With guests Dr. Jasmine Kelland and Chris Sampson.
In this episode, we explore the challenges and opportunities of fatherhood in the workplace, featuring insights from Dr Jasmine Kelland and Chris Sampson. Discover how employer support can make a significant difference for new fathers and why gender equality in parental leave benefits everyone.
We discuss:
Fatherhood experiences at work
Fatherhood forfeit phenomenon
Workplace bias against caregiving fathers
Support for fathers during transition to parenthood
Impact of employer policies on father involvement
Social misjudgment and stereotypes about dads
Flexible working and parental leave policies
Transcript.
Introduction
Rachael Jordan: Hello everyone, and welcome to the next episode of The Parent Experience podcast. I'm Rachael Jordan and, as ever, I'm here with my friend and colleague Dr Krystal Wilkinson. Today we have extra special guests, and I'll explain why in a second. Krystal and I are both very excited to be talking about fathers and the fatherhood forfeit with Dr Jasmine Kelland and Chris Sampson.
Fatherhood, and the challenges fathers face during pregnancy and the early years of parenthood, is a topic that's very close to Krystal's heart and to mine. So we're really thrilled to have an episode dedicated to it today. Without further ado, let me introduce our wonderful guests.
Dr Jasmine Kelland is the Associate Head of School for Student Experience at Plymouth Business School, part of the University of Plymouth. Jasmine previously led the HR programme teams for the BA and MA in Human Resource Management and has taught widely across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Before academia, Jasmine built a career in HR management in organisations such as ITV and the NHS.
Jasmine's research on the fatherhood forfeit explores how caregiving fathers can be disadvantaged at work, from limited access to flexible working to workplace stigma. It has been widely cited in the press, in titles such as The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph, The Independent, the Daily Mail and New Scientist, and by professional bodies including the CIPD. Jasmine's work has informed a House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee publication and a Commons debate on fathers and the family, and she has presented to the UK Parliament's All-Party Parliamentary Group on Fatherhood. She regularly discusses fatherhood and caregiving on outlets such as Sky News and BBC Radio, and her recent work on fathers in prison was cited in a discussion involving Vikki Slade MP and the Justice Secretary, David Lammy. That's quite the professional background!
Dr Jasmine Kelland: Thank you.
Rachael Jordan: We're really thrilled to have you here, Jasmine. Our other extra special guest is Chris Sampson, Krystal's husband. Chris joins us today as a father who had a tough start to fatherhood, and he's here to talk about how his employer in the tech industry stepped in and provided valuable support when he needed it most. It's a great example of how work and life really do collide, and how support at work can benefit not just the individual but the whole family unit.
In today's episode, we'll be talking about the transition to fatherhood and how to support fathers at work.
Jasmine, you've led pioneering research on fathers' experiences at work. Many of our listeners will be familiar with the narrative of a "fatherhood premium" in pay, in contrast to the very well-documented motherhood penalty for women. But you've written about a fatherhood forfeit, where caregiving fathers can be disadvantaged at work, find it hard to access support such as flexible working, and can even face mockery.
Chris, as I mentioned, you had a positive experience of your employer supporting you to be an involved father, especially when your family faced challenges after the birth. And today, you and Krystal agree that you have a really good 50:50 balance, not just in the workload but in the mental load of parenting your son, William.
So welcome, both. We're delighted to have you here. Let's jump in. Jasmine, I'd love to start with the background to your research into fathers' experiences at work.
The fatherhood forfeit
Dr Jasmine Kelland: I'm very happy to talk about that. I started in this area about 13 or 14 years ago. I was a lecturer at Plymouth University, and part of my role meant I needed to do a PhD. So I embarked on working out what I could study that would hold my interest for five or six years. My background, as you mentioned, is HR, so I looked at a lot of HR topics I'm interested in, but nothing was really grabbing me.
So I started thinking more broadly. I have three daughters, who were all young then, and I thought about what I actually spent most of my time talking about and what I felt most passionately about. One of the things my friends and I were talking about was what happened when I became pregnant. My husband and I both worked full-time and we were very equal. But once I was pregnant, there was a torrent of comments about what I was going to do when I had the baby, and the baby being my responsibility. Then, when she was born: how long was I going to have off work? When was I going to go part-time? Was I going to go back to work at all?
It really struck me that we'd been a very equal family, all our friends were very modern and contemporary, and yet as soon as this happened we had an absolute influx of judgement. I went back full-time, and that came with so much judgement. Meanwhile my husband was getting a lot of hassle at work: "Why can't Jas do it? Why are you always the one picking up the baby? What's she doing?" And I was getting, "Why aren't you at home?"
So I thought, that's a topic I care about. I wanted to find out whether other families experienced this, and how they dealt with it. Initially my PhD looked at the experiences of both mums and dads, but it became apparent pretty quickly that mothers' experiences and challenges are very well documented. A PhD has to make a new contribution to knowledge, and fathers' experiences were much less documented. So I focused on fathers, but taking a gender equality approach.
My work is very much about gender equality for both men and women. I think we need to look at the experiences of men if we're going to move the dial. There has been huge progress on parental gender equality in lots of ways, but a lot of it has stalled, particularly around attitudes at work and the gender pay gap. There are still huge pockets of inequality.
Over the years I've given quite a few talks on International Women's Day, and they always start off a bit tricky, with some women asking, "Why are you talking about men? This is our day." But my argument is that we need to look at men and women together if we're going to move the dial, which we need to do.
The baby I mentioned is now 23. I'd love to say that what I experienced is in the past, but it isn't. The things I experienced as a new mum 23 years ago are still experienced by the dads I speak to now. That's quite depressing, but we need to deal with it. We are making progress, but we still need to tackle these things.
Dr Krystal Wilkinson: Thank you so much, Jasmine. That aligns so closely with what we're interested in at The Parent Experience. It's about everyone who goes through the transition to parenthood, whatever that looks like. We need to think about everybody's needs, for everybody's sake. Can you tell us more about the fatherhood forfeit?
Dr Jasmine Kelland: Yes. In my initial study, I wanted to establish whether caregiving dads faced bias in the recruitment process. Were they less likely to get a part-time job, for example? And once they had a role, how were they treated at work if they were actively involved in caregiving?
It became apparent quite quickly from the first part of the study that dads who applied for part-time roles were being discriminated against. They were less likely to get the role than a woman applying for a part-time role, for example. It wasn't a massive study, but it was really interesting to see that something seemed to be going on in the shortlisting process.
I set up a dummy shortlisting exercise with four conditions: a full-time working mum, a full-time working dad, a part-time working mum and a part-time working dad. The part-time father was the lowest-rated applicant across all the conditions.
That got me thinking about the idea of dads facing a workplace forfeit if they were involved in caregiving. In the second part of the study, we interviewed managers, mums and dads about their experiences, and that really developed the notion of the fatherhood forfeit.
Essentially, the fatherhood forfeit means that you're less likely to get a job that allows you to manage work and care. When you do, you're likely to experience bias in the workplace. The reason is that people normally associate caregiving with mothers, so fathers are always considered the secondary parent, regardless of their circumstances. Many of the dads in our study were full-time primary parents or co-parents. But there's an assumption that the complexities of children and work are the mother's to deal with. The dad might help, but it's not seen as his problem.
The next thing that came up was that fathers are less likely to get workplace support than mothers. Support can be obtained, but it's something fathers almost have to negotiate for. It depends on having a good manager, a good relationship, being friendly with the people you work with. It's subject to negotiation rather than being standard.
The last thing that came up, which you alluded to earlier, was social mistreatment. Many of the men in our original sample talked about being teased and mocked, and being viewed as idle. When dads were looking after children and working from home, it was somehow assumed they were work-shy and lazy, whereas when women did it, it was fine: "You're looking after the children on a Tuesday and Wednesday." For dads, it was associated with being idle.
Dads also reported that some people were suspicious of them: "Why do you want to do that?" And again it came back to the woman: "What's wrong with your wife? Why isn't she doing it?" For any working mum, that will literally rile you. It riles me when people say that. Nothing's wrong with your wife. It's our child; we can both do it.
Rachael Jordan: Absolutely.
Dr Jasmine Kelland: A lot of the dads also talked about being excluded from things like play dates and the chat outside the school gate. Many felt that was really isolating, particularly the dads who were largely stay-at-home dads doing a bit of work on the side. They felt excluded from the main crowd, and it was hard not being invited to things.
I remember one dad telling me, years ago now, that another parent had said to him: "We'd love to invite you over for coffee after the play date, because the kids all play together at nursery. But my husband wouldn't like me hanging around with a man." He was so frustrated, because it was nothing to do with that. Their children were friends. He said he just went home with his son and felt really sad. I can completely understand how hard that would be.
Parental leave and workplace culture
Dr Krystal Wilkinson: Such important, fascinating research. Rachael mentioned that you've also done work on fathers in prison, and I'll loop back to that. But this feels so timely. We have a live government review of parental leave and pay at the moment, and quite a lot of people are arguing loudly that dads need more paternity leave, for example six weeks at decent pay. To what extent have you been involved in that, and what would you recommend to the government?
Dr Jasmine Kelland: I think the leave is so important. There's a lot of research showing that if dads are really involved at the beginning, they go on to have more confidence, they stay more involved, and things are more equal. So more leave at the beginning would really help shift the dial towards parenting being a joint responsibility.
In my situation, my husband had a week and a half off work and then went back. I remember it really vividly: okay, it's just me and her now. You become the primary parent, whether or not that was the plan, because you're the one who's there all the time.
I remember reading Sheryl Sandberg's book Lean In a few years back, and she described exactly the same thing: because of the leave situation, women are forced straight into the primary parent role, even if that's not what they intended.
So parental leave is really important. But I do think it's more complex than that. We know from research and data that where companies offer more leave, it isn't always taken up. Companies that offer equal leave for mums and dads are doing something fantastic, and I'd stand by that. But we also know that a lot of dads don't take it, because there are so many attitudinal barriers in this country, including the fatherhood forfeit.
Six weeks would be fantastic, and it's really important. But it needs to go alongside tackling the way people behave, particularly in organisations: the comments, the misjudgements and the microaggressions that aren't dealt with in the workplace. Even if we got the leave tomorrow, I don't think it would necessarily give us the change we need.
Dr Krystal Wilkinson: I totally agree. That takes us back to a conversation we had a few episodes ago with Dr Ruth Abrams and Dr Lilith Wiley about women's health, the maternity transition and menopause, and the signals organisations send, right from senior leadership, about the kind of culture they want. Policy is great, but if no one feels it's for them, or they think they'll be treated differently if they take it up...
Dr Jasmine Kelland: Exactly. A lot of companies that do offer more leave keep it very quiet. People don't really take it, and none of the managers take it. So if someone does take it, they hear, "Oh, have a nice holiday," or, "It's promotion season, are you sure you want to take that leave?" Comments like that make people think twice.
As we all know, having a baby is a financially tight time, often because one person isn't working as much as before. So if there's talk of promotions and pay rises you might miss out on, people sometimes don't take the leave, even when it's paid. So leave is important, but it's not the only thing that matters.
Chris's story
Dr Krystal Wilkinson: Some of what you've just said links to what Chris is going to talk about, which hopefully gives a more balanced picture. It's not all doom and gloom for families trying to navigate this. So thank you, Chris, for joining us on the podcast. We're very different personalities and navigate things in very different ways. I talk quite openly about our family situation, and I'm an ambassador for the Maternal Mental Health Alliance, so I'm quite vocal about maternal mental health struggles. I really appreciate you coming on. Can you tell us a little about your transition to fatherhood? It didn't go at all as either of us expected.
Chris Sampson: Absolutely. Thanks for inviting me along. I think everybody's journey to parenthood is different, but ours was certainly different from how we hoped it would go. We had concerns before conception and before the birth, because of family histories of mental health issues. We engaged early with the NHS about this, and they were supportive. We had a birth plan, and we visited the local mother and baby unit beforehand. That gave us the confidence to go ahead and start a family.
The pregnancy went about as well as we could have expected. There were ups and downs, as there always are, but nothing serious, thankfully. Then our son arrived, and everything seemed to be going okay for the first few days. He needed to stay in hospital a little longer because he was jaundiced, but the maternity ward dealt with that efficiently.
Then we came home, which was an interesting journey. We got home to find the house alarm going off. It had been going off for the last 24 hours and all the neighbours were a bit annoyed, so that was our fun first challenge!
Rachael Jordan: Oh no, you were that neighbour!
Chris Sampson: So we faced the usual early challenges, like working out how to feed him, along with dealing with the house alarm. For the first month or so, I had the standard couple of weeks' paternity leave, which I'd arranged beforehand, plus some annual leave, which I think is still fairly typical for many working new fathers. Then, as you said, Jasmine, suddenly I was back at work and Krystal was at home with our son, unsurprisingly a bit like a rabbit in the headlights, as new parents are.
Things still seemed okay for the first few weeks. There were what I assumed were the usual wobbles: "I don't really know what to do with our son day to day." None of it seemed out of the ordinary. But then, unfortunately, things started to change, and Krystal's mental health took a turn for the worse.
We'd already had visits from the midwife and the health visitor. Thankfully, we had a very professional, friendly and capable health visitor. It's a bit of a luck of the draw with anybody you deal with in any organisation, but we got lucky there. We were also still engaged with the local perinatal mental health services, and we leaned on them more as Krystal's mood and wellbeing deteriorated.
Ultimately, that led to a recommendation that we try to get a place at the local mother and baby unit. There wasn't one available immediately, but there was after a day or two, so again we were lucky with availability. Krystal and our son effectively lived in the mother and baby unit for a while.
I was still working at that time. I'd do a day's work and then visit them in the hospital, maybe not every evening. The staff on the ward suggested I might be visiting too often, because they wanted to encourage a bit more independence, so I cut back on their advice. That went on for about a month. Krystal was able to come home for a couple of weekends, which was good, but her wellbeing was still evidently not improving.
After about a month, it became clear that our son couldn't stay with Krystal and Krystal couldn't stay in the mother and baby unit. She needed different care elsewhere. So one evening I got an unexpected call in the office, and suddenly I'm at the hospital, and suddenly I'm not going back to work any time soon. I had to look after our son, who was two and a half months old. I was now very much the primary caregiver, while also trying to support Krystal remotely.
So that's the history. In terms of support from my employer: for about a week, I was effectively phoning up and saying, "I'm not in work next week," with a bit of explanation as to why. They said, "Okay, come in when you can." That in itself was quite supportive, rather than "You need to be in the office tomorrow", because I'd have been there with a two-month-old baby.
That gave me a week to get over the initial shock. It definitely took longer than that to wrap my head around it. Then I started thinking about how I needed to engage with my workplace. We were a company of about 40 people at the time, a relatively new start-up. I arranged to see my line manager and the managing director. I took our son along in a sling across my chest, and he slept happily through what we'll call a meeting. Really, it was me explaining what had happened the week before.
Very surprisingly, the managing director said, and this was in October: "We'll see you in the new year. Don't worry about it until then. If you need longer, let us know and we'll have a conversation."
Rachael Jordan: That's amazing.
Chris Sampson: So I left with an "Okay, I'll just go home and look after our son" mentality. I wasn't really thinking about money. Was I going to get paid? Would it affect my career? My main focus was that I had a two-month-old baby, so I was going to look after my son and deal with everything else afterwards.
I was very fortunate that they were so understanding. They effectively waved me out of the door, in a good way. They said they'd stay in touch, but there was no expectation that I'd do any work. I did come in for a couple of keeping-in-touch days, the usual set-up you'd have during maternity or parental leave, to keep my hand in and remember where the office was. This was well before COVID, and we were very much an office-based company with no real working from home.
And they kept paying me. I got to the end of that first month, had a look at my bank account to see whether I'd been paid, and I had. That's nice!
Dr Jasmine Kelland: You must have been delighted to see that.
Chris Sampson: It obviously took a lot of pressure off. I didn't have to worry about eating into our savings. All of that was incredibly supportive from the employer's point of view. I couldn't have expected anything more, and I remain very thankful for everything they did for me during that period.
What the support meant
Rachael Jordan: Thank you so much for sharing that, Chris. It must have been incredibly difficult for you, as well as for Krystal. What did that support from your employer mean for your life? One thing Krystal and I keep touching on in these episodes is that employers sometimes think of people only in the context of their work, the nine-to-five, and don't always consider what life is like for that person, or how what happens at work affects them at home. In the last episode we talked about how difficult it is to separate work life and personal life: what happens at home affects you at work, and what happens at work affects you at home. They're inextricably linked. So what did that support mean in terms of getting through that really difficult period?
Chris Sampson: It was immensely helpful. Knowing that I still had a job, and in particular an income, meant I could support the family and buy food to feed the baby and myself. And it gave me the headspace in those few months at home to focus on our son and on supporting Krystal remotely.
This is going to sound like heresy, but looking after a baby is pretty boring, because they don't do a great deal!
Rachael Jordan: That's very true.
Chris Sampson: Day to day, it all became about the routine of looking after our son. Obviously that changes as they get older. But taking away the worry about work meant I could just focus on the family during that period.
I sometimes look back and wonder whether I went through a period of depression. Nothing was ever diagnosed. I was certainly sad. Maybe I wasn't depressed; maybe I was. But if I'd been trying to work at the same time, I think that would absolutely have led to a very mentally unwell Chris, and probably a very physically unwell one too. That almost certainly wouldn't have ended well for me or the family, and I wouldn't have been at work any more.
The company's decision to say "We'll see you in two or three months" was a bit of a hit for them, because I wasn't there working. But ultimately it meant I could go back the following January and start working again, rather than becoming so unwell that I'd need another six months off to recover. That's how I've rationalised what happened over that time.
Dr Krystal Wilkinson: That's such an important message for employers and line managers to hear: the human impact. Understanding that you're dealing with humans who have lives, responsibilities, and mental as well as physical health isn't separate from the business case. If you treat people well and look after them, you encourage them to stay and to keep performing.
Dr Jasmine Kelland: Exactly. There's quite a hard business line to it. Chris came back to work. Otherwise he might have been off sick for a long time, or had to leave the business, and they would have lost all that talent. So there's a huge business benefit as well as it simply being the decent thing to do.
Chris Sampson: I remember a conversation Krystal had with the managing director some time later, after she'd thankfully become well again and come home to us. We were at a work event, and Krystal thanked him for everything they'd done. His response was, effectively, that it was a no-brainer. There was no real choice. He didn't expand on that, but my take is that without their support for those couple of months, I almost certainly wouldn't still have been at the business. Going back and carrying on was the justification for it.
Dr Jasmine Kelland: It's interesting that you say it was a no-brainer, because I completely agree. But it's surprising how many people don't take that response. They say, "You've had your two weeks' leave, you need to be back at work." It's a complete no-brainer, isn't it? But that's not the view everyone holds.
Chris Sampson: I don't want to call it short-sighted, but it's more short-term versus long-term thinking about supporting new families and people who are unwell. Sometimes people need that time off. Obviously you can only support them for so long. In that very first conversation, sitting in the meeting room with our son strapped to my chest, the managing director said, "We'll see you in January. If you need longer, let's talk about what that looks like." Obviously there needs to be a cut-off; a business can't pay somebody for years without them contributing. But where do you draw the line? In many cases, it could probably be more than two weeks.
Dr Jasmine Kelland: Certainly. In employment law terms, it comes back to the need to be reasonable. If your partner has been through mental health issues, or a traumatic or complicated birth, then you need support. I think it might have been something you wrote, Krystal, that I read recently: if someone has had a caesarean, or significant tearing, the expectation that she can look after the baby alone after two weeks is just not physically possible.
And then that member of staff comes into work. Do you really want them at work when they've been up literally all night with a baby, because their partner is unable to and they have no family nearby? They're distracted, and probably resentful. It doesn't work for anybody, does it? No one's a winner.
Becoming an involved parent
Dr Krystal Wilkinson: We've talked before on the podcast about involved fatherhood, and about mums becoming the default parent because of the length of time they're at home with the baby. I've often wondered, and said to Chris a few times, whether we'd be such equal parents now if our journey had been different. Chris has always been a group scout leader, someone who gives his time and supports others, and he's always been a brilliant husband. But to what extent has taking over so much of the parenting at the start shaped where we are now? It's interesting, but we can't know, can we?
Dr Jasmine Kelland: It was that enforced solo time. That often seems to be the factor: when dads have solo time with their children, they become either the primary parent or a true joint parent. Chris, you had that enforced solo time, so you became an independent parent. And Krystal, we've spoken to people over the years about this: when dads take leave on their own with the child, for example through shared parental leave, that's when the magic happens. They really start joint parenting, rather than deferring to the mother all the time. With the best will in the world, I think that's what happened with my kids. We both work full-time, but it wasn't until I went back to work fully that we had a truly joint situation.
Dr Krystal Wilkinson: What are your thoughts on that, Chris? Do you think we'd be any different now if things had been different at the beginning?
Chris Sampson: It's quite difficult to say unless we'd experienced it. I'd like to think I would still be a very involved parent. But I imagine my early relationship with our son would have been different. Krystal was away from home for a year to 18 months, and when she came back, our son unsurprisingly still saw me as the go-to parent: he's fallen over and needs a cuddle, that kind of thing. We were integrating Krystal back in. He recognised her, he knew who she was and he very much loved her, but there was that obvious split.
It was maybe less traditional, in that it was me rather than Mum. I suspect it would otherwise have been the other way round, the more traditional set-up, with Mum as the primary parent and Dad in the background. So would it have made a difference? Most likely. Would I still be as involved? I'd like to think so.
Thinking about engagement with other parents, the school WhatsApp groups and all the other seemingly obligatory things, I'm one of the few dads who regularly messages in there. Otherwise it's usually the mums. And I try to keep on top of the many messages from school. I'd like to think I'd still be doing the same, but it's difficult to say.
Flexibility at work
Dr Krystal Wilkinson: Going back to the fatherhood forfeit, to what extent do you think you've experienced anything along those lines, having taken quite a big chunk of time off and then gone back into a tech environment? You still work flexibly, and you're there for sports day and parents' evening.
Chris Sampson: It's fair to say that my employer has remained very flexible and understanding, not just for me but for other people too, men and women. I regularly say, and hear others say, "I need to go to sports day," or the Christmas nativity, or "I need to take my son or daughter to school." The response is almost always: "Fine, take that hour, and if you need to make up the time later, work flexibly around your schedule."
There are sometimes limits on how flexible people can be. There might be a meeting or a deadline that has to be met.
Rachael Jordan: Of course.
Chris Sampson: But another important thing I've seen is that if there's a deadline, it's "we need to meet it" as a team, rather than "you need to". How do we figure it out between us? If I do a bit more this time, someone else does more next time. As an employer, we're very people-focused. We try to support people as best we can, within the bounds of reason. It's not always reasonable for somebody to have 12 months off, although there are cases where that's appropriate, but you get the message.
So there's a lot of support, and from my perspective I don't feel I've missed out on career advancement or opportunities. In fact, in a somewhat perverse way, what happened was a turning point. The project I was on at the time made it difficult to communicate with the hospital, nurseries and so on, because of the environment I was working in. The business had already been thinking about moving me to another project to use my experience elsewhere. So they turned the situation into an opportunity: "Let's go and try that."
That actually gave me more flexibility, because I was able to do some working from home. Pre-COVID, we didn't really do that. The MD wanted everybody in the office, nine to five. But I could take our son to nursery and avoid the rush hour, when a 10-minute journey to the office takes an hour. I'd wait until quarter past nine, then it would take me 10 minutes and I'd be in the office by half past. I'd do half an hour or an hour's work at home, go in and do the rest of the day, then come home and pick him up from nursery.
Occasionally the nursery would phone while I was in the office because he was unwell, and I'd be home from two o'clock instead of five. Again, they were very supportive and trusted me to carry on working once I'd dealt with our son. There was no pressure to get back online as soon as possible. It was just: "Go and look after your family. We'll figure it out."
Dr Jasmine Kelland: That's so good. That's a really good story.
Rachael Jordan: It really is great.
Society and the involved dad
Dr Krystal Wilkinson: I'll come back to employers to wrap up. But I wanted to touch on you being the default parent at home. For the fathers listening, as well as the mothers: to what extent is society in general set up to welcome involved fathers? I know you had some quite frustrating experiences where you didn't always feel welcome.
Chris Sampson: Appreciating that this was a number of years ago, things might have changed slightly, though probably not a great deal, unfortunately. Generally I was welcome. If I took our son to the local garden centre, I was just a person with a child at the garden centre. I never heard any snide comments there, for example.
As I said earlier, looking after a small baby gets quite boring, so I tried to find local parent and baby groups. I make sure to use that word, "parent", not "mother", and I think that's telling. We did swimming with Water Babies, and baby sign language. Who knew baby sign language was a thing? There you go.
Unsurprisingly, the classes were mainly women with their children, less so at swimming. There were definitely more fathers there, which was good to see, though maybe that was because it was a weekend class.
At something like baby signing, I was made to feel welcome for the most part, and people would talk to me as well as everybody else. But there were times when conversations started up between some of the mums. In one conversation, they were talking about expressing milk and feeding their children. Obviously I physically couldn't express milk, so fair enough. The conversation was going on and there was no reason for it to stop. But after a minute or two, I distinctly remember one of the mums looking at me and saying, "We need to stop talking about this, don't we, because you're here." And I thought, okay, should I go home then?
That's the only one that sticks out vividly in my memory. Generally I was accepted. People weren't rolling their eyes or making the snide little comments you might expect, like the workplace comments we talked about earlier: "Why doesn't your wife do that?" There wasn't any of that. But occasionally there was that sense of, "We can't possibly talk about this because there's a man in the room." I need to feed my baby as well! I'm interested in how to get more milk into him. Obviously I can't do it that way, but I've still got to feed him.
The other one was that we'd done the NHS antenatal classes and the NCT ones too, and of course the new parents from the NCT group had WhatsApp groups. Everyone loves another WhatsApp group! Maybe unsurprisingly, I was never invited into the mums' WhatsApp group, because I wasn't a mum. The dads' WhatsApp group had maybe five messages in it, ever. The mums' one was much more active, and they were organising things to do with the kids.
I remember getting a message from one of the dads saying, "We've heard things haven't gone so well. Do you want to meet up one day?" I said, "Yeah, sure. Where should I bring our son?" And he said, "Well, we could go for a beer one evening." I thought, okay, and what do I do with my son then?
Dr Jasmine Kelland: You're not getting the point here!
Chris Sampson: You've not really thought this one through, have you? Then, after a year or so, we finally got an invite. The mums had been organising a trip to a sensory room at a local leisure centre, and I thought, I've never done one of those, I'll come along. That was the only time I'd seen them since the NCT classes. I was effectively forgotten. That's fine, we didn't really know each other. But it was a little bit telling: the mums were all together, organising things in their WhatsApp group.
Dr Jasmine Kelland: That's quite hard, isn't it? Having a baby can be isolating, hard work and lonely. You need connection with people who understand, who want to talk for hours about the colour of a baby's poo. A lot of your other friends aren't interested, because they haven't got a baby. It can really make you feel excluded.
Dr Krystal Wilkinson: It shows how, in and out of the workplace, dads tend to be the second-class-citizen parent. The focus is on mums, and while there's a lot that can be improved for mums, I think we're probably a lot further behind with dads. We've mentioned before that, Chris, you were perhaps worried about your own mental health at that time. But did anybody really ask, or put the dots together, that if someone's in crisis over there, it doesn't mean other people aren't struggling too?
Closing thoughts
Rachael Jordan: Thank you so much, Chris, for everything you've shared today. We really appreciate it, and I'm so glad you had the support you did. I can completely understand how much it meant, and how different the outcome was because of it.
Jasmine, before we close, what's the one takeaway you'd like to leave employers with when it comes to new dads in the workplace?
Dr Jasmine Kelland: I've got loads, but I'm conscious of time! One of the main things is to actually talk to your new dads. Accept that when someone's partner is expecting, it's a big deal, and open the door to a conversation. What leave do you want to take? Do you want to reduce your hours? Accept that this is a big deal. You can't just send a gift basket in the first week and think you're done.
The dads who've made it work and stayed as successful employees, as Chris has, are the ones whose employers led that conversation: "Let's have a meeting and discuss how this is going to affect your work." So it's about acknowledging that dads aren't invisible in the workplace, and that this is a wonderful part of their lives, not something they have to keep secret.
That's the main thing, as well as making sure your leave is equal and you have flexible working policies in place. But very simply: ask dads how they're doing. How is the pregnancy going? What are your plans? What are you thinking about work? And afterwards: how is it going with the new baby? Rather than, "Oh, you're back at work. Brilliant. Let's crack on." Actually ask how they are, because we know it's a really difficult time emotionally and financially, even if everything goes well.
Rachael Jordan: It's still a big transition.
Dr Jasmine Kelland: It's a big adjustment. So having that conversation is probably the main takeaway.
Rachael Jordan: Thank you so much. I couldn't agree more. And as we've seen from Chris's story, it's not about it being an inconvenience. It's an opportunity to do something slightly different, and something really fantastic might come of it for employers too. Thank you both so much. It's been a really interesting and moving conversation, and we really appreciate your time.
Dr Jasmine Kelland: No problem, thank you.
Chris Sampson: No problem. Thank you.
