#BreakTheBias
By Michelle Bailey
#BreakTheBias on International Women’s Day
The theme of International Women’s Day 2022 is #BreakTheBias. I felt this would be a good platform for me to talk about breaking the stereotypes of infertility and childcare from my own and my peers’ experiences.
Setting the Scene
Back in 2017 my world was turned upside down when my husband and I were told that we would never be able to have a child that was biologically ours; that after months of tests and investigations, there simply wasn’t anything that could be done. To take a step back, at the beginning of our journey, we, like so many others presumed that there was something medically wrong with me. Googling the word Infertile brings up questions, articles and webpages heavily skewed towards women’s infertility. Even the first page of the NHS’s overview of infertility appears to solely relate to women (although page 2 does go on to list causes of infertility in both women and men). Certainly, from my own experiences people just presumed that there is something wrong with me, when in actual fact it was my husband who was unable to have children.
Even when speaking to friends and family, it came as a shock to many of them that we were dealing with a male infertility issue. I fully appreciate that it is a woman who gets pregnant, so a lot of leaflets and information online and at clinics relate to IVF and treatments, therefore more tailored to women, but what we need to change is the early diagnosis information and #BreakTheBias that this is predominantly a female issue. Since our news in 2017 we have met a number of other couples who have experienced male infertility issues but agree that it is something that is so rarely spoken about. There is still a sort of ‘taboo’ regarding talking about infertility in both men and women.
It’s often seen as a source of awkwardness and even embarrassment and shame, yet a lot of these conditions causing infertility are ones which people are born with or suffer with without any control of their own. We need to break the stereotype that women are predominantly the cause of infertility and also open this platform out so that men can feel more willing to talk about their own experiences. I am hugely grateful that my husband is so open about his story, and I know that his honestly has inspired others to talk about how their own families have been formed.
How did I feel about my story?
I felt like I couldn’t discuss our story with a lot of people, not until we knew what our plan was going to be because as a woman you often get asked ‘when are you going to have children’ or variations of this question. I’d be interested to know how many men are asked this same question? In a lot of cases, it is presumed that women are going to start a family and unconscious gender bias plays a huge part here. I hold my hands up and admit that I’ve been guilty of asking this question, joking with people about becoming parents or asking someone a leading question about their life plans. After my own experiences, I think twice about this now. How would it feel to ask this question to someone who is secretly going through their own infertility journey, or starting IVF but keeping it quiet from those around them until they have more positive news? Why does there need to be a societal bias that women need to grow up and start a family? All too often we are faced with stigma and ignorant comments, in my opinion, from my experience we really need to #BreakTheBias.
Furthermore, whilst not a gender bias, I feel there is a general bias towards growing a family through pregnancy rather than adoption. Most, if not all firms have a maternity or paternity policy, but it’s my experience and that of my peers that many firms do not have an adoption policy in place and when someone says they are adopting, people want to know ‘what’s wrong?’, when in actual fact why does something need to be wrong for someone to want to adopt. We met plenty of amazing adoptive parents who chose to adopt because it was simply what they wanted to do and how they wanted to grow their family. Again, there is a stigma and bias surrounding adoption in itself, even our own friends and family aired concerns about an adopted child ‘having issues’. What does that even mean? Don’t we all have various issues in our lives that we work through? We need to change this perception.
So, what happens when someone is pregnant or adopting? Who is going to be the caregiver?
Scholars widely believe that a child needs a primary attachment figure for healthy emotional development. Yet all of the articles I read during my research for this blog automatically assume or list this person as the mother. The only time the narrative changes is when they are discussing a same sex couple.
We’ve all heard the phrase ‘full time mum’, but how often do we hear ‘full time dad?’. I was at soft play a while ago on a weekday with my husband and son and a lady came over to me and said that it was lovely to see my son playing with his dad. This comment really bothered me because I’d been to soft play many times and no one had ever told me that it was nice to see me, his mum, playing with him. Why did it need to be special that dad was there? As if this was something completely unheard of and unseen? In actual fact it’s probably true, in all the times I spent there I rarely saw another male, but why did he deserve praise and I didn’t? Because there is an entrenched gender stereotype about women being the primary care giver. Whilst I agree and acknowledge that statistically more mums are primary caregivers compared to dads, we need to start asking ourselves why this is and whether some things need to change.
Is there a gender stereotype, or bias?
In my opinion there is a gender stereotype around women who choose to look after their children full or part time. I spoke to one mum who said that she has received negative comments from other parents, friends and family when she divulges the fact that she gave up work to look after her son and has chosen not to return. She feels that there is a general belief that stay at home mums are lazy and sitting around all day doing nothing. In her opinion if she cannot be there to take her son to and from school then what was the point in giving up her career in the first place? A few mums have said to me that there is this expectation that because they are at home they should be cooking and cleaning all the time which reflects entrenched stereotypes in society that men are the breadwinners whereas women are caregivers and homemakers. One mother said to me that her husband told her recently that since she had been back to work part-time the house wasn’t as clean as it was when she was on maternity leave! But surely now if they are both working, roles could be more shared?
Is there a societal expectation?
There is also a societal expectation that as a mum we will look after a sick child. Interestingly all the women I spoke to said that they would be the caregiver if their child was unwell, and the majority of these women would have to take a days holiday to cover their work absence. Recently my son had a hospital appointment and I said to my husband ‘maybe you should go in with him?’ and his response was ‘no you’re better at all this than I am?’. Whilst this is probably correct; I tend to remember more than he does, it also strikes me as a gender stereotype, that the mum is going to take the lead in the childcare. Why is this the case? Because for hundreds if not thousands of years women have been the homemaker and the caregiver, but we need to #BreakTheBias.
Needing ‘me’ time
Nowadays I tell people that I work Saturday- Thursday! I have a day off on a Friday when my son is at nursery. It took me a long time to tell people this because the first few I told questioned what I did with my time and why I was having a day to myself. When my husband would ask me what I was doing with my day I’d get defensive and feel like I had to come up with a list of things to justify the time without my son at home. Whilst my husband’s enquiry was purely conversational and nothing else, it made me feel almost guilty for allowing myself some ‘me’ time, when in actual fact without this day I’d be completely burnt out. I felt like if I mentioned that once a week, I just needed a mental health day, people would revert to mental health stereotypes and think that there was something wrong with me or that I couldn’t cope as a mum. There is a massive stereotype towards mums having to ‘have it together’ all the time. Mums are expected to do so many things and always be on top form, we need to start remembering that being a mum, a parent, is one of the most difficult jobs there is and that we all need a break from time to time- including dads. Through my research I’ve been really pleased to hear that a number of my mum friends are taking time for themselves and breaking the bias that a mum needs to be working all the time, either through childcare or other paid work.
What role do finances play?
‘A mum gives up her career and stays at home and she is lucky. A dad does the same thing, and the mum is lucky’
This was a quote from one of my interviewees.
Caregiving is an unpaid role. Women in this role can often depend on male family members to earn an income which supports the household. Here is an interesting thought, ‘if a mother was to earn a wage for looking after their child, would this be equivalent to a man’s wage?’ Is staying at home to be a caregiver any lesser of a job than leaving the home to go out to work? Would more men want to be the primary caregiver if there was a wage attached?
I spoke to one mum who stated that she simply couldn’t afford to not work once she had her baby. She was the main breadwinner and so wanted to share her parental leave with her husband as it made more financial sense. Although legally shared parental leave is available and you can share up to 50 weeks of leave and up to 37 weeks of pay between you, her husband’s company didn’t have a policy in place to support this. Being a very male heavy company, they had a rough maternity leave policy, but paternity leave was restricted to 1 week off and there wasn’t a policy for Shared Parental Leave. Why? My only conclusion is that no one had asked for it before, as a male dominated firm it wasn’t something that they dealt with very often, and there is a deep rooted gender bias that women are going to look after their child after birth, or in my case adoption. I also believe that there is a bias towards women who choose to go back to work before their leave is finished, almost as if there is something wrong with them because they have chosen work over their child, when in actual fact more often than not it’s actually for financial reasons and not really a choice at all. But even if it is a woman’s preference to return to work why should we look upon this negatively, we are all entitled to our own choices. Another lady I spoke to said that in an ideal world herself and her husband would both work four days a week, but that in reality this simply couldn’t be the case as their wages aren’t level balanced and so its ‘easier’ for her to not work. So, is it the case that more needs to be done to bridge the gender pay gap so that we can allow more women the flexibility to return to the workplace and share parental responsibility? Can companies do more to #BreakTheBias?
Final thoughts
Firstly, as a woman, especially on International Women’s Day it’s very hard for me to shape a completely unbiased argument. I am under no illusions that change will happen overnight, but I hope that by writing this blog it makes people think and open up new channels of conversation. I don’t want this blog to take away anything from anyone’s infertility journey or all the things that men and dads do for a family; I know personally that without my husband I would be completely lost! Life and families work on a balance and every individual, circumstance and family is different. For us it suits that my husband works full time and I work part time and look after our (adopted) son on the days I am not working for Shapes First. Interestingly though, we realised that we never actually discussed that this would be the case, we just presumed that I would give up work when our son came home and then remain primary care giver. Why? Probably because if I’d actually given birth to our son, I’d be off on maternity leave, but also because I strongly believe that when it comes to being a mum there are so many historically ingrained stereotypes and a huge amount of unconscious bias, that it’s hard to #BreakTheBias. I also believe that men are just as stereotyped as being the breadwinner.
Interestingly I spoke to a few couples where the mum is the main earner, yet she was still the primary caregiver because it was just seen as this was the way it was supposed to be and how they had ’been brought up’. I hope that by writing this blog it gives people pause for thought and together we can all work to break stereotypes and #BreakTheBias.
Before I finish, I would like to say a big thank you to all of you who once again confidentially shared what were some very personal details of your experiences and allowed me permission to use some direct quotes. I think it’s important that we share as much of our experiences both the positive and negatives as we can, so that more people see what is possible, and on this international women’s day let’s celebrate all conversations that work to #BreakTheBias.