Dolly Jones on Returning to Work After a Baby

0:01Georgia: Zoe and Georgia will be here in just a moment.

0:05Dolly Jones: After this episode, you should get You Don't Know You're Born lined up to play next. On their recent episode, Brooke Vincent and Wingman are joined by Sophie, a mum of three, including a daughter who's autistic.

0:17Georgia: She opens up about her family's journey from navigating diagnosis to battling for a place at a Senn school and shares the reality of parenting children with very different needs.

0:27Dolly Jones: So when this episode of Made by Mamas is done, search for You Don't Know You're Born and get it lined up to play next.

0:57Dolly Jones: Results will vary. Not all payments are Boost eligible. Some may not see improved scores or approval odds. Not all lenders use credit information impacted by Experian Boost. See Experian.com for details. Experian.

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1:22Dolly Jones: Level up with savory marinades, spices, and rubs, and complete your cookout with a crowd-pleasing cherry pie and their balsamic chicken salad. Available at the prepared foods counter. Get Summer Splash savings now at Whole Foods Market.

1:40Dolly Jones: Hello and welcome to Made by Mamas, the podcast. I'm Zoe Hardman. And I'm Georgia Dayton. And this is your parenting safe space where no conversation is off limits.

1:49Georgia: With five kids between G and I, we have seen a lot. We really have. Each week, we'll be joined by some famous faces and experts, and we'll chat about the brands and products that have saved us along the way. In short, we're the parenting podcast for you. Before we get started, hit subscribe or follow so you're the first to know when each episode lands. And they're on Tuesdays and Fridays. And it really helps if you leave a rating and a review. You can also find us on Instagram. We're on at Made by Mummers. But for now, George, should we get into it?

2:21Georgia: so nice of you to join us how rude this is the level of bullying and work toxicity that i have to deal with from georgia everyone um there's no hr department here hold on who's head of hr in maple lovers oh i think it's oh it's me i'm finance i think finance and it is georgia i don't know i'm head

2:44Dolly Jones: of socials and hr when i say socials i don't mean instagram i mean like nights out

2:50Georgia: how are you my bestie i'm good i'm good i actually um needed to talk to you about the school ball oh fuck me oh my god so i still moved schools and we have come into like a new sort of parent circle i guess yeah and it's been lovely like everyone has been amazing but the ones that we're friendly with had all kind of teed up what the school you know how the school ball was going to be and so we were like oh my god we can't miss this this is gonna be great people watching oh my god so I had been out at a bottomless brunch all day oh yeah that's when you messaged me yeah I messaged you and I was on the train on the way home and like psyching myself back up to go to the school ball yeah of course I've been at a bottomless brunch I definitely was a little bit and then I got to the ball and I was like oh this is actually like quite mellow like this is fine you know this is all going to be all right then the auction started okay wow wow wow wow so parents actually fight in the auction over a parking space at school right it was unbelievable i thought that like the people who told us about it were like they're joking no like one guy pulls out his chair from the table and then is eyeballing the other guy across the room and they're going yeah two grand three grand stop it no no i'm not joking it was you know when boxers you know when boxers do like that entertainment thing before yeah where they're like you know like iron each other up yeah it was like that over a parking space in the school wow yeah who won um the bigger guy I don't know.

4:37Georgia: Or no, the richer guy, the richer guy. Yeah, the richer guy would have won. But it was literally like, who's the big dog here? It's me. No, it's me. And we're just literally watching, looking at them, thinking, you absolute idiots, because it's not even hard to park at school. Right. It's not even difficult. Like, there's a full car park, and there's always space. There is no scramble for parking spaces.

5:02Dolly Jones: No, this isn't about a parking spot, George.

5:04Georgia: It is so funny.

5:07Dolly Jones: This is who has got the biggest cajones in the room.

5:11Georgia: Yeah, and we're all thinking, you're like absolute mugs. What are you doing?

5:15Dolly Jones: So I've hosted so many of these charity auctions in the past, and it is so wonderful. It's like a David Attenborough documentary when silverbacks are like battling it out. And the way to do it, which I've always done, has been like, you're going to let that guy over there with the tiny penis beat you. and then this guy stands up and he's like no and then you get another two grand and then you're like what that guy slightly balding shit suit

5:42Georgia: oh my god next year I want to do the auction I'm going to get all your tips because that is what it was about it was like a I don't know what happened everyone sat normally like for you know the dinner ha ha ha smile whatever oh the auction comes out all of the worst sides of everyone's characters oh it's brilliant it was unbelievable to watch James was like, shall I just, shall I just like throw one in just to throw them off? No, because we'll end up being lumbered with the parking space that we don't want. So let's not do that. My favourite thing to say ever was, what, you're going to let that guy over there

6:19Dolly Jones: who told me earlier on that he wants to take your wife out to dinner. The other guy just stands up and goes, 10 grand. It's like, you're so easy, you idiots.

6:30Georgia: Oh, brilliant. And did you make any new friends that night? No, but I saw someone that I went to school with, which is wild. We should get her on the podcast. Yeah, maybe we won't do that. She knows too much. She does. She definitely does. I was really naughty when I was at that school as well, so let's not do that. She's probably looked at me like, God, I thought you'd be in prison. What are you doing here?

6:54Dolly Jones: Actually, no. I run a very successful business and podcast. Thanks very much. George, you started the podcast by saying nice of you to show up. Would you like to tell the listeners why you would start off by saying that?

7:03Georgia: Yeah, no, it was just because Zoe missed one day of recording and we happened to have recorded this episode on that day. I'm sorry I missed it. Yeah.

7:13Dolly Jones: It was a beautiful conversation though, right?

7:14Georgia: It was a really good chat. And we were talking a lot about going back to work after you become a mum. and the guests had interviewed I think over 500 different people you know talking about their experience in going back and what worked and what didn't and how they felt and also all different roles as well so there was someone that she interviewed who was in the army and what that looked like and it was you know what it was just a really interesting chat because I think lots of people obviously on social media have you know gone freelance after they've gone back to work or made a career out of you know doing something for themselves but you rarely hear stories from people in jobs where actually it isn't quite set up for coming back after you've had a baby you know like even things like you wouldn't think of like the lady who was in the army couldn't fit back in her uniform and what that brought up so um yeah it was a really interesting chat and the guest is an absolute like powerhouse you know it was the editor of vogue.com like She, yeah, I mean, she's been there and she's really juggled a big career after having kids.

8:23Georgia: So I cannot wait to have a listen to it. George, who did you speak to today? I chatted to Dolly Jones.

8:34Georgia: Joining us on the podcast today, former Vogue.com editor and author of Leaving the Ladder Down, it's Dolly Jones. Welcome, Dolly. Lovely to see you. Thanks for having me. You too. Now, it is just me. I think, you know, the audience will probably have got that today. But this is a conversation Zoe and I are like so passionate about. And, you know, we started MBM careers because of, you know, the whole experience of going back to work and everything we'd heard from different parents. So I'm really excited to have this chat with you today.

9:03Dolly Jones: So am I. I've been listening to your podcast so much and I'm like shouting at my phone like I want to get involved. So it's lovely to be here.

9:09Georgia: But before we get into the chat, we always ask our guests how their mornings have been. And you've already alluded to the fact you have no school run now. Oh, my God. So talk to her. It's changed my life.

9:17Dolly Jones: Literally, the last couple of weeks, my daughter, who's 11, has started, she's allowed to cycle to school alone. So it was that whole kind of transition of me being terrified of, like, even though we've taught her how to ride her bike and all of the safety and everything. But I had to follow her for a couple of weeks, which infuriated her, but just to make sure she was doing all the right stuff. And then suddenly she went off the other day. She's thrilled. And I was like, oh, empty house, 8 o 'clock in the morning. And I wasn't expecting it. suddenly I feel like wow yeah not not I'm not feeling empty nasty I'm thinking yes I can work straight away it's because you realize actually that the school run however lovely it is or however hard work it is depending on the day it you're quite tired when you get back from the school run you've been up early you've done breakfast you've done everybody and then you come do a journey or whether it's walking or whatever you do and come back and you're like oh god then you've got to start work yeah suddenly that whole energy is now going to go just to me just to work so yeah So it's been good.

10:10Dolly Jones: I had a meeting actually down elsewhere in town first.

10:13Georgia: And you can almost start earlier as well, can't you, when you don't have the school run? Yeah. I know the few occasions where my kids have been away or staying with my parents or whatever, and I'm getting up and getting on with my dad like, wow, look at all this time I have. It doesn't feel like even, my school run is like 10 minutes. It's really not like a big deal. But there is something in that. Yes, there is. Because, I don't know, you need a little bit of winding down time after.

10:40Dolly Jones: But it's also, it's all the prep, it's making sure they've got everything. So maybe it's combined with the fact that mine are a little bit older and they still forget things all the time. And I have to mind, but, you know, there's a level of independence that happens, I feel, quite suddenly. That now, as I say, all the energy that was going into their needs, they don't have those needs. So I'm now getting all the energy back. It's going to be amazing.

11:00Georgia: Yeah, yeah. And I think as well, like, this is the whole thing with parenting is, you know, we talk a lot about going back to work after having kids actually it is a small period of time where you are adjusting you know like you adjust to nursery then you adjust to school then you adjust to secondary school and there it's not just going back to work it's there's all these different sort of like times where things have to change and shift and you know we have to evolve all the time I remember when my son who's at secondary school year eight now and he went to

11:34Dolly Jones: secondary school for year seven so you know year and a half ago whatever it was and I thought I'd been told that when they're in year seven they took themselves to school yeah but we have always walked to their primary school and his secondary school involved a bus or a tube and I thought day one right off you go I mean he was totally not confident and I was totally not confident letting him go and actually it was quite a long transition now he's like whatever see you later and doesn't mind if the tube breaks down or the bus terminates and he can make his way that's a year and a half after starting secondary.

12:02Dolly Jones: So I keep saying to people with their children going to secondary, by the way, don't expect it to be on day one. Maybe it was naive of me, but it's like they take their time and then they're confident and they're away. But for those first few months, actually, it's, you know, he came back, he'd left his wallet and his house keys and his phone, he just has a Nokia, all on the bus. And the bus, luckily somebody else on the bus on his first day noticed and they got the bus driver to stop and the bus driver came off and said, I think this is all yours. Poor little guy. because he was just so anxious and so trying to remember everything that he forgot the works.

12:33Georgia: Yeah, and also you don't think of things. You just said like the tube breaking down or the bus going wrong. You don't think of that. You think, you know, this is what you do. You get on the bus and then you get off, but you never prepare them for if the bus diverts or breaks down or any of those scenarios. And you don't want to because you don't want to scare them.

12:51Dolly Jones: No. But it just, and now as I say, it's absolutely fine. It was quite a quick learning for him, so now he's confident. But just those first few weeks, I was like, oh no. And of course, it's the first term, it's the autumn term, so it's getting dark quite soon. So you're letting your little child go off and, you know, you've got all this fear. So you get there, but it's just not as quick as I thought it would be, as I was expecting.

13:10Georgia: Yeah, absolutely. Now, you're coming on today to talk to us about your book, Leaving the Ladder Down. Do you want to just tell us a little bit about what, you know, what prompted you to write the book?

13:20Dolly Jones: Yes, thank you. So I was working at Vogue. It was 2012 when I had my first baby. Went off for about six months to have, just over six months to have maternity leave for him. came back and I didn't talk about him and I didn't talk to any of the girls and it was a magazine made by women for women predominantly and nobody really talked about their kids I was working alongside women I didn't know how old their kids were how many kids they had what their kids names were and nobody said don't but it felt like it wasn't the right thing to do it wasn't professional and I wasn't the only person who felt that um you know we were all there being professional and therefore we didn't talk about having our kids and it was weird and then I was pregnant again and I was promoted to help run Condé Nast which owns Vogue is the publishing house that owns Vogue and it also publishes GQ and Vanity Fair and House and Garden and various others about 10 others and they promoted me to run all of the help run all of the digital operations at Condé Nast and I was quite heavily pregnant I was promoted by a man who was younger than me and he didn't have kids and when he offered me the job I was like I mean I'd love it but look at me I'm giant I'm about to burst and he said I don't really care I'm not really interested in that I'm interested in what you've done and how you can help me do the rest of it which was refreshing and unusual um but it was everyone else's reaction going what you've been promoted when you're pregnant they just thought I was kind of making my way towards the exit because it's my second baby and all of that anyway the next job big corporate really professional job lots of big kind of commercially tight meetings it was much more about money making and I would occasionally see a woman and there would be evidence that she was also a mother there would be I would say there was somebody on a train and she had a Paw Patrol sticker on her on the sole of her shoe and then I would broach the subject quite nervously and once you start to talk to people about their child care arrangements or whatever transition their child happens to be going through it pours out of them because most of the time they're not really talking about it and so then I was going home in a taxi one day I'd been at a really cool meeting with I can't remember who but properly voguing fashiony people and I so therefore I'd stay in the meeting meeting a bit late in a cab on the way home because I was too late to get the tube and the children were at school we had to call the schools different pickups permissions all of that stuff sat in the back of the cab thinking oh god what have I you know what if I dropped what have I missed and the cab driver turned around because we were in stationary traffic and she said there's no guilt like a working mother's guilt is there and I was like oh my god thank god for you thank you for your empathy and then I interviewed her for the book because I said I'm writing a book about this what do you think and so she was fascinating about when she'd studied the knowledge with her twins who were 18 months old and she had older teenagers and why she'd kept working what work had done for her how she'd managed it all and so I wanted to write so then I wanted to interview people from every profession so I've got more than 200 women in there from literally fighter jet pilots actresses medics lawyers beauticians the full works trying to all have a conversation about the joy in it the triumph in it yes the challenge but no woman in that book says she regrets doing it we all love love it because of those brilliant days when the kids are happy work's going well sun's shining and you just feel euphoric um but we kind of have a reputation as working mums for being a bit stressed and a bit hassled and our kids are suffering and our relationships are breaking down and yeah there are all those challenges but we're doing a brilliant job every day and I wanted people to be able to aspire to it if they if they wanted to yeah it's so interesting that you say

16:51Georgia: about people not talking about their kids at work because when I had I was actually quite young I was 26 when I fell pregnant with my first which is quite young now yes it's not really in the grand scheme of things but it is and I was working in fashion in London and no one in my team like was even talking about getting pregnant or any of that everyone was really excited and you know but I just think they assumed that that would be it like I wouldn't come back because no one had seen anyone do it before um and I don't think I got the memo that we shouldn't talk about kids Good for you.

17:29Dolly Jones: I'm glad to hear it.

17:30Georgia: I don't know if that was naivety, what that was, but it actually opened the doors for me to speak to so many other women across the business that I never would have done before, having kids or falling pregnant. And I think they probably had felt that for a long time, that they couldn't talk about it. I wonder why that is, because I'm sure people talk about fiancées and getting married and all of that kind of thing, but why not kids?

17:57Dolly Jones: it's weird I mean I'm just 50 so it's almost a generational thing people you know are beginning to talk about it more I think but a girl came onto my team and about seven she was brilliant at her job she loved it she worked 24 7 and she became pregnant about seven months in and she was really like oh god Dolly I'm really sorry I was her boss at that stage and I was like I'm not sorry it's fine I mean I was you know look at the age you are it's not really a surprise yeah um but I was a bit reticent to talk ask too many questions because it's personal yeah and I knew I had this um thing that you know HR you can get yourself in hot water you can you know it can be illegal you're not sure what you can say you shouldn't assume she's coming back or assume she's not or how long she wants but luckily she she'd been out for a blood test because I said by the way don't ever be embarrassed I think you'll need loads of medical appointments I've never been pregnant so I don't know but I remember my mum being pregnant she was always in that hospital so let me know don't be embarrassed like whatever you need and so she went for a blood test one day And she came back and she came to speak to me and she nearly fainted.

18:53Dolly Jones: So I sort of sat her on the floor and I sat down next to her and said, well, this has kind of broken the ice. Like, how much support do you need? I don't want to ask you questions because I don't want to offend you. I need to be led by you. How much do you want to share about your plans, about your paternity leave? How should we get your cover organised? Do you want to choose somebody or do you want me to choose somebody? How much do you want to stay in touch while you're away? And it was just, you know, completely open. but I think those two things people you know people are going through so much at work that they can't talk about they're going through fertility trials and some people want to talk about it and some people really don't want to talk about it and then there's the the assumption of it being legally tricky but there's a whole part in the book about how to broach difficult conversations like like that because you know people don't know what to say when somebody comes

19:43Georgia: back to work when they've been bereaved yes so true and often they don't say anything and actually the person who's been bereaved really I think generally speaking wants at least to be asked

19:54Dolly Jones: how they want it handled as opposed to just it not being mentioned at all and the worst thing in that scenario is the person doing the asking might embarrass themselves by saying the wrong thing but like that's okay you can be embarrassed that person's been bereaved like they've got more on their mind than whether or not you're embarrassed so I'm trying to encourage just people to be able to work out how to speak to each other because we're human things are going

20:16Georgia: or human stuff is going on at work yeah it shouldn't necessarily always be behind the scenes and that's such a good point actually because we so often hear from the people who are pregnant and having to talk to their employer about about it but you don't so much hear from the employer or the manager or whatever not knowing how to broach it with the person who is pregnant because I get that like there are so many weird rules of not being able to ask this and not being able to ask that and it is it is actually a really weird gray area yeah and I get that it's there to protect people of course but there has to be like a human there has to be because also each of our individual

20:58Dolly Jones: experiences of having every individual baby and every individual labor is so different yeah and if somebody I would say if somebody went off and had a car accident and then took some time off work to recover and then came back and they weren't fully recovered you'd be like oh do we need to get your chair changed do we need to change the position of your chair so your broken leg isn't sticking into the corridor like yeah what do you need but with a pregnancy and a birth and a baby being born it's have a cupcake before you go out well done have a lovely break and when you come back maybe see a baby photo and then just get on with it there's no um reference to it which is an odd one because it doesn't have to be difficult it just might be different yeah didn't

21:33Georgia: undo a bit of a transition yeah exactly you mentioned you've spoken to over 200 women yes

21:39Dolly Jones: yeah what did you learn from them oh gosh so much I mean mainly that book was about 15 times as long because everyone talked to me for over an hour so they're talking about their whole lives their relationship their you know ability to get pregnant then being pregnant then the birth and then their whole career which all of them you know well had either transitioned through different careers or pivoted after babies or all sorts of different examples so I feel like I did them a real disservice because I wanted to include all of their stuff in there mainly that people love doing it there's so much validation for people's own individual identity so however they have navigated all the changes that parenthood brings or trying to become a parent brings they were so pleased they'd kept going um and just there's just such triumph in it I mean there's one woman who had a baby of about two and then she was pregnant again and she said to her husband one morning as they're getting ready oh god I don't feel very well and then she collapsed and in fact she was pregnant with twins unknowingly one of the twins was ectopic and it had burst so she was then you know about to die she nearly died and then she went back to work after after her recovery I can't remember how long and then she was still pregnant with the other twin but she didn't know how he would be because of the huge operation to to sort the fallopian thing so all of the rest of that pregnancy she was very very worried she had this toddler and all of this pressure and strain and then she gave birth to him and he was fine and she went back to work after six weeks like I'm sorry and then her boss she was in the bank and she um he said look I think it's best if you don't tell anyone I will give you anything you need to support you but it will affect your bonus if you had lots of time off if they think that you've got you know problems this and that so he was trying to support her and she appreciated that he was a nice person and he was trying to support her but nobody spoke to her about it this massive sort of multitudinous trauma that she was living through and she now looks back and says I wish we talked about how to tell people so that I could have got the support from HR that would have been offered if she had come clean about it and just he could have been supportive that actually from a mental health point of view people knowing the right people knowing at the right time talking to you the right way might be better than just like let's be quiet because she's held it in and when we talked she couldn't stop crying because it was you know 10 years ago and she hadn't been sort of helped through it at the time yeah so the idea of finding the right context in which to talk about your experience and it's so different for everyone I'm not just saying go back to work and talk about your labor all the time but I think it's really important there's another woman who was in the army she had a little boy and then twins again actually and her both survived one twin was very ill her husband was in Afghanistan at war she was starving herself to get back into her army kit because she'd taken a lot of time off before the twins were born because she'd got so big she couldn't fit in her uniform and she was just so depleted that she only lasted another nine months back at work they trained her so much they invested in her so much she was brilliant at her job and if only she'd gone to the army and said look just give me like another nine months to get my life straight I'll be back completely and utterly normal but she felt such pressure and she didn't feel comfortable to talk and ask for what she needed and so she just assumed she was no longer welcome and she left and I think often you know nine months is nothing in the grand scheme of things and employers might might not but they might be open to being more supportive if we can just feel more confident or find the right support to feel confident to talk about it yeah because that that it's a tricky um line actually isn't it between some people really like to have a professional

25:21Georgia: persona and they don't want people to know about their personal lives and you know that is fine like I totally get that I'm in some ways I have a different in my like what my day job a bit more of a persona maybe than I do like at home or at you know I've kind of learned what that is but I still talk about personal things maybe not that personal but I guess I've never been through something really traumatic and so I've never thought about how that would present itself yes at work and I think that is a difficult line I guess for a lot of people like how much do you want to talk about it how much like how does that impact I don't know it's just it's really interesting to hear you know we're not talking about straightforward situations no we're talking about individuals and it's just learning to communicate yes yeah and having the confidence

26:21Dolly Jones: to do it yeah and also I think you know I went into my first maternity leave and a girlfriend of mine always makes me laugh she talks about all I could hear was the whir of the washing machine you know that kind of loneliness you can feel on maternity leave for some people some people absolutely love it I didn't I was very much the whir of the washing machine yeah and I felt really really guilty and sort of ashamed and I was so and I so lucky to have the baby and so loved him so therefore you're like what's wrong with me why am I worrying about the wearer of the washing machine and being bored and lonely and actually that lots of people feel like that and lots of people feel blissfully happy and so it's but there's a sort of shame in it there's a shame in working parenthood there's a shame that you're having a baby so therefore you're not being professional and the shame that you've got a job so you're not really being very maternal and so you're kind of bound in all this kind of guilt and I'm not doing the right thing whereas actually we're all doing it it's really brilliant people are to do the two jobs you know the mothering the parenting job and any other job it's really amazing we should really talk about the combination of that because you've got to be so tenacious and resilient and quick thinking and flexible all of which are skills that are really really important for paid colleagues yeah um so actually I want to instead of you know replace any shame replace any apology oh sorry I'm having another baby or sorry I'm in maternity you know I need a bit longer.

27:38Dolly Jones: Take the apology away because it's really magnificent and I want people to kind of take that confidence into work.

27:45Georgia: We'll be right back after this short break.

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29:23Dolly Jones: I sold my car in Carvana last night. Well, that's cool.

29:26Georgia: No, you don't understand. It went perfectly. Real offer, down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong.

29:32Dolly Jones: So, what's the problem?

29:34Georgia: That is the problem. Nothing in my life goes to smoothie. I'm waiting for the catch.

29:37Dolly Jones: Maybe there's no catch.

29:38Georgia: That's exactly what a catch would want me to think. Wow, you need to relax.

29:42Dolly Jones: I need to knock on wood. Do we have wood? Is this table wood? I think it's laminate. Okay, yeah, that's good. That's close enough.

29:47Georgia: Car selling without a catch. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up these may apply.

29:56Georgia: Welcome back to this episode of Made by Mamas. Now, where were we? I've said this a few times before. I am definitely not the same person as I was before. I'm way more ambitious. I'm way more to the point when it comes to work. Yeah, I'm better at deadlines. Time management is so much better. There have been so many positives that have come from being a parent and having to learn to be more organised, all of these things. But we never talk about them. We see sketches of the working mum rushing to the school gates. Porridge in her hair. Yeah, and all a bit dishevelled. But actually the reality is so many working mums, in particular working parents, are the complete opposite.

30:45Georgia: they are you know that they are organized to the like to a t because they have to be schedules are you know like nothing you would have ever seen before and they have to keep it like keep it ticking over all of the time and that in itself is a crazy skill yeah and if you paid somebody else

31:06Dolly Jones: to do it for you you'd have to pay them a lot of money i was listening to you the other day talking about axel going to a new school and i was thinking all of the different ramifications and implications for you making the decision leaving an old school leaving all the parent group there a new school is it the right thing will it be long term right for him long term short term in the transition it's a whole psychological game for all of you to work out let alone the practicalities of where it is and the uniform and all of that kind of stuff forms and the guilt you'll feel if it goes wrong and you'll blame yourself whether it's your fault or not and all of that again you couldn't you couldn't pay somebody to do that and there's all this huge discussion at the moment well two big discussions one is you know screens for children and the other is this you know the whole of you know the question mark over masculinity and how we're bringing our boys up to know whether they're meant to be one thing or the other or how we're doing that that's a huge psychological strategic intellectual conversation that the people bringing the children up are doing we don't credit them with such huge pressure yeah and it's really interesting and you need to do a lot of reading about it and it's a really if that was a work problem and you were in a boardroom brainstorming that would be a high level conversation so I

32:15Georgia: that's so true and I've never thought about it like that but also you know axle changing schools is you know I guess quite a normal thing to do but choosing a school like especially a senior school wow what goes in like the things that go into that having to learn admissions processes like I'm learning so much now speaking to other parents learning you know logistics learning you You know, which school has better, you know, pastoral care. You're right. It's a project, a work project in itself. And none of us give ourselves any credit for. Ourselves any credit. Yeah.

32:51Dolly Jones: And also I think to take on, you know, if you're going to become a working parent to go, right, if you were going to do two jobs, paid jobs, you'd really think about how am I going to do this? What do I need in order to get the transitions right between the two and all of that? and so there are you know I didn't want to write anything about guilt in the book because I think it's such a kind of infectious you know I'm guilty no I'm guilty no I'm guilty and we all kind of you know breed it in each other but every time I did broach the subject with the interviews the answer was immediately oh my god the guilt I was like right clearly we have to talk about this some people don't feel it some people adamantly say I'm not going to feel guilty I'm paying the mortgage why should I yeah some people are really good and say I'm going to um guilt is if I feel guilty it's a red flag I just need to do something differently I need to clear the diary a bit and just really spend some focus time on the children to kind of replenish my feeling of being a good person um and some people which was more my thing I would just take one thing to focus on to do really really well and mine was really weird mine was from the moment they were born I was concerned about how they would learn about sex oh right because I had been at boarding school and I did not have a very good sex education and so it was funny we had a nanny at one point and I was buying all these big like picture books the children were unable to read like they were teeny weeny and and my nanny was like why are you buying all these weird books and they were called things like hair in funny places or mummy laid an egg all this stupid stuff that's got nothing to do with how babies are made and um but I was reading all around the subject kind of go when they're old enough at what point do we broach the subject at what point is right and wrong and so I knew that once they're you know of a certain age I would be educated myself enough as a parent to pass on this what I felt was very important knowledge because I knew that there's a cut-off point of children now you know they're 13 and 14 they're like don't come in yeah yeah um so some people teach their kids to swim some people make sure they cook you know nutritious food I was quite weird and I bought loads of children's education books but those things made you think if I'm being crap in every other department there are one or two things that I really you know think are important that I can that you make sure I feel good about yeah I think as well like I'd so many

35:05Georgia: of like my sort of peers at the moment have got themselves into this cycle that we are you know all working really hard so then we throw ourselves our kids into loads of extracurricular activities because I think as a maybe traditionally if you're a working parent you couldn't do those things whereas now with like flexible working you can do those things but what then happens is you are exhausted because you know you might pick them up from school at four o 'clock or 4 15 or whatever and then you are dropping them to one club sitting working dropping them to another club sitting working then getting home and being exhausted but in your mind you're like oh look at me I'm a working parent but they're still doing paddle, swimming, you know, football, karate.

35:55And I'm so guilty of it but if I took it away it would make me feel bad.

36:01Georgia: So I'm just like, you know what, that's my thing. That's like, I feel good about doing that. Yeah, good for you. It might be exhausting me but that's my sex education.

36:11Dolly Jones: Yeah, yeah, good for you. yeah and also the thing is they they tend to love it i mean if you're taking your children into karate kicking and screaming that would be a different thing because they because they were somehow making you feel good about yourself yeah but it tends to be the children really love all of that stuff so therefore you know lucky them good for you it's making you feel good and them feel good yeah and also people are different some kids don't want to do anything some kids do not want to go and do a class and you know we're all different all the parents are different but we have this thing i think i put in the book although i edited it so much because it's so long might not in there that you we assume we're all really different so I'll assume you know you're younger than me so oh god you're probably doing a better job because you're you know taking a better approach this or that or the other but somebody I said you know some people used to turn up to the school gate and they'd be in their PE kit and I'd be there in my Vogue kit heels and whatever and I think oh they hate me because I'm not with my kids that much and I look a bit like stupid and fashion and I've got the wrong they'll think I've got the wrong priorities but the woman there in her gym kit a is not necessarily not going to work she's just got up in her gym kit to get her kids to school and then she's going to go off and do whatever job she was so I shouldn't assume she's not working but also she thinks I hate her because she doesn't work and we're assuming all of this judgment of each other it's like no actually nobody's doing judge nobody's judging each other we're all just judging ourselves based on what we perceive you might be thinking of me whereas you're happily going about your life you don't really give me a second thought so it's there's a lot in there about female relationships and how they're the best possible support throughout all of these transitions but also about self-doubt and judgment and how often I don't want to blame the women for doing it because we're taking on enough but sometimes we can be kinder to ourselves and

37:44Georgia: not assume judgment yeah what have you learned about sort of mum friend groups you know you're nearly at the end of primary school so I think particularly that is where they take place isn't it you know you kind of meet your mum mates in primary school I guess well I'm trying quite hard

38:00Dolly Jones: to keep some mum mates going in secondary school are you yeah because that's good because children are given phones tend to be um not my son my poor son only still has his nokia still a phone still his phone yeah he would not agree with it but um and I said you know to balance that out I will make sure that you have friends over our house as much as you possibly can because obviously I've you know murdered his social life by not giving him an iPhone yet um and so I am trying because I think it's quite scary the kids will start experimenting with alcohol in the next few years they'll start to do quite grown-up stuff and I want to have the parents phone numbers just in case we know they're all safe um so I'm quite enjoying that that's quite successful but it's been a different effort to when they're at primary school yeah um and mum friends are like marmite people assume in the book that oh god one woman says i just did not want mum mates i just thought they were going to be dicks and that really made me laugh and then she was you know absolutely wrong she was like actually the first day in nursery i was so pleased i bumped into another woman who said oh my god i feel so bad leaving my child here should we go and get gin and tonic and actually they've become best friends for ages um and so i i loved going to monkey music you know I loved it I would even sometimes take time off work to just say to the nanny you stay at home I want to take the kids to monkey music I don't know why I just really loved it and I interviewed a monkey music teacher in the book and she said a hundred percent it's more for the mums than it is for the kids oh totally yeah to give them a bit of sanity and bonding time with with the mum friends um so yeah I mean I think gosh you need them you need them but again you assume they're different to you because they look different they dress differently whatever it is and people kept saying don't assume you know don't assume anything about the other women at all because you have so much

39:38Georgia: more in common than you don't and that's the that it's being brave to kind of overcome the fact that

39:44Dolly Jones: they look a bit nerve-wracking or scary or dress differently and actually they're going to be going oh my god me too much yeah and i think there's actually quite like there's some negative

39:52Georgia: connotations as well but like with getting in the mum group like lots of people are it's so busy you know like oh have you got time I don't need any more friends you know you hear all of this kind of stuff as well yeah but you're right like I think when I had when I my first my first went to school Axel it was locked down and um life was really different everyone was working from home pretty much so there were mums and dads at the school gates like every day you know it was it It was quite idyllic, really. But no one was living their normal life, normal routine. And I think everyone formed sort of friendships and would talk quite easily.

40:33Georgia: And it was nice. And everyone was kind of up for the connections because they'd lost out on connections and, like, all of that kind of thing. And that was really great. And then with my daughter, when she started, everyone was back into their, you know, tunnel vision, breakfast, after school club. And it wasn't there so much. Thankfully, I already knew a few of the mums from the before, so it was fine. But you don't realise how much you need them. And it's not just about, you know, is it PE today or, you know, what's World Book Day? It's the things that are going on in the classroom that you need to sort of sound out.

41:11Georgia: That's what I find. I'm not, I don't really care if I've forgotten two pounds for, you know, World Book Day or whatever. That doesn't really get me. I don't feel bad if I've forgotten that. that's the ball I can drop if I really had to. But the stuff that I want to know is, I didn't know that this had happened in the classroom. I didn't know that they were saying these words. I didn't know this person had got these views and they've been telling other kids about it. That's the stuff that I really want to know about so then I can have my own conversations at home. And I think that is probably where the emphasis should be rather than, you know, has such and such forgotten their PE kit, oh I've lost my jumper and all of that stuff where yeah it's boring but then it's just practical

41:55Dolly Jones: but it's not a priority necessarily I think everybody so one of one woman in the book said you've got to decide and they change throughout your kind of parenting experience in life probably but some balls are glass balls and you don't want to drop them and some are like whatever they can you can drop them and for her she said you know for me baking like whatever I know I haven't baked for ages but yeah you know all of our mental health and our physical health clearly is a glass that you that you don't want to um to drop but there was a woman when my son was at nursery and she had four children and she couldn't believe I worked and she said to me it's so it's so unnatural it's just biology that women shouldn't work after they have children and I am not I am not of that I don't agree with her and I thought I want to slap you uh because I'm literally dropping my kid and running off and he was happy as Larry and this nursery was really adorable and the staff for brilliant and all of that but I really was annoyed and then I thought I'm not going to be annoyed that's her position that's her life I don't know how she was brought up or what went on but it's great because she's always there so if I'm ever late for work I'm just going to call her and say can you pick mine up too and just use it to my advantage and she's she was nice it was a I don't know why she decided to tell me that there was something I always think it's someone like

43:03Georgia: it's what's going on in their life so it might be that she's been telling herself that you know she's been telling herself that because either she doesn't want to go back to work or she can't or she'd had a bad experience and so she has told herself you know what we're not supposed to do that anyway yeah and it's probably not yeah you're all right she wasn't being aggressive she genuinely

43:24Dolly Jones: thought it but there's a chapter in the book called end the mother wars yeah because mother wars is a an actual phrase which i hadn't heard really until i started to research the book and it's women who have children versus women without children women who have professional jobs versus women without professional jobs and it's like this is ridiculous and it's a you know without getting too heavily into the patriarchy it's a it's a symptom of that and so and and they're just there isn't there isn't that much difference and I've got people in the book who um who didn't have children tried to have children and didn't end up having them and I've got women in the book who um actively said no thanks I definitely don't want them and how has that you know affected their their journey through through life and again they've got so much in common and one woman Donna Ida who's the jeans designer yeah and she's like absolutely not never ever wanted them a hundred percent no but I wanted to run my business and I'm so maternal to the women I work with I'm so maternal to my god children to my sisters to my friends and so it's like even you know even that would be a stark difference woman with children versus women without and it's rubbish there's again loads more in common than not yeah and also just because

44:34Georgia: somebody chooses not to have children it doesn't mean they understand understand people who do have children because I think that's you know probably I would have been exactly the same in fact I was exactly the same when I came back to work after having Axel um there the lady who was sort of my manager didn't have children at the time and she was explaining to me that I couldn't come back in the capacity that I wanted to and that I needed to do this and I remember going home really angry like she doesn't understand because she hasn't got children and maybe she didn't you know who knows but essentially she was just coming at it from a business case you know and I probably didn't look at it like that I looked at it as a personal thing and maybe it wasn't and we anyway we came to a solution and it was all fine but my immediate thought was well you don't get it because you haven't got kids but now like you just said there are so many reasons for people not having children and it doesn't mean that they don't like other women who have children and they don't understand they might have a sister who's got kids and they totally understand or you know there I think there are enough conversations and I think people do understand now that you know if you've got children and a career there are certain sort of benefits and negatives and yeah and everyone's kind of just trying to figure it out yeah and everybody's different yeah there's a woman in

45:54Dolly Jones: the book who doesn't have children and she said I was perceived at it was perceived that I was being given the kind of higher profile work in that particular I think she was working for the government and she said I was perceived to be getting this you know high profile work because I didn't have children so I could work longer hours but actually what that meant was I did work longer hours and I would get home and I would just kind of drink wine for an hour to kind of you know wind down yeah and then I would get up at you know whatever o 'clock in the morning really early to go and keep working hard again so for her own well-being actually it wasn't a benefit at all that she didn't have kids even though she was perceived to be having a kind of better more glamorous time um so it's more about asking and being curious about people's individual experiences because mine and yours would be completely different even though we're both mothers and both working um and it's and it's fun to it's fun to have those conversations and to learn and I think that I mean I wanted to when I was at Condé Nast I wanted because I'd been promoted when I was pregnant and that was a bit like oh weird um to other people I was really happy about it but um I then came back and had this very supportive boss and I wanted to be the person that when people became pregnant that they could be told about me go to me for a bit of I don't know mentoring or coaching or just a friend to say this is what it might feel like it might not but if it does call me and we can talk about it and while you're off call me if you want and before you come because people are like I'm terrified about going back and they use the word terrified that shouldn't that shouldn't make them feel terrified it shouldn't be terrifying you should be able to be helped and supported lots of other women have done it um it should just be a series of conversations um but it was very much regarded as me getting involved in stuff I wasn't needing to Dolly you've got a big job you've got a huge team just get on just get on with that and I thought no then this needs to be a formality in in all businesses really people need to not feel a terrified or be wrong-footed ashamed yeah you know embarrassed um or wrong because people have been having babies forever and we need them to keep doing it otherwise we won't have any businesses

47:49Georgia: yeah exactly what tips you know do do you pass on to people who are going back to work

47:55Dolly Jones: uh the number one when people quite often ring and say i'm terrified yeah and i say the terror is it's much more terrifying thinking about it than doing it once you're doing it yeah you'll very quickly feel quite invincible and of course there'll be days when you need to solve problems and be agile and whatever but that's the same in every life um and i also say on a practical level practice practice the child care before you go i'm afraid we saved up and i had my nanny for a month before we started we actually quite quickly moved at one point then into nurseries but i practiced going into work, getting dressed, leaving the baby, number one was what I practiced, to just make sure, as I put in the book, I wasn't a childcare virgin on my first day back because I didn't want to be crying in the loo and people often are.

48:45Georgia: We'll be right back after this short break.

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50:24Georgia: Welcome back to this episode of Made by Mamas. Now, where were we? Someone came onto the podcast like years and years and years ago and said that that's what they'd done. They had started nursery like two weeks before they went back to work and they did like the, you know, the commute and got all of those like, it's actually not just logistical, it's actually emotional stuff out of the way as well. and also like you say you might think oh we'll have a nanny because such and such has a nanny and then you might actually really not like it that might not work for you or you might think oh everyone goes to nursery we'll go to nursery then something comes up about the nursery that you don't like you don't feel comfortable you've got a bit of time and I know listen we all know child care is really expensive um but yeah I agree with you it's one of those things that

51:11Dolly Jones: if you can just get it in place yeah just but to your point I wanted to go back full-time I loved my job I did not want to change it in any way I wrongly assumed in those days that if I went part time or worked less that I was kind of the slippery slope down out of a professional kind of status which was which was not wrong and I've learned that from the book there are so many different ways of of navigating it um but my husband kept saying to me because I was going to go back full-time and I'm worried is the right thing is the wrong thing and he said you've just got to remember you can change your mind you can change your mind if you go for a nanny and that turns out to be wrong nurseries are great and in the book people have tried all different types and changed their mind and pivoted and whatever so that's the kind of mantra when you're about to go back it's fine if it's scary if it's horrible if it's uncomfortable if anyone's upset you can change your mind and that kind of takes away the fear and pressure a bit yeah definitely and also

52:02Georgia: I find it really interesting to hear how other people navigate it yeah there's actually a lady on social media called The Working Mum Life, I think her name is. And she works for Google and she works full time. And she does these posts and they're so simple, but I find it really interesting. And actually it's something I might start sharing as well. And she basically, at the beginning of every week, she goes through how she's juggling the childcare with her husband and what she's doing. And it's so good. It's like, oh, that's how they're doing it. So she has, they both every week have one day where they don't have to do any childcare.

52:40Georgia: So they don't have to do any pickups, drop offs. They don't have to do anything. And that is the night when if they want to stay late at work, they stay late at work. If they want to meet a friend after work for dinner or a drink, that's when they do that. And they've almost got this agreement. It's so simple. It's so simple. But I just, I'd never thought of that. No. I've been having this conversation on this podcast for like eight, nine years and no one's ever said that before. Oh, amazing. So you should talk to other people as well and find solutions. Like I didn't grow up with a nanny. No one I knew really had a nanny, I don't think, growing up.

53:13Georgia: I think I thought that was just for like people who had to travel for work or in my mind. Then we moved house. I couldn't get my son into nursery. And we had to find like a nanny. I didn't even want to say the word nanny. I used to say childminder because somehow that's better. I don't know how that's better. and it wasn't as expensive as nursery. It was actually cheaper than nursery.

53:36Dolly Jones: Especially when you get two children and they're both at nursery and then it's cheaper. So that's the kind of assumption isn't always right.

53:41Georgia: But people just don't talk about these things or nanny shares. That's another thing that nobody talks about. You might have a neighbour who has got a similar schedule to you and you both need to leave the house at half seven. A nanny could come and then take all of the kids to school and they do till nine o 'clock and then they come back at 2.45. There are so many different options that no one ever speaks about. No, it's weird. And also, I think we don't speak about it because it kind of feels boring.

54:11Dolly Jones: It's boring, yeah. We're being a bit mundane and we're being a bit kind of dull and mumsy. But that was the thing. Like the army officer I was telling you about earlier, when she started, it was on Zoom, that call, and I didn't know how she was a friend of a friend. Like this whole book was everyone was like, oh, speak to me, but yes, speak to my friend. Oh, I know this person. And it just went, oh, it would have gone forever if I'd let it. But so we were on Zoom and it was during lockdown. and when she started to talk about her experience she started to really sob and I mean they weren't all crying interviews there was a lot of laughing as well but this one was a crying one and I said do you want to stop should we just take a break because she was obviously you know feeling overwhelmed and she said no actually I really want to talk about it I haven't spoken about it I don't think in the last 10 years and it was sweet because her husband popped his head around the screen and said don't worry I'm going to make her a cup of tea and he said I've never heard her talk like this I think it's really cathartic so please keep going and so you know that was on a heavy emotional level but all of these things actually child care is really complicated if it goes wrong like the wheels fall off the bus yeah so and yet we all sort of carry on doing it because we feel like we should be able to do it without without raising a hand and saying help and you should be able to do that at work as well ideally but there's a woman in there who said that her boss said oh yeah if your child care goes wrong we've got some kind of work insurance thing that we can just kind of send an emergency nanny she's like i'm not an emergency nanny i've never met she said if i was paedophile that's exactly the job I'd sign up for which I'm not sure was a fair assumption but you know it's true if you need child care at short notice it's tough yeah exactly and I mean

55:36Georgia: Zoe and I have done it a few times where when the kids were younger and if they had to then come into the studio we would use like the um is it the peanut app no it's not the peanut bubble bubble we would use bubble and get a nanny to come to the studio yes for those three hours and they would be in like our eye shot yeah but it would all be going on and there's there's those things that people don't really think about you know you might have a meeting that you've really got to go to but you could have a nanny in the next room you don't want to leave them at home with a stranger but there's like these things that just yeah no one really talks about because like you say it's kind of boring it's boring so no one talks about like this lady um having a night off like that's actually fine you need that yeah you really need that yeah you can't just especially if you're going into the office every day you need that one day where you could just turn it turn all the responsibility off yes that is lovely and I would say to my husband you know I want to go out I

56:35Dolly Jones: don't know once in a blue moon with a girlfriend and drink wine and that means that you're on call for the children all through the night because if I've had wine then I don't want to wake I'll be even groggy you know groggy in the night and actually I want to sleep in a bit in the morning only kind of half an hour so if you take on the night you know the evening babysitting because as my husband as their father that takes me all the way till after breakfast the next day yeah because you you need the full responsibility and time off but also the thing about as you say talking to people I ask people for practical tips in the books as well and there are so many parenting books yeah and I can't necessarily even though I've written one I don't really want to read parenting experts on parenting i want to know women who have all kinds of different jobs how they've done it and it's really cool there's a woman in there who says that she has a separate wash bag that's on the top shelf in the bathroom with calpol toothbrushes toothpaste blah blah blah so every time they go on holiday that's what she takes so she does it so she leaves all the home toothbrushes etc etc it's like quite helpful because i hate that bit of packing yeah so she's got two bottles of calpol two bottles of whatever she needs and so that's just the holiday one and when she comes back from holiday she makes sure it's all replenished with everything all the cowbell and toothpaste and whatever puts it back on the top shelf till the next holiday yeah actually that's quite time-saving yeah and another woman who's a really amazing entrepreneur she was like oh i really don't want him on his screen um it's a smallish child you know when they're in restaurants so she just grabs a couple of handfuls of lego any random lego into a plastic bag into a food freezer bag in her handbag and when they go to a restaurant she just gives him and says you know make the tallest thing or make the smallest thing and i've tried that and it does work i don't I think it would work every time.

58:12Dolly Jones: Yeah. But I love that idea because I know who it came from. And she's a really high-powered, successful businesswoman. I was like, oh. Yeah. So then you have this little tapestry of all these other people's brain.

58:22Georgia: It's just the advice that you would have from another, like, mum mate. Yes. Rather than, you know, do this or you're going to ruin your kids forever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a lot. Yeah. And a lot to take on.

58:34Dolly Jones: Oh, my God. And also, I think we all think it. But actually, I've got, I did think of that in the book. there's Julia Samuel who's a quite well-known psychotherapist and she says yes we will all fuck our children up but there is the power of repair so when they are teenagers and they come to you or adults and say I hate you because you did x y and z as long as we can listen to them and say okay right I'm glad you told me I wouldn't necessarily have done it differently because with the resources I had at the time I love you and I loved you and I did my best but I'm so glad you've told me how it impacted you and i'm sorry then apparently that's okay that's it so so we're okay we're gonna be okay as long as i don't know it's not like a get out of jail card free but i feel like we can teach them to to give us feedback i mean do we want feedback i don't know we're doing our best i don't know about that i mean i'm like to my nine-year-old son i'm like the enemy

59:30Georgia: at the moment are you well not the enemy but he's just my my husband could say the sky's purple and he'd be like no but it is mum you know even if I ganging up I don't know it's really annoying so

59:41Dolly Jones: I don't think I want any feedback at the moment no not the moment my son you know goes between thinking I'm the least cool thing in the whole world to coming in and you know the other day he was like oh god there's an injection at school I don't want to you know and needing support in a kind of nice emotional mummy way so there's still a bit of that but also we need to I did I did try the feedback thing on my daughter she's now 11 because there's this awful story which I keep saying about in the book where when she was at nursery she was three they gave her a questionnaire with however many questions on it and then they wrote the teachers wrote in the answers i don't know why she couldn't read or write why they did this it was just to kind of hound me i guess question two what's your favorite toy ipad so embarrassing question three what's your favorite food pizza so embarrassing question seven what tell me something mommy always says to you so i was thinking you know i love you sweet dreams darling and she said you can talk to me when i finished my call oh my god I mean I have never said that to my child I mean obviously I had I don't know anyway so I was mortified I mean I remember reading on the way back from nursery and I felt my insides just going cold just thinking oh my god what have I done and then anyway I've put about it in the book and laughed about it since because I just feel so dreadful about it so I said to my 11 year old daughter the other day power of repair darling I'm really sorry I said that to you can you tell me how you felt can you and she was like oh mommy I can't even remember I was about three you probably said it once that morning and I just and you remembered it well she didn't write it but I just dictated it to my teacher so you know I've never thought

1:01:11Georgia: about it since and I thought yeah we torture ourselves absolutely well my son he wrote had to do like parents hobbies and he had like my husband hobbies paddle football mom's Instagram Oh, no. I was like, just not okay. Wow, that is a lot.

1:01:30Dolly Jones: Anyway. There's a couple of gay men couple in there, in the book. And he said that his little boy drew his husband painting. Lovely artist. Like, this daddy teaches me how to paint. And then he drew the other daddy on his phone. He's like, I've never, ever taken my phone out again in front of him. Oh, God, no, don't. Yeah, absolutely. So you're not alone. Instagram hobby.

1:01:52Georgia: Walking around with a paddle racket. Yes, exactly. No intention of using it. Anyway, Dolly, we've been chatting a long time now. But just before we wrap up, what is the best piece of advice that you would give to another parent in general or about working or just the best piece of advice?

1:02:13Dolly Jones: The best piece of advice, I think, to take away the fear is that you can change your mind. You can. You can change schools. You can change the way you do your job. you can change your mind so nothing you decide to do can go that wrong because you can change your mind it takes the pressure off

1:02:27Georgia: I love that thank you so much thank you for having me thanks cool oh I really liked that so sorry I've been gone forever no it's good it's like yeah because you this it's a big subject isn't it yeah it's lovely and people love

1:02:45Dolly Jones: because now I'm going into businesses and doing all these talks

1:02:47Georgia: oh are you oh cool

1:02:48Dolly Jones: and people love talking about it and even a man was in that was like 65 women in the women's network of a bank the other day two men in there and the women who had organized the event were really pleased that one of the men was there because he was really senior and he stood up at the end and said i'm so glad you're having you're pushing this conversation but even with the young fathers with their yeah he said they don't want to talk about it it's really awkward he said i really persevere and once they open the floodgates all they want to talk about is their baby and how their wife is and how they're feeling and so we need to encourage it because it's good for people it's good for you know mental

1:03:20Georgia: help it's good it's good for us what a brilliant conversation she is a powerhouse she is brilliant i know and isn't it interesting that in some industries like the one that she was in it was almost a taboo to talk about your kids like it's a bad thing like they're a dirty secret it's mental isn't it and that isn't that long ago um but i do think she made a really good point when she was talking about, you know, we always like, we expect, you know, the manager to have all the answers and know exactly how to handle a situation. But actually, it's like a two-way thing. You know, you need to say what you want as well.

1:03:58Georgia: And also, you know, give people the benefit of the doubt sometimes that they don't, you know, they might not have always been trained in the correct way to know how to handle it. And so human conversations around these things are always the best way to go.

1:04:11Dolly Jones: also businesses really really need to get their stuff sorted yeah you know i interviewed somebody from morning live the other day in chester and he works for lloyd's and he works in one of the in fact i think it is the biggest um office in the uk right and he was like we he was quite senior there and he was saying we've really jumped forward in where we were to where we are now and we've now got a dedicated mother's room that is like there's there's um beds and there's breastfeeding areas and there's fridges and they I mean we need to go and see them actually George but I was so impressed I was like absolutely that should be there you know and also they really need to lead by example these bigger bigger corporations because sometimes I feel it's the small businesses yeah that make it work that make it work and actually the bigger companies can afford it they're the ones that need to be the market leaders in really supporting return to work

1:05:05Georgia: mothers yeah absolutely yes zoe for pm zoe for pm exactly um thank you so much for listening to

1:05:13Dolly Jones: today's podcast as always we'd love you to rate review subscribe and please give the podcast a

1:05:17Georgia: follow and i promise you i'll be back next week yeah and if you've got any feedback on this episode or guests you'd like to hear from drop us a dm on instagram we're on at made by mamas and we'll be back on friday

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