Latest news with #EmmaBarnett
Telegraph
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Stacey Dooley took her baby to a brothel in Nevada
Stacey Dooley has revealed she took her eight-month-old baby to a brothel in Nevada while making a documentary about prostitution in the United States. The broadcaster, 38, recalled the story in an interview about balancing motherhood and professional life at the Hay literary festival in Powys, south Wales, alongside fellow journalist Emma Barnett. Dooley, whose book Dear Minnie: Conversations with Remarkable Mothers was published in March, said: 'There's nowhere that child hasn't been. 'When she was eight months', Dooley said, 'we had this gig in the diary to go to the States to make a documentary about this legal brothel in Nevada. 'I'd sort of signed the contract and was like: oh, she'll be eight months, that'll be fine. I'll be fine to go to a legal brothel in Nevada! 'Anyway, the trip comes, and I'm nowhere near comfortable leaving her so I take my eight-month-old child to this brothel in Nevada. 'I have to ask the sheriff for special permission, because she's under 18. It sounds like a comedy sketch, but it's legit! 'I have to then rent a trailer to put [my child] in. Her dad stays in this trailer with Minnie looking out the window while I'm filming and then going back to the trailer to breastfeed Minnie, and all the girls [working at the brothel] are like: 'Morning Miss Minnie!' 'I'm like: she'll be open minded if nothing else!' Campaigner for gender equality Nevada is the only US state that allows legal prostitution in the form of regulated brothels. Dooley has been a campaigner for gender equality since she began her career as a documentary filmmaker with the BBC. She chose to focus one of her first films, in 2010, on sex slavery in Cambodia. Dooley has been in a relationship with dancer Kevin Clifton since 2019 after the two were paired up on Strictly Come Dancing in 2018, where she was the winning contestant. Asked for her views on the shifting language around motherhood, such as terms like 'chestfeeding', Ms Dooley said: 'For me, I suppose I always try and prioritise other people's feelings. 'And I've also had to be aware that even when having these kinds of conversations, I don't want to ever equate motherhood to womanhood. That's something I'm really clear about. 'I don't think becoming a mum means you're any more of a woman or any less of a woman. 'So for me, it's all about trying to be aware of people's opinions, and you know what their preferences would be while talking about my experiences.'
The Guardian
29-04-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
My mum died in A&E last month – and the place was like a war zone
Another morning, another absolutely bananas conversation about transgender people, without any trans people involved, following the supreme court ruling that permits the exclusion from single-sex spaces of anyone not born into that sex. On BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Emma Barnett was asking care minister Stephen Kinnock about wards in hospitals, and came out with the immortal line: 'Do you think it's right for trans people to be segregated from other patients, as an interim measure, or for the future?' Great save, that 'for the future' – because if you're going to interpret this ruling as a requirement to exclude trans people, what does that mean in practice? Trans women on men's wards, trans men on women's wards? This delivers dignity and respect to precisely no one; so, sure, 'segregate' away, and it would have to be for ever, because it would otherwise be an interim measure on the way to what? The relentless demonisation of trans people has led us straight to a place where every choice is impossible, using words that recall, or should recall, the darkest days of prejudice and hatred. I've spent the best part of 2025 in and out of various hospitals in London, and I have some observations that in a sane world would give a little texture to this debate, but in the world we're in are just waved away, because of course it's more important to focus on harassing the small number of trans hospital admissions there are, and ignore a wider system that's in crisis. There isn't a single NH hospital in the UK that could afford a separate trans-only wing, but that's just the tip of the iceberg of things they can't afford. My mum spent some weeks admitted in south and west London, and, in any six-bed, single-sex ward, a minimum of four people had dementia or, at the very least, had been so discombobulated by infection and unfamiliarity that they lacked capacity. Never mind what you would make of a trans man in the bed next to you, following the supreme court decision; nobody in any ward needs to be dragged into a hot-button issue. They need calm, kindness, emotional support dogs and a social care system that's functioning well enough that they can get out of hospital. My son, meanwhile, was in a male-only admissions ward in central London, after a pneumothorax, next to a guy who needed a pretty urgent mental health intervention. I was not wild about leaving my kid there overnight, but nor was I wild about where we've got to, as a society, that mental health provision is so poor it's blue lights or nothing. When my mum died, though, it was in A&E, which is the last sentence I ever wanted to write. It would not have occurred to you to worry about who identified as which gender, nor would it have been possible to separate anyone, because the place was like a war zone. There was a woman in handcuffs, a man who vomited for 11 hours straight, people lying face down on the floor … I swear I glimpsed a man's internal organ. It was an absolutely brutal scene, full of people doing their best in impossible circumstances. It looked nothing at all like the healthcare facility of a developed nation. So I don't want to hear Wes Streeting off in some fantasy world where trans people are treated in private rooms in NHS hospitals, or Stephen Kinnock tying himself in knots about all the things that shall be done after 'careful consideration'. I want to see politicians dealing with real problems, and journalists asking real questions. I want to see the discussion recentred so that priority is given to things that matter – the life-and-death business of a health service – not lost in some vindictive land of riddles where trans people don't belong anywhere so they'd just better hope they never get ill. Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
The Guardian
22-03-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Emma Barnett: ‘People ask, is that the radio you or the real you?'
At school, I was the girl who wanted to dissect sheep lungs. I had a lack of horror around gore, I'm not squeamish at all, which was helpful when it came to all those needles for IVF. I thought about being a surgeon. I also thought it would be interesting to become a fishmonger. I'm fascinated by fish – I don't know why. As an only child, radio was my companion. I had a little battery-operated radio at the table next to my cereal bowl. I broadly exist on six hours sleep. After Today, I've got about half an hour of chat left in me before I need to be silent. The goal in every interview, the absolute dream, is fresh snow. You're walking somewhere no one has gone before. I wasn't a rude child, but I was certainly inquisitive. I have a curiosity. Sometimes, in conversation, people say, is that the radio you or the real you? Radio me is me. I routinely work through bone-grinding pain. Work is my salvation from endometriosis. It fills my brain. Being a parent teaches you how to not be the main character in your own life, to play a different role in your own existence. When you're forced to learn that, you're also forced to relearn what made your life enjoyable before, and how to access that. I was left with two kids when my husband returned to work. I decided to survive the week by writing down everything I felt – a portrait of maternity leave. I hadn't expected to have a daughter and thought it would be a great map for her should she ever go down this road. On radio, you need to think of someone to talk to, so I think of my Auntie Jean, always a crafty fag on the go, on the white wine by 6pm, maybe a champagne cocktail depending on the night. I thought of her the first time I did Question Time, the first time I did Woman's Hour and the first time I stepped out seven months ago and did Today. She meant so much to me, and that has helped me in moments of doing something new. There are parallels between maternity leave and lockdown: only being able to get out once a day to your local park, knowing your area better than you ever have before, there being limited things you can do, wondering who you are, having an existential crisis. The thing I find hard is toggling between work and parenting. The jaggedness comes in the gear changes between my different roles. It's almost like relearning a dance step every time. Remember that those who matter don't mind and those who do mind don't matter. I have a job where I can get judged on a moment in time, and it amazes me how judgments can be formed without the full picture – but that's the world we're living in. You've got to back facts, you've got to back yourself, you've got to have people around you that you trust. Maternity Service: A Love Letter to Mothers from the Frontline of Maternity Leave by Emma Barnett is published by Fig Tree at £12.99. Buy a copy from at £11.69
The Guardian
16-03-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Maternity Service by Emma Barnett review – a tour of duty in early motherhood
'It's a bloody weird experience, maternity leave, and it's OK to acknowledge that,' Emma Barnett writes in Maternity Service, her short, no-nonsense guide to surviving this curious – and relatively recent – phenomenon that can feel, in the thick of it, like a temporary exile from the outside world. For many new mothers, the abrupt severance from their professional lives and previous identities can leave them flailing in a strange and destabilising limbo where it seems almost taboo to voice any feelings of dislocation, in case these come across as a lack of maternal devotion. Barnett proposes that the whole business should be rebranded – rather than 'maternity leave', which suggests a nice relaxing break, it should be styled 'maternity service', with all the latter term's connotations of a military tour of duty. Words such as 'duty' and 'service' are unfashionable these days, she says, but it can help to reframe this strange, formless, sleep-deprived time as a finite period in which you are performing a series of tasks in the service of keeping your newborn alive. There are echoes here of Claire Kilroy's brutally honest novel of early motherhood, Soldier Sailor, in which the narrator is the soldier of the title; Barnett mentions that she and a new mother comrade still greet each oother as 'soldier'. This may sound rather a grim and brutal depiction of what is widely supposed to be a joyful time, but Barnett's mission is to separate maternity leave as an experience from the new mother's feelings about her baby. Even when the child is adored and longed-for (both Barnett's children were born after gruelling rounds of IVF), these early months can leave women feeling cut off from the wider world, their partner and their former selves, and her aim is to offer ways to navigate this rupture. By her own admission, she is not the first writer to attempt a warts-and-all rendition of the physical and psychological demands of this life-stage. Over the past decade or so, an increasing number of women have articulated, in fiction and memoir, the ambivalence, drudgery and isolation that attend new motherhood and were once considered unsayable. For this freedom to be candid, Barnett says, 'we owe a debt to those who initially transgressed and sometimes paid a price for it. First mention goes to the important writing of Rachel Cusk, starting with her searing A Life's Work.' If Barnett's book lacks the poetry of Cusk's 2001 memoir (my life raft during my own maternity leave, 23 years ago), it is written with a different purpose: less a literary and philosophical inquiry into the inequalities and conflicting emotions inherent in motherhood, and more of a practical how-to guide. Barnett explains that she is writing in real time, during her second tour of duty – thoughts jotted down in snatched moments between feeds or while her infant daughter naps. In an encouragingly breezy tone, she offers advice on how to adopt a practical uniform or build a semblance of a daily routine, as well as the importance of connecting with other 'sisters-in-arms' and being honest when you are struggling, to relieve one another of the pressure to look as if everything is under control. This frankness is also essential for future generations of mothers, she explains: 'And when they do ask us, the women who have gone before them, for an honest account of maternity leave and beyond, we struggle to explain it. We partly gloss over the truth out of loyalty to and love of our own beautiful babies.' There are, inevitably, limits to the applicability of these lessons. Barnett is careful to check her privilege at every step, but she is writing principally for women from a similar demographic to her own – middle-class professionals, who find their work stimulating (more so than wiping up poo, anyway) and who miss their autonomy and the previous sense of equality in their relationship. These caveats aside, Barnett is a sympathetic and cheerful companion, and in writing this book she has provided valuable dispatches from the front line, the better to enable a more honest transmission of hard-won wisdom to her own daughter and all the mothers yet to embark on this bloody weird journey. Maternity Service: A Love Letter to Mothers from the Front Line of Maternity Leave by Emma Barnett is published by Fig Tree (£12.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at Delivery charges may apply
The Guardian
16-03-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Going on maternity leave? Don't expect it to be a bundle of joy
When I started to approach my second maternity leave, five years after the first, my main feeling was not excitement or freedom but dread. That low, leaden kind of panic, which grew inside me alongside my son's new fingernails and feet. I'm thinking about it again, another five years on once more, as Radio 4's Emma Barnett publishes Maternity Service, a book centred around the idea that maternity leave has never been accurately titled. Instead of the holiday it's billed as, she writes, it's hard work. It's 'a period of leave from all you know: taking leave of one's mind, body, job and relationships'. And it's a period that 'doesn't end when or if you return to work. It's just the start'. I felt, back then, if not quite shame, then certainly, a sharp awkwardness describing my fears of maternity leave as my due-date neared. Because, really, I had it good. The fact I had maternity leave at all, and a job to come back to, felt like a privilege. In the UK up to 74,000 women lose their job each year for getting pregnant or taking maternity leave, a figure (reported by campaign groups Pregnant Then Screwed and Women In Data) up from 54,000 a decade ago. In America, women get no federal paid leave, no guaranteed financial support and no universal services. But beyond the practical, there is the idea that this is meant to be a simple and beautiful time. It's talked of as a blessing, a dreamlike window of love and rest and milk, but much of my first maternity leave was shadowed by loneliness and fear and a series of identity crises that crawled over me in the night, without work, without sleep, without time to wash my hair. I found it hard to remember what I was for, or who I was – nurses insisted on calling me 'Mum'. And I know that even those who didn't scrabble through grimly like this will have had days of boredom, or anger, or pain, or insecurity, watching their colleagues become enamoured with their replacement. In the same way that it has slowly become acceptable to admit, radically, that there are parts of parenting that aren't delightful, Barnett is insisting we acknowledge that, regardless of what people regularly tell new mothers, we don't, in fact, need to 'make the most of every second' of maternity leave. That there are parts of it that are simply shit and that's OK – it doesn't make you a bad parent to say this out loud, and it doesn't make you a bad person. I recently returned to the columns I wrote about that year, my closest thing to a diary, and was shocked to realise I'd been describing postnatal depression. I wrote of the baby, 'The thing I feel for her is physically painful. It's an awful love… A bruise being pressed, continually, by a strong thumb.' I was talking about the kind of love that was, 'two centimetres from grief,' an inescapable, destabilising thing that followed me round the early-morning east-London streets and unmoored me from the person I'd been. So I was determined to make sure my second maternity leave was different. After some gruelling administrative mishigas, eventually I got an appointment with a counsellor, scheduled for the week I'd go on maternity leave. We planned to talk about birth trauma, mental health and how to populate this maternity leave, so it felt as different as possible to my first. While there were many things I couldn't plan, there were some I could – I would schedule time alone, we would ensure our care responsibilities were split more equally, that sort of thing. Shared parental leave was introduced a year after I had my first child. It was designed to give fathers a greater role at home, but research by economists shows the policy has fallen flat, so it's still on parents to structure their families in equitable ways that, at the very least, don't leave one of them seething blankly at windows. Anyway, everything was in place. The baby was due, the counselling booked and then, the day my dreaded second maternity leave began, the country went into lockdown. All bets were off, we were spitting into the wind. And, despite everything – despite the five-year-old at home, despite my mum not being able to visit – the maternity leave itself turned out far better than my first, partly because everybody else in the world was similarly unmoored, and partly because it couldn't have been more different. Barnett is right – the cultural idea of maternity leave is not fit for purpose. There are plenty of things employers and government can organise in order to make sure it doesn't feel as though women are disappearing when they have a baby, including introducing real flexibility, legally required data collection to track how they're being treated around maternity leave and an enthusiastic embrace of paternity leave. And, of course, if women's postnatal bodies were celebrated, and their conflicting feelings around motherhood and identity were understood, it might be easier to advocate for policies that protect and support them. Maternity leave takes a strange bite out of a life. You leave work, you leave youth, you leave your body, somewhere in a room in Archway. You leave a part of yourself behind and are not sure for some time quite what's left. But while it's certainly not always the dream it's pitched as, there are plenty of opportunities to make maternity leave less of a nightmare. Email Eva at
