(Gentle) Parenting with Sarah Ockwell-Smith

0:04Elliott:Hello and welcome back to To Be A Boy with me, Joeli Braley. And me, Elliott Ray. Today's guest is Sarah Ockwell-Smith. She is a mother of four young adult children, a best-selling author and one of the UK's leading parenting experts. She has a Bachelor of Science in Psychology and spent several years working in pharmaceutical research and development before retraining after the birth of her first child. as an antenatal teacher and a birth and postnatal doula. She's also undertaken additional training in hypnotherapy and psychotherapy. Sarah specialises in gentle parenting methods with particular expertise in the tween and teen years.

0:46Elliott:Her best-selling titles include The Gentle Parenting Book, The Gentle Sleep Book and How to Raise a Teen and her work has been translated into over 30 languages. Next year, she will publish her 17th book, How to Raise a Gentleman. Sarah, welcome to the podcast. Hi, thank you for having me on. Sarah wanted us just to introduce Sarah, mum, written loads of books. We had to get the 17 books in. I mean, that is impressive. 17 books is quite a feat. It is a magnificent achievement. So I want to start with a bit of a quote from your new book, if that's okay. The sad truth is that we are failing our boys currently.

1:34Elliott:While society is busy blaming social media creators and tech firms, influencers, YouTubers, podcasters, smartphones, gaming and the like for the demise of boys today, we are missing the things that really matter. The way boys are treated differently to girls from birth. the harsher way in which they are parented the biased way in which they are spoken to and about and the many stereotypes we believe about boyhood that we unconsciously force upon them simply it isn't their fault we are where we are it's ours could you unpack that a little bit more for us yeah it's quite big isn't it so I think first of all I don't want to be parent blaming for anything.

2:19When I say ours, I mean like society. It's not an individual parent's fault, but I think it's really important that I start by saying I have three boys and one girl, but my boys are all now in their 20s. And as I said in the book, I began a bit of a crusade of standing up for boys' rights nearly 25 years ago because I noticed right from the beginning of having my firstborn how they were spoken about differently, how they were treated differently. So at the time, I didn't know the research, but what I did know is when I had my second boy, people would say, oh, you've got your hands full. When I had my third boy, people would say, gosh, your house must be dirty and smelly and loud all the time.

3:00Are you going to try for a girl? When I have my girl, which, you know, I always wanted four children. I didn't care what they were. People congratulated me for having a girl. You can finally stop. Now you've got that little girl. and it used to really upset me like why are boys painted in this light of being loud and dirty and not close to their mums that was something a lot of people said to me all the time so I always had that at the back of my mind and then as my boys grew obviously I began to see the way the world treated them differently I read the statistics like the biggest killer of boys teenage boys is suicide and I think about five years ago I really started to say you know what's happening and what can we do about it so that's when I really started looking at the research and it's horrifying from the moment we give birth like in the very first day if you're in the hospital or at home wherever you are we treat boys completely differently to girls and I don't think we realize we're doing it I think we're carrying so much baggage with us and conditioning from our own upbringings but we talk to them less, we hold them less, we discipline them more harshly, we smack them more, we talk to them less about emotions and presume that they're unemotional.

4:21We say things like, oh, boys just talk later, without realising, but maybe that's because we talk to them less than girls, which we do, backed up by research. But for me, the thing that really struck home is, if you are a baby boy and you cry, you are significantly less likely to be picked up and have your needs met than if you're a girl and that's just absolutely mind-blowing I'm sure we'll talk about it Netflix adolescence which seems to have sparked all of this all again and now we are utterly obsessed with social media and the manosphere and influences and we think that's why boys have such a high suicide rate we think that's why violence against women girls is on the rise but we really are looking in completely the wrong place.

5:06It starts way, way, way before that. It starts in the home from the moment they're born. And with this book, I remember a couple of years ago, I was at a conference and there was a lady talking about how you could help young boys. So three, four, five-year-olds with social and educational literacy programs. And I was like, this is great. How do we help the children and their friends and nobody there could answer me and I still struggle to answer that question you know when they've already had that upbringing what can we do when they're older I always think there's something you can do but for me everything has to start at the beginning and I think we need more awareness of that sorry that was so long I won't answer everything else as

5:54Elliott:long as that please do it was brilliant I mean what a great introduction to the topic because I agree with you I felt a lot of that as well when I had my boys this sort of duh that's going to be hard and you know the the gender stereotyping starts very early doesn't it from other people I felt like some people judged me as less than them because I was pregnant with a boy actually I did I did feel that judgment from other people do you think since you had your boys things have got better or worse and I don't mean like but that's a massive question so I'm talking about in the way that we talk about boys and the conversations that we can have about boys and their feelings and their emotions?

6:36Elliott:And do you think it's improved? I mean, the initial thing I'd say is I think it's got worse, but I actually think it's just got different. So I think when I was researching and writing this book, I kind of did a bit of a historical tour. And I think we've always been very stereotyped about boys and men. I think we've always treated them poorly. But we were talking just before we came on air When my boys, who are now only in their 20s, were little, although there was a huge amount of stereotyping in terms of what boys should wear and play with and do and the comments, like you said, that I used to get, we didn't have the hyper-gender stereotyped sort of toys, clothing, and even, like, programmes, I talk a lot about Love Island in the book and the pressure on boys to be hench and muscular and the pressure for girls to be also hyper-feminine.

7:30but when they were little there was much more of a choice of toys and clothing that there is now and I think equally we we didn't talk quite so badly about them we didn't have the boy blaming and man blaming that we have now I think that's increasing I think almost yearly yeah but we see the boys as the problem how do we fix the boys and it's not how do we fix the boys it's how do we fix us in the way that we raise the boys and that I feel is fairly new but also

8:02Elliott:it feels to me like it the narrative is very much how do we fix the boys and it's all very let's teach boys about misogyny let's talk about masculinity and associate it with misogyny nothing positive there doesn't seem to be a positive narrative about masculinity it seems to be paired with it being a problem all the time and of course young men are absorbing that narrative I've gone a little bit off the track here because that was just so interesting I couldn't help but ask questions but and and we've touched on this but the definition of masculinity get we talk about this a lot on this podcast and how you would describe masculinity how would you say that that definition has shifted over the last maybe 50 years or do you think that definition is very much stuck I think it's always been you know when we talk about masculinity and you think about the first thing that pops into your mind you're talking about something called hegemonic masculinity which is the really stereotyped you know manly men strong the provider not so emotional fit athletic very manly very doesn't you know dresses and very manly clothes has a manly haircut does manly pursuits and i think for now if you look at the manosphere that's held up as the ideal be alpha male but that has always been if you think of like Victorian time you know that the epitome of masculinity would be your circus's strong man or your Victorian gentleman who was always you know tall short hair well built stocky the provider and that shifted slightly through time mostly with fashion with music there's a really strong correlation between masculinity and music and then you know we had in the 80s we had like the rock culture then we had you know that sort of subculture with music with like your tex flannel shirts and then it was masculine to have long hair whether you were Kurt Cobain or John Bondovi and then we had like your new man in the 90s and that Athena poster with the man with short hair massive muscles holding a baby that 90 % of girls had on their bedroom wall and I think there was shifts in the 90s and the 2000s in a positive way and I don't know what happened.

10:15It's all gone bad again. It's all gone back to very hegemonic, very much your Love Island type boy. And you've got a massive resurgence of lad culture, which is what we had in the late 90s. Yeah, yeah. And I don't really know how it happened or when it happened. It was like all of a sudden it was there and nobody really saw it building up so much.

10:37Elliott:Elliot, what do you think about the way the definition of masculinity has changed like what have you seen in your lifetime of how and your experience of I think it's tough because I think I've had a unique experience everyone has a unique experience but I think for me it's as I've grown up I've seen masculinity different myself so I always try to think about what's actually happening versus how am I perceiving it because now I'm older I'm a dad now now I do what I do now and so what I see around me is different to probably what I think most people see because I'm surrounded by good men I have literally an organization that invites good men in so I am surrounded by a different kind of masculinity than the average person so I think my view is skewed but I think what you're saying Sarah there I think does chime you know when I was younger Oasis Michael Jackson etc and now I think men don't really make love songs anymore no I love R &B right I love a slow jam I love a good love song a big softy but if I want to listen to a good love song I've got to go back to the movies yeah there's no like men don't really sing about love and I think when you're talking there about the correlation between music and masculinity that's that's very interesting to me actually and I would love to see more men making love songs.

12:07Elliott:Yeah, yeah. That is such a good point. Like you really don't hear men making love songs anymore. And what a shame that is. How sad that is actually. We should write one. We should write it to be a boy album about love. I can play the recorder. I'll play the recorder in the background. Sarah, you say parents of boys and girls often come to you with very different concerns. Could you share a bit more about that, please, like how gendered those concerns are? Yeah, so I would say the top concern for girls is things like whining and sulking. With boys, it's more externalising behaviour, so more violent type behaviour.

12:51I mean, that's not to say I don't get parents with girls to say, my daughter's hitting and kicking, can you help? I do. But I would say maybe if you looked at the parents who came to me with, my child is swearing hitting kicking being violent can you help 70 of them are about boys 30 are about girls and then what's really interesting is then we think in society well that's how boys are boys are more boisterous well boys are more violent boys are more thrown to lashing out girls are more emotional but it's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy you know we're seeing

13:25Elliott:that because we create that not because that's how they are naturally i have two boys one of whom is home sick so he's listening sitting over there that um the youngest is prone to lashing out and you know being I wouldn't call it violent but outbursts of real anger that um are quite challenging and I I was the same when I was younger he obviously gets it from me I had these big outbursts and I would go upstairs and I would trash my room I'd throw things around the room My mum told me the other day, she won't appreciate me saying this on the podcast, but I said to her, I remember you coming in and just trying to make a joke out of it.

14:07Elliott:And she said, oh, no, a couple of times I dragged you down the stairs and hit you down every step because I was so furious with you for doing it. I was like, oh, OK, well, maybe my parenting isn't so bad then. But what do you say to parents when they come to you with boys or girls having outbursts and how to help? I mean so it doesn't matter if they're a boy or a girl I would treat it exactly the same way so I'm very much about three words why how what why are they doing it what are their triggers how are they feeling and normally when a child is out of control they're feeling really bad like they themselves also wish they weren't like it and then obviously when we punish them for it or isolate them for it we leave them with whatever problem that has caused it in the first place and then the what is what do you hope to gain from disciplining so why are they doing it what are their triggers how are they feeling what do you hope to achieve from disciplining and I think so much discipline is so short-term focused like I just want them to stop whereas if we think in the longer term yes I want them to stop I want people to be safe but also I want to help them to manage their emotions better so that when they're older they're happier and calmer yeah so So, I mean, I don't have advice for violent children per se, because every child is different and every child will have a different trigger.

15:30Very often there's undiagnosed ADHD. You've actually just written a whole book about that or some other learning disability neurodivergence. And it's really important that that child isn't punished, say, for having ADHD and that you work with them and you love them unconditionally. because mostly when a child is acting up persistently, they've got chronically low self-esteem and they're really feeling the connection with you is quite unsure and what they really need is somebody to be on their side and help them. And I think this is where people think that I'm permissive. Like, why would you not punish them?

16:06It's like, why would you? They already feel bad enough. So why would you heap on board any more punishments? Zoe, what you're saying there in terms of your mum won't appreciate it. I find that parents, like my parents used to beat me as well, and they hate being reminded about it. They hate it when I bring it up. They're like, don't talk about that. It didn't happen. And I wish we had like CCTV video footage and smartphones. I could be like, actually it did. I've got the evidence, but we don't. I'm really interested, Sarah, in terms of the parents that are coming to you saying their children are acting out.

16:36Do you think more parents are coming out and saying that now? Do you think in your experience, there are more children that are behaving in this way than there were before? No, I think it's maybe more acceptable to talk about it alongside parents talking about how they're not coping, which let's face it, when you do have a parent who drags you down the stairs and smacks you, that's because that parent's not coping and they don't know what to do anymore. and I think maybe this is a good side of social media because I think we are able to talk about the fact that I just can't cope anymore I don't know what to do I need some help whereas before that was very much kept behind closed doors so I feel yes maybe I'm asked for help more not because the behavior is increasing but because the parents are more willing to say I just don't know what to do but I know I want to do better yeah it's not seen as a failing like it would have been in the 80s and 90s it's seen as good parenting now to say I'm really struggling

17:34Elliott:help yeah that is a real positive you're right I mean I did that recently went on to social media and said help me out I really am at a loss for what to do people were so generous yeah and so kind and clearly really wanted to help and then there was an outpouring of other people saying I'm in the same situation I don't know what to do and they started following what other people were suggesting and it was a really nice bonding exercise actually for people and it normalizes it doesn't it because there is still a slight stigma I would say when you have a child that exhibits anger. I feel more from older generations so when one of my boys has ADHD and when we were out in public I felt very much the judgment or the unwanted comments came from people who were all older than me because children did not behave that way when you were younger they would be slapped and punished and kept at home yeah that's very true yeah yeah I think there's the real kind of resilience you have to build you know we've got two a nine-year-old and a two-year-old and very different like our nine-year-old is she's a comedian she's very funny but she's very well behaved you know she got the um the letter home from school at the end of last year to say there were no bad incidents of naughty behavior and not one it's incredible the youngest uh that's going to be a different story when she gets there 100 and um sometimes when we go out now the youngest may act up and scream and shout and me and my wife we have to kind of just be aware of how we're feeling because we know other parents and other people are probably judging and it's a kind of taught yourself don't let that judgment impact how we're feeling don't let that don't let that impact our joy and don't let that impact how I'm going to parent my child and it's quite tough when you're out and I speak to a lot of parents whose kids have autism or ADHD or other neurodiversity and they just talk about that when they're out and about it's quite difficult and sometimes sometimes they then don't go out because they feel it's going to be too stressful to leave the house and that's that's sad right and I think I think I've learned as well that when I am the other person in that space is to have a bit more grace than maybe I would have done 10 years ago when I didn't understand yeah and so I think yeah one thing to take is if you're around and you see a child acting out like don't stare don't don't like look at them like they're an alien you know you don't know what's going on you don't know the background to that child's life and the most The powerful thing you can do then is just smile at the parent, just say, oh, it's tough, isn't it?

20:12Or even better, can I help in any way?

20:17Elliott:Yeah, make them feel normal, not like some sort of alien species. So I have two boys who slept terribly, both of them, slept really badly. The first one slept really badly for the first six months of his life. The second one woke every 40 minutes for the first 14 months. and it was so bad I walked into A &E with both of my children and I said I'm not leaving until you fix this baby because it's broken the baby is broken and I am now broken with results and after four hours they just threw me out and said there's nothing we can do this was Manchester a couple of years later somebody published a map that showed where all the mental health support is for new parents and it was a black hole in Manchester at the time there was nothing there which is my experience i sleep trained both of them and the first one it fixed it overnight and he slept brilliantly after that the second one it didn't work and it was hell because we went through the crying and it didn't change anything it was horrible and i know people would judge me for sleep training but it did really help me the first time around and i'm all about being honest about my parenting experiences.

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21:51Elliott:You in the book talk about the difference between boys and girls with sleeping, which I found really interesting. can you tell us a bit about that yeah I realized I mean I work with hundreds like one-to-one over zoom and email and visiting in person but then I also run workshops with like 100 parents coming at a time but when I was doing my like one-to-one consulting I realized halfway through the year I have not worked with one single baby girl this year and it was like this is really weird so and obviously you know maybe that's just coincidence because I always found when I was a doula and an antenatal teacher you would get like a month where it was all girls that were born and then a month that was all boys and there was a real pattern there and I thought maybe it's just that but then I went back and I was like oh my god it really is something insane like 70 % of the parents I see come to me with boys and I was like well is there a difference between boy and girl sleep so I was sort of digging around in the journal article thinking there must be must be that boys are significantly worse sleeper than girls and there is some research that boys are more wakeful than girls but it's a tiny difference so it actually amounted to five minutes per night less sleep for boys which is inconsequential isn't it it's not what you were talking about you know if it was just five minutes who really cares it's just five minutes so it was such a tiny difference that I thought, well, it really can't be that.

23:23Why are these boys waking more? And what I would really love some scientists, if you're listening, to do is to do some research into, do we sleep train boys more than we sleep train girls? And why do we do that if it's not because there's a dramatic difference in their sleep? But then I never really understood at the time. And one thing I would say to you is, although I did gentle sleep training, so I was a no-criper, person, I've always stood firm behind the belief that it's not about being the very best you can be or gentle. It's about doing the least harm. And if the least harm at that moment in time is sleep training, because otherwise your mental health and your connection with your children is so low that you're going to snap.

24:06Absolutely. And then I even would help you to sleep train. So it's for me, it's not about perfection. It's about at that moment in time, what is the least harmful thing you can do to get through as a family? Anyway, so that's your topic. And what I realised actually over time, and I've been back and revisited that, is I think it is all down to how we respond to boys and how there is research to show that when boys and girls cry, the boys are more likely to be deemed to just be angry and less likely to be responded to. There's research showing that if a baby is crying, and the pitch is high it is more likely to be perceived as a girl so this is obviously in an experiment where there were some babies crying on play noises of babies crying and the participants were asked is it a boy or a girl and when the baby's pitch was a higher pitch they were perceived to be a girl when it was lower they were perceived to be a boy in reality there is no difference in pitch between boys and girls cry just averages out some boys are high some boys are low some girls are high, some girls are low.

25:14But what is interesting is if the pitch is higher, we are more likely to respond to them than if it's lower. But also if we perceive it is a girl, we are more likely to respond to them than we are a boy. But it goes beyond that. So baby boys receive significantly less nurturing touch than baby girls. So we actually cuddle them less. When we're dressing them or doing a nappy change, we're slightly harsher with them than we are with a girl. And the way that we speak to them is different. So we speak to girls more than boys in general, but we also speak about emotions more to girls. So if we're nappy changing a six month old, we would be like, oh, it's okay, darling.

25:57Now I know you're really cold or you're really scared. I'll be done soon. If we're talking to a boy, we're more likely to say, it's all right. We'll be done soon. Man up. It's okay. So all of this, I think, when it comes to sleep, means that we are somehow less tolerant of boys needing more nurturance at night than we are with girls, which is really, really sad. but there are so many studies looking at how the nurturance is less with boys and I think somehow that has morphed into when girls wake up and cry at night somehow we are more responsive to them and we seem to have a perception that it is okay for them to need us more than boys and I don't know this is all just in my head you know sort of 1am thinking is what I wake up and need the loo at night and maybe we don't maybe if there is some research done maybe it's just a weird quirk of the people who came to me maybe we don't sleep train them more but I would hedge a lot of money on the fact that we do I think that's so that's powerful and that's very interesting I kind of wish we'd sleep trained our eldest so she was a terrible sleeper I didn't sleep through the night until she was four I remember there was one time she was up all night she would wake up every hour or so and I thought okay I'll get her in the car and take her for a drive forgetting it was Christmas and we went to Piccadilly Circus and the lights were on and she spent two hours just wired looking at these Christmas lights and it was like the worst idea and I got home at 4am and she was just wide awake having driven around London for two hours but yeah what you're saying is super interesting I'm assuming that gender stereotyping comes from mums and dads yeah so we yeah there's literally no difference I think it's just the way I mean we like to think as parents that we choose how we parent that it's all conscious we've made decisions but I would say 80, 90 % of it, we're just repeating familial cycles.

27:49We repeat how we were raised and our parents repeat how they were raised and so forth. So I think so much of what we do as parents is completely unconscious. And even if we try to parent consciously differently, I think we still have those beliefs encoded in us. So I don't, yeah, I feel it's pretty similar. Although I would be interested to see in dads, if they were treated more harshly, do they somehow believe that boys should be treated more harshly? Even again, though, that's not a conscious thought. Is that somewhere inside them? I think so. Like, I still speak to a lot of people who do have different approaches.

28:33Men, I'm talking about, who will have different approaches. I've got two girls, so, you know, they're different people. So there's different approaches based on their personalities. but I would say the men and dads I'm around and again it's not from a bad place it's not with bad intent I think they probably do it to help and they probably think it's the right thing because hegemonic masculinity is the goal they think you need to be strong son yeah I definitely do hear conversations where I think the dads I'm around will probably be a bit softer with their daughters yeah harder with their boys and I didn't realize maybe it starts from that age you might think it starts from primary school secondary school but i'd never heard that kind of research around babies i hadn't thought it goes that far and we're live from the living room as doug eyes up the match day spread he's reaching for the buffalo wing perfect hang on what's this oh he's going for a can of pepsi too incredible what a finish sensational combination look at the delight on his face there's no doubt about it It just tastes better.

29:41Match days deserve Pepsi. Food deserves Pepsi. Grab a pack of Pepsi Zero Sugar for today's match. It's poetry in motion.

29:53Elliott:That brings us on to emotional intelligence in boys. It's such a vital skill, emotional intelligence. And you talk about this in the book. How do we nurture emotional intelligence in boys when society often discourages them from showing vulnerability? I mean, this one's quite easy and quite simple. We just talk to them more about emotions and we accept their emotions and we show our emotions more around them. It really is that simple. I mean, it's that simple, but it's also very hard because we were probably raised to not show emotions. Yeah. And you think that, do you think that's more important that men do that than if dad does that than mum?

30:35For dad's mental health, I think it's really important that he embraces some emo diversity. So realizing it's okay to be mad or sad or jealous or angry or whatever. A lot of the work I do, a lot of parents will say to me, actually, this really helped me as an adult, or this helped my relationship with my partner. So for his benefit, I think it's really important that all men do this and learn to embrace their feelings a little bit more and not hide them and talk about how they feel. You know, if you look at the suicide rates for men and boys, it's very clear that it needs to happen more. There is, if you look at something called social modelling, so we know that there'll be a stronger effect in terms of copying the behaviour of the carer who is the same sex as them.

31:17So boys, if they have a dad who's very angry and very closed and doesn't talk about emotions, there is a potential, only a potential, not a guarantee, that they may be slightly more like him than like the mum who's very open and embracing all emotions. again I feel a lot of this is very gender stereotyping what if I am a single mum and the dad's not in the picture you know what if we're a two-mum family do we is our son going to suffer because they don't have that positive male role model and I think we learn to be nurtured and to be nurturing from our parents and carers who love us doesn't matter what sex they are but it's like the cherry on the top if you have an involved dad's uncle some other figure who has embraced his emotions and is very open but I don't think nurturance is sex specific yeah do you you

32:11Elliott:know in terms of male role models for boys and the importance of male role models for boys firstly you know it'd be good for you to expand a bit on how important that is but as you've alluded to I mean a thing that I struggle with a lot is that a lot of the narrative at the moment is about the importance of male role models and there's a conversation happening about the fact that many boys are growing up in fatherless households and the problems that causes and I know lots of men that have been brought up by single mums who are the loveliest kindest most brilliant men although I you know I'm saying this without research or evidence but from my experience of men I think that you can raise happily a kind generous good man without them necessarily having a positive male role model in their lives absolutely so there's there's a billion questions there all at once I mean the first thing I would say is I don't want to diminish the role of a great father a great father has such a wonderfully long-reaching long-lasting positive influence so when I talk about this I'm not diminishing the importance of dads they are really important and men can make such a difference but again I will come back to the key thing is nurturance and it doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman with nurturance then the second thing is embracing emotions good communication emo diversity which just means being able to show all your emotions and receive all of your child's emotions so I think that matters more than who is giving it and what sex that person is when I talk about male role models I'm talking more about wider society yeah so who are their role models you know are they footballers who are really quite misogynistic are they rappers who are grossly misogynistic what about when they go to nursery how many of their carers are male and the answer to that is something less than two percent we have a chronic lack of men working in child care and it would make such a difference to those little boys in child care if we did have they would see oh right from the very beginning men can be nurturing carers at preschool and infant school the percentage of male teachers is tiny by the time we reach secondary school it's still only 30 percent so I think in general we need more men involved in child care and in teaching but I also think there's a whole section in my book when I talk about celebrities and I think male celebrities particularly those who have a lot of boys whether we're talking little boys or 18 year old boys I think they have a real responsibility to consider the messages that they are giving to their audience some of them are great some of them are less so so I think when I talk about role models I'm more like well what voices do your boys hear in your family and actually what is your goals here it doesn't matter if they're male or female if you have say your great uncle albert who is deeply sexist and misogynistic that in itself isn't a problem but it's how you deal with it so pick him up on what he says in front of young boys and girls have a conversation with him after like oh what uncle albert said you know it was a very different era back then however it was wrong because yeah okay yeah um just on the topic of sport because you touched on football there I mean we have a very sporty household both my kids play a lot of sport like every single night we have something on which is exhausting my partner does football coaching and I it's you know they he's a good role model he's a good male role model for lots of those kids and I think there is such an important role that people can play in community sports and community activities to be those good role models for those boys and sport feels to me like it's a real opportunity to start to change some of the messages that they may be getting from celebrities or whoever it is it's I'd recommend people haven't seen it to watch Ted Lasso because that's a really great example of you know a completely you know open nurturing communicative about emotions a male coach and the impact it can have it's really I know it's a comedy but for me the biggest thing in that sir is just to watch all of these very hegemonic male masculine footballers opening up because of their coach like the impact is massive yeah we interviewed John Amici about coaching he's a basketball player and he said they can make or break yeah you know you've got it can go wrong as well you can have a coach you can make things worse not better but it feels like a really important role that men can play in other boys lives and my partner gets so much out of it himself as well and even places where you think it wouldn't make a difference like there's a big movement amongst male barbers to be talking about emotions and almost treating a session where they're just you know buzzing a kid's hair as almost like a little bit of form of therapy so it's those moments where you think it's only 10 15 minutes you know every couple of months but that can make such a difference to this boy who's coming in who doesn't really open up with somebody you trust with his barber and having a chat there so it's it's those little moments it doesn't have to be something massive that makes a difference yeah i like that that's really nice although my son's barber recently showed me that he's very homophobic so that was nice I said so do you have a girlfriend yet and I went or a boyfriend and he went yeah no no no we don't do a boyfriend I was like okay right yeah um in the book you talk about the importance of making boys aware of the discrimination that girls and women face obviously that's a topic very close to my heart.

38:18Elliott:Can you elaborate a bit about why you think that's so important? So there's some really interesting research that shows when men have a daughter they start to become significantly less sexist and that heightens when their daughter is between four and five when they start school and when the dads start to see my goodness this is quite bad like they start to see the different way that they're treated and you know if they go into a toy shop or a clothes shop they'll start to see oh wow you know this is actually quite bad um i give an example in a book about my husband when we went out and i was buying a new car and i was buying a new car with my money for my car and the the guy in the showroom was only talking to my husband not to me he asked me one question and he looked spoke to me once and it was to say what color do you like and we walked out and my husband went oh my god that was so bad I said yes it was but I deal with this shit every day yeah almost almost doesn't register because it's just another day of being at a woman you know it's another day and people mansplaining treating you differently blah blah blah so when they see it what you tend to find is that men can become really great feminists.

39:36However, if they don't see it, they carry on in their little bubble and like, why would I be a feminist? So it's really great when men have daughters, their eyes are opened and they kind of join the cause, so to speak, but it needs to happen much sooner. And it's really helpful if you have boys and they have a sister because then they naturally see it. But if they don't see it, it comes back to, again, it's not about sitting them down and lecturing them because that doesn't help teaching boys about misogyny and stuff like that not going to help it's just going to make them feel bad why are you always having a go at boys and they'll they'll go in there in a sort of a competitive nature with like why is it always about us why can't you talk to the girls but when they're really little and actually even as they get older just to point out little things it's like almost like throwaway comments like when you're in the supermarket and you're buying some razors to shave your legs if you're well if you're a man as well i guess and you go to the man's section and you see the razors are like£1.99 and you go to the women's section and you look at the razors with exactly the same brand probably exactly the same blades the only difference is the handles are turquoise and they've got a lotus flower on the packaging and they're£4.99 that's a really good chance that you could have a conversation about that or when you're in a shop and there's a girl's section and a boy's section about actually we can look at any section but look at the stuff in the girls it's all pink and sparkly and pretty and playing but why don't they have building toys and fun toys that you get to play with so it's not about lectures it's about as early as possible pointing out the differences in the way society treats boys and girls so that they naturally as they grow up become a feminist which means naturally they will treat girls and women better yeah and I think it's so important like we know with those those men who have daughters it changes their behavior quite dramatically and they become really fierce protectors and spokespersons for their daughters we just need that to happen 20-30 years earlier

41:39Elliott:yeah and presumably that's the same for all types of discrimination as well so really good to talk to your kids when they're younger about homophobia about racism about all the different types of discrimination that so you'll mention with the barber that would have been a lovely organic natural situation to talk about why do you think you said oh no no yeah we did well they both went they couldn't quite believe that had come out um none of us could um you talk about the education system again is something that is Elliot and I have spent a lot of time talking to people about the education system and you said you say in the book that it's sexist in the way talks to girls.

42:19Elliott:Can you elaborate a bit on that please? Because a lot of the conversations we've been having as well, you know, we know that boys are doing worse than girls in the education system in terms of results. So at all levels, boys are less likely to go to university and boys are more likely to be excluded from schools. But can you elaborate? Talk to us a bit about the education system, I guess, for boys and girls. Yeah, there's two parts there. There's like, why is it so male centric. So if you're looking at, say, English, why do we only ever read William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, John Steinbeck?