14: On Pride, Acceptance & Finding Balance by Parenting Equally While Working Full-Time-Paul's Story

This episode, which was recorded during Pride month, features the investigative journalist, author, and equal parenting advocate, Paul Morgan-Bentley. During our conversation, Paul shares his experience of coming out and we discuss what impacted his sense of balance during those formative years. Having reluctantly resigned himself to accept that as a gay man, fatherhood was a closed door for him, Paul’s life changed when he and his husband discovered that surrogacy was an option. “I mourned my fertility”, Paul says, as we discuss how his assumed infertility has gone on to impact his work-life balance choices as a parent, and he generously shares some insight into what helped him maintain his balance in those difficult times. Paul’s book, ‘The Equal Parent’, is based on his perspective of sharing the parental load when you’re in a same sex marriage. Our conversation focuses on the impact that parental equality can have on parents’ sense of balance, with some thought-provoking and practical advice based on Paul’s observations of the deeply ingrained gender stereotypes which, he argues, reinforce inequalities in the home and the workplace. Recording this episode during ‘Pride month’ is no coincidence and I’m so grateful to Paul for making himself available at this time to recognise what the celebrations mark and signify to him. Being proud of something means more just feeling satisfied with it. That word – pride - implies a degree of celebration. There is an instinctive interplay between feeling proud about something that you’ve done - or something that you are - and feeling a degree of balance in life. For Paul, parenting equally with his husband contributes significantly to his contented sense of balance. ‘Acceptance’ underlies it all, and is something that Paul refers to again and again throughout our conversation.