Sharing the Care: A Sort Of Love Story 

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1:00Elliott:Hello and welcome to To Be A Boy with me, Jolie Braley. And me, Elliot Ray. Today we have the glorious Melissa Hoganboom, who is author of two books, The Motherhood Complex and Breadwinners, which you can spot on the shelf back there, very subtly placed. And we want to talk to Melissa today about lots of things, but predominantly about unpaid labour and about this notion of sharing the care. And let's, I mean, we'll just get straight stuck in. In our society, we have a system where women have this enormous pressure to do the vast majority of the unpaid labour. And men carry the vast weight of being the main breadwinner often.

1:45Elliott:And both are paying the price. What does that look like and what does it mean? Give us a full overview of where we're at. This starts extremely young. So we socialise our girls into more caring roles than we socialise our boys. Our girls grow up expecting to be mothers in the same way that, you know, boys might expect to be fathers, but they don't tie it to their identity in the same way. Because of the type of toys we give our girls and that we don't give our sons. I mean, my daughter's already talking about wanting to be a mum. It's this kind of implicit expectation we place on women. But then when it comes to actually having children, women are the ones who tend to take the maternity leave.

2:24They're off with the kid and therefore do all the caregiving when their partners are at work. Lots of my friends, lots of couples I've spoken to want to do 50. In fact, they say it. We're going to, you know, we're going to be equal. But the unpaid labor, the mental load and the invisible care is really quite hidden. And so women take on all this extra work during maternity leave, which then isn't handed over. And so it definitely happened in my relationship. And I didn't even notice it. It was things like the nappy sizes, the doctor's appointments. These are all the obvious ones, but also the research, kind of the rashes, being up late at night, Googling what a strange rash was.

3:02I was the one texting my mom. I was the one texting my sister-in-law, who's a GP, and then emotionally internalizing the angst. Because there is research that when you are a primary caregiver, you have a heightened emotional response to anything that goes wrong. That exacerbates unless you sit down and talk about it. And then because men are the ones working, it's often the case that when they come home, they're like, right, my job's done. And they might not see all the invisible work that's been done during the day. They might not anticipate it in the same way. And then women go back to work most of the time because financially most couples need dual incomes.

3:40But then they still find themselves doing most of the caregiving roles at home.

3:45Elliott:We interviewed Gary Barker from Acumunda the other day And their research had found that 40 % of men are constantly worrying about keeping a roof over their heads It's a constant noise in their brain It's massively damaging And one reason is women have so many other identities they can tap into So it's okay for a woman to take time off to do caregiving roles They get penalised financially and professionally but it's not judged. When men take time off, they're judged for it. When men request flexibility, they're seen as less of a man. They get disparaging comments from colleagues or they are not for promotion.

4:27Women, that's the same for women, but women expect it. And so men really tie their status to their financial earnings because that's what they know they can do. But they're also expected to by society. And because power and status is so closely linked to earnings in are a capitalist society. It's really hard to uncouple that. Women can fit into so many roles and are expected to. They can be primary caregivers. They can stay at home, look after the kid. They can do school PTA stuff. They can go to work. They can enter leadership roles. Men are recognized in those workspaces, but not in those home spaces.

5:06They're judged for it by society still. They're seen as less of a man. They feel like less of a man. One research interview said, I'm called Mr. Mum, but I'm not Mr. Mum. I'm Mr. Dad. I can do just as much as my wife, but people don't respect me for it. Another man I spoke to said he loves being there at home for his children. His wife's the earner and he doesn't earn any money. He says he's really lost a sense of status and identity because men often tie their identity to their work in the way that women haven't been able to, even if they wanted to. Women are just expected to kind of lose their sense of self a bit into motherhood and it's okay, you know, it's hormones and all that.

5:42You know, we're only really having conversations in the last couple of years, I would say, probably since COVID, around men being equal caregivers, around the idea of success, around the importance of having a community around you who are like-minded and how that's so important for you to feel empowered to do things differently to what you've seen in your family for generations. So when I work with men, I do feel like this year, particularly there's been a shift where I think the men are a bit more open to the conversation. They're a little bit more honest. And I think that should be celebrated, even though there's so much more work to do.

6:20I spoke to a few sociologists, and there's actually a term for what you're referring to. It's called caring masculinities. When men take on more caregiving roles, they actually start redefining their notion of what masculinity is. They add kind of more empathy to it. They become more tolerant, even among kind of things not related to parenting at all. They are aware of their emotional skills more, and they're able to have both sets of identities. So I can be a man's man, but I can also be caring. I can also take care of the housework. And it doesn't mean I'm less of a man. That's literally a quote from one of the research participants.

6:53and so it is changing but the change happens by doing and unfortunately a lot of the doing only happens out of like financial necessity or if men are out of work and their wives are temporarily the breadwinners they're forced into these caregiving roles so it's not always a positive change initially because it comes out of stress and often men who are not no longer the breadwinners they have higher rates of mental health issues and so that causes strain on the relationship as well But I think that is a real positive because then at the same time, there was this amazing researcher I spoke to who studied a phenomenon called the fatherhood forfeit.

7:30And this is the recognition that men are judged by workplaces when they ask for flexibility. but she found in her research there was this group of men who stopped caring what anyone thought of them and if their workplaces weren't giving them the flexibility they required they were like well you know what I'm going to go elsewhere I know where my values were I know what means more to me in my life in my immediate family that's more important and I need a role that matches that these men tended to be in higher power positions of course so they had the ability to take those risks and they knew they could get other jobs.

8:04But it takes that kind of change in leadership for it to trickle down. Because of course, if you're in an entry level role, and you are a caregiver, you don't want to admit that because you think you'll be penalised against and you will be in many cases. So it's a really difficult kind of balance. But I think the change is happening. And it's going to increase because as we see, more women are entering breadwinning roles where men are going to have to take on more care at home unless they can afford you know to pay for the care but that's not the reality for lots of families yeah i think what you said there in regards to being empowered is so important like one of the most powerful things that we do in parenting out loud is probably the most simple which is asking dads to record a video yeah for a minute just talking about how they work flexibly how they took the full parental leave and what i did for their relationship how they parent out loud and we get so many messages from other dads saying oh wow there's other people who are doing a similar job to me who are like minded who are speaking openly about this this is going to give me some that boost you know to to go forth and do what I want to do regardless of maybe what my parents are saying or my friendship group are saying or what I'm seeing on the daily mail that's when I get really frustrated when you see really unequal relationships and you're like what are you modeling for your children like an interesting one to do actually you should ask your kids who has more power or who who's the boss of the home um and i asked my kids that and my daughter was i don't know was it my son he's like oh daddy's the boss because he's he's louder and then he goes out to work in the office more as i work from home more so my daughter was like yeah daddy and then i told her all the things i did and then she knows I write and have a book published so then she really kind of repositioned that she's like oh yeah actually no it's equal and so talking about it is really important because a you're valuing each other's contributions but then they see they see these changes and this I mean I love a complex sociological term there's one called intergenerational norm transfer and I love this one because change happens when you see something modeled in your parents and that can be positive and negative right like one couple I spoke to said that because her partner's family were really really traditional he just had no concept of how to be kind of an involved father or how to do any housework but then on the other hand one man I spoke to who was the one doing the caregiving he had the same he said I never saw my dad growing up and I didn't want that for my own children so it can happen both from positive and negative situations the the men's health strategy was released a few weeks ago and in the strategy talks about the fact that you know when fathers are more involved with their children they have better health outcomes this is a health issue for the parents and i was reflecting the fact that it's taken so long for that language to penetrate at that level there's been so many of us that have been talking in this way there will

11:02Elliott:be women listening to this who are really struggling with the unpaid labor you know i when i wrote my book I interviewed a few women one of whom told me that when she's at work and her partner is at home with the children she has to set Alexa style alarms to remind him to feed the kids you know like it's lunchtime Derek you now need to feed the children and I think lots of women have their own stories of the fact that you know you have to be the project manager you feel frustrated because you're constantly holding everything in your head. Why do you think lots of men are just not getting it? There's so many linked reasons, but I think the main one is linked to how women internalize the judgments and the expectations of perfect parenting and perfect motherhood.

11:56So women are judged for parenting in a way that men aren't. Women are judged on the cleanliness of their house more than men are. Men see dirt just as well as women do. And there's this really famous study where they showed participants a kind of not very tidy room and they attributed to either Jennifer or John. When it was attributed to Jennifer, her character, not the room, her character was judged as more negatively than John. So participants, men and women alike, judged Jennifer more harshly than John for the exact same room. And so that kind of just exposes what women internalize. And it's if you've ever had your in-laws to stay, do you feel judged if your house is not tidy?

12:42My husband doesn't. I do. And then also there's the societal issues, right? There's the fact that more men earn more money than women, the gender pay gap. And so the man's role is prioritized. He then has less time available. And so then it's just the time spent thing. But when women earn more than men, they still do more housework and child care. And that's the crazy thing. And that's why I wanted to write about this topic, because that exposes how deeply we're socialized in terms of gender expectations and how women, in fact, because they're socialized to be more emotional, we do this thing called gender deviance neutralization.

13:21Sociologists are going to love this. So that just literally means we make it less uncomfortable for men because they feel emasculated by earning less. And so women then step up and do more at home. And this has been discovered in loads of studies now. There's this BBC presenter I interviewed for the book, and she said her and another breadwinning woman went out to dinner with their respective partners. Time for the bill came. Both men took out their credit cards and the women performatively let the men pay because it was so important for them to be seen as you know i'm and it's linked to power and status right so it goes really really deep on so many different levels and there's so many kind of things to unpick but the fact that it trickles down into relationships is massively problematic because it will increase resentment it will lead to more instances of divorce leads to less sex if women are doing more at home and so there's so many solutions that will literally make your life happier your bonds with your children better and you know allow each of you to have equitable free time which is so important in a relationship how much do you think is is um due to like socialization as a child there's been a study out recently where they studied the brains of newborns and there was no different in the part of the brain for empathy the genes that code for empathy are no different anyway so it's how we're socialized plays a massive massive role and it again ties into women anticipating planning researching so when it comes to the actual doing all the hidden work is already part done and so the actual doing is why a lot of men feel that they are contributing as much like well you know the visible work is um i'm i'm doing a lot more than my father's generation I'm out there taking them to swimming classes I'm doing loads I'm a really active dad if you're taking the kid to swimming classes did you research the class did you book it did you text the mum's whatsapp group that you're probably not on asking what the best class is probably not and again it's not a blame thing right men are not valued or recognized in the home sphere in the same way women are in fact they're quite ostracized from it girls do more chores than boys which is a shocking fact I think we should all be shocked by it and then it was last week I noticed that my daughter was more willing to help than my son I asked them both to help me put up some laundry my son was like no I'm not going to do it he is two years younger so he's a bit more defiant and not as just happy to help but she's definitely more keen to please she's realized she's very empathetic she knows what's important for other people and it would have been easier for me to just be like okay well you know let's just get on I don't want to get into an argument it's going to take me twice as long to get him to try and help and I know it's not going to be hung up properly but having written about this for the last two years I was like no you know these are your this is your underwear as well I've washed your clothes I'm doing this work you will help me will hang it up and he did and then he needs to see my husband doing it as well and it's not about sharing everything 50 50 because that's impossible and that just duplicates the work but it's having ownable tasks that you do end to end and recognizing that and so i bet if i keep getting my son to do more chores we're not going to be a family where my daughter's doing more chores than my son always get more pocket money as well don't they that's shocking i haven't

16:50Elliott:i haven't seen that but i wouldn't wouldn't be surprised i've seen that i am i have a photo of my son cleaning the toilet with marigolds on when he was about six years old i was like this is how you earn money clean the toilet poor kid we've been talking to Philip Savant and the research that they've published which shows that 9 in 10 new mums have less than an hour to themselves a day and 86 % of them say that you know they're not spending that time doing anything luxurious for them they're showering or they're just sitting in silence for a little bit of time just to have a bit of a break and I just think that's I mean, we all know it.

17:32Elliott:I think no mum is going to be surprised by that. But reflecting back, I just think it's so devastating that that pressure we put on new mums when they're so vulnerable. What do you think it says about how we value mothers' time and their labour? I think it's massively problematic. And I think lots of women do get lost into motherhood because of the lack of social support. so again I don't think it's a blame thing I think women internalize these expectations but there's not a village anymore right like not so long ago families live much closer together in fact in the Netherlands where my family's originally from it's people tend to live more closer to family members and it's very normal for a grandparent to come and spend a day with the kids or two even and having that extra support just makes you more of a human and sometimes Sometimes I was literally speaking to a friend who's got a six month old and she says she's doing 95 percent of the care work and she had not expected it.

18:37She was kind of she yeah, she was she was completely shocked and she didn't know how to bring that up without seeming like she was nagging. She said they've had so many conversations about it and the conversation just kept going back to what I'm working really hard. and again it ties into what you said work that's paid is valued more than unpaid care work yet unpaid care work is needed to educate or bring up the next generation sometimes you have to have a sit-down conversation look at who's got more free time because the argument of i'm working really hard i don't have time doesn't hold up if someone's been caring all day and hasn't had a moment to themselves and then their partner comes home at 6 or 7 p.m and then after that point it's not shared 50-50 because it's work I remember those days I couldn't put my daughter down she would be crying every time I put her down the only solution was to strap her to me and hope I didn't get you know spaghetti on her head because I had to feed myself had to feed her I was alone it's just recognizing that and my partner recognized it he I think he even said when I when he went back to work again I think it was three weeks we had an extra week because I had I was in hospital for for a while he said it's so unfair that I go back to work and everything is the same for me and yet everything's changed for you and that validation and recognition was so important because he understood it and when he got home he instantly took the baby he was like right I've got her my turn and that was just that was just implicit wasn't said he recognized it and And sometimes you have to just explain that very early on, or even better before you have children, because a lot of people don't talk about it, and then it's a shock.

20:17Elliott:And the palliative care nurse Bronnie Ware said that every man she cared for on his deathbed said he wished he had worked less and spent more time with his children, which I think is devastating. And as your book is articulating that pressure for men to be the breadwinners, can have devastating consequences on everybody. Going back to what we were talking about with mothers and the fact that women tend to be doing the majority of the unpaid labour, it's so difficult for them once they start to step out of that, isn't it? Because the consequences of stepping out emotionally on the whole family can be enormous.

21:02Elliott:How do we shift things once you're sort of in that trap? the best piece of advice which i think i wrote in my first book and not everyone agreed with is just to do less more often literally that sounds really simple drip feed of less more often and do the things that aren't consequential so it's and it's little right it's it's one dividing tasks end to end so there's no point both to if one of you tends to do all the cooking sharing that means both of you have to have the mental knowledge of whether you've still got the right spices, whether you've got milk. And so it's actually quite complicated to hand over everything, because one of you will inevitably be doing more of the groceries.

21:45If it works for you, it works. But having a discussion about it. So in my family, I do all the shopping and cooking, but we talked about it. And I'm okay with it, because actually, I'm always the one home first, because my job tends to finish earlier. He does drop off, I do pick up. And so having to explain every part of what's in the fridge actually takes a lot of time in fact at one point I got overwhelmed with planning for weekends and if you've ever as you both know as parents weekends are excruciating if you have no plans because the first two hours are maybe quite nice and then everybody goes a bit mad yeah and that's so true both working full-time and I just couldn't I was like a mental energy of having to you know text people plan for weekends figuring out what to do and he took that on and ever since you know saturdays from literally 7 7 a.m to 1 p.m he's got the kids he takes them swimming with another dad friend and i don't have to think about him because they've had this big activity we can kind of relax a bit in the afternoon do some crafts or go and see a friend and he he he's taken that on ever since and he has such a good time with the kids it's really rewarding they're more fun when they're out and so it's really reinforced positive reinforcement and so you have to sit down and literally divide who does what one couple I spoke to said they've got two kids and they each take on the activities for a kid each but then the thing with doing less more often is failure is a good motivator so another example I often use is you've got a nappy bag it's not got any nappies in or snacks in like I think once my husband was like there was no nappies in the nappy bag I was like oops and then he never forgot ever again right and And it's a really small thing, but it can apply to everything.

23:27If you're on top of everything in your house, whether they've got the right swimming costumes or shoes, that's always going to be your task. But if you're like, right, swimming is your thing. The nappy bag's your thing. Do it however you want. And if, you know, it means your kids are screaming because they've not got any snacks, that'll be a very quick way to learn. We've spoken before about choosing a partner. and I think we spoke about the fact that for for men and women maybe when you're you know in your early 20s what you desire in a partner is maybe not the things the attributes and the characteristics that are going to necessarily make a really good lifelong co-parent you know what things should we be looking out for before we kind of go on to procreate with with somebody yeah it's such a difficult questions because when you're in the thrust of attraction you're not going to be like will you do the washing up yeah um but it's a really good point because one of the researchers who scanned all these comments and articles when she was doing the research on the dads who just go for it and don't care what anyone thinks about them one of the comments was if i act like feminists told me to i wouldn't get laid that kind of made me laugh because i suppose when you're in you're not looking for a man whose aspiration is to stay at home and not earn money right but we have to recognize that society's changing all the time and jobs are scarce in some some industries at any point we should be accepting that someone might be out of the labor for us at some point and i think how you respond to that is what matters so it's not just about being there and doing the washing up it's about adapting to a changing world and I don't know how you ask for that I think there's a lot of research about cultivating deeper connections by asking people value-based questions so not just like how's your job going Elliot it's like what do you like about your job and what does it drive you does it make you like getting those deeper questions in earlier on and that can be quite uncomfortable and unnatural actually because we're not psychologists but I think understanding that if there are red flags if your partner is not getting involved in things you expect them to not being an equal partner not you know valuing your work because that's a lot a lot of the time that's what happens when couples have children a man doesn't value his partner's contribution contribution as much if she's not earning as much money right but who's to say someone working in a charity shouldn't be as valued as someone earning you know a huge wage in the financial industry we've kind of got our values wrong we value teachers and charity workers on a societal level but not on a financial level and that translates into relationships so it's really problematic so I think value-based judgments and getting just really understanding what someone expects to be like and what what gives them joy and what gives them meaning and I think that can come after you've been together for long enough like if you're in the initial you know dopamine hits of the first date yeah you're not going to bring that up and then you might actually realize this is just a bit of fun it also depends on what age you are right like in your 20s i wasn't thinking about having children i wasn't thinking about any of that whereas if i'd met someone in my 30s i think i'd be more likely to say and to acknowledge look i do want children i need someone to be present i'm ambitious I need to have support.

27:01So I think it's a really difficult question and it's just use your intuition.

27:06Elliott:All of that is probably changing a bit for the next generation as well. I'm sure I've read some data recently that more men now want children than women. Men are more interested in starting a family than women are. And inevitably that's going to change dynamics in couples, isn't it? Why do you think we still frame unpaid labour as it being a relationship issue or it being a personal choice rather than it being an economic or political issue? The short answer is capitalism. That's the answer to her. It's really problematic because we need unpaid labour for society to function and policy to change that is very expensive.

27:49so it's very convenient that there's a lot of unpaid labor um i mean you see the policy changes now where they're increasing uh you know funded hours i know you post a lot about that really complicated and there's other hidden costs and it's just it doesn't make economic sense that someone has to give up their career because child care is so expensive that is that is an easy solution for policy to make look in you know look at sweden where child care is just a few hundred pounds a month that's it and it's really high quality and no one even questions whether or not they'd send their child there and there's another fact i love about um when researchers were interviewing swedish mothers uh they didn't understand the term working mother they're like what do you mean working mother i'm a i'm mother and i were like why would you have a term for that like whereas here we're like oh she's a working mother of two you wouldn't say i wouldn't say oh, Ellie, you're a working father of two, would you?

28:50And so they just didn't have the language because all mothers or most mothers expect to go back to work. It's not pitted as a choice because the societal infrastructure is there. There's not the judgment if you leave at 4.30 for pickup. In fact, dads who don't take parental leave are judged for it. It's like there's a social stigma if you're not taking the leave afforded to you because of this policy change. And this wasn't the case before they enacted paid parental leave for both a kind of a user or loser approach so it is is economic even though women internalize a lot of the things we've discussed they feel like they have to do more of the care but they're it's not it's not how it should be and there's a lot when i was researching the book i i went deep into ancient history as you do um and there's these amazing scientists who study um hunter-gatherer societies so they use that it's obviously not ideal because we can't understand the past by only looking at present but um there are societies that are much more egalitarian by that i mean they share resources um whereas in our society when we change from hunter gathering to farming women moved out of their parents home became the property or not the property but they then became part of their male partner's household and had no kind of autonomy of themselves and then had lots and lots of children so had no time to work so it kind of trickled down from there but it doesn't have to be like that and it isn't like that in all societies where there's equal caregiving built in from the outside equal sharing of resources there's no hoarding and there's no kind of status driven reward if you have more than someone else because it's frowned upon it's like well you've got more share it with someone else right and that obviously doesn't work for lots of reasons.

30:36I can't get too political because I'm not a political scientist. But yeah, it is economic and there's a solution. And yet, I think the structural lag thing comes into play. We know the changes that need to make happen, but it's so hard to push them through and it'll take a lot of time.

30:55Elliott:I mean, the fact that unpaid labour isn't included in calculations of GDP, I think, is also a problem as well because you have governments making policies whereby it will drastically increase the unpaid labour, particularly for women, which will remove them from the workforce and therefore have a knock-on, negative knock-on impact for GDP. But how do we redesign work so that being a good employee and being a good carer are not competing identities? I think we have to value that everyone has a life outside of work and so it has to start with flexible workplace policies and for people in senior positions to take it it can't be a state where if you're in a senior position you could do what you like but you expect all your employees to be there nine to five and be glued to their desks and I think also a trust-based workplace where you value output, not bums on seats or time spent.

31:53And I think it has to start with good leadership. And unfortunately, once you're in a position of power, your empathy gets reduced. So I love looking in the psychology of what happens in leadership. So it kind of ties into breadwinning in many ways, because as soon as you have power, you think less about those who you're managing or underneath you. And there's good reasons for that, because if you're making big leadership decisions, you can't spend all your time empathizing with those beneath you right but obviously you can see the downsides of it so a more empathetic caring workplace and it is changing so our assumptions of leadership are changing somewhat but when polled both men and women prefer more traditionally masculine traits and leadership because it's always been seen but I think it is changing people value empathy much more responsible leadership and we're seeing that actually at the BBC they increased paid paternity leave or they call it parental leave now which is great to as much for men or any caregiver as for a woman and so all my male colleagues who have had children in the last two years since it's been enacted have taken 18 weeks off on full pay and they're expected to do it it's not penalized in fact I noticed a male manager in not my team, but a team adjacent to me would always just say, oh, sorry, I can't make the meeting, childcare issues.

33:15And I never said that eight years ago. I would just did this secret parenting, which is ironic because I wrote an article about it. I kind of pretend there was a different reason or not mention it at all. But you need more men who acknowledge those kind of caregiving roles for other people to feel like they can speak up and not be present or constantly worried about presenteeism and I think a trust-based workplace where you expect your employees to do their job unless they have reasons unless they've given you reasons not to so it's like I don't know I did a stint in management for a while and I always said to anyone new starting out look I trust you implicitly these are my expectations and unless you have I have a reason not to then you know I don't mind where you are you don't have to tell me if you've got a physio appointment or if you're clocking off early ultimately people want autonomy in their lives they don't want to feel disempowered or micromanaged or feel like anything they do that's not on the clock is um a detriment to their career because the leadership point is so powerful there we did a parenting out loud program with a big company and at the end of it the co on the panel kind of made a submission that on a tuesday he was with his son he was with his son that was his morning with his son, reading books and taking him to nursery.

34:32But in his calendar, he had gym. And for many years on a Tuesday, everyone thought he was at the gym on a Tuesday. So he'd come in and like, oh, how's the gym? Yeah, it was fine. Did some squats today. He was with his son, right? So he kind of admitted on a Tuesday, I'm with my child. And you could see everyone in the audience like, six hail, be like, this is what we need. We have the CEO now committing to changing that gym to whatever toddler time book reading snail in the whale whatever he's reading right and the permission you can see in their faces the permission for everyone else to be like oh okay this is this is a shit now because the person at the very top is now being like more open and honest

35:08Elliott:about his parental responsibilities absolutely finally melissa what gives you hope when progress feels it feels so painfully slow for so many of us what is it from your research that really gives hope? I think it's the stay-at-home dads who embrace their caregiving roles and who speak about it. The effort fathers who demand flexibility. The dads at the pickup at my kids' school, there's so many dads at pickup. I think it's the fact that I'm able to talk to my children about this and they understand it and they will model this in their generation. I think we have to have hope because our expectations actually act as this prediction engine and will reflect reality in some way.

35:57And the fact that we're speaking about it today, the fact that more men are speaking about it and feel able to, because I know a lot of them want to. So I have huge hope. It's not going to happen immediately. You know, there's a lot of people we need to convince to speak up. We need men to be part of the conversation much more and we need them to be able to feel like they can be part of the conversation and often that is men listening to other men talking about it because men don't tend to read books written by women as much but i think the next generation is really going to make a mark and i think we have to hope for it because i want my children to grow up into a world where they can do whatever they want to do without being penalized financially for their choices thank you very much for joining us thanks for

36:43Elliott:It's been fascinating. Really great conversation. You can buy breadwinners from any good bookshop, as well as your first book, The Motherhood Complex. Thank you.

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