Not Complicated - Kathryn

In this episode we talked to Kathryn -  a social entrepreneur, with a passion for supporting mothers into flexible and rewarding careers.  She co-founded Digital Mums in 2013 and awards for her work towards labour market equality included Red Woman of the Year.

These achievements are particularly powerful because Kathryn, herself, is childfree by choice. Her reasons for getting involved with this podcast were as another challenge to the status quo that women will regret not having kids, and her noting that in her 30's it was men's 'mad rush' to have them that stopped her dating. 

We enjoyed hearing about people’s very public assumptions on her motherhood status as far up as the BBC! and basking in her unapologetic take on who she is. 

The conversation touched on how easy - or not - it may be to have a child.  We would like you to know that we are very aware that parenthood for some people is not possible.  There are some parts of this conversation that may not reflect that. 
This interview gave us lots to ponder upon.  We hope you feel the same.

Transcript

Kathryn

Kathryn: [00:00:00] so I was live being interviewed on BBC news in the BBC newsroom. And they started asking me all these questions about my children and how old they were and my own personal story. And I was like, Oh no, I know.I don't have children. And the woman that was interviewing me live on the news, I could see that she had this, thunderous face that meant she was going to go and have a serious word with her researcher. 

Rebecca: hello, and welcome to It's a Bit More Complicated Than That, where we are listening to all the fascinating, sad, joyful, messy answers that follow the question, So, do you have kids?

I'm Rebecca.

Dannie-Lu: I'm Dannie-Lu,

Rebecca: I'm a parent.

Dannie-Lu: and I'm not. But it's a bit more complicated than that. And that's the same for pretty much every one of our guests. 

Rebecca: Every episode, we ask one guest whether they're a parent or not, whether it's a bit more complicated than that, and a few other questions about their journey. we see where it 

goes.

Dannie-Lu: And to finish, we give them a magic wand and ask if there's anything they'd change about society if they could. 

Dannie-Lu: In this episode, we talk to Catherine, a social entrepreneur with a passion for supporting mothers into flexible and rewarding careers. She co founded Digital Mums in 2013 and awards for her work towards labor market equality include Red Woman of the Year. 

Rebecca: These achievements are particularly powerful because Catherine herself is child free by choice. Her reasons for getting involved with this podcast were as another challenge to the status quo that women will regret not having kids And her 30s, it was men's mad rush to have them that stopped her dating completely.

Dannie-Lu: We enjoyed hearing about people's very public assumptions on her motherhood status as far up as the BBC and basking in her unapologetic take on who she is.

Rebecca: The conversation did touch on how easy or not it may be to have a child. [00:02:00] We would like you to know that we are very aware that parenthood for some people is not possible. There are some parts of this conversation that may not reflect that.

Dannie-Lu: This interview gave us lots to ponder on. hope you feel the same. 

Kathryn:

so we will, we will say hello to you, though, because we need to say hello to you. Maybe we don't even need to say hello to you. I don't know.

Kathryn: Hello, Catherine. Oh, hi guys. Very excited to be on the podcast today.

So, Catherine, are you a parent or a non parent? Or is it a bit more complicated than that? I am very much a non parent. I think before I realized how difficult parenting was, I maybe thought I would have children. but I don't. But as I got old enough to realize how, how challenging and difficult it was, I came to the realization that I very much did not want to have children and I realized that by my late twenties.

it's not much more complicated than that. I made a very definite decision and I don't even niggly voice in the back of my head and I've never had it saying, Oh, I'm going to What if you change your mind when it's too late, I just knew. And then as soon as my very close friends started to have kids, that just reaffirmed my decision to be honest with you 

Dannie-Lu: How would you describe 

yourself? yourself? 

Kathryn: I generally would just say I don't have kids. I'm not sure I love the term childless because it makes it feel like there's a vacuum of some sort in your life, like you're missing something. So I generally just say, I don't have kids. which. When I set up and ran Digital Mums surprised everyone because they didn't think or understand that you maybe could set up something that was focused on supporting women that did have children if you yourself didn't have children.

And they found that so difficult to get their head around. that's just generally how I would describe myself. I would just say, I don't have kids. And I think some of the terminology it that's commonly used [00:04:00] is a bit challenging. I find it a bit spiky, spiky.

Rebecca: when we were talking before we started, you said about younger people. So would you say that in some situations you put yourself in a bracket of older? 

Kathryn: I would consider myself to be an older woman. I don't have an issue with the word old either because I have fought against that whole old, women have no place in life and actually, I am really embracing aging. And being old and seeing it as a very positive thing that it comes with a lot of wisdom.

I'm generally much happier. I don't worry about things in the same way. but I had quite positive older role models, like my nan, she divorced the sort of 40, which is what I'd heard of in those days in a small Welsh mining town to get divorced, but she divorced her husband cause he's an alcoholic and she was very independent.

she's a bit bonkers and she just talked to everybody. She just knew everyone and she would talk to everyone all the time. and she was just a proper, proper lulz. So I had quite a, quite positive sort of older female role models. And a matriarchal society as well.

The Welsh mining values, very matriarchal. So women were seen as adding a lot of value. They still did a lot of parenting and were quite active and actively contributed to the family and the family life. And my nan also had a job and she, she's a cleaner one minute and then she'd go off and then she'd do something else.

So she was. Quite independent. So I don't know if it was partly that or that I'm generally quite rebellious. So if the society says one thing, then I tend to gojust cause it's just my natural personality type. 

Rebecca: So you mentioned the Welsh mining towns. so how would you say you got to the point, of saying, yeah, I don't have kids. What do you think led you all the way up to that? 

Kathryn: so where I grew up it's very family orientated and everyone had children. I don't remember any women not having children. I [00:06:00] also remember my mother telling me never to have children because it was incredibly difficult. She was extremely honest, actually, but in a good way.

Often people, they think that's a really horrible thing for my mother to say, but she would say, look, I love you unconditionally and It's been an incredible journey to have you and your sister in my life. But what I would say to you is don't do it because you have to sacrifice so much. And she said, I used to be laid back and fun loving.

And then suddenly I had children. And all I did was worry that you were going to die. And I was just filled with anxiety the whole time. And I had to fight against that in order to not be like a helicopter parent. 

My auntie, who lived in the same street as me, so we all, it was very insular. And at one point until we were about four, we actually all lived in the same house. Me, my mom and dad, my sister, my auntie and uncle, and their two boys who were roughly my age and my nan. so they are, my auntie and uncle are my cousins, we're extremely close in an uncommon way that maybe people have with their cousins.

My poor auntie had two boys. And she had a nervous breakdown when she was 25 because they just run her ragged. So she had also, again, she, loved them unconditionally, but she'd also not had a particularly positive, parenting experience either, I don't think. So I came to adulthood with probably quite, I've talked to a lot of people that I know now that have children and they've all said, no one told me how hard it was going to 

And I think I'm the only person who was actually given more of an honest account of how difficult it was. So I knew it was really difficult. And then, I think I just then was like, Oh yeah, but they're quite cute, aren't they? But then I also realized that, I didn't really like babies, but the very singular defining moment where I was like, I definitely don't want to have children is I woke up in the middle of the night having had the most intense nightmare.

Where I dreamt I was completely soaking wet and I dreamt that I'd basically got pregnant, but I'd [00:08:00] only realized when it was too late to have an abortion. And I was like eight months pregnant. And I just woke up with this. I just never had such a visceral reaction in my life, holding my stomach, just being like, Oh my God, your baby.

And then realize that it was okay. And I wasn't actually having a baby. And then I was like, okay, yeah, this is a, I think that's something don't want to have children. And I was, how old was I? I may, I want to say maybe 26 or 27 at that point. So that was, then that was definitely like, okay, yeah, 

Rebecca: your unconscious telling you, 

Kathryn: basically, 

Rebecca: two things resonate with me. One was, is I've already mentioned to Dani, about, yeah, my mum telling me very similarly. you don't need to, You don't need to.and how I think that affected me. But also, I used to have dreams when I was younger.

Kathryn: I used to have dreams that I, remembered there was a baby in my life and I'd run upstairs and then I'd realize I'd forgotten for too long. Yeah, this is subconscious telling us things, isn't it? 

yours feels less visceral than mine. Mine was very much, there's no, there's a real clarity and no ambiguity in that message. 

People have babies and they're like, Oh, do you want to hold the baby? And I'm like, absolutely not. I do not want to go anywhere near that baby. I don't think they're cute.

I'm notscared of them in any way, but I just don't have that gene where you just want to hold them. I do however, Really like children once they get to the point where you can have conversations with them and I love Crafting and do it like we make up songs on the guitar and stuff like that So my friends love it when I come around because obviously they've got no energy to be making up songs or to do crafting I would just then do really fun things with their kids and Like just really get into playing with them for three hours and then they can just You know, drink some glass of rose and get drunk and leave them with me.

so I do actually really like children, but I'm very glad to give them back once I've done that and to then go home and be able to do whatever I want.

Dannie-Lu: So what, you to, because I imagine for some [00:10:00] people, this is cognitive dissonance and you've already said, like for some people, they find it hard to reconcile. Well, hang on. You co founded Digital Mums and yet you don't have children yourself because we live in that basic world sometimes. What, what was it that made you? Set up Digital Mums. What was the motivation for it 

Kathryn: it was very much a gender equality issue for 

Dannie-Lu: Hmm. 

Kathryn: but it didn't matter that I didn't have children because I do, as I'm sure you will understand, have the capacity for empathy

Dannie-Lu: Yes.

Kathryn: understand

Dannie-Lu: not have to be a mom to have empathy This is a thing I like to debunk too, Catherine

Kathryn: I have a lot of empathy for refugee asylum seeking migrants. I've never been one, but I have a lot of empathy. So I didn't feel like I needed to have children. I set it up with a friend of mine, Nikki Cochran, who also doesn't have children and didn't ever want to have children.

but we, at the time were, we had a marketing agency, a social media marketing agency in East London, and we were serving clients and they kept wanting us to run their social media platforms instead of doing, which is what we wanted to do, and training. And we very quickly got to the point where we had way too many client Instagrams To manage.

And this was way back in the day before social media managers were really considered to be a popular job. It was quite early on in the social media journey. And we realized that we needed a solution. And then it just so happened that at the same time, there was a lot of data coming out around lack of flexible working options and the gender pay gap.

And the reasons behind that were usually because as soon as women started to have children, that's when they essentially lost their jobs. Were discriminated against on a number of different levels, and they'd often have to leave their high powered jobs. A lot of my friends worked in TV, which is one of the worst industries.

So I was seeing it firsthand from my friends that just started to have 

Rebecca: So how 

Kathryn: which was also one of the worst industries, for flexibility. And so that's where it came from. It was a business problem that we had, and then we could see this [00:12:00] societal problem 

Dannie-Lu: Mm mm. 

Kathryn: that actually,they could be retrained to become flexible freelance marketers.

And that's where it all came from. But I feel very angry that women with children are so discriminated against, but I don't need to have my own children in order to. Feel that rage. and I remember getting interviewed for, we were a social enterprise, not a charity. So we were a business that made money, but we reinvested all our profits into our mission and our mission was about flexible working and, creating system level change to create more flexible working options.

So we spent a lot of money on these big flexible working campaigns. And we did a big data report that showed. 60 billion would be injected into the economy if women were, enabled to go back in more flexible capacities, et cetera. And that got coverage across like all the main broadsheets and also on BBC news.

And so I was live being interviewed on BBC news in the BBC news newsroom. And they started asking me all these questions about my children and how old they were and my own personal story. And I was like, Oh no, I don't have children. And the woman that was interviewing me live on the news, I could see that she had this, thunderous face that meant she was going to go and have a serious word with her researcher.

Because they'd obviously just not 

Dannie-Lu: Oh, assumed.

Kathryn: that we didn't actually have. And they were then completely aghast and shocked and said, Oh, how did you come to set digital moms? again, just assuming in order to have empathy for, a population of people, you have to have lived experience of that, which you obviously you don't.

Dannie-Lu: Absolutely. 

Rebecca: did you feel about that? When you were asked, how did you feel about that? I'm not getting any sense that you felt anything but slightly finding it amusing that somebody else hadn't done their research properly, but that, like, how did that feel? And I guess, yeah, where do you think that all comes from?

That, that sense that you Is it something about the fact that this is a woman's experience or, like that idea that we've placed mums somewhere really special So that other people can't understand it? [00:14:00] from any perspective, it's like you can't understand it if you're in, if you're out.

Where do you think that comes from?

Kathryn: So I think that it, so that specific issue with being interviewed, and it happened a lot that just happened to be on live TV, we would get interviewed a lot and people would generally. be shocked when, they found out that we didn't have children ourselves. And I think one element of that comes from just laziness and that if someone has a business that serves a specific population,a mom business is what people would call it.

They also invented this hideous term mom, mompreneur, which I just couldn't bear, that they would just assume that you Were a mom and there were a lot of mom businesses popping up and they, to be fair, commonly were moms that had identified a need and then were solving that need and make, and then turned it into a business.

there's definitely, there was just an element of that, but then there's just a much bigger element of an assumption. That women have children by the time they were our age, which at that point was probably like late thirties, early forties. So there was just an assumption that if you're a woman, then you are going to have children.

which is obviously a much darker, more disturbing kind of 

Rebecca: Ah, 

Kathryn: people 

Rebecca: yeah. 

Kathryn: because there's all sorts of limiting factors that come with that. and then there's also, just a lot of pressure for people to then have them. And Even if there are younger people thinking, I don't know if I want to have children, then people that do have children will say, Oh, you'll regret it.

And you, and that is such a scary thing to say to someone because ultimately when it's too late, it is actually too late. So then they're setting up this fear that. will change their mind and that they really should think about reconsidering, which is complete madness, really, because there's lots of things that people know they don't want to do 

Dannie-Lu: yeah.

Kathryn: by the time they're, and a lot of these women are late twenties, early thirties.

So they're not 17, they've obviously lived their life enough and probably are pretty confident that they [00:16:00] don't want to have children, but some of the worst on social media that jump on our mothers who then start, you know, scaremongering, like, it's going to be the worst decision they've ever made.

And it'd be too late and they'll regret it. Thankfully, lots of women like me will then come on and say, actually, I don't regret it. I've got great life. And I feel like there's a bit, you're allowed more to come and challenge. I think these days, 

Dannie-Lu: Mm 

Kathryn: I always did. There's always going to be a small percentage of people that just don't really care what other people think and will challenge regardless, then they help the other sort of 30 to 40 percent to feel brave enough to come in 

Rebecca: Did you feel that pressure at any point in your life? Oh my 

Kathryn: I never felt pressure to do anything to be honest with you. I'm not really that sort of person. I just do whatever I want, whenever I want. And I've always been a bit like that. so no, I never felt, and I never worried about regretting it either. I also knew if I wanted to have children, I would have just gone and had them on my own if I wasn't in a relationship, I've got some friends who didn't have children and cause they didn't meet someone, but I also know if I was like, do you know what, I want to have a kid, I just would have done it on my own.

I never felt any pressure, which is good. which is probably how I ended up escaping generational poverty where all my family members were unemployed and no one ever left Wales.

I just forged a path by myself and just went off and escaped and went to live in London, which is quite unheard of, for people that tend to grow up in my circumstances. So I've just always been quite lucky that I've just naturally had that personality, but obviously there were a lot of women out there that don't have.

That strength of conviction where they don't feel pressured. And that's what annoys me because obviously there's a lot of people that do feel really pressured to go to have them. And then I think,if they've then got a partner, there is really keen to want them. They might ignore that little voice in their head that tells them that they don't really want to,

Dannie-Lu: ​

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Dannie-Lu: Totally. ​

So would you say, so you've touched on quite a few things there, Catherine, one of the things that, um, we often ask people is what can people get so wrong about the reality of your life? And it sounds like some of those things that you've talked through might fall under that. Is there anything else that you think people can sometimes misassume about someone like you who has chosen not to have children, has no regrets?

Beyond what you've said.

Kathryn: there's definitely. Older men that I've ended up rowing with on social media that obviously just make assumption that you didn't have children because you couldn't get a man. So that's why you didn't have them. put into, this is one of the most hilarious and amazing moments of my life where I was rowing with someone on Twitter, which is obviously now called X.

he then put me in a list. Women that don't like men I said, actually, I love men, I think men are great. And so then he put me in a list that was called that don't like being put in lists. And then 

Rebecca: in a way that's true, yeah. 

Dannie-Lu: ha ha [00:20:00] ha ha ha ha! 

Kathryn: that is genuinely one of the most genius interactions I've ever had on a social media 

Rebecca: It shows the desperate attempts of people to Put you somewhere in a box. 

Dannie-Lu: Yeah. ha ha ha ha ha. 

Kathryn: and putting people into boxes, aren't we? And we've always been like that. hence it's like a whole branch of biology where you just put things into boxes based on what it looks like. But, Yeah, so that's obviously, I don't think any of us really want to interact with those misogynistic men anyway, so that's no hardship.

generally, people that I surround myself with don't make any assumptions or there is no negativity. And in fact, quite a lot of my female friends with children, are slightly jealous that they wanted to have children.and they again love their children. I, they're like, it's really amazing.

but they do, they like. Oh, like you could just do whatever you want and you could just get up whenever you want. of lying if you're a bit hungover. If you're ill you don't have to look after anybody. This is just, dreamy. so there's definitely sometimes they're a bit like, Oh, that just sounds really lovely.

Even though they'd like, love their children and their lives obviously. do, like the idea of just, Having a weekend off where they don't have to worry about anything 

Rebecca: Do you ever find your close friends that do know you and love you and understand you?double checking.really, are you really, you've got some good friends

Kathryn: I've got a lot of very strong Feisty in like independent female friends. Most of them earn more than their partner They never questioned it at all that I didn't want to have them. They were just like Great. Good for you. I wish I didn't, cause got to go and think about having children.

Cause you do have to be a bit strategic. Some of my friends that wanted to have kids were like, I'm ready to get on the dating app. So I really want to meet someone, it's a whole other level of forward planning. That you 

Dannie-Lu: Mm. 

Kathryn: do if you're not happy, or even if you want to have a child by yourself, IVF is again, a whole other element of forward planning and often, expensive if if you need multiple rounds and things like that.

So [00:22:00] actually, I think they, some of them had wished thatthey hadn't. Had that urge, but if you have it, you have it. And if you don't have it, you don't have it. So you can't get rid of it if you have it, unfortunately. But no, but they're, they're not the average population member, might, surrounded myself with the people that I find the most annoying and the most negative are 

other women, complete strangers on social media sites will pass judgement me. say extremely irritating things like you just don't know what love is until you've had children or it gives you a meaning to your life that you didn't have before, 

Dannie-Lu: Yeah. 

Kathryn: I just find really patronising.

And then one of the most harmful things they do, which is It doesn't impact me, but when younger women that obviously might be influenced by these women's words 

Dannie-Lu: Mm. 

Kathryn: I don't feel like I want to have children, it's most annoying when they come in and try and change their mind for some unfathomable reason.

I don't know why when we live in a world, which is already overpopulated, other people that have children are trying to push people that don't want to have children into having children. For 

Dannie-Lu: Mm. Yeah, and disrespectful, right? Because that's, it's, for some people it's a choice, but everyone has a right to a choice, whether it turns out as choice or not, ultimately. I'm talking about people who want to have them and then don't have them through, but they wanted them. 

Kathryn: It's just wrong on so many levels because it's disrespectful and patronizing. 

Dannie-Lu: Yeah. hmm. Mm hmm. 

Kathryn: they got their viewpoint from. also illogical because it just doesn't make sense to try and persuade people that feel confident they don't have children to have children.

Cause it's not the path of least resistance and the decision to not have children, if you genuinely know, you definitely don't want to have them makes your life much easier. It's much less expensive. You could do whatever you want, whenever you want.

So the most difficult pathway is the parenting pathway, because it is incredibly difficult. and then I'm also mindful. And again, I can have empathy, even though this [00:24:00] isn't me, for that wanted to have them and then. They obviously didn't want to go down the IVF route themselves. And so they've got to the point of being child free, but not necessarily by choice at my age.

I'm 48 this year, so that, most of my friends are between 45 and 48. So for them, they do feel like it is biologically too late, even if they met someone now. So you have those women. And then I've also, and I have got experience of this from one of my close friends who went through IVF. Eight rounds of IVF.

that was the most torturous experience. So she really was desperate to have children. And I saw her in some of the most. Harrowing states. And it was just such an incredibly difficult, stressful process. Thankfully her and her partner, had a really great solid relationship because it could have broken up a lot of people and they were both really committed to it.

and they managed to eventually have twins, but that could also have gone the other way. And then they would have been child free, not in any way by choice, and had tried desperately hard more than, they could have. Harder than most people are able to, because thankfully they managed to privately fund a lot of those rounds 

which most people wouldn't 

Dannie-Lu:

Kathryn: there's all sorts of different pathways and other women just need to be more respectful of those different pathways that people take, rather than pushing.

People down one or the other. And then also people will ask or make an assumption, maybe that you didn't want to have children or just ask people in relationships. Why don't they have children? And that is such a personal question to ask someone. 

Dannie-Lu: Yeah. 

Kathryn: they didn't want to have children. Maybe they desperately wanted to have children, but they couldn't.

conceive. they had a child that died. You don't know. You have absolutely no 

so it's such a personal question to ask someone and people will ask it casually, a 

Dannie-Lu: Mm. 

Kathryn: someone that they've been chatted to for five 

Rebecca: do you find you still get asked that?

Kathryn: do I get asked whether or not I [00:26:00] have Children, sometimes, not too frequently, but it does sometimes come up. I think I'd get asked more if I was there with a partner, I think. But the fact that I'm seeing people are less likely to ask me potentially. but yeah, I do sometimes get asked. 

Rebecca: I was going to mention as well about your, about the digital mums. I really like the phrase, it takes a village, but I like to end the phrase, it takes a village, not necessarily to raise a child to do anything because it does, it takes a village to do anything, like it takes a lot of people to do things well, but that's that's my thing, but also it does, it takes a village.

And I've been, and I think, I have a, I've got an organization called Kids Kitchen and about 50 percent of the reason for that organization was about solidarity with parents, not necessarily wanting to make sure that, kids were okay. But, knowing that's a really difficult job and let's support people doing that job and it, Thinking about how people raise children and the role of everybody in society in raising children, I realised that setting up something that supports parents to have better jobs digitally is again A similar way of looking at, it takes a village, right? So supporting, parents in their, in their work is exactly the same as saying, Oh, I'll have the kids while you go to work.

these are all ways that we support each other and ways that you can be involved in a child's life. You can be in involved in a child's life by being involved in the parent's life. Ha ha

Kathryn: There's all sorts of ways in which you can support 

parents and children that are in your family group, friendship group, whatever. I think the most important thing is that you do try and support them though. I am very aware. Maybe it's because my mum was clear on how difficult it is.

But I have also seen [00:28:00] A lot of my friends have very difficult parenting journeys and, they're crying and they're just completely exhausted and like on the edge. as a good friend, I think it's important to provide support. I don't think it's the responsibility, obviously, of people that don't have children to support other people with children. But, you're a friend with someone, that is one of the biggest things that you can do for them. The nicest things you can do is to just take the kids off their hands for a bit.

And the reason that I set up digital moms and made it for women only, because we did get men come and say, why can't I do the training? then in the end, I would just tell them that they could, because actually they didn't really want to, they just wanted to complain that they weren't allowed to.

So I'd be like, yeah, you can actually, we don't advertise it, but you could do if you wanted to, and then you'd never hear from them again, it was 

Rebecca: ha!

Kathryn: popped! That's

Rebecca: ha! 

Kathryn: reason that we wanted to support the women, and set up an organization to support the women specifically, is because, and I've seen this first hand in almost every single one of my friends is that they are doing more parenting than their partner. And it's not like the old days where at least they didn't also have to work.

They also have to work and they have most of them higher paid or more demanding jobs than their partner does. And then there's just the natural assumption, obviously, that they will do everything. their mothers are like the harshest critics. Whereas all the husband has to do is like one tiny household chore or parenting duty for them to be like, Oh, isn't he good?

He's such a good dad. Isn't he? Look at him. Whereas, they've got to be nailing absolutely every element of their parenting journey and any words of encouragement or affirmation from any of the older generation above them.it's really difficult. And then obviously they are super challenged in work because they are expected to work long hours and how are they then meant to the school run?

Actually, the challenge came when the children went to school and they suddenly, they had to drop off [00:30:00] nine, nine 30 and do pick up at three, three, three, three 30 and they were like, I can't actually get a job that allows me to leave at 3.

30. So

so it was very much devoted to women because they're the ones that I think have got the most difficult, they have the most difficult time. 

where I grow up.

Traditionally speaking, the men, they're much better dads than they used to be, but there's no element of 50, 50 parenting going on. It's 80, 20, where the dads do 20 percent of the work.

Dannie-Lu: strikes me though, that. there's so much, a lot of it really is just more sexism that's wrapped in parenthood narrative, I find,

Kathryn: just sexism in a different form because men, they can't be as blatantly sexist as they would perhaps still like to be. Or they just can't get away with it. it's always, I think, about women down and it just, it happens at so many fundamental levels of society and it starts extremely young.

In fact, I actually think when I was a kid, even though it was very, chauvinist where I was, and the boys went off and did woodwork and the girls went and did sewing, least with toys, it wasn't as gender stereotyped, even as it is now, it's even worse now. 

Dannie-Lu: yeah, 

Kathryn: so you've got four year olds and it's these are your toys and it's all makeup and, dolls.

And then they're like, boy, these are your toys. So this is the science kit. It's, it's for you. So it's, I don't think it's got any better in terms of that, but it is just, it's just another form of, Let's keep women where we want them to be, 

Dannie-Lu: yeah. 

Kathryn: afraid what's going to happen if they rise up and start a revolution, because, all men know that women are better than them.

as well though, because, know, I my partner co parents with his ex, and it's very 50 50, and it's really interesting, and I do know a few men, to be fair, I do know a few men who, they've got it, they've done the 50 50, right? but I think it's still hard for them to do that, because people will still judge and undermine. Because I know for my partner, for example, he'll often still get the, or did used to get that, Oh, you doing the pickup today? Oh, aren't you good? You know, And he said, I'm not good. This is my, [00:32:00] it's my child. So this, even if you've got those people who are doing the 50 50, you've still got an en masse societal narrative that will like undermine it, which I feel is really interesting.

Dannie-Lu: Gatekeeping. 

Kathryn: dad was a bit more hands on, I think, than the average dad. And he would be picking this up and doing, the like nappy chases and things like that. And my nan would take us off him. As if it was my, it wasn't his job to do that. And she wasn't comfortable with him doing that.

he obviously didn't want to live in a house with loads of relatives and my nan anyway, but he said that it became completely untenable to live with my nan because you just wouldn't let him be a dad or 

Dannie-Lu: Yeah. 

Kathryn: whatsoever. So he was constantly undermined.

he was probably a bit more. 50 50 on the parenting, than my mum, although we were very lucky because my nan was around and she parented us and I was always at her house. Plus I could walk to school. It was a different time and it was much more of a village mentality anyway, whereas, the struggle for a lot of my female friends now is that they don't live anywhere near their parents.

Dannie-Lu: Yeah. 

Kathryn: my mum was like 22 when she had my sister, whereas most of my friends were 42. when they 

Dannie-Lu: Hmm. 

Kathryn: so their parents are just old. it's just much more challenging in terms of that village mentality of, 

Dannie-Lu:

Kathryn: each other. But you can also support your female friends by taking them out.

if they drink, get them drunk. If they don't drink, just take them dancing, maybe, or singing. And just let them. Moan and give them a safe space to tell you that they hate their children and they hate their lives because obviously they don't, but I think sometimes it's just, they're constantly judged from all angles.

Dannie-Lu: Hmm. 

Kathryn: you could just support them in a very non judgmental way to relieve some of their stress and let them say the things that they feel like they should never say out loud, which they know they don't mean, but sometimes just, it's just quite powerful to be able to just get stuff out there.

Dannie-Lu: I love that. I feel like that should apply to all women, whatever their situation is. Just allow them to mourn and be honest and not judge them. Amen sister to that. Yeah. [00:34:00] Hmm. 

Rebecca: up an organization that changes the shape of the labor market, you know. And they're like, oh, you haven't babysat for me lately. It's like, well, I'm changing the shape of the labor market, mate. Um, this is going to help. 

Kathryn: system wide 

Rebecca: Oh, 

Kathryn: so I've got time

Rebecca: so sorry. Too busy. 

Kathryn: and it was really hard running digital ones. Like we run it for 10 years and it just broke my work wife that we had to sunset it in the end. She was just broken. It was so hard. And also our customers were some of the most difficult customers and some of them hate it. They absolutely hated us.

there would be like 40 percent of women would love us so much they would send us these like really lengthy letters talking about how we'd completely transform their lives. And then we had 40%, 40 percent of people that just, liked us. And then there was this more hardcore group of people that just absolutely hated us because it was almost like we'd.

even though we hadn't, we'd promised them this, amazing flexible feature. But we always said from the beginning, like you you do need to go out and find clients and they were just carrying a lot of rage and we just became the bad object of the rage because they were raging against the children, they were raging against their partners.

And then they were also a lot of them sandwich caring. with their parents, like looking after their parents, or what was quite common, doing most of the looking after of their husband's parents as well. So they were just 

all this stress. So when they were unhappy, they could it came out basically.

that was like, there was definitely like one of the more challenging populations to work with for that reason. some of them would hate us when they were on the course and then love us later because the course was really difficult, hard, because they were completely changing career and learning this whole different marketing skill.

most of them had never done before, with a live business at the 

they were also parenting. So it was a real challenge. for them to get through it. And we made that very clear to them at the beginning. They were like, it's really hot. but if you want it enough, like you make it work, do you know what I mean?

Which is the case. 

they were definitely quite challenging. And then some of them were obviously also perimenopausal where they [00:36:00] just had unspecified rage. They didn't even know why, 

Dannie-Lu: I know that feeling.

Kathryn: thankfully one of the women that worked for us used to be the agony aunt for just 17. She just used to give them like calming virtual arm rubs and calm them down a little 

Dannie-Lu: amazing. 

Kathryn: me how you're feeling. she was 

Rebecca: Wow. That's wasn't expecting just 17 to mention. 

Dannie-Lu: I used to love that magazine. 

Rebecca: We love hearing these stories, right?

Dannie-Lu: Yeah.

Rebecca: and we want to hear more.

Dannie-Lu: So if you have something that you want to share about your story, your complicated journey, or anything that you feel belongs in this conversation, then get in touch.

Rebecca: You can go to complicatedpod. co. uk to find out more about the different stories we've already told and to let us know why you want to be part of this excellent cavalcade of stories.

Dannie-Lu: There's a contact form just to fill out to send in your submission and we can take it from there. 

What one thing would you change about society if you could wave a wand and make it happen? 

Kathryn: if I could wave a magic wand, I would,

I don't want to force men to go through the menopause cause that just feels a bit harsh, but I want to force men into a position where they absolutely have to do 50 percent of Parenting, which would then mean all businesses would have to offer flexible work because essentially then every single person would get treated the same and there would be no way around it.

So I think because I genuinely believe that it's the role of a mother. And all the constraints that come around that has such a knock on effect at so many other levels of society because then it means that women are not in positions of power, which means they're then not in positions To change things for the better for other women, the fact that we've got [00:38:00] such abhorrent, menopausal support across the whole medical system at the moment is traditionally because there weren't enough female doctors.

And they are not just female doctors as practitioners, but female doctors setting, the curriculum for new doctors. I just think that inequality just impacts at so many different levels.

And I think it just comes back to when women have children, traditionally, that's when it all goes a bit tits up. And a lot of the data supports that as well. particularly nowadays, because a lot of the time, in certain industries, women are earning more in their twenties and doing better. But then as soon as they have children, that's when it all starts to go, the other way.

And also, I just think it would give them, give men just more empathy and understanding about, what, women have to go through. I would also like them to go through the menopausal and that would just be, that would just be, like, the lols. 

Rebecca: I'm going to say. I don't think more menopause is going to increase the lulls in society, so I'd,I'd love more empathy, but it's interesting that, We started this conversation talking about how, you can have empathy not having been through an experience, right? I think this is going to come up again and again, but the idea of, this assumption that if you haven't been a mother, you can't understand a whole swathe of things, But we are asking that of other people, aren't we?

We're asking people who have not been a primary carer and having to have to do loads and loads of parenting to understand how hard it is and how hard it is for women to manage their bodies and all of those things. We are asking that and we expect that to happen. 

Kathryn: And, yeah, it was that cliche where they were just like rowing. They had a really solid relationship, but they just started rowing and he'd come home and he'd be like, I'm really tired.

And then, she'd ask him to do something apparently, but I've been working all day. I'm really tired. And then she'd be like, I'm really tired because I've been with the [00:40:00] kids all day. it can be hard to have empathy if you are also feeling own kind of stresses and unrelated to your partners and you just have not had that lived experience.

And then she ended up getting him to take every, it was only every other Friday. He took every other Friday of work. So he parented on that Friday and within a month she got home from going out for coffee with her. And he was just like, I'm really sorry. I had no how hard it was. I'm really sorry.

And then from then on, when he came home, like he was just so much more supportive. He was just much more, understanding of like how tired she was. Cause it's just a whole other level of tired and it's a different tired. And I used to work next to a guy called Aviv.

And he was such a legend and he was really honest about parenting. And I love that. And he'd come in and he'd sit next to me. He'd flop into his chair and he'd literally just go, Oh, thank fuck for that. And I'd be like, what? And he'd be like, this is a break. You don't even know. coming to work.

And I was like, what do you mean? I was just too young. I've got two kids under four. You don't even know. My poor wife. He was like, she's still at home. And this for me, all day now, it's just a holiday. Oh, I was just like, oh, I love that. I love that. Just, he was just really that honest about it, but it just used to really make me laugh.

Dannie-Lu: So more recognition of what women in particular go through. they're managing kids and work and all of that would be good.

Kathryn: Yes, but also, as you mentioned, like your partner is really good, it's like 50 50, which is what there's not many 

Dannie-Lu: Yeah. 

Kathryn: there and you're right, actually, that's also really tiring. Let's just recognize how hard it is to have children just generally. 

Dannie-Lu: Mm. 

Kathryn: there's a reason why all the housewives in the 50s got addicted to Valium.

It's really difficult. Parenting is incredibly tough, it's incredibly tough if you've got neurotypical children that just fit really easily into the school that they go to. And it's even more stressful if you've got any, anything on top of that, 

Dannie-Lu: Mm. Mm

Kathryn: I've got friends whose kids have got [00:42:00] autism, 

Dannie-Lu: hmm. 

Kathryn: much 

more difficult on top. Some of them have got physical health needs. Someone that I used to work for, she had one child with very severe autism and one child with Down syndrome, again, additional challenges on top.

So even 

Dannie-Lu: Yeah. 

Kathryn: level, it's And nowadays, there's a lot more. issues that can then be going on that are just making it even harder. and I just think just everyone in the world recognizing how hard it is to be a parent would improve things so 

Dannie-Lu: Mm. 

Kathryn: when you're a dad staying, at home looking after the kids or taking the kids out, just, it's also hard for mom.

It's just hard. I think we all need to be a bit more aware of that.

Dannie-Lu: Nice. 

Kathryn: bringing us back to whether people decide to have children or not, is quite a helpful thing to know, as part of the decision making. I think it's good to make it more normalised around how difficult it is, then people make more informed choices. 

Rebecca: I do feel like I want to say though that even if you make the choice to have them or not, it's not always a choice as someone who is childless, not by choice. feel like I need to represent that a bit because yes, that's part of the equation, but there's a lot of complexity within that as well.

Dannie-Lu: You know, it's not an either or it's as well, hence the title of this podcast, right? Cause it is complex And it is massively nuanced.

Kathryn: And I don't take that for granted. I reckon I'm very good at recognizing like where I've been lucky and I recognize that is lucky particularly cause I've seen.

People go through fertility issues. so I definitely don't, I know that I'm lucky that I've been able to make a decision that was the right decision for me, because also people are pushed into having a child where maybe they didn't want to have a child, maybe they had a child really young.

Um, and it wasn't planned and that maybe that was a mistake. 

Then there's people like my friends that didn't feel like they wanted to have a child by themselves, meet someone, so that, there's [00:44:00] that, they've not made that decision for 

Dannie-Lu: Circumstantial. Yeah, 

Kathryn: Yeah, it's just a circumstantial decision. 

it's a whole myriad and 

Dannie-Lu: Yeah.

Kathryn: and I think just generally people having more understanding around the nuance of this subject, is always going to be good and trying to have a little bit more empathy for people's situations. And 

Dannie-Lu: Mm hmm. 

Kathryn: not just blanketly asking. People, if they have children or why 

Dannie-Lu: Yeah. 

Kathryn: people say, why did you, why didn't you have children?

and such a personal question to ask 

Dannie-Lu: Mm hmm. 

Rebecca: you said about wanting people to understand how difficult it is. And I think. Part of us telling all these stories is to be able to understand how difficult it is, 

but then also that not being coupled with therefore this is the most difficult thing you could ever do and nobody else will ever understand it.

I think that's the, that's the nuance for me that to talk about difficulty without that becoming something where somebody gets put on a specific pedestal. Wow. 

Kathryn: because on the complete other extreme, you could argue it's, it's as difficult for someone to be chronically lonely, where they've got no one 

Dannie-Lu: Yeah. 

Kathryn: their life, no family members, no friends, all the data shows that, Social isolation is terrible for your health outcomes and will kill you before, a lot of things that you traditionally associate with being bad, like eating bad food and smoking and drinking or whatever.

but yeah, but it just comes, it always just comes back to you. Empathy. And it's also, I do think that there's a bit of a weird competitive element with life being hard sometimes.

It's 

Dannie-Lu:

Kathryn: there's a weird competitive, I'm more busy than you. No, I'm more busy. I'm much more busy than you are. 

Dannie-Lu: Yeah. 

Kathryn: And some people might sail through parenting and then other people will struggle. it might not be, it might be child independent. Maybe they've got their own undiagnosed, needs or whatever, or, they're struggling with their own mental health.

Like my mom had really chronic depression. so she really struggled with that. Cause obviously trying to parent when you're chronically 

Dannie-Lu: [00:46:00] Mm.

Kathryn: it's very difficult. so everyone has got. issues and difficulties in their life. And I just think, just having more empathy in the world would just make the world a better place.

Just generally.

Rebecca: I agree. That's probably a good place to say thank you. 

Dannie-Lu: is.

Rebecca: Thank you, Catherine.

Dannie-Lu: Yeah. Thank you, Catherine. 

Rebecca: Thank you. 

Kathryn: Thanks guys. That's 

Rebecca: to have you. 

Kathryn: ​