18 when I left that school

um I still you know I was bullied so relentlessly it was soul-destroying so um not even an apology I don't know I find that quite hard to stomach and the reason you made this really quite remarkable documentary is you know so much has happened in your life since then and now you're you're a huge influencer you went on Love Island but actually it happened to you again didn't it at 21 yeah when you went into Love Island what happened yeah yeah so there was a guy who I was um going out with he was a you know professional um he was a lot older than me I think he was like almost 30 and I honestly thought that he was like the one I was like this is the guy that I've been looking for he's mature he's got everything um he ended up asking me for an image a few months into our relationship um I sent a few and I think that essentially he sent them to his friends at the time and then we broke up uh and that was after when I went on Love Island because I was gonna not go on Love Island for this guy

because I liked him that much and we broke up I ended up going on Love Island, because I was going to not go on Love Island for this guy because I liked him that much. And we broke up. I ended up going on Love Island. And then I think that he'd sent the images to his friends before I went in the villa. And then as soon as I appeared in the villa, all his friends were like, oh my God, we have these images of this girl who's just gone on to Love Island.

And they started circulating it with their friends. And on that occasion, it went worldwide, like ridiculous amounts. My ex-boyfriend Adam said that he was on a flight once and he was next to a guy and this guy just got the images of me and just shoved them in his face. That's the extent that people would go to at that point. It was crazy. And terrifying. Just absolutely. It's really hard to even hear you it was it was crazy and terrifying just absolutely it's really hard it's

really hard to listen even hear you talking about it actually I mean now you're involved in um refuges the naked threat campaign what what do you want to do I think that it's really important that these types of crimes get more recognition um there's several things that you know if I was if I was the prime minister i would change quite a few things about the about the law there one one main thing um that we're looking at with the refuge campaign is the idea of the threat to share so you know looking at a lot of research we know that so many women are almost held hostage to these images you know their abusive partners can have these images and say if you leave me if you if you walk away from this relationship or if

you do this or if you do that I will share these images with your colleagues with your friends with your family and women are more and more feeling so isolated in these situations. And I think it's so important that we recognise that. And because I think so many women are probably scared to go to the authorities because it's actually not a crime. So where could anything go with that? And for some women, just the threat of something like that can destroy their lives, as we'll find out in your document.

I'm going to bring Baroness Nicky Morgan in here. It was when you were in office as minister for women and inequalities that explicit or intimate images without consent you know exposing them sharing them became illegal what do you make of what zara is saying now and actually pushing it further and making the threat to share those images made illegal as well i think it's it's necessary to criminalize the threat of sharing women feel held hostage um and of course i should just say it is necessary to criminalise the threat of sharing. Women feel held hostage. And of course, I should just say, it is mostly women who are the victims. Of course, there are going to be some men and people in perhaps same-sex relationships.

But the vast majority are women. The vast majority are, as in Zahra's second situation, are in a relationship. And this is an instrument of control. And this government has already recognised in domestic abuse legislation the issue of coercive control. So I think it's right that it is time that we use this domestic abuse bill to criminalise the threat to share intimate images. Also, as Zahra says, I think when people do know that this is being threatened, they will go to the police. The police will say, well, we can't do anything until those images are shared. That's not entirely correct, but the law is not clear. There are potentially some other offences

that could be used, but it's not clear at all. That's why I think having a clear offence in the Domestic Abuse Bill, the Law Commission is then looking more broadly at other image-based abuse offences. But our argument, I think Zara's now, Refugees is, we've got this bill, let's take this opportunity now, Refugees is, we've got this bill, let's take this opportunity now. How likely is it to go through? Well, the government have conceded a principle. I think the government understand there is a gap in the law. And ministers know that actually, there is this opportunity to fill that. I think they would have preferred to wait for the Law Commission to report more on all image based

abuse offences. I understand that. But I think the government have indicated that they are going to accept, whether it's my amendment, whether we're able to put some other wording down that we can agree on. But I think that's good news. But obviously the next stage of the bill is going to be in early March in the House of Lords.

And I hope we'll get some definite movement from ministers then. And we definitely need to look at how our education system deals with this situation now obviously because of the way that Zara was treated. She was excluded from her school. She was blamed for it. Well I find that just extraordinary and I hear the school statement that this was 10 years ago and things have changed and I think we all hope that's very much the case. But I think we know generally in a lot of these incidents and similar things that actually the victim is still blamed far too often. And it is the person, the abuser, the perpetrator, the person who is threatening to share the images and does share them.

They are the person who is at fault. Now, there is now a better PSHE curriculum being taught in secondary schools. I hope very much that this and sexting and other dangers are taught well. And I think Zara's documentary will be an important part of that. And actually schools could probably do, you know, pretty well in just showing the documentary and talking it through appropriately at the right moment. Zara, as part of the documentary, you looked into teenagers now, young girls 10 years younger than you and just how common it is to be asked to sext so a young man I mean what did you discover to be honest it kind of confirmed exactly what I thought I knew that this was just going to get more and more prominent

in society you know we live in a digital age people have entire relationships across one side of the world to another and I think it would be completely naive to think that they stop at you know just how was your day you know I think that's completely naive to think that so it doesn't surprise me in any way shape or form that this has just got kind of this situation has got worse um what kind of does sadden me though is the fact that a lot of the young girls I spoke to and as Nikki rightly said you know there are other victims in this situation you know it's not all women but just for the most part it is um you know a lot of these these young women felt that the blame and the onus was always going to be on them and they felt that there was no clear definition of punishment and I think that once the bill is

passed and once there's more clarity in the law and there's less of a gray And I think that once the bill is passed and once there's more clarity in the law and there's less of a grey area, I think that it gives people more guidance on what they should and shouldn't do. And I think that is going to be such a huge step. Nikki, how difficult is it for the government to keep up to date with amending offences with the constant advances in technology? Well, I think it is going to be a challenge. And of course, one of the things that has been discussed in the context of this amendment, but more broadly, is the issue of deep fakes.

And that's something that we might not even thought about a couple of years ago. So I think eventually, obviously, the government is also going to legislate against online harms more broadly. The issue of curbing some of the, or making sure that harmful content shared on platforms is, you know, is taken down quickly. And I suspect eventually what we will have is a sort of general law, and then there'll be underlying regulations that can be kept up to date more frequently in order to respond to the changes in technology. It's always going to be a challenge for the government, the police to get ahead, obviously, of the technology,

but that doesn't mean that we, you know, we must not try because people, as we hear, their lives are being taken apart by having this sort of thing happen to them. And Zahra, what struck me is, you know, the amount of people that, well, you were blamed by the school and by your peers, you know, the boyfriend you were seeing at the time dumped you. I mean, it was just the repercussions were horrendous. And we constantly talk about this in terms of stopping girls from sending the images. But surely we need to be talking about how to educate boys. I agree. I'm in complete agreement with you. But I think at the moment, the problem is there is that lack of safeguarding in place. There is that lack of education.

So my advice right now is saying to girls you know really think before you take that risk because it is a huge huge risk to take when deciding to stand that image you're putting the you know the autonomy over your own body you're putting that in someone else's hands and unfortunately with the lack of education and the lack of punishment you know we can, we can't govern it enough. Well, you're talking to probably lots of teenagers right now. You're talking to lots of mums and parents right now. What would you say to them if there's parents who are probably terrified that they don't know what's happening when the doors are closed?

What are their young children doing on their phones? And young girls who admire you, the 1.5 million people who follow you on Instagram that aspire to have the life.5 million people who follow you on Instagram that aspire to have the life that you have, what would you say to them? My message to them would be, and if they're going through something similar to what I went through,

I would say the main, most important thing is to talk to someone. What I didn't do is I didn't open up to my parents enough. I didn't explain things to didn't open up to my parents enough. I didn't explain things to them enough for them to understand. And I isolated myself a lot in that situation. So I would say it's so important, whatever you're going through, if it's hard, talk to someone, your parents will love you, no matter what, they won't be disappointed in you. And I think that's a lot of the feeling that I felt, I would say to parents, you know, encourage those open conversations.

And the one thing your child doesn't want to feel is that you're disappointed or embarrassed. And make sure you highlight that, that you are not and it is OK. And highlight the fact that you understand that if these images are shared, it's not their fault. Zara McDermott and Baroness Nicky Morgan, who I spoke to earlier this morning. And we've got a statement from the school, the Coopers Company and Cobourn School, and they've said the leadership team is sad to hear about Zahra's experience. We outline in the strongest possible terms

that if that situation happened now, it would be handled very differently. Our leadership and safeguarding teams are different to when the incident happened in 2011, and we now have specific policies for peer-on-peer abuse and clear procedures along with regular staff training and they finish off by saying the safety and well-being of our students is our top priority and we have rigorous policies and procedures in place to protect them and that documentary will be available to watch on iPlayer on the 23rd of February. Your email's coming in

Jan says here's a novel idea. When women stop sending intimate images of themselves and use their common sense to realize that a bloke who asks for them should be shown the door and not their private bits and pieces, says Jan. Straight talking Jan there. Ginny Grillo says, and this is about parenting. We've been asking you to send in emails and texts and messages about the best advice you were given about parenting. The best advice, Ginny says, and this is about parenting, we've been asking you to send in emails and texts and messages about the best advice you were given about parenting. The best advice, Ginny says, I was given from my mother was never to take a sick baby into your bed. Go to them with your pillow and blanket and lie beside them.

That way you have a clean, warm bed to get back into after they're done feeding. And an email from Anne Warren says, I was very anxious as a new mum and set myself very high standards however a midwife made me feel much better when she told me that I was doing a great job if I get if I got 40% of the things right 40% of the time I found this so reassuring I love that it's 40% as well it's quite a specific percentage um keep your texts coming in 84844 lots of advice coming in on parenting and I will be talking about that in just a moment. But first, despite being disproportionately affected by

COVID, people from black and Asian backgrounds are also much less likely to take up offers of a vaccination. In fact, a study by the University of Oxford and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine recently found that in England, black people over the age of 80 were half as likely as their white peers to have been vaccinated against COVID. In Wales, the proportion of people in these communities who've had the COVID vaccine is 14% lower than among white people. Disinformation and myths have spread across WhatsApp, have been largely blamed for the lack of uptake. But a new television campaign, shown at the same time last night by ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Sky, is hoping to change things. Let's hear a bit of it now. Hello, namaste, satsiri akal, assalamu alaikum.

This past year has been challenging for us all, with many of us losing our loved ones. But we will be reunited with our friends and family. All we have to do is just take the vaccine. Many in our community have suffered the most, largely due to our efforts on the frontline at the NHS or as key workers. Looking after others and serving our community is what we do. It's how we've been brought up. That's why we have such immense pride when a family member becomes a doctor or a nurse.

We have so much respect for them. They need our respect now more than ever. Now, more than 20 famous faces from black and Asian communities have taken part in the short film. One of them is television presenter and blogger Maireen Baig. She's here with me now. And I'm also joined by Dr. Benita Kane. Very good morning to you both. Welcome to Woman's Hour. Now, Mehreen, what made you want to get involved in this? It was a really easy decision, actually. I am obviously British Pakistani. I have parents who are elderly. My father is incredibly vulnerable and shielding and so is my brother.

So for us, knowing that there was a vaccine coming at some point was a real kind of light at the end of the tunnel. And obviously when the studies were being done showing that there are so many people from Black and Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds who are not willing to take the vaccine for various reasons, it just felt right to do something about it and just address some of the fears and some of the concerns. Even with my own dad, I saw sort of him getting messages from his mates around the world, WhatsApp videos. Saying what? Saying all sorts of conspiracy theories.

He's going to get a chip in him. He's going to die. He's going to, I mean, it was, it was, they were, one of them, one of the things that we saw was actually on YouTube and it was like a full film. It was over an hour long, going through all sorts of evidence and stuff

of why we shouldn't take the vaccine. I witnessed him firsthand go from being quite excited to quite reluctant and quite frightened. So I think the beauty of this campaign was that it's not just for these communities, but it was made by people from within those communities, authentic and trusted voices, just to make sure that, yeah, people are given the right guidance, they're given the right information and ultimately that they make the safest choice. Benita, let me bring you into this because you've come across vaccine hesitancy on the front line. You were nodding away, I could see, when Maureen was talking about those videos and WhatsApp messages. Is this something that you found when you've been talking to people?

Yeah, absolutely, Anita. And, you know, I think we have to remember that vaccine hesitancy is quite complex. It's not just, let's not just blame the communities for being slack and not taking up the vaccine. It's complicated and it's based on people's previous experiences and, you know, their beliefs and that's shaped And that's shaped from social issues, from cultural issues, political factors. And, you know, there are also things around health literacy, language literacy as well, and access to the services that can give them the right information. I mean, you've done community awareness groups.

What are people saying to you? What are their fears? So I think there's lots and lots of fears. So firstly, as Marina said, there's huge amounts of misinformation circulating on WhatsApp, people masquerading to be doctors and religious leaders as well, spreading misinformation. And people are worried that it will affect fertility. People are worried that there's animal products. People are worried there hasn't been enough testing, that they haven't been put through rigorous processes and that they're not effective. So there's lots of percentages being thrown around. It's only this effective or that effective. And all of this is just stoking fear in people who are at higher risk of dying from COVID. And that's the really sad double whammy here. And are these conversations, Maureen, that you're hearing within your own family

or on those WhatsApp groups? Yeah, absolutely. And I think as well as all of that, I think a lot of the sort of information that was being delivered regarding, I mean, throughout the pandemic in general, a lot of communities were sort of disengaged because they were around sort of Christmas or pubs reopening. And I think

communities eventually did become sort of disengaged and a bit resistant to it. So when by time it was the news of the vaccine, I feel like, yeah, they weren't really engaging as much. But that's, again, that's why being part of the campaign was such an easy decision for me. Is this a good way of tackling it, Benita? Do you think to get famous faces on TV telling people to go and have the vaccine? Yeah, absolutely. I think any prominent voices that can get the correct messages out there is really welcome because this is about building trust. And there's a huge issue with trust from the black and Asian communities in particular, again, based on previous experiences. And you have to build trust and it doesn't come overnight. So I think any trusted people, whether that's celebrities, doctors, whoever it is a huge proportion of our population who are mistrusting of the systems around them and the health care system in particular?

And at a time when it's so important that we have trust to get beyond this situation that we're in. Yeah, absolutely. And you can go as far back into this, Anita, as you like because you know all of medical science uh much of the the things we learn in medical school are based on you know through a white lens so what you know we're not taught things through the eyes of a Asian or a black person in this country and therefore the systems are structured to disadvantage certain groups and it it's not just black and brown people, but, you know, the traveller communities and other communities as well. And so, you know, there is a systemic element to this as well, where people are disadvantaged. Well, Professor Kevin Fenton, who's Public Health England's Regional Director, said racism is a key factor in the disproportionate

deaths in the BAME communities. What do you think? Yeah, he's done a huge amount of positive work around this and a huge amount of research into what's going on. And I think it's people who are from minority ethnic communities are more likely to live in poor conditions, in deprived areas, perhaps not have as good a diet because of that crowded, damp housing, in jobs that are exposing them to things that might harm

their health. And all of that is due to societal factors that disadvantage people and stop them from not being in that position. Because actually, Maureen, I don't know whether you agree with me, actually, within a lot of certainly South Asian communities, historically, there's a huge trust in doctors and medicine. You know, they are the people that you would have turned to to get your advice. So it's not actually a mistrust of medicine per se, is it? Or science? Yeah, no, I do agree with you. I don't think it's a mistrust of science. I don't think I think there's something I mean, all the all the issues that Benita's highlighted so far it's an amalgamation of all of these things over many many years that has caused this to happen and get to the stage that

we're at right now and I think it's this year has just proven I mean the last year has just proven how important it is to start tackling those wider issues to prevent this from happening ever again and have your parents has your dad has had the vaccine now my mum and dad both had the vaccine and I cannot even I just get I get teary thinking about it it's pathetic I can't tell you what a relief it was we lived and I know the past year has been so terrible for so many people but we we have lived in fear for a year not being able to leave the house even to pop to the shops or even like it was it was just horrible and just knowing they've got some element of protection is just a wonderful wonderful relief I hear you my mum had it this week as well

and I feel that same sense you don't even realize that you're going to feel this sense of relief but it's a huge weight taken off you but you are so right I didn't even anticipate feeling the way I did and I just cried and my dad walked out and I just cried and cried and cried because and I didn't even realize I've been holding that much anxiety inside me about this but yeah I just hope other people kind of follow well you've done a great job by highlighting it in in the campaign that went out Benita as somebody who is you know actively trying to get people to go just anyone listening who's still hesitant what would you say to them we did have a vaccination event that we held on last saturday it's available at www.southasianheritage.org.uk

but it can be aimed at all communities lots of events out there um and we will have a resources page on our website really soon as well that people can dip into final thing is vaccination doesn't get you out of the woods completely remember there is a second dose you need to socially distance wear a mask wash hands keep all the precautions it's only part of the solution of how we get out of the situation we're in great advice um thank you very much well done maureen maureen beggar and dr. Benita Kane. And just ignore those WhatsApp messages. I know that my mum got them too. Just do not pay attention to them.

Just pay attention to what the actual advice is. Lots of your emails and messages coming through about what we've been discussing this morning. Lydia, we talked about a revenge porn documentary that Zara McDermott has made. And Lydia's emailed in to say, listening to this programme, I very much hope that charities

who work against revenge porn empower young girls and women to learn how to say no and refuse to send images of themselves these images lead to men and women becoming objects for other people's perverse desire needless to say in our digital age sexting and revenge porn are common but please could someone stand up for promoting the dignity of the human person and encourage men and women boys and girls to value and respect each other and themselves beyond the narrow and highly toxic focus of sexual gratification if you want to send us an email or your thoughts on anything just go to our website and uh chris holbrook emails in say i think that the education of boys is one point but i think the issue of anonymity and the internet is a huge factor I think young people understand very early on that there is some kind

of protection that this all takes place in a digital platform I don't think this would take place with such frequency if young people believe that they would be in trouble if they shared an image I've worked with children all my life and stopping certain types of behavior relies on them seeing what happens to others when they do something wrong. Which is why I guess Zara and a lot of charities are trying to get the laws changed. Yes, you can also text us on 84844. Now, you might have heard the phrase, the good enough mother. It was coined by paediatrician and child psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott.

It's 50 years since he died but his influence is still enormous and he has a legion of fans amongst therapists, educationalists and social workers. So what is it that he had to say and why is it still considered so relevant and reassuring at the moment? Well with me to discuss this is Dr Angela Joyce, a child psychoanalyst and chair of the Winnicott Trust, and sociologist Dr Tracy Jensen from the University of Lancaster, whose research work includes the investigation of parenting, culture and policy. But first, let's get a flavour of the man himself. This clip comes from his BBC broadcasts, which took place between 1943 and 1962. Many of these talks can be found in his book, The Child, The Family and the Outside

World. Here he is. I know a young mother who made a very early contact with her baby boy, her first child. From the day of his birth, after each feed, he was put in a cradle and left by his mother's bed by the sensible matron of the nursing home. For a while he would lie awake in the quiet of the room and the mother would put down her hand to him and before he was a week old he began to catch hold of her fingers and to look up in her direction. This intimate relationship continued

without interruption and developed and I believe it has helped to lay the foundation for this child's personality and for what we call his emotional development and his capacity to withstand the frustrations and shocks that sooner or later came his way. Some children are never allowed, even at earliest infancy, just to lie back and float. They lose a great deal and may altogether miss the feeling that they themselves want to live.

It seems to me that if I can convey to you that there really is this living process in the baby, which as a matter of fact, it's quite difficult to extinguish, you may be able better to enjoy the care of your baby. Ultimately, life depends less on the will to live than on the fact of breathing. I'd quite like to listen to more of that voice. Angela and Tracy, welcome to Woman's Hour. Angela, tell us, for people who've never heard of Winnicott, who was he and why was he so influential? Well, he was, as you said, a paediatrician and a child psychoanalyst. In fact, he was the first male child psychoanalyst to qualify in this country in the 1930s. He was a children's doctor

at the time when there was no division between paediatrics and child psychiatry. And in fact, he was of the view that there shouldn't be a division because a child is a psychosomatic entity and you need both the body and the mind to really understand what's going on in a child. So he worked as a children's doctor from the early 1920s until he retired in the 1960s and he died in 1971, 50 years ago as you said. He was a man full of energy and life and was renowned for his enormous capacity for establishing very intimate contact with the children that he saw. You may also know something about a technique that he developed in order to help children to feel at ease. He was a kind of squiggler, he was a doodler and he developed

what he called the squiggle game which was a game that he played where a child would do a squiggle and he would elaborate it. He would do a squiggle, the child would elaborate it. And in the context of a very protected, quiet environment, the child would bring what was of concern to him or her. And Winnicott was an immensely receptive man to these communications. But I think the reason why he's so relevant still is that he put at the heart of his thinking, his clinical practices, theorizing the question of how we come to be the sort of people we are. And that that starts right at the very beginning of life in mother's pregnancy actually not not even postnatally in in mother's pregnancy he he was um really uh concerned about how we come

to uh feel that we're living a life that is real that is worth living um that in which we can uh meet the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, you know, with fortitude, with forbearance, with courage. And in his view, these things started right at the very beginning in the quality of the connection that mother is able to establish with her baby. Let me bring Tracy in. Tracy, if you look at the history of parenting advice and gurus, and there's so much of it out there, I'm sure lots of our listeners have read the books. Where does Winnicott fit in? Where on the spectrum is he? Well, I think there's been a variety of parenting advice approaches available for a long time, and it's useful to think of it as a kind of continuum. So at one end of the continuum, we have emphasis on strict routines, training babies and children to fit into parents' schedules,

discipline, obedience, rules. So if we think about people like Truby King, Gina Ford, Jo Frost, the super nanny. And at the other end of the continuum, we've got baby-led, child-led parenting practices like baby wearing, co-sleeping, a lot of emphasis on attachment. And that kind of continuum gets reinvented for every generation um and i think of i think most parents muddle through somewhere in the middle um and i think i think of winnicott as a kind of voice from the middle um and he's a he's a parallel figure to dr spock in the united states whose motto was trust yourself i thought it was live long and prosper i think like winnicott's great talent really is that he offers reassurance in this landscape of competing advice.

And when you listen to that was a great little clip from one of his broadcasts. When you listen to the kind of care and attention that he gives and the kind of complexity that he understands with each parent's relationship with each of their children. And he understands that parents are individuals they have their own preferences their own struggles they inhabit the world differently and every child is an individual as well and I think that's that kind of slower pace and that deep consideration is really valuable to revisit at this moment. What would Winnicott do you think have to say about the amount of advice that is available out there to parents? He was very suspicious of books and advice giving.

And in fact, in a way, rereading these broadcasts is immensely satisfying, actually, because he doesn't say should. Can I take you to task, Anita? You said at the very beginning, you know he he said that you know mothering should be good enough he was not a wagging finger he was someone who really supported women supported women to trust themselves to trust their intuition to trust their capacity to get to know their babies and therefore get to know their children as they grew well i suppose he wasn't an advice giver I suppose we should try and understand then and explain what did he mean by good enough what was this phrase that he talked about let's start we'll start with

you Tracy I want both your thoughts on this well Winnicott was really positive about failure and I sort of think of him as the patron saint of failure and his concept the good enough mother is really what he's proposing here is that mothers have to fail and failing is what gives children space to grow to find their independence to discover their autonomy and I think that's really useful when we think about some of the intensive idealized versions of motherhood that we have to live with they tend to see failure as damaging or traumatizing to children and winnicott says completely the opposite he says failure is an essential part of parenting it helps children

learn that the world is not arranged to accommodate all of their needs and wants immediately um you know if you're breastfeeding a, that baby has to learn that the breast is not eternally available to them. Children have to learn to wait their turn. They have to learn patience. They have to experience boredom. You know, that's a failure to entertain your children. They have to experience frustration. And that kind of messy, chaotic family life, in a way, prepares them for a messy, chaotic world. And I think that's a really reassuring and important message for parents today, particularly in the context in which we're parenting now. We're working from home, we're homeschooling, there's an intensity

to family life right now, and many of us have a near constant sense of failure. So Winnicott offers so much kindness and so much reassurance about failure. He's really celebratory of it in a way that I think is so valuable for us to be reminded of now. I think you have definitely reassured and Winnicott has reassured a lot of people listening right now who are having to homeschool and deal with everything that's going on at the minute. Angela, how comfortably does what you have to say about the importance of mothering fit in with the second wave of feminist demands around women's rights and to choose childcare and go to work? It's so problematic, this, and I find it problematic. I mean, I've always been a working mother.

But I think just to follow what Tracy said, and there's one of his quotes, which I really love, which is that the good enough mother is constantly mending her failures. You know, it is a constant feature of good enough mothering. But this is predicated on earliest life where mother's task is to get to know her baby, is to adapt to her baby as closely as possible, because it's on the basis of the baby's experience of the breast always being there when needed, that the baby can learn that the breast isn't there when wanted. You know, it's on the basis, he used the word illusion, on the basis of the baby's illusion that the breast is created out of need, that disillusion, which is a fundamental task of motherhood disillusion can be born um so the thing about uh working mothers is that i i think our social system is absolutely wrong um in that it doesn't support mothers to stay at home long enough at the beginning at the beginning um you know babies need time uh to be good to for mothers to get to know them.

This is not something that can happen at pace. It happens slowly over time. And babies need their mothers to be there in order. Another quite famous child analyst, a colleague of Anna Freud's, Erna Fuhrman, wrote a lovely paper called Mothers Have to Be There to Be Left. And I think that we've got it all upside down, actually, in our social system. Well, I'd like to thank you both for talking to me about this fascinating conversation,

Dr Angela Joyce and Dr Tracey Jensen. And I'm sure lots of you are reassured to know that it's OK to fail. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. Hello, I'm Greg Jenner, the host of the You're Dead to Me podcast, and I have some good news. Now that we're all stuck at home, again, we are bringing back Homeschool History. And if you missed out the first time, you don't know what it is, it's our fun, family-friendly and informative show about, well, you can probably guess, yeah, history.

And yes, we're bringing back the obligatory sound effects, of course. This time out, get ready to learn about the Great Fire of London, ancient Egyptian religion, the Scottish Wars of Independence, Mary Seacole and one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, that you'll have to tune in to find out which one. So that's Homeschool History with me, Greg Jenner, 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'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.