“There’s a lot more that needs to be done across the corporations on recognizing and not assuming that women are going to be the carers. So, men will never be asked what’s their return to office plan. What’s your plan when you come back after having a baby? They just won’t be. Women will always be asked that and I don’t think that’s going way anywhere far.”
Lou Hemming, Head of Google Shopping Solutions, Google
Lou Hemming (Google) and Ian Dinwiddy (Inspiring Dads) join Lucinda Quigley to talk about equal parenting and what needs to be done to ensure it’s supported within organisations.
Listen on to this exciting episode to learn more about:
- Is equal parenting still a myth?
- What is equal parenting and is it happening in any organisations right now?
- How can we stop gender divide happening from day one of parenting?
- Where we need to do more to promote equal parenting.
- What can be done to promote shared parental leave even more within organisations.
Watch the interview
Or read on for the transcript
Lucinda Quigley (she/her): Hi, everybody. Welcome to our podcast today. The subject we’re going to be exploring is Equal Parenting. My name is Lucinda Quigley. I’m head of Working Parents at Talking Talent and today I’m joined by two fantastic guests. I’m going to let them do their own introductions and tell you a little bit about themselves. Ian, over to you.
Ian Dinwiddy: Alright Lucinda. My name’s Ian Dinwiddy. I’m the founder of Inspiring Dads, a coaching business that helps stressed dads balance work and fatherhood. I’ve got two children. I’ve got an 11-year-old daughter, an eight-year-old son, and I’m married to Lisa who is a lawyer. Before I started working as a coach, I was a stay-at-home dad twice looking after both our children for about nine months, each time from the age of six months. So, lots of practical experience, hopefully in terms of equal parenting and men taking on some of that load.
Lucinda Quigley (she/her): Fantastic. Thanks, Ian and Lou over to you.
Lou Hemming: Thanks, Lucinda. Hi, I am Lou Heming. I am head of Google Shopping Solutions for the UK. I am married to another woman who’s also called Lou fun fact, and we have two boys, one 14 and one aged 11.
Lucinda Quigley (she/her): Amazing. Thanks, guys. Thanks for those introductions. We are talking about equal parenting today, so I think it would be good to start off with what do you both see as equal parenting to those people listening? What do we mean by that? Ian, do you want to kick us off? Ian, what does equal parenting mean to you?
Ian Dinwiddy: Yeah, Lucinda, I think there are two elements to equal parenting. I think we’ve got equal parenting within the domestic environment. We’ve also got equal parenting within sort of broader societal and workplace context. I think domestically equal parenting should mean something, should being the wrong word really. I think equal parenting in sort of a domestic circumstance is about shared purpose and direction and it’s about couples working together to share the childcare, share the domestic labor. So, a lot more perhaps about equity rather than necessarily equality within relationships. Certainly, within my own relationship with Lisa then I’ve taken on the majority of the sort of domestic activity, whether that’s childcare, picking kids up, dropping them off those elements.
However, we’re very definitely equal partners. We make shared decisions in terms of parenting choices and how we’re going to do things and there are certain things that my wife will do that I don’t. So, anything related to clothes and the kids’ clothes I completely outsourced to her to make those decisions. That’s just something that’s sort of grown-up sort of naturally I guess, on that side of things. But I think when we are talking about equality and parenting and equal parenting what’s really important is that you both agree with the approach and how you’re going to do things and that within the domestic setup you are sharing a sense of purpose on how to do the things. Societally I think it’s a little bit more challenging. I think there are gender assumptions which we’ll get onto hopefully soon in terms of who does what and what that means in terms of expectations within working environments.
Lucinda Quigley (she/her): Lou, maybe you could expand on that from the workplace side of things. So, you know, what does being an equal parent as an employee mean and look like to you? What do companies need to know about equal parenting do you think?
Lou Hemming: So, I think Ian touched on it earlier which is assumptions. So, stop assuming that women are the primary carers. I think that this is a hypothetical type of question because this is still very much real for most women in the workplace. They are assumed as a primary carer. Men don’t get great parental leave from many companies. Companies are getting better. So, at the forefront of many corporations now hiring manifesto is to try and be more equal with the parental need, but it’s certainly not anywhere where it needs to be. So, from a workplace perspective, I think there’s a lot more that needs to be done across the corporations on recognizing and not assuming that women are going to be the carers. So, men will never be asked what’s their return to office plan. What’s your plan when you come back after having a baby? They just won’t be. Women will always be asked that and I don’t think that’s going way anywhere far. So, in terms of what they can do about it:
- Be aware of it
- Stop assuming
- Training is a good foundational basis to bring awareness to this, about what women go through every day if they’re a parent.
The bigger thing about this is flexibility for both parents regardless of if you’re a mother or father, both parents should have access to flexible leave and working hours.
Lucinda Quigley (she/her): In your situation, what have you seen because you’ve got teenagers now? What changes have you seen in the workplace in terms of your parenting?
Lou Hemming: So, do you mean in terms of access to flexible working hours, or what do you mean by that?
Lucinda Quigley (she/her): Yeah, I suppose it’s just since you became a parent, how do you think it’s changed, and particularly, I suppose for someone in a same-sex relationship who’s being a parent.
Lou Hemming: Yeah. So, in terms of wording same gender is the right phrase to use.
Lucinda Quigley (she/her): Excellent. Okay.
Lou Hemming: Might want to edit that one out, but the same gender.
Lucinda Quigley (she/her): Yeah.
Lou Hemming: Is the right one to use. So, let’s come back to the same gender topic first because, for me, this is the interesting thing. So, I’m in a same-gender relationship. I live and I’m married and have children with a woman. She has gone through that same lived experience as me. So, she has gone through societal pressures, the pressures since she was a small girl. Pressures at school, other pressures about body image and stuff like that, and then further pressures in the workplace. So, she’s lived through those just as I have. I think if you’re in a heterosexual relationship, then even if you’ve got a fantastic partner like Ian seems to be where it’s equal, but Ian as a male has not been through that lived experience. So, he will have to do a lot more intentional work in trying to understand what women go through on a daily basis.
So that’s one thing from same-gender relationships. We don’t have that, and we can relate to each other, I think a lot more easily and then from what I’ve seen change. So, I think companies are getting a lot better at recognizing primary care. So, let’s call the women primary carers role and allowing flexibility around that. So, back in the day before I had kids, it was really frowned upon for women to do less than five days a week or go home early to pick up their kids. Now certainly in the company that I work for, that’s positively encouraged mostly, not all the time, but mostly. It’s not a perfect world.
So, I think it’s been a step-change and I think some of the stories that have come out in the last couple of years. I think COVID has accelerated this. COVID has had a positive and negative side of this, which we can get into. But on the positive side, I think many companies have really tried to double down on allowing women more so to have that flexibility. Work from home or go home to pick up the kids and look after who you need to look after. Google has been amazing at doing that. Take as much carers leave as you need over this time. You need to look after yourself and your family first and everything else comes second. So, I think there’s definitely going to change but there needs to be a whole heap of change still to come.
Lucinda Quigley (she/her): Yeah. Thank you. Ian, what are your thoughts on what you heard there from Lou?
Ian Dinwiddy: I think it’s really, really important. The support for moms has obviously been the first thing that needed to be done. I thank you Lou for your kind comments about whether I was a supportive part partner. I do my best certainly. There was a conversation I had a couple of years ago when I went and spoke to a business that my wife used to work at. It was all about how supporting new dads was a route to gender equality. The lady who organized it had worked with my wife and she said, when I met Lisa, I didn’t think she had children because I didn’t think her mother could do this job.
She said to me, I realize how damaging that was for my prospects as a 20-something-year-old woman. Even if I didn’t want to have kids, there were expectations that I carried as a woman that was really, really damaging to my prospects and prospects of women within society and within the workplace generally. She realized how important it was that not only do we support moms, and we support relationships generally and parenting generally, regardless of how you become a parent, but also that we use this sort of trend that men have to want to be more active and involved fathers. As you said, Lou, quite correctly, some of the benefits accelerated within from COVID that men want to be more involved, and they can see actually they don’t need to be.
For men who’ve traditionally taken on a very traditional gendered role around a breadwinning sort of stereotype. It doesn’t have to be like that, and I think men are starting to understand actually there are better ways of organizing their time and being more connected with their families. It’s a lever that I think we can pull to understand how actually men do want extended leave and if you offer extended leave, if you advertise jobs as being flexible from day one, then men will take those jobs up. If you make it optional and you make it look like you’re doing something that’s perhaps a female role you’re asking for flexibility, that’s only associated as perhaps being seen as a perk for moms, then men will be reluctant to take it because they fear the consequences of being seen as uncommitted within the workplace. So, I think supporting dads and supporting moms can equalize the opportunities to progress at home and be connected to your family at home. It’s a lever towards greater gender equality, I think.
Lucinda Quigley (she/her): Now one of the policies that have been introduced in recent years is shared parental leave. It had a very slow start and actually the most recent figures that have come out, show that the numbers of people taking shared parental leave have declined. Why do we think that is? What do we think is making people not to take up this amazing opportunity? Either of you open to thoughts.
Ian Dinwiddy: Yeah. I think shared parental leave was a great signal to the wider community, the business community in particular that actually government were interested in doing things differently and expanding the provision for men. So, shared parental leave is inherently complicated and it’s also that optionality element where it’s transferred from one parent to another is quite problematic, I think in this sense of primary and secondary parents I think is quite a challenging sort of nuance to kind of get past. It is quite complicated. I think partly the reason it’s not necessarily well paid in the majority of cases unless you are fortunate enough to work in a business that enhances that parental leave and perhaps treats leave as being for parents generally rather than for male or female or either gender. Then I think we get caught up. It’s difficult to do and it doesn’t pay well.
Perhaps in COVID, I’ve been talking to men who have been less worried about their leave because they’re already at home in a way that they weren’t previously. I think that might have something to do with, I think it was about a 17% decrease Lucinda, versus the previous year. The most recent stats about men taking leave generally. I mean, there’s all of the men, if you freelance you don’t get any opportunity to take leave at all. There’s no provision if you are a freelancer, if you work for yourself. But I think there’s an element of reduced demand because working patterns have fundamentally changed and maybe men don’t feel necessarily likely to have protected blocks of time off, and certainly something that’s come up and a couple of conversations that I’ve had.
Lucinda Quigley (she/her): So that formal request, and also the fact that it’s a very complex process to navigate and quite hard to do within companies is probably what’s putting people off. Lou, have you got any thoughts about what would make it more accessible or something different that should be offered in terms of policies?
Lou Hemming: I mean, I think it probably needs, what is it? Six years old now. It probably needs a massive overhaul. It is too complex. The payout is 150 quid. Is it worth it to go through that complexity? For some people, it will be worth it definitely, but they will have to go through a lot of complexity to get there. As Ian mentioned, self-employed, you’re not applicable. If you are a zero-hours contract, you can’t access it or agency work, you can’t access it. So, there are lots of barriers to accessing it in the first place. I think the general uptake is what I believe 2 to 4%, which is very low. I think the interesting thing is when we look forward to 2022 and beyond. So, as most people start returning to the office, I don’t think it’ll happen in a big way for this year. But as those people look to remodel their lives next year and beyond, you may then see an uptake on it. However, I think the whole system, the whole offer, the foundation is not correct. It needs a rethink, and the reward isn’t big enough for probably most men to consider it.
Lucinda Quigley (she/her): Yeah. I think what I see a lot of is if you think about a pregnant woman’s journey is that as soon as they get that 20-week scan that almost kicks off this whole process, doesn’t it of the benefits that happen, that companies have been rolling out for years and that have got better but there is a whole ball that starts rolling. That’s not the same for someone who is becoming a parent but isn’t the pregnant mother. What I see is that most people who want to take advantage of shared parental leave, have to do all the work themselves. They have to dig out the information. They have to dig through very complex HR systems. There aren’t lots of people or role models who have done it, even though that was increasing up until last year. So, I think there’s something systemically for companies to actually have a process that is to encourage people to say as soon as they are becoming a parent, whether they are a birth mother or not, that there is a process that they go into, and these are the options that are then available to them outside of the issue around compensation.
Lou Hemming: I think another build on the shared parental leave topic is actually, it’s not equal across society, is it? Because if you are from an underrepresented group and you are working class, then you have much less access to shared parental leave because of the nature of the work that you do. If you are a white middle-class man, then you’ll have a lot more access. Sorry, I don’t mean to point fingers, but if you’re a white middle-class man you’ll have a lot more options. Maybe you don’t need the money, 150 quid is irrelevant to a lot of people in that position. So, that whole shared parental leave across society is not equitable at all.
Lucinda Quigley (she/her): Yes, and that money, I think as you say, becomes nice to have, but it’s not the thing that’s tipping the balance to enable you to make that. It’s the fact that you can do it now. and there is the option there. Okay. One of the things that I was thinking about earlier was going to what companies can do to support equal parenting. I think what you said Lou earlier about the journeys that every individual goes on to get to becoming a parent are obviously varied. I’m wondering what your thoughts are on what responsibility do companies have to create spaces within the workplace for people to talk and share, and I suppose get support on that journey.
I suppose the reality is that we are talking about this topic now in 2021, but I still coach a lot of people who feel really uncomfortable about talking about their personal and private lives within a professional context. I think that is also related to potentially your cultural upbringing, your race. But we also know that there can be a lot of benefit in people feeling that they can have these conversations and ask for support within the workplace. So, I suppose I’m just interested in your thoughts around what responsibility do companies have to support parents or people wanting to become parents in this day and age and how would that help equal parenting?
Lou Hemming: So, for me, this is a diversity, equity, and inclusion topic. So, all companies, in my opinion. So, that’s not Google’s opinion, this is my opinion. All companies should stand up a very solid DEI plan across their organization. The DEI for me comes in two different pillars. So, you’ve got organizational DEI and individual DEI. Most people experience diversity, equity, and inclusion through the individual lens, which means that they may experience microaggressions on a daily basis, or they may feel more included on a daily basis. That’s a starting point for DEI and then the organizational stuff acts as a structure behind that so you need both. For parents to feel that they are able to talk about these types of topics at work then the role of the organization should be to allow them forums to do that. To have a strong plan, to have the right people in the room to ask the answer the whole questions and make sure that plan is spread throughout their organizations throughout the teams.
Certainly, in some of the teams that I’ve worked in, we look at doing mandatory DEI training. Now that’s not right for a lot of organizations but I think if you have some sort of manager training around DEI and I’m talking beyond the core DEI training. I’m talking about racial equity and training that have come up relatively recently in some organizations. I think making it mandatory and really focusing the team’s efforts on understanding what DEI is and how people who don’t look like them or speak like them live their daily lives and what challenges they come up against. So, I think DEI for me is at the core of it. Great organizational plan, but the individuals should be on the hook for doing this and they should lead by example across the business and it’s not just down to the leaders, it’s down to individual people as well.
Lucinda Quigley (she/her): Yeah. So, following on from that, what role do networks, so specific let’s say diverse talent networks play or minority group networks play within companies. What role can they play do you think to support that?
Lou Hemming: So, I can speak from the point of view. So, I co-chair the pride [23:02 inaudible] code for Google UK, and the role that we play is to allow the LGBTQ+ community to have a safe space to come and discuss whatever they want to do. We also have a very clear focus on usually per year two to three things per year that we want to focus on. So, for example, later on, today, I’m going into the office. I’m hosting a panel on the ethics of drag with five drag Queens. It’ll probably be a huge laugh, but actually, we’re going to get into a serious conversation about some of the DEI issues around drag. I’ll give you an example of those. A lot of trans people find drag quite offensive. So, we’re just going to get into the weeds of that. So, my role within Google for the pride community is to raise awareness across our community of some things that people just won’t be aware of and that’s fine, provide them a safe space and community, but also work with some external partners. So, charity partners to help raise money around mental health and homelessness and stuff like that. Did I answer your question?
Lucinda Quigley (she/her): I think so I was just really interested in listening to you and I’m just going to pause there actually because I want to ask a question, but I want to make sure I phrase it properly and you can help me with this. I want to ask a question around moving forward because this is something we’ve been talking about at work. So, for example, a trans woman having a child or a trans man having a child, if I got that the right way around or either. What can companies do to prepare themselves? I mean, it might be a repeat of, but I think it’s so worthwhile because it’s something we’ve thought about. So, what do you think?
Lou Hemming: It’s a tricky one because I don’t know all the legal ins and outs. So, it would have to start for each country from a legal point of view. So, that’s your start point. It’s a tricky one to answer because there has to be a conversation, but it has to be within the legal framework of the country that the business operates in.
Lucinda Quigley (she/her): Yeah. Okay. Well, what do you guys think? Do you think it should be included as a question, even if we can’t fully answer it?
Ian Dinwiddy: It’s a little bit outside of my experience. I’m going, to be honest.
Lucinda Quigley (she/her): Yeah. It just came up to me because we’re talking about equal parenting and it’s something that occurs to me a lot is that…
Lou Hemming: It probably should be included, Lucinda. I think, even if it’s quite a short and possibly quite vague answer, I think it’s a good signal to include it.
Lucinda Quigley (she/her): So, just building on that conversation, Lou, what are your thoughts around supporting trans parents to gain access to equal benefits and support?
Lou Hemming: Yes. So, I think it’s a great question and something which the answer is going to be across each country the business operates in. So, there are going to be, and I’m not an expert in this. So, I will not attempt to answer any legal questions. But there will be some legal challenges across many countries. I think the starting point is for the benefits team for your organization, or it might be just a person is to understand the legal constraints in the country that you’re operating in. Then once you’ve been through that, then you sit down and map out just to make sure that those potential trans parents have equal access and equity across all things like parental rights and healthcare than any other parents in your organization have. So, as I said, I’m not an expert on it, but I think it’s a really valid topic for us to discuss and I think this topic will only become bigger possibly through the next few years. But yeah, I think start point legal and then make sure across the benefits team it’s equitable across all people in your business.
Lucinda Quigley (she/her): I think it goes back to what you were saying about companies having that overall, very strong DE and I plan doesn’t it and that should form a part of it ultimately.
Lou Hemming: It should form a part of it, but actually this is also a benefits question which is also a legal question but that’s the balance to be had. Providing a safe DEI space is potentially a lot easier than trying to work around the loopholes and stuff like that. if there are any in the countries that you operate in.
Lucinda Quigley (she/her): Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Ian coming back to you on this whole question of, I suppose, how do companies really support parents to be equal parents in the workplace. What do you think the companies can do from day one to support parents to do equal parenting I suppose if there were maybe top three things or the key things that you think companies should be doing?
Ian Dinwiddy: I think the number one starting point Lucinda, is to equalize their parental leave offer. I mean, that’s headline-grabbing. It’s obviously expensive for businesses and depending on the size of the business, it can be quite daunting to do. But where you equalize the opportunity for parents, you treat all parents as parents first and foremost regardless of how they become parents. Then we treat them as parents first and foremost, we take away some of these distinctions between primary and secondary carers, between maternity and paternity leave. We start to build a culture that sees parents as parents and therefore equally as likely to seek out and hopefully remove some of the gender elements around, whether you seek out and take leave. If you have ring-fenced leave for individuals that aren’t optional.
Obviously, it is optional to a certain extent, but we don’t have that optionality whether we’re going to transfer leave from one parent to another, which is one of the challenges around shared parental leave. We have to treat parents as parents first and foremost. When we do that, we start to change the culture especially if we encourage men who traditionally don’t take or haven’t had access to extended parental leave. If we start to have men who are taking that leave, then we start to change the dynamic of how we treat a large number, a vast proportion of the working population. Because at some stage more people will become parents that are not parents. At some stage that will affect and will sort of touch upon their lives in some form or other and then we start to change a culture. So, we see perhaps a generation ago, a man in my situation, a white middle-class man. It’s important to recognize my privilege. I do understand the privilege. I think it’s really important that Lou was talking about the privilege that I have and the access that I have.
A generation ago I wouldn’t have been taking leave at all and I would’ve been expected to carry on working. I would’ve perhaps become a solo breadwinner and I would’ve been in a senior position in the business and business would look a lot like me. As we start to understand the benefits of diversity, gender, and otherwise in all types of diversity towards the bottom line for businesses. Anything that we can do, any levers that we can pull to change culture and so that success looks different. It doesn’t just look like me ultimately. I think that’s the important thing.
Lucinda Quigley (she/her): Lou made a point earlier around culture change or any implementation of change has to be top-down, but it is also down to individuals. What I see a lot of in my role as a coach for working parents and their managers is that particularly over the last 18 months, managers have been really squeezed in terms of the demands that are being placed on them to be everything and support and have an eye on their colleague’s wellbeing. To make sure everybody is being able to work in a way that suits them, to support people through homeschooling. Probably also while dealing with a lot of these challenges themselves. So, we can talk about policy and top-down but what do you think companies should be doing to support those managers, those middle managers in terms of either upskilling or other ways that the manager who is, I suppose, at the coalface of supporting working parents, what can companies do to support them?
Ian Dinwiddy: Lou, is this one for you? This is probably more for you I think.
Lou Hemming: I’m happy to take this. So, I do lots of global work for Google across DEI. So, this is a subject very close to my heart. You see across the business some people will really dial into it and some people still don’t want to, and they’ll only do it if it’s mandatory. It is what it is. You can try and shift those people along a bit by bit, baby steps. In terms of supporting the managers, I think there are a few things you can do. Upskilling is definitely one of them, providing them with the timeless space to learn. Good quality training is another one. Make sure it’s interactional, make sure it’s topical enough that they feel well equipped to tackle something, possibly some sort of current affairs issue. We’ve seen a lot happening across the US in the last couple of years.
So, allowing them the language and the content to be able to have those conversations. Allowing them the time and the space to role play those conversations as well is really important. I think there is a lot of pressure on managers, but I think they’re a leader. They’re a leader of people. They need to step into it. The more you do it, the easier it becomes, I think if you’re not used to doing it, it can feel terrifying. But I just think you need to go in feet first. You’re going to make mistakes and I think you should call that out. Everyone’s human, everyone makes mistakes, but the intent is coming from a really, really good place. So, I think, yeah, upskilling, good quality training and resources, role-playing, and allowing them a space to do that.
Then as managers do this, calling them out and celebrating success, recognizing them for it whether that be in a spot bonus or an award or something like that. Don’t let that effort go unnoticed, because sometimes it’s a monumental effort that goes behind running a certain session or having a point of view on something or calling someone out in a meeting who said something that they didn’t intend to say. But the more you do it, the easier it becomes that support is needed. You’re right Lucinda, it’s a hard thing to do.
Lucinda Quigley (she/her): Yes, and I think you are right in that sense that you are not going to get everyone on board, but it’s about giving everyone the opportunity to get on board.
Lou Hemming: Yes.
Lucinda Quigley (she/her): Isn’t it? And to do it to a level in which they feel comfortable and then slowly shift that dial.
Lou Hemming: Yeah, and sometimes, quite often we’ll do things, these things called micro learnings, which is five minutes. It might be on one particular topic, or it might be on one particular word, and you just bounce it around for five minutes and then move on. So, it doesn’t have to be really heavy all the time. It can be quite lighthearted and a fun thing to do. So, just think about the channels and the formats you’re using. Create a video, send an email, do a slide. Think about different formats of engaging people.
Lucinda Quigley (she/her): I was going to come onto that actually because I think that’s a really good point. We’re talking about company change and DEI policies and a lot of this, I mean every company should obviously have a very strong and rigorous DEI policy. But a lot of, I suppose, the training and the sort of big level support stuff is much harder for smaller companies. So, SMEs. Ian, I just wondered what your thoughts were around what does best practice look like there? So, if you’re an SME, what are the core things that you think they can be doing?
Ian Dinwiddy: Ultimately, I think people need to understand sort of the human element and connect with their employees on a sort of one-to-one basis and remove some of those assumptions and have conversations with people about what they need and what they want because I think that starts to shine a light. It’s very easy to sort of assume. So, you use the word assume again. It’s very easy to assume that you know what people are going to want and need in terms of their support. But I think the starting point would always be to have human-sized conversations and start to understand and connect people together who perhaps wouldn’t otherwise be connected. I think for men in particular that’s a challenge. Sometimes we assume that men have it all together, but actually mental health statistics and suicide statistics suggest that men don’t necessarily seek out help when they need to, in connecting. That’s just one example I think of connecting people together who could support each other and build that community relationship. It’s complex.
Lucinda Quigley (she/her): Yeah. That human elephant, Elephant? The human element. I often talk about managing the whole person, I think as well and that understanding about what’s going on and whether you’re a parent or not, everyone has other demands on them outside of work. So, the question that I want to come onto is, I suppose we’ve talked about the basics, and we’ve talked about what we want people to be doing and what companies should be looking to do to support equal parenting. What can companies do to really enable all working parents to thrive do you think? What are the top things that you think companies can do to support working parents to thrive?
Ian Dinwiddy: I think we do a lot of it for moms in particular, at the moment. I think the opportunity is there to look at what do we do for moms and what’s appropriate and what’s feasible to do for dads, so we don’t have a two-tier system. If you are a mom, then you have one version of how you are going to work and the challenges that Lou is talking about with supporting, a lot of it is a really important support for moms in terms of homeschooling throughout COVID and taking the leave you need to. But making it okay for men to feel like they can take that as well and that just changes the dynamics, I think.
So that’s particularly important. Yeah, and I think anything you can do to do with leave and ultimately, we don’t want things to look like they’re perks just for moms. If it’s seen as equal and it’s seen as something that I can take a man, it’s okay if I do this, it’s going to be okay. There’s some brilliant research from the government behavioral insights team and they did some research with Santander and another big bank, and they looked at what men thought were their peers approaches towards flexible working and taking parental leave. They found that men were massively underestimated how likely their male peers, their competitors if you will, how supportive they would be of taking leave.
Actually, the majority, 99% of men who were surveyed were supportive of other men taking leave, working flexibly. By using that information with a second group, a second cohort increased the chance of those men seeking out the flexible working which we generally associate with, with females and with moms. If we can take that away, then we start to see something that actually, looks the same regardless of who you are and what type of parent you are and everyone has the opportunities to connect with their family, maybe take leave. Whatever it might be, whatever works for them, but it’s seen as an option. Actually, men, it’s called pluralistic ignorance. We assume that other people don’t believe the same thing that we do. I think that can be quite damaging for equality within the workplace.
Lucinda Quigley (she/her): Yeah, absolutely. I mean, assumptions are a really big piece, I think, as we’ve seen already, isn’t it? Lou, what are your thoughts on supporting working parents to thrive?
Lou Hemming: Well, I think Ian really nailed it. I mean, flexibility is an obvious one, but also normalizing it. Don’t see it as a one-off. I only know one man, and this happened three years ago in my whole working career, which has been long who has gone part-time to spend more time with his family. One man, out of my huge network of all the people I know, that I’ve worked with. Two huge corporations, a startup, one man and it’s depressing. Hopefully, it’ll change. Well, two men actually. Now I’ve met Ian. So yeah, I think also Ian, it struck me as quite an interesting word you used in terms of men being more competitive with each other. So, a little bit like the accessibility across society to share parental and leave.
Actually, men are more competitive with each other than women actually because they’re more primary carers. I’m not saying they’re not as competitive, but they seem not to have access to that option because they’re the ones who are going to go off to have to look after the children. So, feels like a privilege around that competitiveness is interesting, I think. I don’t know what the answer is or what it’s all about. Yeah. It’s an interesting point.
Lucinda Quigley (she/her): Any thoughts Ian?
Ian Dinwiddy: Yeah. I think it is a privilege. I think the journey we alluded to before. The experience and the journey of a middle-class man, certainly a white middle-class man is very different. We don’t have a lot of intersectionality’s and I think that we are lucky and privileged, but it also comes with a bit of a burden and certainly there was an article in the Times about three years ago. A journalist called Matt Rudd and interviewed men who were commuting out of Victoria back in the day when everyone and commuted and it was long hours and that kind of culture. He asked the question, why aren’t more middle-aged men, middle-aged fathers happy, successful, middle-aged fathers happy? Essentially, they were trapped in a set of circumstances that were of their own making, but they hadn’t ever stopped to just color consider what would’ve made them happy and what kind of family set up.
They had all the trappings of success, but without the connection to their family and feeling trapped by their success and having to carry on a sort of hamster wheel. So, whereas men do have the privilege it’s a little bit of a gilded cage in some ways for men. I just hope that generationally, I think we’re seeing men are more open to talking about some of these challenges and what they really want rather than necessarily blindly following the societal stereotypes that perhaps my dad’s generation would’ve had. So, we can be the father we don’t necessarily remember grow and I think that’s also something that comes through my coaching work. Men want to be different types of dads. I think that should be embraced and encouraged and I think that it’s useful and helpful for everyone when that happens.
Lucinda Quigley (she/her): And I think it’ll be really interesting to see whether actually COVID could be a catalyst for that. What the legacy will be of COVID in five, 10 years’ time. But it may well be that although it’s set us back in some ways that actually that could be one of the positive outcomes. So, I have one last question for you both which is around, I’m going a bit desert island-esque here. But if I could grant you a wish with regards to what you would like to see to progress equal parenting. So, let’s say fast forward five years’ time, what’s the one wish that you would like granted that you think would progress equal parenting the most?
Ian Dinwiddy: For me Lucinda, I think it is probably the most difficult one to do, which is equalizing parental leave. I think when you do that, you completely change the landscape of parenting generally.
Lou Hemming: So, for me, it would be to move away from putting all of the pressure onto individual organizations and small businesses, to having a better foundation from the government and a better offer from the government. That would be my wish because I think if we start off with a good foundation, then businesses can build upon it.
Lucinda Quigley (she/her): Yes. So, putting that structure, systemic structure in place. Thank you both so much for your time today. It’s been a really fascinating conversation with both of you and thank you everyone for listening to us today. Thank you.
