Patrescence, Paternity Leave and Parenting Out Loud with Elliot Ray

0:01Hello and welcome back to the very last episode of Where Did I Go for 2025 and oh my goodness what a great year it has been. I honestly can't believe quite how much this podcast has brought me this year actually. The ways that I've been able to connect with people over shared stories, the level of understanding I've kind of developed about my own experiences it's honestly been like public therapy and I am so so so grateful to every single person that's been involved in this so far for taking me on a journey as much as you guys so thank you all so much for the support and I really hope you've enjoyed it and I certainly just loved every second of this process so let's see what 2026 brings but for now thank you so much and we are going to be finishing on a huge high note so I'm not even gonna beat around the bush here today we're gonna be talking to Elliot Ray the Elliot Ray and I literally again can't believe he's here talking to me but here we are let's um let's roll with it so as the visionary behind some incredible movements in the UK right now from Parenting Out Loud, the best-selling book Dad and the groundbreaking BBC documentary Becoming Dad Elliot has forced the UK to confront a glaring blind spot.

1:40Dad's a parent too and it's time that workplaces, the media and society treated them that way. Elliot's doing some really important work to dismantle outdated stereotypes, pushing employers to create truly inclusive cultures and giving dads permission to show up as their full selves, kids and all, without apology. His Parenting Out Loud campaign has become a blueprint for workplace equity. His documentary sparked a national reckoning and his book has given voice to a generation of fathers who felt invisible for far too long. In this episode, we'll explore how Elliot turned his personal journey into a movement and why parenting out loud is now the gold standard for supporting working dads.

2:22We'll talk about the workplace revolution and what it really takes to build cultures where dads get to parent loudly and proudly. And of course, we'll talk about what's next for fatherhood in the UK and how you can be part of the change. So if you've ever wondered why dads are still treated as an afterthought or how to fix it, this is the episode you've been waiting for. Let's get to it.

2:48so firstly hello how are you doing we've kind of talked about this already we're both knackered

2:53Elliott Rae:is basically i'll answer it for you basically yeah so normally i have time in november sorry that's how tired i am i don't even know what month we're in normally i have time in december to kind of chill out a little bit plan for the new year but it just seems that this year the business has continued into December and I think there's a reason behind this interestingly this year for inclusion and DEI work I feel like at the beginning of the year a lot of people are figuring out what they're trying to do are they still doing it is it still a thing what language do we use I think people have settled now and so are starting to plan for the new year so it's really good work-wise but I still can't wait for Christmas holidays and sometimes just chill out and lie horizontally on the sofa.

3:45Yeah, because the thing is as well, the work that you do, it's big think stuff.

3:49Elliott Rae:It's not like you get to just kind of have a week where you're like, man, I'm just going to kind of like put the brakes on a bit and kind of coast. Like the stuff you do is so emotive and so meaningful that it's just like, it must be very draining as well because it's like, you have to give so much throughout every single engagement you've got, whether it's, you know, the work you do with businesses or whether it's your podcast or whatever it might be. it's just like big topics that are really kind of thorny. But I think that's a good segue for anybody who doesn't know who Elliot Ray is. Who are you?

4:20What's your sort of mission in the world? What are you working on?

4:23Elliott Rae:Yes, I'm a dad of two, a husband. My kids are 10 and two. Proud girl dad. Shout out to the girl dads. Reppin. Reppin. And I'm the founder of Parenting Out Loud, which is a campaign and community to support dads to be loud and proud about their caring responsibilities at work and equal parents at home so I go into businesses we do consultancy speaking programs really to help to create workplaces that support dads but we also work with dads as well so loads of really cool interesting community initiatives we do to kind of build dads up and then I'm also the co-host of To Be A Boy podcast with one of your previous guests, Jolie.

5:06Elliott Rae:And yeah, in between that, I try and get to the gym every now and again, you know, eat good food and just take a walk and walk the dog. Normal stuff. Just like trying, exactly trying to squeeze in a little bit of like stuff for you and amongst all of the other big things you've got going on, because it is, you know, taking on the sort of national conversation about fatherhood and masculinity. These are like huge battles that you've chosen to face head on and really kind of grab with both hands like what made you first step into this space and kind of when did you realize this was a fight worth taking so I think um by accident really like there wasn't a grand plan at the beginning so my career has always been with people when I finished uni I started marketing and then I went straight into well couldn't get a job so I worked at the bank with my mum because the only job I could get was literally sitting super awkward don't do it if you can avoid it but then after that finding out the stuff I actually wanted to do which was like all people stuff so I had a social enterprise working with young boys teaching a music production but having big conversations about identity and gang violence and relationships and this was back in kind of 2006 and then when I got into the corporate world in the civil service it was hr change roles inclusion roles community building within organizations and then became a dad and you know if you become a parent it's a life-changing experience for everybody and for us it was a difficult start to our eldest her life was difficult at the beginning she was born of a serious infection called group b strep and so it was quite a traumatic time we spent two weeks in the hospital we left the hospital went back to work straight away I was diagnosed with PTSD and it was at that moment really that I think I started to become very interested in the topics around masculinity really and truly my own masculinity to be honest my own mental health and how we do or do not support farmers in the workplace and in communities so yeah started blogging you know small little blog nothing serious no big plan it's like 3am in the morning you know just thoughts on my chest and watching don't tell the bride you know i've never seen that i used to watch don't tell the bride reruns on repeat it sounds like a to be honest that was like a dream situation for me it's like still one of my favorite shows it is gold right tv gold you know like they plan the wedding and then turn up in a in like a farm it's like have you ever met your wife before because everything you've decided to do she hates.

7:46Elliott Rae:I've got to find out. I'm sure it's on YouTube. I need to re-watch those because it was so funny. But yeah, I remember the first kind of six months of just watching Don't Tell the Bride and blogging. And then other dads started blogging too on our website. And yeah, that's how it kind of started. And that was 10 years ago now. Things have evolved since then, obviously. I think you've touched on some really important stuff there. But the thing that really strikes me is just how much of the conversation around how this shift into parenting for dads is, well, we just don't really have that conversation very openly.

8:19Like we have a lot of conversations about the transition into motherhood. And we talk about that in very, almost like now at least, almost like mystical terms. You know, it's this like very beautiful process of becoming, or at least the conversations that I have, or the people that I talk to, it's this beautiful process of sort of transitioning into the role of a mother and all of the sort of mystical, magical things that that involves. That conversation around fatherhood is basically non-existent. It's sort of like, yeah, you've had a baby, you go to work, life goes on. And I can understand that especially, like in any case, I think that is like totally discombobulating.

8:57But when you've had a traumatic experience, to not be able to sort of like channel that anywhere or say out loud, whoa, oh, I'm really struggling with this. That was scary. And I've just seen so many scary things flash before my eyes and I now have to go back to work as if none of it happened. That must have just been horrendous. And obviously it sounds like at that time you tapped into something that a lot of people were experiencing because people contributed their own stories when you started your blog. like have you have you been surprised by how much willingness there is for men to talk about

9:36Elliott Rae:their journeys their experiences so I love how you kind of frame that around entering motherhood and the beautiful transition and how we just don't necessarily have that same framing I guess for men you know I guess partly because we don't carry the baby but I think often there is a there are ideas and false narratives I guess around the emotions that men feel in becoming dads and a lack of acknowledgement around how much their life is going to change as well yeah physically the hormones mentally emotionally you know lots of dads will experience a drop in testosterone when they become fathers you know it's nature's lovely way of helping us to bond with our baby and be more soft and gentle but the majority of men have no idea that that is a possibility for them you know and the emotional changes we go through when we become dads and the changes we go through in terms of our priorities and our perspective on life and health and longevity is it's amazing but yeah we don't necessarily frame it like that we don't frame it as this beautiful transition that you're going to go through and I think we definitely should do more of that but yeah I found that for me you know my eldest is 10 now and so it's interesting to think about how far we have come because 2015 you know we can for the most part remember probably what we were doing just before Brexit you know um you remember those times beautiful times the golden era the golden times we didn't know how good we had it right we did not know as much as we knew what was coming up like Brexit and Covid like you know like no because I think everyone would have just jumped ship they would have been like no um no it's too much it was so stupid looking back it was a good time to be fair but the conversation about about fathers has changed dramatically you know when I started my blog it was called music football fatherhood at the time and I didn't actually blog about the birth trauma I just started writing about being a dad and and health and you know all the things I was thinking about but at the time there was very little in place around fatherhood yeah I'm talking about within our health services but also just socially community group wise we didn't really have the amount of men's talking groups that we have now we didn't really have the conversation on social media and so when I started blogging there was like maybe two or three other platforms in the country yeah that were talking in this way about these things and now I think that has changed massively you know I'd like to think now if you go through birth trauma or any kind of experience or just becoming a dad you'll be able to find pretty easily some community that is talking to your experience and that's part of what we do in parenting out loud is but we are a space where those dads can come and and talk about their experiences not just as a new dad lots of the dads that come to us have children who are seven eight nine sometimes they're 15 16 sometimes older but they are going through parenting and the challenges don't stop when the kids go to school sometimes actually the challenges get more difficult absolutely you know I think parenting my 10 year old is harder than parenting my two-year-old a lot of the time and um I can only imagine that's going to get more tricky big kids big problems yeah yeah 100 so yeah I think for me at the time it was a real challenge because I'm a very like extroverted my wife always says I've got a really loud laugh like stop laughing so loud like you know like I'll laugh and like the other person on the other side of the bar is turning around like who the hell is that so I've always kind of um like being expressive but then going back to work and and just not feeling myself at all and you know having panic attacks in work meetings and and not being able to speak sometimes I remember there was one morning when I was at work and I was so tired this feeling all over the place and my colleague came up in the morning and said good morning and I remember looking at her and just mumbling like I couldn't talk I couldn't even process what my brain wanted to say I couldn't even get it out yeah and I remember like afterwards feeling so ashamed that I can't even speak like what's going on with me so I think a lot of it was just not understanding what's going on and I think now you know we have more awareness of birth trauma so hopefully for the mums and dads who are going through it at least they might understand what's going on and then then they can start to kind of get the support they need and help they need.

14:07Yeah, it's really encouraging to hear you say that there has been a positive shift. And I mean, I can definitely see much more openness towards talking about mental health, particularly, I mean, for everyone, but certainly with men, which is like a conversation that, yeah, 10 years ago would have been much harder to have. I think people are more in tune with their inner workings of what makes us tick and trying to find some language to actually articulate it in a way that previously I think would have been like, oh, just bury that somewhere. Like, you know, that's a bit of an uncomfortable feeling and definitely don't want to share it and certainly don't want to share it at work.

14:46I would love to talk to you more about Parenting Out Loud because I think it's really, I've got a, what's the word? A perspective that I think is quite interesting because I live in Scandinavia where I think the culture is centered around a very beautiful kind of cultural norm of Parenting Out Loud. I would say the family unit is at the centre of society and everything else builds out from there. So often, and I think it's hard already, you know, it's hard for men and women, even in Scandinavia, to be parents in modern culture because it's just, it's hard. And you can hear that I'm British and have made a conscious decision to raise my family here.

15:25But there is like a real sadness in that because I would love to not be away from my, what I can still consider home but the thought of coming back to parent in the UK feels like too difficult

15:36Elliott Rae:and do it don't stay stay away do not come back yeah trust me yeah exactly and it's like that's the reaction that people are like oh just don't you know it's just too especially we've experienced now kind of like the good life right like what it can be like and it would be million percent whiplash to come to the UK and be like wait what you know you guys are still figuring out this thing that was done 40 years ago in Denmark? Like, what is that all about? So I have an interesting kind of perspective on this sort of concept of parenting out loud because I have the Scandinavian model as a reference point.

16:10And I'm so keen for the UK to just start talking about family as being like an absolutely integral part of how we show up in all parts of our life from work to anywhere. I'd love to hear more about what you're doing to advocate for a more expressive culture around parenting. so that people feel like they can show up or just share the reality of what it's like to be a dad in today's society.

16:37Elliott Rae:Yeah. So you're in Denmark, aren't you? Yeah, I am. Yeah. I always talk about Denmark. I don't know if it's perfect over in Denmark. I'm sure you've got your isms and whatnot, but it seems like looking at it from afar that, as you said, you know, family is so much at the centre of life. And I think over here in the UK now, it's very tricky. It's very, very tricky. You know, most couples are dual income. I think around 74 % of working families in the UK both work, which is obviously a good thing because women entering the labor force and more equality means that women are earning now and that's something to celebrate.

17:11And dads, the expectations around dads are a lot different than they were for our parents and previous generations.

17:18Elliott Rae:at the same time because we have super expensive child care you know it's a second mortgage because we have the worst paternity leave in Europe because we feel so scared to let our kids play out on their own yeah so they're spending a lot of time with us and we are kind of parenting as a verb more than we ever did before yeah and they're spending so much time on social media it's difficult to live near your parents because it's really expensive to buy property in some areas that you may have been normal to on a decent salary to buy a house so all these things I think just culminate in making it really stressful for lots of parents and when I first started parenting out loud one of the reflections I had was that I was talking to lots of dads and you know dads that were from different areas in the uk different kind of jobs demographic age sexuality race etc but there was like one thing that made a massive difference in regards to how they experienced life and how they experienced their relationship with their children and their partner and that was the kind of workplace yeah that they were employed at it was who their manager was it was what their culture said to them the dads who had you know fairly supportive managers who they could say you know my kid's sick or actually I'm doing a school run today the ones that encouraged them to put in a flexible working request the ones that were okay with them you know rearranging a meeting to start a bit later on because they had to do something with their kids like those dads experienced life they were still stressed don't get me wrong but they in general had a better sense of self they were able to bond with their new baby they were able to maintain a like a healthier relationship with their partner and they could see their friends and they had a better sense of hope for the future interesting and then the dads who had managers who were like no be here nine or six no flexibility we don't encourage you to take parental leave you can't ask for flexibility if you do we're gonna basically bully you we're gonna make you feel really bad those dads experienced life completely differently you know they were for the most part more stressed their relationship was strained there was a lot more marital and relationship breakdown and really looking at it and thinking like work has a massive part to play in all this you know and so we need to do two things we need to build workplace cultures that support dad's parenting out loud first and foremost and then we have to at the same time work with dads to empower them to ask for what they need and so our approach is always twofold is always tackling it from both angles and when we go into workplaces a lot of our work is with leaders and staff networks and hr teams and it's really engaging the decision makers but everybody really around what it means now to be a working dad what some dads are struggling with and how you can help to better their life how you can play your part in supporting that dad to parent out loud so he has better outcomes in his relationship and his bonding with his children, his longevity, his health.

20:44Elliott Rae:And he's going to repay you back tenfold with his commitment. And he's going to stay in the organisation. He's going to work harder than ever before. He's going to be engaged. And so going into workplaces, it's super interesting, you know, because there's lots of people who are on board with this. They just need help and support. And there's other people, other leaders who I call dinosaurs, who don't agree, who feel very uncomfortable with the idea of dads being equal parents who have maybe been successful having a stay-at-home partner and a nanny yeah and they are very wedded to traditional gender roles and they they believe this is how you be a man and anything else is not acceptable and so going in and trying to influence those people who often hold quite senior positions in organizations it takes a lot of skill and mastery.

21:35Elliott Rae:I was going to say wizardry, wizardry, maybe that's it. I like wizardry way better. Definitely wizardry. Yeah, but it's interesting. You know, I'll never forget. I tell you a story about a dad who was a more mature man in his 60s and he had two kids. And when the kids were younger, he wasn't around much. He pretty much missed the first 12 years of their life because he was working away he was abroad he was hustling grinding provided very well financially but he you know he wasn't around for the school runs pickups nursery yeah bedtimes he missed all of that pretty much he saw his kids on the weekend yeah and now when his kids are they're older they're in their 30s they have children themselves there's a distance between them they don't really know each other the kids don't make an effort with him they don't phone him they don't have any shared memories they don't have a close relationship and he reflected on how devastated he was and how he wished that we were having this conversation about parenting out loud 30 years ago so I remember I told that story with a bunch of CEOs from the energy industry a small round table there were maybe 15 leaders and me and the organizing team and after I finished that story this guy one of the CEOs he walked out of the meeting and I thought he just needed a toilet break you know I thought maybe he's going to make a cup of tea I didn't I didn't know I just thought he walked out anyway he came back 10 minutes later and I could see the look on his face like he looked like he'd been crying and after the session he said to me Elliot like it's actually really made me think about my life how I've lived the privilege I've had but also my relationship with my own children and the story resonated with me and actually it's made me think about the impact I can have on my team and hopefully the younger men in my company who won't have the regrets that the man in your story had but also he has himself and it's conversations like that all the time you know I think this is deep work it's not necessarily a quick fix with policy it's deep cultural work where we have to really help people to challenge their idea of masculinity and success and relationships and gender so yeah deep work yeah because one thing that I found really interesting when I was doing a bit of research for this episode was that so already the UK's paternity leave is as you said like the worst in Europe it's terrible but even the two weeks that people can take it's only one in three dads who actually take it and I think that's really interesting because there's obviously a lot of work to do like you say both ends of the the culture the culture drivers, both bottom up and top down, need to do some heavy work because even though men might want to take a more active role in parenting, I think there's still something holding them back in their either ideas about masculinity or externalised pressures that they've internalised or just feeling still like they're saying that I can take more and it will be okay, but will it be okay?

24:40Will I be at a disadvantage compared to somebody who doesn't? I think there's a lot of pressures still at play that mean, even with the limited help that families do get right now, especially dads, that it's still not being fully exploited.

24:54Elliott Rae:Yeah. So I think with the statutory paternity leave, research is different. Sometimes it's one in four, one in five. But a proportion of dads do not take any statutory paternity leave. The main reason for that is financial. so it's paid 187 pounds and 18 pence per week way below the national living wage and so if the dad is in that relationship the higher earner yeah most families can't afford to take that because they won't be able to pay their mortgage that month or their rent that month so they have to continue working but what we do find to your point is that even in the companies that offer but enhanced paternity leave, for example, six weeks paid paternity leave, or even six months paid paternity leave.

25:41Elliott Rae:The take up is not always the full allocation. You know, most dads, well, it depends in the company. Some dads will take up the full allocation, but it's never all of the dads. And I think part of the barriers is organizational culture. It is leadership. But part of it is that dad feeling like, I'm not sure if that's something that I want to do. and I think in that kind of fear or that confusion as to is this what I should be doing with my time is this what I should be doing as a dad there are so many aspects to that one that I think is important that we try to do is really educate the dads on the importance of what's going to happen on that paternity leave I think there's a lack of education around actually how important it is for dads and all parents to bond with their babies very early yeah and the ramifications of not doing that so we know that one in ten dads will suffer in the uk will suffer some symptoms of postnatal depression in the first six months of their child's life and one of the main risk factors for experiencing postnatal depression is a lack of bond so at the moment we're telling dads to go through one of the biggest life changes you're ever going to experience have a couple of weeks off if you're lucky and then kind of get on with it and go back to work for nine hours a day come home yeah maybe be out for bedtime if you're lucky and what that does in regards to the relationship between dad and baby it becomes very hard to build that bond where you actually know your baby where you understand what their different cries mean where you understand how to soothe your baby by yourself how to bond with your baby a lot of parents will go through if they are given the opportunity to be a very involved caregiver they will go through neurological changes like their their brain will adapt and this is again nature's way of helping us to be attuned with our baby's needs and be that caregiver and that secure attachment that they need but if dads aren't given the opportunity to go through that evolution of the brain then they will never get there potentially and that is really damaging to their relationship their bond and also to the child's outcome who needs secure attachment with adults so a lot of our work is in kind of like talking about why it's so important the joy you're going to experience the fact that you can't get that time back you know you're going to be in a parent forever but that first year is never going to be that first year again and if you can if you have the opportunity to take advantage of six months four months whatever it is like take that because that's going to be so important and impactful for your bond with your baby but also to your relationship you know how you support your partner how you build the rhythm of your household that puts all of you at the center that ensures you understand and you actually co-design what the household looks like and how it runs with this new dynamic rather than being like the third wheel that just comes in at 7 p.m and doesn't know where the nappies are and I mean yeah exactly that's really important you know it's really important the impact on relationships.

28:53We're all talking about the mental loads and how disproportionate it is. It's not equal across families. Women are shouldering a lot more of that day-to-day mental load. And it's so hard to make that easier for women and to share the load unless men, as you put it really well, co-design what family life looks like. If women are the ones who understand how to soothe the baby, what different cries mean, where things are held, when the last time they ordered such and such. And, you know, if they're holding all of that in their head and you're not part of that rhythm, you cannot help to shoulder some of that load and to, you know, I don't know, it's only anecdotal, but the impact of motherhood's outcomes in terms of better mental health, better feeling of sort of that stress.

29:40The first year is amazing, but it's also like, what the hell is going on? It's so overwhelming. And you're dealing with a lot of that on your own. And that for some women can be intolerable. And being able to just share that, offload some of that as a partnership, because you entered parenthood as a partnership, that must have massive outcomes on women as well. And your relationship, the longevity of your relationship over time. And it just everyone benefits, you know, when we give families the right structure to step up in the way that is meaningful and make sense for them for the right reasons, not because they've got the pressure of needing to pay the mortgage or whatever it might be making the decisions for them.

30:19Elliott Rae:Yeah, I think we're going through this massive redefining of relationships, ultimately. When our parents were, when they were younger and when they had us, the model of family looked a lot different. And there were more traditional gender roles. You know, when I was born, there were very few mothers that worked full time. Yeah. It was rare to have two full time working parents, you know, that changed, obviously, like late 70s into the 80s and whatnot. not but now we're in a position where relationships fundamentally look different to the previous generation yeah and that's a good thing that we should celebrate at the same time we need to do more to help those relationships thrive and I don't feel like the structures and systems around us have evolved as quickly as our wants and desires and attitudes towards each other have changed and so absolutely a lot of the conversation that we have with the dads that we create community space is for a lot of it is just around balance you know how they find time for themselves because you know the dads that engage with us are super involved parents they're doing equal share they're working full-time they're knackered they're exhausted they're doing everything like their partner is as well and this is a new a relatively new dynamic and so it's about how do you within your relationship find time for each other to have date nights and actually you know don't still know each other like have conversations not about the kids it's always good how do you find time for yourself to go to the gym to see your friends you know so many dads are lonely they don't have friends they don't see their friends so making time for their friends making time for the kids making time for work and you're both like balancing and and juggling this so yeah we know that yeah the majority of working families are dual income around one in five or dual income working families the mother is the main breadwinner and that is increasing day by day and so I think there's a massive conversation to be had around expectations from men now yeah how that has changed and how we help men to adapt and evolve into a man that can provide financially if that's what they are doing as a family but also a man that can provide emotionally and mentally and can do and be the things to his children and his partner that they need him to be and so I think it's about we have to do a little bit of a little bit of kind of hand holding through that process we need to be kind you know I think there is a lot of blame between people at the moment between men and women online it's just like you know whose fault is it yeah and shit women blah blah and there's a lot of division a lot of divide and I think in some part you know that's manufactured by people because it's profitable and it gets engagement and clicks and all that sort of stuff but I think it's about how do we just help people to like coexist together because ultimately we all want happy relationships we all want purposeful work we want to make money we want to enjoy our lives we want to enjoy each other we want to be good parents and it's just figuring out how in this new world like how do we do that together and what needs to change for us to do that together You mentioned earlier, the systems around us haven't evolved as quickly as our attitudes and desires have.

33:38And if you could sort of wave a magic wand, like what is the one or two biggest sort of systemic changes, whether it's policy or culture, whatever it might be, what would have the biggest ripple effect on starting this chain of events that kind of takes us where we need to go?

33:54Elliott Rae:So I think I'll talk one policy and one culture. I think the biggest thing policy-wise that would have an impact and also shape culture would be improving our statutory paternity leave. As I mentioned, it is one of the worst in Europe. Two weeks,£187.18 per week. One in four, one in five dads, depending on the data set you look at, don't take it. and that is really really devastating in regards to how you start your family life it's terrible yeah and it's really terrible for the message it sends to dads and to mums in regards to the role they play in life and so I think increasing that would be massive so at the moment there's a parental leave review the labor government are kicking down the road I'm not optimistic about it unfortunately i feel like we had a budget two weeks ago they're saying there's no money so i don't know i was optimistic a few months ago now i'm not sure but the campaign is to introduce six weeks paid paternity leave at like 90 of salary i think that would be a bare minimum it would still not put uk in the kind of top 10 european countries at all it would still be pretty bad relatively would still be in a relegation zone but it's for the football fans or sports fans but it's um better than where we are you know it's an improvement that we build from there absolutely ideally we'd love to get to where you are in denmark where you have 24 weeks paid parentally for both parents and you know use it or lose it and these amazing structures that we can only dream of so you can't transfer as well you can't transfer so you gotta yeah and also So some other interesting stuff around that is like one of the other more subtle, but actually really meaningful changes that happened recently was you get your, what's it called?

35:49Like child benefits paid out quarterly. And it used to go by default to the mum and they changed it so that it's now split 50-50 between mum and dad. It's a challenge because I think a lot of men still aren't doing the clothes buying and club signing up and all of that. But it's forcing a conversation around, hang on, you've got half the money now, so you can take on half of the load of things that we are organising this quarter. So it's like a real top-down, at least conversation driver. I think it's caused a lot of frustration for a lot of people because it's not practical. You can't, I think a lot of mums are just like, oh, I really could use that other 50 % now.

36:29Transpare it back.

36:30Elliott Rae:Transpare it back to me. He's like, just trying to write back because I kind of really need it. But nonetheless, you know, it's shining a light on something that shouldn't be. So, yeah, there's lots of policy measures in place to sort of try and force more equitable roles. Yeah. And I think that's what policy does as well, doesn't it? It's not just about the direct impact of the policy, it's what it signals and what conversation it starts. And I think for paternity leave to increase, it's not just that. Obviously, dad's being at home for six weeks is going to be a game changer. But it's more than that.

37:05It's what does that signal in regards to from the very start of that child's life, who does what, essentially? Yeah.

37:12Elliott Rae:So I think from a policy perspective, it'll be that. From a cultural perspective, and this is like harder to achieve, but it is what Parenting Out Loud aims to do. and that is I would love to be able to sit down with every like senior leader across the UK we're getting through them we're talking to a few but everyone and have the conversation about fatherhood about bonding success masculinity like what I've realized about workplace culture is that a lot of it really starts from the top yeah you know a lot of it is shaped by the executive team their own role modeling their appetite for championing in particular causes their acknowledgement of challenges and then what they do with that to make sure that their organization is built in a way that reflects the desires of the people that work for them and so that's a deeper one because there's no magic wand to do that but I think where we have been successful is where companies have recognized there's a need and they have invested in making time and space for their leadership to be able to be involved in these conversations and what I've seen is that when companies do that we can go in we can influence and that trickles down to actual real culture change and real outcomes for people so going back to you know earlier when I mentioned parental leave and some of the organizations that have enhanced their parental leave so we have around 165 companies in the UK that offer equal parental leave.

38:48Elliott Rae:They have a normalised paternity and maternity. So as a dad, you might get six months off paid parental leave, completely paid, great. But even then, the take-up might not be 100%. And from an organisational perspective, what I find is that it's not that those leaders are saying, don't take the leave. They're not saying, for the most part, anyway, if you take the leave, you're going to get demoted or we're going to think less serious of you. They're not saying that explicitly for the most part. Sometimes they are. There are bad examples. But for the most part, it's not that. For the most part, what it is, is a kind of apathy towards the policy.

39:24Elliott Rae:It's a lack of communication that you support parenting out loud. It's a neutral position. and what i find is that when there are neutral positions from leadership in regards to dads and parenting out loud the dads assume the leaders aren't supportive so they never actually ask for what they need they never ever come to the table and say this is what's going on this is what i actually need to be an equal parent at home they don't bring that conversation to work because they assume the perception is a negative one um it's a term called polaristic ignorance where we feel like our beliefs aren't mirrored by the people who are around us and so what I think is important for leaders to do yeah is to over communicate and be explicit about their support of working dads so they need to say openly over and over again yeah in different formats we really embrace flexible working here we really support working parents working dads working mums if you need something from us to make your life a little bit easier ask your manager they need to be saying we have this four-month parental leave policy in place it's really really good we want to ensure every expectant father knows that this policy is available that we as a company support it and we want you to take it up Zurich UK is a great example in 2019 they took the unprecedented move to introduce all new job vacancies as flexible so nearly six years ago now they did this since then they have had a 45 increase in men working part-time and they've had a 48 increase in women entering senior roles oh wow they were explicit about their support for flexibility they advertised all their jobs as part-time you can do it in a part-time basis compressed hours job share etc and they were really open about that and proud about that internally and externally and so if I could wave a magic wand it would be to be able to have time with their leaders to explain that to do the deep work to unpack their own ideas about what they think about parenting and caring work more widely and then really help them to be supportive and talk them through the steps about what actually makes a difference and creates a culture where dads feel safe to parent out loud.

41:49Yeah, because like often people in senior positions, they don't have a burning platform because they've been able to get to a senior position with the system that we have right now. So what is the incentive? Unless you've got some really strong voices forcing you to face an issue that they're seeing elsewhere in the business, like it's not an imperative for you. And I think you're right. Like every time somebody is, so on top of the over communicating what your position is as a company about parenting generally and you know how your business supports parenting it should be mandatory that every time someone says yo I'm gonna have a child that there is like a process in place that's a series of discussions to help you enter the process of parenthood and then evolve your role through the as you're parenting as a kind of structured set of conversations so you don't have to take the initiative to be like I think I need flexible hours and that feels really uncomfortable to ask for but rather your manager coming and being like okay you've just told me you're having a baby here's everything you need to know about parental leave and here's the things I'd like you to think about so that when you start thinking about your process back into work how we can best support you but that requires training and that requires someone more senior than them to be like this is really