“We’re dressing up as the walking dead —which is not difficult for mums — to demonstrate the frightening lack of consideration that the Government has given mothers over the last decade.” Although she speaks quietly, Joeli Brearley is angry as she details the dress code for March of the Mummies, which will see 12,000 people take to the streets of 11 cities on October 29 to demand reform on childcare, parental leave and flexible working.
Organised by Pregnant Then Screwed, the charity Brearley founded in 2015 after she was fired via voicemail when she announced she was expecting, the marches will take place simultaneously in London, Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds, Belfast, Cardiff, Exeter, Norwich, Bristol, Newcastle and Birmingham.
The main aim is to make those in power acknowledge the frustration, fear and fury of families navigating the sorry landscape that is childcare and maternity provision. The UK has the second most expensive childcare system in the world, the least generous paternity leave in Europe and mothers face 45 per cent lower earnings in the six years after giving birth.
Brearley cites the 2015 Equality and Human Rights Commission report into pregnancy and maternity discrimination which found that 54,000 women a year were pushed out of their jobs for getting pregnant or taking maternity leave — figures which had almost doubled in 10 years. “There were recommendations on what the Government can do to reduce this and it hasn’t implemented a single one and that was seven years ago,” she says. “In addition, we’ve had a decade of a Government completely abandoning the childcare sector so it’s completely dysfunctional and not working for families.”
Statutory maternity pay is £156 a week, which is impossible to live on with energy costs now accounting for some 31 per cent of it.
“We are seeing women returning to work after a month after having a baby because they can’t afford to stay off,” she says, adding that there are still parents who have no access to any parental leave whatsoever. Flexible working as default is currently nothing but a pipedream. Brearley and her colleagues at PTS want the collective rage about all of this amplified via March of the Mummies.
“We want recognition from the Government that people are really genuinely angry now — that we’ve had enough of this,” she says. “[Parents] have been asking for these changes for decades and not only have we been ignored but in that time the situation has deteriorated.”
The marches will see support from high-profile figures including actor Bronagh Waugh, leader of the Women’s Equality Party Sophie Walker and actor and public speaker Kelechi Okafor. Writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and actor Sarah Solemani are flying in from the US to attend.
Pregnant Then Screwed’s social media presence is as consistent, witty and single-minded as its founder is. But Brearley believes social media can only take progress so far. The physicality of taking to the streets to protest is hugely important to her. “Social media is a wonderful tool but you need people to come together in solidarity, firstly for the campaign to grow and turn people from bystanders into activists,” she says. “I’m under no illusion that ‘you do a protest and everything changes’. Of course that’s not the case but I do think protests are absolutely critical components in change... PTS can’t change things this monumental on our own.”
As with any movement, there are detractors. “Lots of the comments I get are ‘why should my taxes pay for your lifestyle choice?’, as if having children is like a game of golf or going to the spa. What they see is the cost of childcare on the taxpayer but what they don’t see is that if we have a functioning system, that it is a net benefit to the economy.”
The alternative is to create a scenario where it is impossible for parents to work because they can’t get childcare or flexible working. They are then not contributing to the economy or to their families and will instead be reliant on benefits which come from the taxpayer.
But why, with this in mind, is there so much opposition to making it easy for parents, especially mothers, to get back to work? For Brearley, the answer to this is complex and nuanced but she concedes that it’s the ongoing result of living in a patriarchal society. “There is an inherent belief that women should be at home looking after their kids until they are five years old,” she explains, citing a 2018 British Social Attitudes survey which found that over a third of people were of that opinion. “This is what we’re fighting against that all the time.”
The march cannot go unnoticed, but when asked what she wants to happen once the mummies have disbanded, the costumes packed away and the rallying cries fade, Brearley is assured and clear: she wants the march to influence both forthcoming Labour and Conservative manifestos and she wants an MP to raise the protest and all it stands for in Prime Minister’s Questions.
How can we ensure this happens? Brearley’s answer is simple: “Keep the conversation alive.”
March Of The Mummies takes place at 11am on October 29. Register your interest at pregnantthenscrewed.com
