Child Swap & the emotional fallout of the John Lewis Christmas ad

0:04Elliott Rae:Welcome back to To Be A Boy podcast with myself, Elliott Rae and me, Joeli Brearley. And we've had, we've been playing in the Premier League, the Champions League recently. We've had some heavyweight guests, Richard Reeves and John Amici, two heavyweight, incredible conversations. But today we have our favourite guest, Producer Katie in the building. And these are the episodes where we get to chew the fat and Kayleigh asks us some questions. Kayleigh, what have you got for us this week? Yeah, my first question is based on knowing how busy you are earlier and seeing all the posters around my local gym.

0:43It's about the ramp up to International Men's Day and Men's Mental Health Month. I would be really interested to hear how it's feeling this year, what's going on. If you think it's different to previous years, just download your thoughts.

0:55Elliott Rae:So the busiest month of my life and it's my wife's birthday on Monday. So it's like in the middle of International Men's Month. So it's always a mad month for me. But in terms of the whole month, it's a weird one. I feel like just inclusion in general this year has been quieter. I think International Women's Day felt quieter to me. Black History Month was definitely quieter. I think in general, though, there is a lot more conversation about men and boys. Obviously, adolescence was earlier this year, but that has carried on. And I think it has put these issues front of mind. I'm interested to see what organizations do, because I think in previous years, there has been lots of internal activity.

1:38Elliott Rae:I'm interested to see if they do the external activity as well. So that's to wait and see. But I always feel like with these kind of big milestone inclusion diversity events, we shouldn't rely on corporate organizations to set the narrative and do the work. I think really and truly they are community-led. And so it's for community organization, like do stuff to mark the occasion. And so I would personally love to see like more of that stuff. But I don't know. What about you, Jenny? I remember, you know, the old days of Twitter when you'd say, oh, it's International Women's Day. And all the men would go, when's International Men's Day?

2:14But well, it's in November. You've obviously missed it. And it wasn't marked at all, International Men's Day. people would just laugh at it and now it's taken very seriously so I think it's real progress to see that we've come from a place where we laughed at International Men's Day to a place where we're now talking seriously about men's mental and physical health so yeah I'm really pleased to see all the events that are happening I agree with you that it shouldn't just be about corporations putting some money towards the speaker coming in you've got to use it as a moment to trigger definitive action I think we've lost that with International Women's Day as well it's just become a corporate celebration of the women in in the organization yeah one thing that did make me

3:03Elliott Rae:smile this International Men's Day so I often get asked to speak about the deficit what we're not doing right how poor men's mental health is physical health toxic masculinity I say that in quotes for our audio listeners but I'm doing some work with the AA this year and what I really loved about their email to me and our conversations is that they wanted to echo the general theme around International Women's Day which is like celebrating a lot of it from what I see anyway celebrating women's contributions um obviously there's conversation about what more we need to do around International Women's Day but I do see that kind of celebrating this is what women have contributed to society community work over the years we haven't necessarily had that over the years we've been to national men's day i've never been a part really of celebrating men in november at all and so they were like we want to recreate that kind of vibe where we're celebrating men and i was like yes 100 i want to be part of that so we're going to really focus on how do we celebrate a lot of the men especially the men that work in the aa and men more widely as well and i just oh, do you know what?

4:08Elliott Rae:That kind of is progress because I don't know if five, six years ago, we would have been allowed or it would have been encouraged to celebrate men because the narrative was and still is about how men are oppressors and what they do wrong and they're to blame for all these things. So I thought that was really, really cool, actually. And I'm looking forward to having a slightly different slant on International Men's Day. This one is from a listener, but also from my mum's WhatsApp group. She, and I think it hearts back to the Ruth Whitman episode, which I still think about all the time. I love that one.

4:42She is trying to work out, his two boys, trying to work out why she might be having negative feelings about that. And so we want to ask you as a girl dad and a boy mum, where do you think feelings around gender disappointment come from if you have two children of the same gender? And I guess the question from me to add on is, do you think we put any of this on our children? Kayleigh, that is a big question. Crikey. I'll go first. I'll have a go. I also felt disappointed to have two boys. I think partly it's because I was raised by women. I have a sister and I didn't really know what to do with a boy.

5:27And also, I think naturally you want to project your life lessons onto the person that you raise. And I think it's harder to do that if you're raising a boy and you've grown up as a girl. I couldn't, I wanted to hand over all of my wisdom on, you know, relationships and how to navigate the world as a girl and a woman and things that I'd learned. And, you know, obviously my boys just, I still try and explain to them, but they're like, great, thanks, mum. So there's definitely disappointment with that. And I think I probably continued to feel disappointed that I'd had two boys for the first two years of their lives because babies are boring, in my opinion, and useless.

6:08And they just cry and they need your constant attention and you're giving, giving, giving, giving, giving. And to give, give, give, give to a baby that hasn't been born the sex that you had wanted them to be born can feel extra brutal. and also boys as Ruth explained are often harder to look after as babies compared to girls so friends that I had that were girls would come over and they'd be like oh yeah she's sleeping through fine yeah oh yeah she's just colouring over there and doing nice things whereas mine weren't sleeping or waking every 45 minutes and they were probably punching each other and turning the house upside down at the same time and you're like oh that's lovely for you great thanks but of course when they come into themselves and they grow into talking fun humans there's no obviously there's no disappointment because they are them they are just little human beings that you adore and couldn't imagine your life without them but i am not going to pretend that i didn't

7:06Elliott Rae:feel the same disappointment i absolutely did i've got a solution we just swap you can have my youngest i'll have your oldest and we just swap over right like we could try it for a year I think it could work. How would you feel about having a two and a half year old? Okay, she sleeps through the night. She eats anything. She's pretty boisterous. So we'll just fit in. I love that you listen this month. It's an advert for her. I'm trying to sell. I'm trying to find a pose to this. Anyway, let me know. The offer is there. We could try it for like a two month trial period. Oh yeah. Like wife swap, but children swap.

7:43Elliott Rae:But children swap. Yeah, this is a deep question for me. this is a deep question because I was scared to have a black boy first I was really scared and I was praying for a girl and I think it's because I know what it's like to be a black boy in London and I knew I knew what they would experience even if we did our best and so it was really yeah it was really kind of like I hope we have a girl because I knew that me and my wife could do the best job that we could do but I know they're likely to come up against certain things and that was my naivety because black girls and black really come up against a lot of shit too yeah but I personally didn't I didn't understand to the level that I understood what I know my boy would have gone through so yeah I was I was really happy to have a girl and now having two girls I don't really feel I don't really feel kind of any I I wanted a boy or I wish I had a boy or any feelings of I wish it had gone differently really I think my girls are they're quite boisterous girls to be honest they like physical play they like all the things that we would associate with boys in terms of their energy and how they interact like they're they're very much like that my eldest comes to the football with me I've made her I've conditioned her when she was young but she comes along to spend time with me and she shouts in the terraces and she enjoys that and yeah I don't feel like I miss anything I guess I do think quite a lot about the future though and learning more about what black women face in life that does that does worry me in terms of like how how we're going to support them both to thrive in the world you know when we look at statistics around childbirth and mental health and everything a lot of black people and black women are at the bottom of that.

9:36Elliott Rae:So it's difficult. So I do think a lot about the future and what their future is going to look like and how do we support them. Do you find, you see, with two boys, I panic about things like the things that boys experience that I never experienced as a girl growing up. So like, you know, fighting and violence. And that feels like an inevitability when you bring up boys that they're going to come back with a bust nose and a black eye one day and that I can't protect them from that. And I find myself spiraling and panicking about that, whereas my partner's just like, it's going to happen. Part growing up, that doesn't bother him, barely, at all.

10:13Do you find that you have a similar thing with the girls where you worry about the things that you know they will experience because they're girls, more than your wife does? Because your wife is like, yeah, that happens and you get through it.

10:26Elliott Rae:Yeah, I think so. I worry about heartbreak. I worry about sexual assault. I worry about abusive relationships. you know and it's not to say that i wouldn't worry if i had a boy but we know how prevalent these things are for women so yeah i worry i think about that probably way more than i should considering they're both young but i think when when you're doing the work that we do and you're so aware of all these things so you're looking at statistics you're part of trying to change that so you're very aware of the reality and so i think about it all the time and it's yeah it's kind of stressful i think this is parenting right like i think parenting is really fucking hard i guess When I thought about this question, I thought about how social media worked out.

11:04I was having a boy quite early and the algorithms were sending me all these memes of boy mums looking really strung out and girl mums like having their nails done and things. It's like, how much is society making me think parenting is rubbish and parenting a boy is really hard and really tiring and things? And I think, yeah, I just I'm just going to stop listening to social media because I don't think it's easy either way with girls or boys. and get them to like me by the time they're a teenager. That's my clue. By being nice to their boyfriends and their girlfriends. Yeah, I feel like they're...

11:36I don't know if they'll like you, Kayleigh, but you just want to feel like they'll have a conversation with you. Yeah, fine. If my kids will talk to me for longer than five minutes. Yeah, exactly. Which probably leads on to the John Lewis advert. Yeah, I was trying to articulate how do we get to the John Lewis advert. Do you want to tell us your feelings about the John Lewis advert, guys? Elliot, you go first. I know this advert touched you.

12:02Elliott Rae:It touched me a dear, dear. It got me a little bit emotional. I'm getting very emotional at my old age, you know. I'm crying a lot these days. You're not thinking about your kids all night. Yeah. I thought I'm so emotional recently. A level of emotion that wasn't there before. I feel like in the last couple of months, things have been hearing me. But yeah, the advert is great. If you haven't seen it, then it's an amazing advert. Obviously, John Lewis do the advert every single year. So it's a thing. And this year it's about a dad. And it's really interesting because it's about a dad with their teenage son, which I think was quite a nice perspective because normally we get younger children.

12:37Elliott Rae:And the moment where the son clearly doesn't know what to say to his dad, he's looking over and his dad opens the record and he plays the music. And it's like he flashed back from 20 years ago when he used to be a little raver. and then he sees his son on the dance floor and they hug but they don't really say anything and I thought you know what I've been the son so there's two perspectives here there's a dad but there's a son I've been the son right like I've been the son who at that point 14 years old let's say didn't really talk to my dad about how I felt about him or how I felt about life not not because he was a great dad do you know I mean but we just at that point in life we didn't have that kind of relationship where I expressed myself my love for him and he did that back to me and so I was looking at it from two perspectives of like okay I've been that son now we're great now like I tell him I love him we hug and stuff it's different now but I've been that little boy but also thinking about the dad's perspective in regards to it's the cycle his son doesn't know what to say because he doesn't know what to say and his probably his dad probably didn't know what to say and so there's the whole idea about masculinity that we keep our emotions inside and I saw that playing out I saw the hug the hug was was everything the hug was like I don't know what to say right now there's hug and that that was a deep hug so that that was amazing too and I think I just saw that sounds really cheesy but at Christmas time and just when we have moments to celebrate each other and pause like how just just try to take advantage of those those moments and not just Christmas every day really but it it's a christmas advert and it did get me thinking about family and moments to connect and how do we over the next like couple months like maybe put the laptops down and the phones down and actually have that face-to-face connection and time but yeah it's a really really good advert and obviously we want to talk about john lewis as a company overall but yeah what did you think jerry what was your response to the advert well i mean i bawled my eyes out i fully had a right old sob this morning watching it because I really saw myself in the dad like I was that raver what a tune I could I was like I take it down deep down where love is I was that person dancing not saying Elliot your ears are distorted like that was awful I agree with Elliot you sounded it all right I totally saw myself in the dark and then also have a son who is about to hit the teenage years and it is constantly on my mind that he's in I've probably got about two years left before we really noticed that distance that yawning gap start and feel emotionally distant from each other people remind me of this constantly who had teenagers that about 14 they just sort of vanish and then they come back to you a bit later so I'm like waiting really nervously for that moment to hit and so it really did hit me and I um had a good old cry uh I think it's just so important that they're focused on the dad son relationship and a reminder of the importance of dads and how they also care so deeply about their children.

15:58I just think we, you know, we do forget that. And so I think it's glorious that John Lewis focused on that. I showed it to my partner. He watched it and said, didn't know John Lewis sold records. And I showed it to my friend who's a social worker who said, I just really want to sit them both down and make them have a conversation.

16:17Elliott Rae:I love, I love like people's takes. So like we can watch the same thing and see a completely different thing i think we need to advocate for parents raving like i've been raving a lot recently we need to like life doesn't end just go home early go home early enough to get a good night's sleep i went into a club two weeks ago first time in a long time i lasted 10 minutes i just you know couldn't hear people talk it was like everybody's 20 years younger than me the drinks tasted a paint stripper so the john lewis advert another thing i want to say about it is that because we do a lot of inclusion work with businesses and often i see one or the other I see businesses doing great ad campaigns and talking a lot about whatever it is, Pride, Black History Month, you know, International Women's Day.

16:58They do lots of external advertising, which is okay, but it doesn't match what they're doing internally.

17:04Elliott Rae:Or we see vice versa. They're doing great work internally, but they don't shout about it and they don't integrate it into their ad campaign and their employer brand. John Lewis have nailed it. For years, they have been a family-friendly employer. They're really flexible. they have an equal parental leave policy dads and non-birthing partners get six months paid paternity leave fully paid they have great take up leadership have been incredible i've worked with them personally they have a great family network and i think it's just really really good because you're seeing a brand here that's externally talking about family and dads but internally they're doing the work as well yeah so i think it's just like celebrating that i'm not saying john lewis are perfect by any means i don't know the ins and outs when it comes to all the stuff but i think we do need to acknowledge that shout out to john yes it's not performative at all they i've also worked with them and they lobby the government hard for better paternity leave so um they have every right to celebrate dads well done john lewis

18:03Elliott Rae:this episode is brought to you by google chrome you think you know a browser but gemini and chrome that's new it can help you with practically anything on the web like restoring a vintage

18:29It would be great to talk about the modernisation of the national curriculum, if we can. The BBC highlighted in the news this week that children in England will be taught financial literacy and how to identify fake news. And the Telegraph reported that children as young as five are going to receive mandatory climate change lessons. The government's going to diversify subjects like English literature and history. So children see themselves and their communities reflected in materials. And they're going to reduce GCSE exam papers. So my question to you is, what would you like to make sure is in these changes for boys?

19:03Another big question, Kayleigh. I mean, I think that's a really good thing. My son said to me the other day that next year the book he's reading is Lord of the Flies. I was like, I did that at your age, English literature. Has the curriculum really not moved on? And doesn't paint boys in a great light. Doesn't talk about boy relationships well. It's a great book, but I really would have thought we'd have had time to maybe put some more modern books on the curriculum. And, you know, there have been many campaigns about having more women writers, having more black writers, having more changing history lessons so that we don't just look at the Vikings.

19:45and we look at all of history and all of the bad things that Britain did. We know that boys are slipping behind in education. And why that is, I don't really know. I'm not an expert, but I know that boys tend to fare better when you have exams rather than coursework. And also I feel really strongly that boys need to move more. And we strap kids in a chair and go, here's a lesson. You must learn this thing. And I feel like there needs to be more movement in education. And I have lots of friends who have a child with special educational needs who are struggling so, so much. And they're struggling because education is still a one size fits all.

20:28If you don't fit this box, you're outside of it, then you are going to have a terrible experience at school. And so I would hope with that modernization comes changes that really do benefit children with special educational needs. because I think it's one in four children are out of the education system at the moment and the vast majority of them are kids with ZEND because the school system is, I mean, it's killing them mentally. And so they have no choice, parents, but to take them out of the system. And that means they're not getting an education and it means their parents are struggling financially and mentally as a result.

21:03So I would hope that that is part of the conversation as well.

21:06Elliott Rae:Or the above. what she said basically and the only thing i would add to that is like life skills like teach me how to do my taxes please teach me how to have a good healthy relationship please teach me how to do my laundry just the the general life skills that we're gonna need to know i personally have never used my algebra but um there's things i do on a day-to-day basis that i really wish i learned when i was like 14 years old would it really help so yeah there's more of the life skills i I would add in everything that Jodie said. Yeah, we're not teaching kids critical thinking at the moment, are we?

21:42But you're saying that's going to be part of the education system. Yeah. I think it's absolutely vital. I worry about my son in the same way that you talked about. I would love to see more play for the younger years. I think you could have really intelligent kids that are going to get in trouble because they can't sit still for that long, mainly slipping through the cracks. I mean, the education system can't really prepare kids for what's ahead because we don't know. That's true. I mean, universities, you know, even, you know, if you specialize in a subject like any tech, you're not going to be getting the information, the knowledge that you need because it's changing so fast that the people teaching you are out of date already.

22:24The things that schools really need to do is teach you about life skills and teach you about critical thinking. I think those are the two most important foundations that you should be teaching every single child and the current curriculum doesn't do either of those things yeah modernization is imperative yeah there's a guy called elijah who i follow

22:44Elliott Rae:he's a kind of a dj and a music thinker and i was listening to him on a podcast yesterday talking about education specifically university and he was saying what would be really good is if the projects that are done at uni or dissertation or whatever project you're doing if it was actually out there in the world so if you are doing a project at uni like that project should exist online for everyone to see and then you can actually test it in the real world while getting the support from your professors and your educators but you're getting the real world feedback and I thought you know that's a that's a that's a no-brainer because you know uni students do some really incredible work but it's kept within the four walls of the university institution and it's marked by some professor um who who you know will stick to some marking criteria but also give their opinion on it whereas why not help them to get the real world experience out there then learning so much about real relationships real implementation of their ideas while also getting the support and i thought you know what that would be so good and that would solve so many problems in regards to leaving the education system getting into the real world of work or business and not having a clue where to start because everything that you learn in education and the way you do things doesn't necessarily translate to what getting a project up and running in the real world looks like and find ways of inspiring kids as well and showing them that they can access things that they otherwise like i left school and and set up pregnant and screwed and the notion that i could influence anything in parliament was so far removed from my experience living in newcastle i was like it was like a different planet to parliament let alone you know just a different city and so i have said next year i'm going to take my son and a couple of other kids to parliament and we'll go and meet a couple of mps and i'll take them around and just like but i have to take them pretend they're sick and take them out of school to do that why are the schools not encouraging more of those sorts of opportunities and we spoke about this with alex didn't we about opportunities and i think that that plays into class as well my eldest thinks writing a book is normal she's actually writing a book now right like she thinks writing a book is completely normal she knows i've written a book she knows so many authors she's seen your book jolie on our bookshelf right like jolie's book we saw it in westfield we went to waterstones oh look jolie's book here daddy that's how you do a podcast with your book was there right so she thinks writing a book is normal she thinks going to big stages i've taken it on stage with me multiple times she thinks that's completely normal right she thinks going to do an event at a football stadium behind like that she thinks so many things are completely normal yo daddy's going to number 10 in two weeks yeah doesn't everyone do like for her that's just so normal and so I feel like hopefully fingers crossed her ambition and aspiration won't be contained or not even contained I think some kids don't even know what is possible and they're not even introduced to the concept of what is possible in life and so your thinking is is is very very small um and it takes someone to come along and say no like you can do this you can do that these are the things that you can do use your skills use your talents start something grind work really really hard you can do amazing shit so yeah I would love schools to be able to incorporate that obviously we know it's hard funding time it's not blaming teachers whatsoever it's the structure and basically the government needs to reform education to be able to provide the time and energy and resources for the schools to provide those opportunities but I think if they do it will have so many young children like more fit for the adult world and having better lives as a result yeah great uh and i think we've got time for another question um this is based on i wasn't looking too much at john lewis on social media this morning because i got the dad shift stuff they are launching a competition to find the uk's best dad joke and given that we've got a dad on the podcast i wondered if we could think about what our entry is going to be the winning entries for our listeners he's just sort of coughing his tea up the winning jokes are going to be read out by MPs in the House of Commons where these two spend all their time quite normally.

26:46So do you guys, what are your best dad jokes, please? I think the dad should go first, though.

26:51Elliott Rae:Jodie, you're funnier than me. I'm not funnier than you. I am not funnier than you. You've studied comedy, Elliot. I've been studying. I went on a two-day course. You are qualified. You're a qualified comedian. I have no joke. Like, I am one of those people. I have no, like, I don't know any jokes. but what I do have is chat gtp so I've asked my mate chat we're spending a lot of time together recently and these are jokes that I can't claim to have written but I did give chat the prompt to write it for me so I don't know if I can claim that in my jokes or not I don't know how AI works it depends on if they are whether you want to claim them or not let's see what the reaction is okay okay cool I've got a few here why did this

27:40Elliott Rae:these are not that funny why did a dad bring an extra pair of socks to the golf course because he had a hole in one seeing you are funnier than me

27:53i'm sure that's a cracker joke i'm sure i've heard that one before all right i've got another one

27:59Elliott Rae:what do you call a factory that makes okay products hey i feel like you're gonna get this one i feel like i'm trying my brain is think about it it's obvious a factory that makes okay products other than that a satisfactory uh all right last one ai is good why did the scarecrow why did the scarecrow win an award

28:31The silence is longer Why did the scarecrow Oh I feel like I know this But I can't think of the

28:40Elliott Rae:Because he was outstanding in his field Outstanding in his field Yes The only one at home is sat cringing They've got better jokes than get in touch with the dad Shift who are doing really great work And send them your jokes and maybe win but also send us your listener questions because we want to do more of this we want to hear more from you and get your questions on air but also shape our future episodes so get in touch thanks very much see you everybody