Having been interviewed on BBC 4’s Woman’s Hour and BBC Radio 5 Live’s Breakfast Show, you could be forgiven for thinking I was confident speaking on live radio. Wrong! As I sat waiting for the phone to ring for my guest slot on Chris Warburton‘s Show on 5Live, I must have looked like I was waiting to be led to the gallows. I was terrified.
When the phone did ring, I hesitated for a moment before answering as I tried to take deep breaths and conceal the fear I was feeling inside.
The longest I’d spoken on the radio was 15 minutes, but now here I was featuring on an HOUR-LONG show. I was a big ball of nervous energy.
Fortunately, Chris Warburton was extremely easy-going, and his kind, jolly voice instantly put me at ease as he set the tone for the show. Phew!
We bantered off one another a bit, and he chatted to me about the article and my experiences before inviting people to call in and debate the issue with us live on air. The calls and messages came thick and fast, and it was really interesting to hear people speak about their own experiences of discrimination in the workplace as non-parents, and how they’d often been guilted into covering not just the most unfavourable Christmas shifts, but those least popular ones all year round, as parents invariably got priority.
There were also calls from people feeling exploited in other ways, such as parents leaving early to do the school run or attend their child’s nativity, whilst non-parents were left to pick up the slack, even if they had sick relatives who also needed them, for example.
Some of the stories resonated with me, others were really sad or just downright unfair. A few made me angry. The debate was passionate but not derogatory on either side, and once I settled into the flow of it I found myself really enjoying it.
Whilst the atmosphere of the debate was good-natured, I made sure to say at the end that despite that, it was a serious issue and I would love to be invited into companies to discuss the inequalities experienced by childless and childfree people in the workplace in more detail.
Will it happen? It remains to be seen, but I hung up the phone feeling empowered and seen. Judging from the flurry of new followers on my social media accounts and member requests from the Facebook group, I wasn’t the only one…
Listen to Sam on Radio 5 Live with Chris Warburton here.
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Facebook group: The Non-Mum Network
Facebook page: The Non-Mum Network
