I spent most of today at Plymouth’s first International Men’s Day Conference. To say I felt energised by the end of it would be an understatement – I actually felt a little bit high!
There is something very special about sharing a room with people who care deeply about changing the world. This is a long one, so I hope you’re sitting comfortably 🙂
Our first speaker was Dr Sophie Mayhew, a consultant clinical psychologist specialising in adult mental health and shame related difficulties. She took us through four major challenges in the field of men’s mental health: fatherhood, domestic violence, eating disorders and suicide. My brain is still digesting some of the information she shared, and will be for some time to come.
When she started talking about fatherhood and the pressures associated with the role, the finances and lack of sleep it made sense. Then she shocked the hell out of me. Did you know that one in three fathers get post natal depression? Nope, me neither! In the first year of fatherhood, the incidence of depression is double the national average. Particularly high risk groups are first time fathers, the under 25s, those with financial problems, prior history of depression and those who are separated from the mother of their child. She went on to tell us that roughly one in ten men suffers depression during the pregnancy – possibly anticipatory anxiety about the responsibility and financial burden? The post natal depression risk went up to as high as fifty percent when the mother had it.
Having been through depression myself, and having lived at other times with other people suffering depression, it is hard to imagine how the cycle will be broken if both parents have it and there’s a screaming baby keeping them up all night. It’s a heartbreaking picture that also sounds like it is a more regular occurrence than we’d like to believe.
Depression can show up in many ways, and the signs we should be looking for in our partners, friends and family members include fear, confusion, substance abuse, withdrawal, anger, insomnia, marital conflict and domestic violence.
When Dr Mayhew moved on to talk about domestic violence, I’m not sure if I was expecting her to talk about either the mental health causation for men to perpetrate domestic violence, or a tiny number of men who are the victims, but I definitely wasn’t expecting her to say that one in six men is subjected to domestic violence at some point in their lives. This can take the form of physical, verbal, sexual, financial abuse and or humiliation.
The reasons they stay tend to revolve around their children – either staying to protect the children, or fear of losing access if they leave; shame, fear of being outed (in same-sex relationships) and lack of support. Can you think of any refuges for men? Nobody in the room could think of any either. If these men find the courage to leave, where are they going to go?
It made me wonder how many of the men I know have been through this and whether they have sought and or received any help.
Next Dr Mayhew talked about eating disorders and whilst the causation made perfect sense to me, she poked me in the brain yet again by talking about how the services set up to help tackle eating orders are designed for women, so men feel even less comfortable seeking out that support.
Finally she talked about suicide. I knew men were three times more likely to die by suicide than women. I knew it was the most common cause of death in men under 49.
I didn’t know that men in the 45-49 age bracket were at highest risk though. She suggested this might be due to the pressure they feel under to fulfil a role, and with redundancy and divorce rife in this stage of life, that role becomes unclear or appears impossible.
She went on to talk about the scary increase in suicide among under 25s and how much higher the suicide rate is in disadvantaged communities. In Cornwall, it is 50% higher than the rest of the UK with a suicide every five days. In Plymouth it is more like one every twelve days. A person choosing to die by suicide every twelve days in one city is a gut wrenching statistic.
There’s hope though. The increase in innovative services like surfing therapy, scuba diving for veterans, www.menssheds.org.uk and Andy’s Man Club are real beacons of light. It’s easy enough to trot out “it’s okay to talk”, but the development of these groups and places to go are making it a reality. Sports clubs like Plymouth Argyle and Plymouth Albion are getting involved too, and embracing their role in modeling positive masculinity.
My head was buzzing. The talking had only started about twenty minutes earlier.
I was invited to attend the conference by my dear friend Tony, who I often refer to as my “unicorn friend”. Why? Because he is a practicing feminist with a passion for deepening his understanding of all areas of inequality and how we can make changes to level those playing fields. He connected particularly with the second speaker of the day.
Dr Jasmine Kelland from the University of Plymouth is a lecturer in human resource management and her research specialty is around gender role stereotyping in the workplace. Tony and his partner Caroline have a refreshing approach to the division of tasks and labour, where school runs, food shopping and self care carry equal weight with client work. Caroline is currently doing most of the client work, and Tony is doing a lot of cooking and school runs. Together they are an impressive unit, deeply committed to moving forward together in pursuit of their shared goals in line with their shared values.
What Dr Kelland’s research highlighted for us was that it was difficult for most couples to equally split the parenting responsibilities, while both having careers, because of workplace differences. The father working full time with a mother working part time is still very much the norm. When she asked a cohort of managers familiar with recruitment to score some candidates who were made up a full time working father, a full time working mother, a part time working father and a part time working mother, the part time working father scored noticeably lower than the other three. The father taking on more of the parenting responsibility is seen as somehow “less than” for making that choice.
She went on to explain what she called “Fatherhood Forfeit”. This is made up of three elements. The first is being considered secondary parents. No matter how involved the father is, he will constantly be asked “where is Mum?” as if he does not count. There is a perceived expectation that dads cannot cope without mum. Fathers reported dropping their children off at school to be greeted with other women immediately redoing their daughter’s hair, or doubly reminding him about not forgetting to bring wellies. There is a perception that fathers are a bit hopeless. There’s also still an undercurrent of judgement that fathers wanting to spend more time with their children are somehow weird, or even a bit deviant.
The second element is fathers receiving less support. The example here that really surprised me was around leaving the office for a sick child. Where mothers are more likely to say “my child is sick, I have to go pick them up” from nursery/school/childminder etc, fathers go through a negotiation process. They don’t feel they can say “I have to go”, because it is not the norm for the father to be the one who drops everything in order to parent. I will ask my own father about this at the weekend. I remember when my mother’s career was taking off and I came down with chicken pox at the age of fifteen. It was made very difficult for her to take time off to be at home with me, so it was my dad who came home from work early and took me to the doctor.
The third element was social mistreatment. A snapshot of the many themes Dr Kelland had identified included feeling excluded. “Playgroups were like a viper’s den” was the verdict delivered by one dad in the research. I read it and immediately thought back to the stay and play sessions I had attended when my little girl was tiny and the solitary dad who came on his own. There were a few dads who came with their wives from time to time, but only one that I remember regularly attending by himself. I also felt instantly guilty that I had never made the effort to make him feel welcome, before remembering that I had my own stuff going on at the time and probably wouldn’t have been much company. I also felt that pang of guilt when Dr Kelland went on to talk about banter and mockery. I have indeed been guilty of teasing Tony that he is the wife in his marriage. He laughed it off at the time and assured me today that it wasn’t an issue, but still I felt bad because it could have been.
Dr Kelland left us on a higher note by reminding the room that stay at home fatherhood is the most popular it has ever been, and that there are some clear ways we can support its ongoing growth. Reviewing workplace policies for bias, amending the Equalities Act and further research around how to make it work when fathers choose to be the more hands on parent are good places to start. If you would like to contribute to her research, please click here for her details.
Our third speaker was Andy Shaw from St Luke’s Hospice. He had a full career as a royal marine commando before having an emotional epiphany and choosing to retrain as a nurse. His segment of the day was about the importance of tackling gender stereotyping as it relates to career choices as early as possible in a child’s life. In his own childhood, he hadn’t felt he had many options and he didn’t want his daughter to feel as limited as he had.
Listening to him reminded me of the wonderful John Beckerley, who used to work in A&E at the hospital in Basingstoke. I met him after a very scary head on car accident back in 2007. I had bonded with my paramedic, Webber, and didn’t want him to leave my side when we reached the hospital. He assured me that I would be fine, because John Beckerley was ex-military and I couldn’t be in better hands. Listening to Andy and meeting him afterwards, I had the same sense that anybody in his care would feel completely safe.
Later in the afternoon we heard from Ed Buckingham, who has completed the Seven Peaks alongside working for Royal Mail for thirty years and came to encourage us all to believe that anything is possible. Then Cathryn Keeble, who talked about the inter-relation between physical and mental health and the vital preventative role of managing our wellbeing. Following them, Dave Cartwright, an inspiring ex combat medic and PTSD sufferer shared his story.
John Hamblin from Shekinah Mission shared some anecdotes about projects they had completed with the Eden Project, including a funny story relating to the Chelsea Flower Show. One of the men who had worked on the project was a prisoner on day release, and he was unsure about how to explain himself if people asked what he did. Turns out he needn’t have worried because he found a way to be honest without oversharing, saying that he worked in a laundry. The next question was about whether it was a national chain, to which he said “er, yes I suppose you could say that”, before being asked for the name of this chain. He shocked the curious lady with his honest response to that one!
The other story he told, which I loved on all levels, was about the building they operate within. About a decade ago, they secured funding to demolish and rebuild. The contractors dug the foundations, laid footings and started to build the walls before going into receivership. The project ground to a halt and they had no premises. It could have been a complete disaster, but for the willingness and commitment of their people. Part of Shekinah’s mission had been empowering people to change their lives by giving them skills. A team of their rough sleepers had been learning construction skills and along with a handful of staff, they finished the building themselves.
This is astonishing in itself, but having just been through the European funding hurdles myself for a building project at the Hub, the idea of the conversation he must have had with them about this particular change really did make me laugh!
Sven Lauch then talked to us about the importance of questions and how conflict brings opportunities. He invited us to challenge our ideas of leadership and management and to focus on walking alongside our people.
Then Ann James, Chief Executive of University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust took the stage. She talked about the overwhelmingly female workforce in healthcare. The numbers are evening out in the doctor/dentist category, but in every other area of the hospital the women dominate. Well, until you look at the board anyway. The boards are still overwhelmingly male.
She shared yet more eyeopening statistics with us. Men make up:
76% of suicides
85% of the homeless population
70% of homicide victims
40% of domestic violence victims
92% of workplace deaths
and they’re more than three times more likely to be imprisoned for the same crime as a woman, with an average of 64% longer sentences.
They may still appear to have an easier ride than women, but they’re not alright Jack.
The final speaker was Alan Butler, who has created an LGBT+ archive for Plymouth that stretches back to 1950 for his PhD. He has had to put his archive together with interviews, because there are so few documents and photographs upon which to build it. He shared the story of a few local characters, particularly one couple who “married” in defiance of Margaret Thatcher’s government, then had a civil partnership and would have married again when same sex marriage was legalised had one of them not passed away. In the course of a fifty year relationship, the times had moved on dramatically.
The day was rounded off with a Q&A to the speakers panel. The room was much less full by now as it was nearing 6pm, but those remaining were of one mind. Well, possibly all but one. There was a question posed by a chap who disagreed with the dismantling of stereotypes. He used ducks as his scientific basis for why we shouldn’t mess with gender stereotypes, and then went on to say that LGBT+ education didn’t belong in schools. The mood in the room was stunned. One of the speakers stepped up to talk about the impact of stereotypes on mental health, and the chap said “but where is your evidence?” At this point, I’m pretty sure I wasn’t the only one practicing very deliberate deep breathing whilst hoping that what was about to happen would happen.
A lady, a mental health first aider who both really knows what she’s talking about and had the eloquence and diplomacy that had deserted me, spoke up. Oh boy did she speak up, for the room. She talked about suicide and the under 25s. She spoke with passion but without losing her cool. The room erupted into applause that entirely drowned out the chap who wanted to talk about ducks. There was one more comment from the floor, about how days like this helped him move forward after more than thirty years with clinical depression, and on that high note, the compere closed the day.
It was the perfect ending to a truly fantastic conference. I learned things I didn’t expect to learn, and will never forget. I felt inspired to keep learning more. And I felt so much hope for the future.
Looking forward to the next one already!
Inspiring and long overdue day.