Why Care? #6: Dr. Laura Radcliffe - The Barriers to Equal Parenting
“Most work-family policies and the whole way work is set up is still based on a really outdated model of what a family is.”
In this episode I talk to Dr Laura Radcliffe, Senior Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at the University of Liverpool and author of many research papers on the topic of parenting and work-life balance. Together we published the Business in the Community Equal Lives: Parenthood and Caring in the Workplace Report in 2018, where we shed light on the barriers men face to get more involved in their caring roles.
We discuss what fundamental changes society and organisations need to embrace to achieve more gender equality and explore topics like maternal gatekeeping and the importance of making male caring visible at work. We talk about the relationship between equal parenting and wellbeing, as well as the impact of work-family conflict for both.
Laura also gives us an interesting preview into her current research project, due to be published this year, where she studies single parents at work as well as blended families.
We hear how 1 in 4 families are single parents, 90% of them women and how the current system fails them as they struggle to fulfil society’s expectations. The norms of being a good worker and a good mother at the same time are completely opposite to each other and therefore unobtainable.
Maybe the global pandemic and its profound implications on how we work has been a reset and started the momentum for a fundamental change so employment and wellbeing can be possible for anyone with caring roles?
Show links:
Laura’s University of Liverpool Page where you can find her published papers
Laura’s Linkedin Profile
Find her on Twitter @laurasue888
Transcript
Laura Radcliffe
I had a recent discussion about my maternity leave. There is this notion that our UK policy doesn't help because it's set up that way but it's not a woman's leave, it's a parent's leave and it should be seen that you share it. I understand as a mother myself; I understand the kind of pull and I don't want to give up. But you are only seeing the short-term picture, you're not seeing the bigger picture of what that sets up for the rest of your lives.
Nadia Nagamootoo
Hi, my name is Nadia Nagamootoo, business psychologist, coach, speaker and founder of Avenir consulting, which creates organisational growth and success by inclusion and diversity. We've been discussing the benefits that diversity brings to a company's bottom line performance for decades with more and more evidence, but there are so many questions organisations still have about how to achieve it. How do you create a culture where people feel valued for their uniqueness and the qualities they bring? I believe it's crucial to the future success and sustainability of every organisation that they find the answer to this question to make sure that each employee is not only supported but also appreciated. With this podcast, I aim to get some of the key challenges to creating inclusive workplaces out in the open and start uncovering the solutions to embracing a culture that cares for everyone. I'm going to be having conversations with some of the most inspiring people in different countries and across industries who are pushing the boundaries on inclusion and diversity in the workplace, from topics such as parenting in the workplace, ethnicity, age, gender, mental health, and all things inclusion. I want to create a movement to change society through sharing life experiences, and creating more empathy and connection. Why care? I believe once we have organisations and societies that accept and value everyone for who they are, we become healthier, happier and better in our roles both inside and outside work.
Nadia Nagamootoo
Hello, and welcome to episode six of my why care podcast. My name is Nadia Nagamootoo, and I am your host. What are the expectations of mothers compared to fathers? What's the impact of these gender stereotypes on our behaviour? And what role do organisations have in challenging these? What are the difficulties faced by modern day blended family types trying to live within a traditional family framework? These questions and many more will be answered on today's podcast when I speak to my guest on the show Dr. Laura Radcliffe. She has a PhD in organisational psychology and is currently a senior lecturer at Liverpool University Management School and the director of the Master of Research programme. Her research looks at work family practices, routines and decision making, looking at the gender norms and the impact of organisational inclusion and diversity. Her research has been published in journals and is widely cited and applied in the business world. We delve into some fascinating psychological concepts such as intensive mothering, maternal gatekeeping, and the ideal worker, dissecting why gender norms are so fundamentally hard to shift. Finally, Dr. Laura Radcliffe explains what organisations need to do in order to challenge stereotypes and support everyone at work, no matter their circumstances or family type. Laura is a very good friend of mine, I personally find her knowledge, passion, and insight on the subject inspiring. Enjoy the show.
Nadia Nagamootoo
Hello, Laura, really, really great to speak to you. How are you?
Laura Radcliffe
I'm good. Thank you. Yeah, I'm looking forward to talking about this. It's something that I care a lot about.
Nadia Nagamootoo
Absolutely, it’s something we both share a common interest in. I do enjoy our conversations, because we're just so aligned in the research that we've both done, but also in our views, so, I'm really excited to speak to you. Let's talk about equalised because that was how we met, so it seems apt. We looked at different types of male carers at the time, a lot of the research seem to be on heterosexual relationships and less so on the fathers. So, we really delve deeper into the experience for single fathers, for same sex fathers, for main caregivers, and also for those men who look after elderly relatives. So, for me, it was really important at that time to get some depth of understanding of those different types of male carers. But can you elaborate a little bit more in terms of your thinking about why that's important?
Laura Radcliffe
Well, I think there's so many different reasons. But mainly, we should just be learning about everybody's experience and not just concentrating narrowly because then we're missing out on a lot. Looking broadly at the issue, we need to understand male carers broadly from whichever kind of angle we're looking at it because there's a few reasons for that. Obviously until more recently, there's been such a focus on working moms. You kind of think if you talk about gender, it's about women, and if you talk about family friendly, it's assumed for moms, even if it isn't. There's so much research historically on how women manage work and care and how women achieve work life balance. Whilst that's important to understand, and it's good that we've done that, it kind of implies that this is only a woman's issue, this whole trying to manage work and care. Then we're missing the whole other side of the equation and that meant that we were really making assumptions about men and fathers, rather than actually understanding their perspective. Then it meant that men were being left out of these discussions often. It has changed over recent years, there's increasing research on men and fathers. But it was obviously very problematic for men because it almost removed care as an option for them, because it made them feel like they're in the dark, they don't get a voice in this matter. They often report, as we know that family friendly support doesn’t seem to be available to them, or at least, they're not targeted at them, so they perceive that they're not available to them. First of all, what if they want to care? We obviously saw that together that most men expressed the desire to be more involved in care.
Nadia Nagamootoo
Yes, it seemed to be a more contemporary father thing, just today's society seems to have moved on in terms of what men want compared to their fathers before them.
Laura Radcliffe
I think that's definitely shifting.
Nadia Nagamootoo
Why do you think that's the case? Why is it that fathers desire to be more hands on nowadays?
Laura Radcliffe
Well, I think that what it means to be a man and what it means to be a good father was changing slowly over time. Obviously, we have these social norms or expectations about what people should or shouldn't do, depending on their different groups. So, for women, there's always been these kind of strong intensive mothering ideals and being good mothers who are intensely committed to their children every need in time and energy. That's what it means to be a good mother, and that's historically been the case. So that's been very different to how previously society has viewed what it means to be a good father, which at the past, has been someone who provides for his family and he's the breadwinner. You're a good father, as long as you're doing that, and you may be doing a little bit of other things. But I think we're still in transition. What it means to be a good father is changing and has been changing over time, and more intensive parenting practices are becoming increasingly relevant to fathers. I think it's good that we're shining a light on this because it's not really beneficial for men to be taken out of that equation of being a carer. It's human nature to want to care for and build relationships with your children. The number of times you hear men at the end of their careers, saying the biggest regrets is that they missed a lot of time with their children growing up. There are a few bits of research now on the negative impact on the well-being of fathers and that they've not got a work life balance. If we're talking about work-life balance, historically, men haven't had that, they've had work. So, it's definitely changing. They're realising increasingly that maybe there's more to it. Social norms are changing, so there's a bit more of an expectation. I still don't think it matches the level of expectation placed on women as mothers, but it's shifting. So, I think that we're kind of in this transition phase that’s been going on for a while.
Nadia Nagamootoo
What I love is these conversations that we're seeing on social media and in the news and all of that, that more men are willing to step up and say ‘yeah, I'm a stay-at-home father or I took shared parental leave’, or ‘I am very active and share equal responsibility with my partner’. So, what you're saying is that whilst men are now starting to be more open, society hasn't quite shifted in the same way for women. So, women are still the main carer.
Laura Radcliffe
They still are but also it hasn't fully shifted for men. That’s why I'm saying, it's in transition. So, while I think, men are standing up and saying that there is still not the norm for them to do that. There's still a pressure for them to fit in this whole notion of being a man. You remember the Piers Morgan thing, which was hideous, mocking Daniel Craig for not being a real man because he carried his baby on his chest. Something that is so beautiful is not a very manly thing to do.
Nadia Nagamootoo
And I loved what happened on the back of that though, didn't you? I mean the Twitter feed just went bananas, so many men posting photos, I loved it. It was fantastic.
Laura Radcliffe
My husband did the same, actually. I think that that's great but it’s still that very popular in the media, it's still out there. It's like a playground, you are being made fun of if you step out of the line of what we say is the normative behaviour. You're still going to risk getting some kind of backlash. You still see it anytime you look on Twitter or on social media, if there is something posted maybe encouraging a slight shift in masculinity or fatherhood, there's so much backlash. For example, having little boys pushing dolls pram, which is one of the things that really annoys me because I have a little boy as well and he's very caring and loving. It really annoys me that lots of people get really riled up about this still.
Nadia Nagamootoo
I was talking to a good friend of mine, and she's got two girls and a son. The son enjoys dressing up in a little dress and he'd like to go to nursery in a little dress, she's quite relaxed about it and she's fine for him to do that. But if her husband spots it, he gets quite annoyed about it. And he'll be like, ‘what are you doing, take that dress off’, it's quite a big thing for him, he doesn't want his son dressing up in a dress and going out in public.
Laura Radcliffe
If you actually try to think about it, stepping outside of our society and norms, it's kind of silly, it's just a piece of material in a certain way, why designate that to one gender? My son thought the same thing because he found pants really uncomfortable for ages, and he came up with all sorts of reasons why he doesn’t want to have these restrictive things around him. Yeah, so it's the pressure. I especially hate the things to do with young boys not being able to express caring without being mocked for wanting a baby doll or wanting to push a pram or wanting to do all of these things. It's from a very early age, they are teased out of them. I just think that what are we saying about caregiving, that it's something to tease people about for caring. They might grow up and be a good dad. What an awful idea? Whilst its changing, change is slow when it comes to social norms. I think we're in transition, which means that the men who are standing up and saying, ‘I'm taking this leave, and I am doing this’, they are brave, and we need more of them. I think that's a really good thing, but I don't think it's that easy. I don't think a lot of men, 30 of those who I spoke to in my research as well don't find it easy even when they want to do it. They imagine all kinds of things might happen and sometimes they're right. Sometimes it's more of what they're scared of, and it's actually going to be fine but other times they are right, it might not be that easy.
Nadia Nagamootoo
The repercussions could be multiple, so a lot of men are saying that it could be potentially detrimental to their career and a lot of the reasons why they might hesitate could be around financial but also perceptions. I was reading the chapter of the book that you wrote rethinking work-life balance and wellbeing in the perspectives of a father. In the beginning of that chapter, you give the example of Mark Zuckerberg, the Chief Exec of Facebook, he took two months parental leave and it was all in the news. I mean, it was pretty big at the time, wasn't it? And actually, we're still talking about it now, which just shows how impactful him taking some time out being a chief executive of a global multinational company. What's the impact of those types of stories and how important is it for the senior leaders to be living and role modelling different behaviour?
Laura Radcliffe
Yeah, so this is a chapter led by one of our PhD students, and he's doing some really interesting research around this. In terms of the opening example of Mark Zuckerberg, I think it is really important, because we're making male caring more visible and more normal rather than problematic. So, I think it's really important in that sense. However, I think the problem with very high celebrity examples, though we still need them, is that individuals in the normal world could easily argue that his life isn’t, and his options aren't relevant to them. They are almost too far removed to be a real on the ground role model so they can easily dismiss it as long as it's great for the CEO of Facebook. So, I think what would be even more important, I kind of already just mentioned that there are men who are saying ‘I'm taking this leave’ and they are showing themselves to be more active and caring.
That's important, especially in organisations if you're in charge of employees, a Senior Manager, middle manager or line manager. So, I think that's where setting these kind of examples and really shouting about it is really important. When it's in your direct vicinity and people are saying, ‘well, this is what we're all doing’. But we hear way too often in our research about men who hide their fathering in the workplace, even if they're doing it. So, they're leaving early to pick the kids up, but they'll pretend they're going to go and see a client, or they've got another meeting or they'd rather be saying that they were ill themselves than admit that they're taking time off to care. One of our PhD students, Martin Bradley, he's exploring this in his PhD research, and there's so much interesting stuff coming out of it. So, he's looking at how and why men conceal fatherhood at work. This concealing of it is so problematic, because I think more men are doing it but they're still not always often shouting about it for fear of all this backlash we've already talked about.
Nadia Nagamootoo
Yeah, but the thing is that the backlash happens, doesn't it? I understand why men are shying away from being overt about it and shouting from the rooftops. It takes courage for men to do that. In the last episode, I spoke to Yash Puri, who set up Papa Penguin, he's a role model and he's shouting from the rooftops about it. He is providing a platform for men to share their stories and I think that is something that needs to be normalised, doesn't it. Then surely, for companies and organisations if it's normal, there could be less of a backlash if everyone's doing it.
Laura Radcliffe
Yeah, I think that's really important. I think that's why we need to make this normal for everybody as well, because if it's always asked whether you need special arrangements at work, then you get marginalised and you get pushed out of the career progression. Whereas if everybody is saying that we all have other responsibilities and things we need to do, this is not a woman's or a mother's issue, this is for everybody, then that will be beneficial for everyone. It just means that the first few people need to be really brave, and then the next few people still need to be quite brave. It's difficult to go against the norm but the more people who do it, there'll be a tipping point, and it becomes normal. That's what we want. It just takes a while, and you have to have a lot of people being brave to get there.
Nadia Nagamootoo
I'm really interested in another one of your papers, you mentioned and explore the topic of maternal gatekeeping. We had already spoken about society typically seeing women as the main carers, and women stepped into that role and welcomed that role and from what I believe you're saying, gatekept that role. Can you just explain a little bit more?
Laura Radcliffe
Yeah, of course. So just noting that what society tells us we should be, we usually want to be or become that because there's a lot of negative repercussions for not being that as we've just kind of talked about for men, and it’s the same issue, obviously, for women. So, what society tells us is our role, we often kind of internalise that and we've been socialised as that. Like, again, we've discussed from childhood, we're internalising that. So, when I talk about maternal gatekeeping, I'm referring to mothers actually managing fathers’ roles in childcare and related duties. We often hear about people talking about women as home managers, they tend to take charge. So even when we're saying that men might be more involved, the involvement is usually directed and orchestrated by the woman, and that's problematic.
Nadia Nagamootoo
It’s so true and it's really real, isn't it? Sometimes I actually have to catch myself from doing it all the time. It's not even something that I'm aware of, it is something that women may or typically do that I'm somehow immune to falling into it. Why does it occur? Is it simply because we've seen what our mothers used to do? Or is it some control aspects of it?
Laura Radcliffe
I mean, it's social norms again, that's to blame for a lot. The intensive mothering kind of ideals and what it means to be a good mother in society means that it's problematic for women. I think there's lots of elements, but one element is that it's problematic for women if things don't go perfectly in terms of their childcare. For example, if you bring a dishevelled looking child to school in the morning, if you forgot to brush their hair or you forgot something that you should have organised for that day, a man wouldn't worry about that, but a woman would really worry about that. It will be the woman as a mother that is judged for that, and the man won’t, so the man has never experienced that kind of maternal judgement before. However, when you become a mother, the judgments are just flying around. It is everyone else's opinion, and you shouldn't be doing this and you don't get that as a father and that means that you've internalised that pressure, you're trying to avoid that as a mother and a man doesn't entirely understand it. So, if you are trying to organise things and you need to keep things a certain way, it's because it will reflect negatively on you as a mother. If the man turns up and the child's a bit dishevelled, they’d be like, ‘oh, that's nice, you really tried’, but it’s really patronising to men.
Nadia Nagamootoo
It’s really off, isn't it. He's just equally as competent and capable of dressing and brushing his child's hair, and yet he's given a free pass for remembering everything.
Laura Radcliffe
We somehow forget that we expect men to be these competent and organised people at work, but they can't possibly do it at home, it doesn't make any sense, obviously.
Nadia Nagamootoo
What's the impact on fathers because of that lower expectation of their competence?
Laura Radcliffe
Well, I think there's negative impacts for women and men, for mothers and fathers. Yeah, I think with women, we talk about the mental load a lot, don't we? That's the term thrown around quite a lot. So, women are carrying the mental load of the childcare and domestic work, even if men are doing more now. The continuous need to plan, think ahead and organise is always in the woman's head, and that’s automatic for her and it will lead to exhaustion. If she keeps doing that, then the man probably hasn't often had the opportunity to even know what that entails to appreciate the effort put in. So, I think that's really problematic for women. I think that women are perpetuated as that, like we say, we've noticed ourselves doing it, and it can make men feel incompetent at home, and feel like ‘I just won't bother then’. I had this in one of my research pieces, where she had asked him to take the kids swimming, even though she really didn't want to because it stressed her out because he wouldn't do it right. So, he's taken them swimming, that's his responsibility and she's written it on a chart for him.
Then she packs the kids swimming things ready for him to make sure that everything's there and she leaves detailed instructions, and then texts several times to check how it's going. Then if something's not gone right, and that's a big problem. The mans now left thinking, ‘well, why do I need micromanaging? I’m obviously not capable of doing that?’, then that sinks in, and they think that I'm not capable of doing it myself. Also, he doesn't get to practice, so, if he's left just to do it, he may fail a couple of times, women may fail when they first start doing it as well. If you don't let them learn for themselves, then they're going to feel incompetent, they're going to feel like it can't be done. Based on the good societal issues that I've already explained, the other problem is that women think that it has to be done my way. I have even caught myself doing this as well to be honest, like, ‘are you really going to do it that way, do it like this’ but that’s so annoying.
Nadia Nagamootoo
Yeah, if my husband did that, to me, I would not be impressed but it still comes out of my mouth.
Laura Radcliffe
That’s what I’m always talking about. My husband knows the term maternal gatekeeping now and he goes you’re maternal gatekeeping again. Also, with my husband, it is the other way round because he's a really good cook, and he cooks a lot. And when I cook, he will come in and start going, I wouldn't have added and that drives me nuts, and I’m like, ‘well, I'm not going to do it then.
I'm not going to cook.’ So, then I obviously think, well, that's exactly how it feels, it's not nice and my immediate reaction to would be ‘well, then I'm not going to do it, forget it then.’ So, you don't want that, it makes men feel incompetent, like they can't do it, it doesn't give them the opportunity to do all of those things. And for women, it just means that you're keeping that mental load to yourself and that constant burden. I don't think it's good for anybody, really.
Nadia Nagamootoo
I do it and I know that I do it. So, I hold in my head what our daughter has in terms of activities at school, when she needs to take her P.E kit in, when she needs to take her tennis racket in, when her swimming bag needs to be in or whatever. I'm the one who typically would sort out her birthday party and manage it. It is exacerbated by the fact that Whatsapp group is just mum.
Laura Radcliffe
My husband is now on the mom's Whatsapp group and there's a couple of dads and there's plenty of women. We kind of talked about it between us and he decided that's what he wanted to do because he's kind of sick of being left out of the discussion about what's going on. And so yeah, we made that conscious decision. I think small things like that means that now he's getting the party invites on the group. He now thinks about when to put the party invites in the diary, when we need a present. He wants to do that because he's always like, ‘well, what's going on?’. Moms’ WhatsApp groups are one of the contributing factors.
Nadia Nagamootoo
Yeah, but it's great, we need more men. I suppose the shift we need to see happen is for women to just accept and let it go. It's not going to be the same way as they would have done it but it's okay and the child still survives. Also, we need the men to step in and say, ‘actually, can I be on that Whatsapp group?’
Laura Radcliffe
Yeah, again it’s then being a bit brave as well for the men because it is a bit scary. I mean, I'm thinking of it the other way around. I just go on a father's WhatsApp, it's not really a comfortable thing. For the women, it's very hard to let go of certain things and saying no, it will be okay but it's about looking at the bigger picture, rather than what's comfortable right now. I always say this, the comfortable path is not the one to gender equality because otherwise we'd have it. We need to try and go a little bit out of our comfort zones by looking at the bigger picture and I think this is really important when thinking about maternity leave and shared parental leave as well. I had a recent discussion with my friends about my maternity leave. It is this notion that our UK policy doesn't help because it's set up this way but it's not a woman's leave, it's a parent's leave and it should be kind of seen that you share it.
I think I understand as a mother myself; I understand the kind of pull but I don't want to give up. You’re kind of only seeing the short term picture, you're not seeing the bigger picture of what that sets up for the rest of your lives. So yes, you maybe go back to work a bit earlier, but you give that opportunity of bonding for the dad and the child, that's so invaluable. You give them the options to be competent at some of these difficult things that you've had months getting competent in. You get them to be part of the routine and you get them to have that really important relationship and realise that. Most men that I've ever talked to in my research seem to think that there's this natural mother-child thing that it cannot connected with them. I think that’s quite sad for them but I also just don't believe it's the case. I think there's an important bond by spending time, going through difficulties together, overcoming challenges and persevering through them, being stressed together, not sleeping together, and you hold that bond, and it's hard. So, it's not that there's a natural bond, it's just how much time you invest. If we're going to do that more equally, then everything's set off on the wrong foot from day one.
Nadia Nagamootoo
Yeah, I completely hear that. It's almost like a myth that needs busting with regards to that first year. I get it biologically obviously, the woman has carried a child and has given birth, so there is a recovery time, that's a given. Of course, if they are breastfeeding, then there are certain things in terms of that what a mother might give initially to the baby. But for a whole year, I totally see that we should relabel it as parental leave. Societally, actually seeing both parents as equal players is key for us to transition into a different mindset on this. We've just touched on sharing care equally, I know that with the latest research that you're doing, you're interviewing couples at the moment who are managing to find this balance between the two of them. Can you just talk a little bit more about what you're doing and what you're finding at the moment?
Laura Radcliffe
Yeah, I'm kind of building on some of the couples that I had from my previous research and then trying to find more because in my previous research, I had a few of these couples, but not very many. I was fascinated with how they’ve managed this against all odds, and nobody else seems to be. I've been trying to gradually find other couples, it's not easy because even when people think and say that they're sharing equally, they're not. In the end, it is very hard to find, but it's in progress. Obviously, I've not published it yet, so I don't want to give away too many. Having said that, I think one of the things that I'm finding really interesting is that there seems to be a lot about the man seeing genuine value in the partner’s work, having a real respect and understanding for the female’s career. So, it's not who makes the most money. Regardless of that, if the man clearly sees his partner's work as valuable or important, or he has a better understanding of what she does, so maybe they've done similar roles or they work in similar fields, that seems to be a real key. This is because it seems to lead to more equal respect, then more equal sharing and then a level playing field where there's more continuous communication. So, they're always checking throughout the day, what's going on for each other. There's no kind of one automatic assumption that one person is going to take charge. It's about checking where’s that person's up to and weighing things up. I think that's really interesting.
Nadia Nagamootoo
In previous research, you've focused on well-being as well as the fathering and the mothering roles and the combination of the two, do you think that you might be seeing some relationship between sharing care equally and well-being? Or is that too early to tell?
Laura Radcliffe
I think it's difficult to say, I think that I can definitely say it decreases work family conflicts. I think sometimes it increases the amount of work family conflicts. For a lot of my couples in previous research, they are both reporting every time they are experiencing a work-family conflict in their diaries. I've never had a conflict that the man's reported that the woman hasn't reported. But you often get it the other way around, that women are reporting a lot of conflicts, and the man is kind of saying no, he's fine. So, I think that overall, in a couple, there can be more conflicts when they're sharing more equally, because there's not an automatic assumption that one person is going to take care of that. However, it’s not going to be heavily loaded on one person, there’s going to be shared conflicts rather than a woman experiencing all of that. Usually also, that's meant that the woman's shifted her career, changed something so that she can deal with all the conflicts and the man's protected from the conflict. That's not good, career wise either.
So, we need to look at it in a more complex way because that means that the woman's not utilising her skills and her potential because usually, she's come to a different job that's below her skill level, she's gone part time and missed promotion opportunities, but then there's maybe fewer work family conflicts. When the couples are equally sharing, every conflict is shared. So, actually sometimes it's kind of complicated, because they're going back and forth. However, people are usually more satisfied with the outcome, they usually seem to have better relationships, because they're texting one another and they're both resolving the conflicts. Yes, there's lots of conflicts because there's no assumptions but each conflict is resolved in a way that kind of means we're sharing, so ‘you’re taking this next time’, as such, nobody's building up resentment. It's also a respect for each other's careers as well, so it's complicated. I don't think it reduces work family conflict, but I think it means that people are happier with the options and there's more options to explore between the two of them. This means they have to sit down more often and communicate more often to look through all the different options which means they're going to have a more satisfactory option available to them that is more equal, and they would have more respect for one other.
Nadia Nagamootoo
Yeah, fascinating. I'm looking forward to that research coming out. So let us know when it does. So, we've spoken quite a lot about heterosexual relationships but these days, families aren't as simple. There are different family types, there are more blended families now where you might have two divorced people coming together, and they've got their own children already, then they might have children together, and all sorts. I think it is an area that you're also looking at now. Is that right?
Laura Radcliffe
Yeah. So, my one of my most recent studies that I'm working on getting out there at the moment is on single mothers. I've looked at single fathers and this is specifically on single mothers. This is something that I am feeling really passionate about at the moment because this is so lacking in the work family literature, and therefore in policy. It's all been on heterosexual couples. My own research has previously also been on heterosexual couples. Usually, two people live in the same house, they've got a couple of children and they are usually middle classed. This is what a lot of research is based on, so we know a lot about their work life experiences and challenges. These are what our work family theories are based on, and these are the people it's based on. However, one in four families in the UK and in the US are actually led by single parents, that's a lot of families. On top of that families aren't stable, they change all the time. I've got a PhD student as well, Anika, she's looking at blended families, which is really interesting because families are so complicated. Even when you're trying to define what a single parent is, that's quite diverse as well. Is it a widowed person or a person who shares the care with their ex-partner in two different houses. We've historically seen that it's the woman who does a lot of that, 90% roughly of single parent households are women led. I think that's kind of changing and it's hard. Some of those statistics will hide the complexity around that because increasingly we are seeing a shift to a more co-parenting relationship. Most people don't stay single parents, so are they re-partnering with children from those old relationships, it's really complicated.
Nadia Nagamootoo
What do organisations need to do then to understand this complexity, how does it impact the workplace?
Laura Radcliffe
The thing is that everybody's lives are complex and I think that because research has been focused on such a narrow group of families, an outdated notion has just set in. Most policies and work family, even the whole way that work is set up is still based on a really outdated model of what a family is. We have the 1.5 and a couple in the UK, it so common, isn't it, where we've got the woman working part-time and the man working full time. So yes, the women is in the labour market but they are presumed to live together and they are still presumed that the women will use a lot of these policies. However, for more complicated families, for single parent families, it's just not going to work. From my recent paper, we've found that the majority of single mothers are in paid employment and they're likely to work longer hours than their married counterparts but a lot of them, around 44%, experienced involuntary job gaps or underemployment. So, we see that the world of work isn't working for them. This means that they are obviously taking lower-skilled jobs, again, because we've got these ideal worker norms. Maybe I should talk a little bit about that quickly. Obviously, we've got the parent norms, we've talked about what makes a good mother and what makes a good father. So, what makes a good worker or employee, and it's just unattainable, to be honest, and expectations just seem to keep growing. It is so demanding like they need to work more and more long hours, unpredictable hours, and be ideal worker that is ever present and ever available and put work first.
I mean if you compare that with the kind of norms of what makes a good mother, you can see how it's immediately incompatible. They have to be completely committed to their work, ensuring that work always comes first and that they are always available. However, the ideal mother is someone who always puts the child first and it just doesn’t match. There are also single parents, who literally have no choice but to be the main provider, as well as the main caregiver, and you just see how it's especially challenging because of these ideas about you what you need to do to progress at work. Most career-type jobs have these expectations of long hours and if you want a promotion to a higher-level position, this is what you need to do. So, we see a lot of single parents just have to step back from that. They want to work; work is also very important to them and who they are but they also face a stigma. The single-parent identity is quite stigmatised in our society, it is historically depicted as not great in the work domain being on the dole or deficient which is a horrible thing, and they carry it around with them. All the single mothers that I talk to are not explicitly saying that they are always saying that ‘I've never gone on the dole and work is very important to me’, and they are really trying to show that's not them.
Nadia Nagamootoo
They are going against what the stigma is and saying no, but the pressure on them is significant, isn't it, to try and be everything to everyone. I hear that. So, organisations then have a responsibility. We've spoken in our conversation today about how organisations reinforce men as the provider and women as the carer. The expectations that are set for single parents, in terms of still trying to adhere to that ideal worker are all unsaid, that's the problem. It's not tangible stuff. This is about the culture of the organisation, isn't it? If you were to think about some key things that you would like to see organisations do to tackle this and to help support this transition with regards to blended families, single families, fathers and mothers, and all of the stereotypes that they're expecting of people, what would you suggest?
Laura Radcliffe
We need to see lots of examples that can help us to counter those stereotypes, and again, it leads to people being brave to speak up about their difference or to be quite vocal that they don't need that ideal worker, or that they're going to do something different, and that's still okay. So, if we're talking again, about all the different managers, line managers, and senior managers being vocal. It’s again about the things we said before about them being very vocal about not hiding when they're doing care tasks, and whether this is because they are in a couple and they want to actually spend time with their children, or whether this is because they're a single father or mother or whether this is because they're looking after elderly parents.
They might have children with learning difficulties, there are so many different things, this is life and it's about people not hiding that. It's very scary and I understand that, but I think it's about really encouraging as many people as possible to start standing up and saying, ‘I've got to go do this now’ and showing that they can still progress and that they can still achieve and we're not putting all these unrealistic expectations. I mean, really, we just need to think about the whole notion of work and how its structured, because it's very dated, it hasn't changed in a very, very long time and we are supposed to be quite a creative society in the UK, at least for now. So why can't we be using some of this creativity that we put into other things to rethink work a little bit and really question how we make it work for everybody? Not on how we make it work for men who have stay-at-home wives, that isn't the reality anymore. How can we make it work now for everybody? We need to think outside the box a little bit. I don't have all the answers because I can't be in every organisation, there are different organisations. However, I do believe that we have the creativity and great minds that if they wanted to, they could think of ways to do this. So that's what I would hope.
Nadia Nagamootoo
Wow, yeah, it's a hugely complex subject. I think organisations these days are like this because of the speed at which change in society has taken place, not just with technology, not just with the policies and expectations of being able to work flexibly, not just with the shift in norms of what it is to be a man what it means to be a woman, and the shift in family type. It feels to me that some of the good organisations are trying to play catch up and trying to do their best to meet those demands. However, due to that complexity, it's hard. We're not asking for something simple for people and of organisations.
Laura Radcliffe
I think that people tend to want to put a band-aid on it as well, they want to try and fix it by making small incremental changes, which may be slightly helpful. However, I think we actually need to rethink and really question some underpinning norms about ideal workers, and what we expect of people on where we place value in our society, not just on paid employment, but all the other really important care work responsibilities that people have more widely and until we can make that more fundamental shift, I think it's gonna be hard.
Nadia Nagamootoo
Laura, thank you so much for your time today, I've really, really enjoyed our conversation, we've covered a lot. For people who are interested and might want to get a hold of you or find out more about your previous research or your current research. Are you active on social media? If so, where can they find you?
Laura Radcliffe
Yes, I'm on LinkedIn and Twitter. I have my University of Liverpool web page as well, my emails are there and you can find all my Twitter and LinkedIn details there, just Lauraradcliffe@liverpooluniversity, and you can find everything there. I'm always happy to talk about this and I'm very friendly, so please email me if you want to talk about that.
Nadia Nagamootoo
No doubt people will. Thank you. So, in terms of the link to everything that Laura and I have spoken about today, it's available on my show notes page, which is going to be on Avenir consulting.co.uk under podcasts. So, Laura, thank you so much for taking the time to speak to me today. I love the work that you're doing. It's such an important field of research and just carry on because we need it.
That concludes episode six of the Why care podcast I really hoped you enjoyed the conversation. I think Laura and I could have spoken for a day or two at least on that subject. I find her systemic understanding and appreciation of the complexity of gender norms and how they play out in mothering and fathering behaviour so insightful. Do let Laura and I know what you thought of today's show. You can find me on LinkedIn and Twitter with the handle @Nadia Nagamootoo. As always, I really appreciate your support of this podcast or leaving a review on whatever platform you're listening to and spreading the word by sharing it with your friends and family. Once more a huge thanks to Maura Kenji for editing this podcast and Christiane Gross for supporting with the show notes and getting it out there on social media.
