027: Melissa Hogenboom on pregnancy, matrescence, the mum brain & gender bias (Part 1)

This week, I'm talking to Melissa Hogenboom, BBC science journalist and writer of The Motherhood Complex, an exposé of motherhood warts and all. It's a very personal and thoroughly researched discussion examining behaviours related to pregnancy and motherhood and presents the deep and unresolved challenges as far as how society views the different roles parents play in raising children. It exposes the stigma and biases that women still experience, suffer from when pregnant, as carers and as mothers, for example, trying to reintegrate into the workplace and re-establish identity.

In this show, we cover:
Motherhood and sacrifice, matrescence, the mum brain, cultural differences in child rearing, expectations of perfection and gender biases.

You can find my own personal account on fatherhood here so I'd love you to read it in accompaniment to this podcast. And of course share with me your own experiences.

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• Podcast music: Tamsin Waley-Cohen's Mendelssohn's violin concerto