Abigail Leonard is an international reporter and news producer, previously based in Tokyo, where she was a frequent contributor to NPR, Time Magazine, and New York Times video. Before moving to Japan, she was a staff producer for PBS, ABC and Al Jazeera America. In "Four Mothers: an Intimate Journey Through the First Year of Parenthood in Four Countries", Abigail offers a profoundly personal look at this transformative period for four women from Japan, Kenya, Finland, and America
548: Motherhood Around the World
Abigail Leonard
In this episode of the Mindful Mama Podcast, Hunter Clarke-Fields talks with author Abigail Leonard about her powerful book following four women through their first year of motherhood in Finland, Kenya, Japan, and the U.S. They explore the universal emotional experience of becoming a mother—and how cultural context, policies, and beliefs shape that journey. Abby shares insights on global differences in maternity care, parental leave, and support systems, and they discuss the U.S. healthcare system’s shortcomings, the evolving role of fathers, and why systemic change is vital for families. It’s a wide-reaching conversation about motherhood, culture, and what true support really looks like.
Ep 548-Leonard
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*This is an auto-generated transcript*
Abigail Leonard (00:00)
It really does matter sort of where you happen to have a baby as far as what the experience is like. It can be made much easier if there's more support, if there's more social support, if there's more sort of medical support, all of it just goes such a long way.
Hunter (00:18)
You're listening to the Mindful Mama Podcast, episode #548. Today we're talking about being a mother all around the world with Abigail Leonard.
Hunter (00:31)
Welcome to the Mindful Mama Podcast. Here it's about becoming a less irritable, more joyful parent. At Mindful Mama, we know that you cannot give what you do not have. And when you have calm and peace within, then you can give it to your children. I'm your host, Hunter Clarke-Fields. I help smart, thoughtful parents stay calm so they can have strong, connected relationships with their children. I've been practicing mindfulness for over 25 years. I'm the creator of the Mindful Parenting Course & Teacher Training, and I'm the author of the international bestseller, “Raising Good Humans”, “Raising Good Humans Every Day”, and the “Raising Good Humans Guided Journal”.
Hi, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. This is an awesome episode for you to be listening to because I'm going to be talking to Abigail Leonard, an international reporter and news producer previously based in Tokyo where she was a frequent contributor to NPR, Time Magazine and the New York Times video. And before moving to Japan, she was a staff producer for PBS, ABC and Al Jazeera in America. She has been nominated for a James Beard Award, many different things. And she now lives in Washington, DC with her husband and three children. But we're going to talk about her fascinating book, “Four Mothers: An Intimate Journey Through the First Year of Parenthood”, where she weaves together these personal stories. And we talk about how cultural context and policies and beliefs shape this first year of motherhood. It's really, really interesting. She talks about four women in Finland, Kenya, Japan, and the US. So we're gonna talk all about motherhood across cultures. It's super, super fascinating.
Before we dive in, I wanna let you know that you can bring me to your workplace or school as a speaker. In the last few years, I've done talks all around the world for groups and we have so much fun. I'm known for offering evidence-based learning in a way that's clear, realistic, humorous, and immediately helpful. So you can go to MindfulMamaMentor.com/speaking to book your dates. And now join me at the table as I talk to Abigail Leonard.
Hunter (02:57)
Well, Abby, thank you so much for coming on the Mindful Mama podcast. I mean, as I was saying to you, your book is so fascinating. So Abby followed four women through the first year of motherhood in Finland, Kenya, Japan, and the United States. And you write about how these mothers kind of no matter where they live, they all had kind of a moment of reckoning, like, I can't believe I'm somebody's mother now. What struck you about this transformation and how did it resonate with your own experience?
Abigail Leonard:
Yeah, I thought it was so interesting, just sort of like to a person, how similar the reaction was to suddenly, you know, being a mom and having a baby. And it was interesting because I had sort of followed them preparing for it. Like I felt like they sort of thought they were mentally ready, you know, they had thought about this moment a lot. But then when it actually came and there was like a real human in front of them and they then were this person's mom, was just sort of, it was completely transformational. And I think none of them, despite all the preparations, were really prepared for that moment. And it was really incredible to sort of watch it and watch how women from different cultures, from different backgrounds, I mean, was just fascinating. And it may not be like 100 % universally true that this is how it happens, but I found it really interesting that that was sort of the first thing was like, wow, I'm someone's mom. Like, how is this? How did this happen? And it totally resonated with me. I felt very similarly when I had my first child. Like, I sort of thought I was ready for this, but like, here we go, you know? And there's no going back. And yeah, I think it really humanized each of them for me in a way and sort of made them really relatable. And also just, you know, across culture is just incredible how similar we really all are fundamentally.
Hunter (04:59.446)
Yeah, I mean, for me, I remember the experience of just being like, my God, there's another whole person in this room. There were four people in this room. Now there are five whole people in this room and just being blown away by that piece of it. And then of course, everything else that followed kind of blew me away too. This is only the beginning. It prepares you to be blown away just to, yeah, over the months and years that follow, for sure. It's really, really interesting: you had your first baby in Japan, which was a really bold choice. think you were like, here I am, I have no family, my husband has no family. You guys were doing work there, your journalist, he was-
Abigail Leonard:
Yeah, yeah, mostly his work. Yeah, he does solar energy stuff and we sort of moved for his job and I figured I could also work there. But yes, yeah.
Hunter:
And, you know, there's no family, you know, it's all completely outside of your culture. How did you feel about that decision before you went into it? And then after the fact?
Abigail Leonard (06:11)
Yes, very good question. I mean, before I went into it, think looking back, was probably largely unprepared for what I was about to undertake, both in terms of becoming a mom and in terms of moving to a place that is so incredibly different from where I was living before. Yeah, so like I said, my husband was- was mostly for his job and we were living in California at the time and he was sort of going back and forth to Japan and I was pregnant and it just sort of increasingly felt like, okay, maybe it's like this sensible thing to do that instead of having a newborn and he goes back and forth, like we are in the same place and you know, going to Japan, I could also work there. I'm a journalist. There's all sorts of reporting I could do. And Japan sort of famously has great maternity benefits and all that sort of stuff. So I think it was in some ways felt logical and I justified it and I thought maybe this would be like kind of a cool adventure. And yeah, I think it wasn't until I actually had my baby. So we moved when I was six months pregnant and you know, so pretty soon after like there I was in this hospital in Tokyo with a new baby. And I just remember sort of looking out over the city of Tokyo afterwards, there's a balcony in the hospital and it was just so immense and so unfamiliar. \
And I was like, what have I done? Like I have this baby, I'm in this place, I don't have the support. You my mom was coming in the next week or something, I think we timed it so she would be there like soon after. But yeah, it was like, it was a lot and it sort of continued to be a lot. There were a lot of things that were really hard about raising a baby. You don't have, you know, in a place that's not your own country. I didn't have the community support. And there are just ways in which cultures think about raising kids that you don't really understand until you're in it that are different. And so just sort of trying to figure out how to do it when I had all sorts of different inputs, like both from the Japanese way of doing things and the American way that I was reading online and just sort of being like completely overwhelmed by the entire thing. was hard. But on the other hand, some of those maternity benefits that I sort of knew theoretically beforehand, they did kick in and they were super helpful. know, there was all this support for women and these like beautiful community centers staffed by retired people who would like sing to the kids and you would go and there were public health nurses there like, and I would be like, is this a problem? Like whatever's going on with my baby right now. And you know, they would always reassure me that things were fine.
So- yeah, for free. mean, they're all across the country and there's a room for babies. There's a room for, at least the ones in Tokyo, I think they might be different in other places, but they are everywhere. Room for babies, room for like teenagers. And my kids, I remember, I mean, it was really pretty amazing. There was one that had like a drum set for the older kids and even like these little recording studios. I mean, they just, there's a lot of focus on making sure that families are supported and there are these government programs that think about ways to connect mothers and this is sort of one of them. There are these meetups and this was something that the Japanese woman I profiled made use of and ended up meeting like a really tight group of moms at one of these places. And it just is, you know, a way to build that support and it's publicly funded. And I don't even think it costs, it's like some tiny percentage of the overall government budget, but they're used by a lot of Japanese people- can't remember the stat, but it's like most people use them at least once a year or something. They're great. Yeah.
Hunter (10:22)
That's amazing. And that's going to be, of course, so different from the way a lot of American moms experience things. I had my daughters at a freestanding birth center here in Delaware, and they had like just weekly pop-in class, like meet, you know, moms groups that I would just go to. And so I met all the moms who had babies the same age. And I'm still friends with at least one of them. You know, I just went to visit her in South Carolina, and just, you I had a good time dancing with the daughter who's now 18 that I was baby when she was baby. that was like one of the most supportive things that I could have had. And I remember thinking, gosh, I wish I hope everybody has this, but that's not true, right? That this is not something that normally happens maybe in the U.S.
Abigail Leonard:
Yeah, know that that seems fortunate. I mean, there are different community groups that set up stuff like that. like the mother I profiled in Utah, I mean, she had virtually none of this, seemingly. You know, she was pretty much alone for those first few months. And I think she she actually relied sort of more heavily on social media to sort of there were mothers groups there where she was connecting with people and there were a few friends she had previously who had babies, but I just got the sense that it was pretty, I guess I would say lonely. mean, I think she even said like, was sort of so desperate for conversation by the end of the day that I was so happy my husband would come home just to have someone to talk to, like intellectual stimulation. And I don't think that in the US there's the same sort of priority publicly funded or otherwise in some ways put on the needs of mothers to have that community support and that socialization and that, you know, all the ways in which knowledge is passed down through generations too. I think that's really important, sort of having older women around you or older parents, people who have gone through this before, previous generations. There's obviously like so much to learn, particularly in those early days about how to be a mom and learning to trust yourself, but also, you know, there's all sorts of practical tips that get passed down and if you are cut off from those things, you don't have those same advantages and it can lead to a lot of, think, mental anguish, honestly. You just sort of feel alone and you don't know sort of where to turn. And that was the sense I got from Sarah in Utah that she just really didn't have a lot of that stuff. And there were other countries that just did a much better job of that.
Hunter (12:39)
Stay tuned for more Mindful Mama podcasts right after this break.
You talk about Finland- wow. So just to kind of like look at like where the bar can go, know, the Finland, wasn't it completely free for mothers to, anyway, you'll correct me. And it also tells moms to take care of yourself so you can take care of the child. And, you know, it has this different, you know, has this community kind of postpartum care. Can you tell us about what it was like in Finland following that mom?
Abigail Leonard:
Yeah, that was really interesting. I mean, they have this maternity system that's sort of a national point of pride and it's like a century old and it's really well organized and like 99 % of Finnish women use this public system. And so she did. There are things that happen even before you have a baby. There's these programs where you go and talk over, it's essentially like a therapy session, but you sort of talk about how you want to be a parent and how you are parented and the ideas to like break generational trauma in order to, you mean, it's really incredible. now they're trying to expand it to men and non-birthing partners because of course, like there's a huge need there, you know. So that even happens before. then, yeah. And then the birth is publicly funded. And then afterwards you meet with the same public health nurse at your local clinic sort of for your child's entire childhood. Essentially they follow you. So you're always going to the same person pretty much so they get to know you. And they do have this philosophy that I saw the public health nurse, you know, talk to her about it was she was having a little bit of trouble with breastfeeding early. There were some issues and that affects sleep obviously. And so she was like pretty ragged and the nurse just said to her, you need to make sure you're taking care of yourself before you take care of the baby. And, you know, I don't think that viewpoint is totally unique to Finland, but there was something about it coming from the public system that was like, value mothers in this system. You know, you're a central part of this. It's not just about the babies. And I think it's totally true. And it allowed her a little bit of, I don't know, like confidence and leeway to sort of have that authority figure telling her that, you this is something we talk about a lot here, but yeah, it's hard for people to believe it unless people, you know, the culture is telling you that, right? That you're important and your needs are important. And I think it really like alleviated a lot of her stress and she sort of like approached motherhood that way. Like she was a great, a great mom, but also like an empowered mother.
Hunter:
That's so cool. it was nice. It's really interesting that, you know, then look, then let's look at Kenya a little bit because even in Kenya, there were the circumstances are very different. The government may not be as wealthy as Finland and Japan, but they still have paid rent to leave, which we don't have in the United States, which is so frustrating. Anyway, tell us a little bit about Kenya.
Abigail Leonard (18:11.522)
Yeah, it's totally true. mean, it's like, you know that the US is the exception here, but like really seeing it around the world, it's like, wow, the US really is the exception. mean, she, yeah, the mother, I followed there Chelsea, she got three months paid leave. And she was like, well, I wish it was more, know, which you can understand. And there are activists there, advocates pushing for more because, you it should be more probably. But yeah, so she got three months, she went back. And their system of care is sort there's like a, as far as the birth and maternity care, it is all publicly funded. There is, but it's, it's pretty overextended because, you know, it covers everyone. So there's still a bit, and you see this in the U.S. as well, of this sort of two-tiered system. So people with more money do get better care. They've modeled some of it on the private, private healthcare system and health insurance system of the U.S.
So we were sort of exporting that in some ways there, is creating a similar system to what we have where some people get better care and it looks like an American style hospital birth. And then some people are in the public system, which can be pretty overcrowded and that's not as great. But she had something sort of in the middle and didn't have access to pain medication because it was too expensive. But besides that, it was similar to what some of the other women got. And then, yeah, she went back to work at three months. She had some trouble sort of following that, going back to work, because they were supposed to have protections for working mothers, and it sort of fell apart. And she had to go home to take care of her sick child, and her boss got upset and said she wasn't sort of sufficiently committed to work. A lot of these laws protecting moms there are new. And so they're not always enforced the way they should be, but they're working. There's some really incredible activists. I spoke to a member of their parliament who's working to push this stuff forward. so, yeah, mean, you do get the sense in a way that you don't in the US always that there's momentum to move it forward. It's not there yet, but there's real, true political will to try to get this, try to make it better. There's will here too as well, but you just feel like it just keeps getting stuck, you know, like every generation we keep trying and yeah, keeps falling down.
Hunter:
There's will, we feel a little like we're banging our heads against a brick wall to get parental leave. Like now, now we're getting maybe even less. Let's go back to Japan for a minute, because I was really struck by your description of Japan's pain minimizing policies during birth. That was really interesting, I mean, you described this belief that the mom and baby will love each other more if the birth is more painful. It was crazy because I opted for an unmedicated birth for both my kids and I was lucky. My body's really healthy and strong and I was able to do that both times. Second time is better with a water birth. And hypno-birthing, shout out to hypno-birthing. But the whole idea of not having an option for the medication if I didn't- at all like that, that would just enrage me. my goodness. What was your experience? And then can you tell us about this, this sort of cultural policy?
Abigail Leonard:
Yeah, no, it's totally fascinating and it was as surprising to me as it was to you when I moved to Japan and realized this was sort of how it was. mean, the idea is that I think you’re ready for anything. Yeah. The idea there is that it's like a Buddhist belief that pain bonds the mother and child and that, right, so there's some virtue in feeling that pain or whatever. And also there's other ideas about like opiates and not using them. yeah, so the interesting thing just about my experience with this is there was one doctor there who was basically the sort of OB to the ex-pat community essentially and his like two calling cards were that he spoke English and that he provided pain medication. So, and he would like, he delivered at three different hospitals. I mean, he was just this like incredible character. He would sort of like race between them at night and his convertible. He was just, I like want to do a profile of this man now. He was great.
So I did have the option and I was glad to have the option. And like you said, there's something about just knowing it's there that's like very important. And I ended up using it with the first one and not the second two, but it was just my choice, which was great. yeah, I mean, for other Japanese moms, and so the mother I profiled did not have that choice, and it really stressed her out. think going into it, it was like she was having nightmares about the pain and people had told her how terrible it was. And I think there's this other element that you sort of know that it's a possibility. she's aware that the rest of, like in the US, this is an option. So sort of not having it be an option there I think is really hard. And her husband also wasn't there because it was sort of the tail end of COVID. so she was alone without medication. And I think it was a very difficult experience for her. So yeah, and it just, there's something about it that says something about the larger society, obviously, like how much we care about women's pain. In this case, whether we're willing to like create a sort of narrative around it to justify women's pain, which is like another sort of level of accepting women's pain.
But the other thing that I thought was interesting was how it made me reflect on the American experience and the American approach to this stuff. And Sarah, American woman, was pretty set on not having pain medication in her birth. her doctor was very supportive, but in the end she ended up, I think, getting Pitocin or something that made the contractions worse. And so she ended up opting for pain medication. But she felt sort of, I think, a little bit disappointed that she had had to do that. there was some way in which I felt like, I don't know, there was this sort of other expectation that she put on herself that she should have to feel the pain. It wasn't the same as what the Japanese women were experiencing, but I mean, there is just all of this stuff wrapped up in how we approach the pain of childbirth and how we think about it how we think about whether or not women should have that choice and feminists have sort of approached it differently through generations. It was sort of embraced and because it was something that allowed women to create the experience they wanted and then it was sort of, you know, sort of fell out of favor when people were thinking about it as far as then being part of the medicalization of birth and then it sort of now I think we've come around again to thinking about it as a choice and I just find that it's such a rich subject to think about. And I do ultimately come back to sort of what you were talking about. It's nice to know you have the choice and this is an experience that's yours and you can sort of determine how you want it to play out.
Hunter (25:53)
Yeah, I mean, the idea that you would be encouraged. I mean, in some ways I was in those, like I was in this birth center where, you we didn't, you know, you didn't want to have a lot of interventions or pateaus and things like that. None of us wanted that. But the whole idea of thinking that it's just not even available, it really does say something about, you know, do, are you valuing the mom, you know, are you, how much is, if men had no drugs available for a colonoscopy, that would be horrible. And that would be rightly seen as like some kind of torture, right? That we're just choosing not to offer men these drugs for a colonoscopy, yet I don't know. And I mean, there are benefits to maybe not going the medicalization route, right? Like in that you recover more quickly and the birth can be easier in some ways. But it strikes me as devaluing of women, is very frustrating.
Abigail Leonard:
So yeah, totally. I mean, it just speaks to all of these bigger things. I mean, I think making informed decisions is sort of where you want to put women. They can sort of think about the cost-benefit analysis and make these decisions and yeah, like have it be available. And I think there is some amount of mental stress you put on people just even in not having it there as an option. I saw it in Japan. saw it in Kenya, she was sort of negotiating the whole time, like, well, how much does it cost and can I get it? And it's like, just the stress of thinking about that as you're going through this like, you know, very intense physical experience. It's a lot to put women through. And as you say, absolutely men would not even, this would not be considered fiction, not allowing pain medication for something like this. So yeah, it's fascinating. And it really does speak to just these much larger themes about how we treat women.
Hunter (28:00)
So let's go to after the birth. And as we mentioned, the US is one of the only countries without paid parental leave. Going to that issue of the parental leave, what are the forces that have kept that way? how is it shaped looking at American moms? Like Sarah, said she was alone. Is that a piece of that?
Abigail Leonard:
Yes, I think that's definitely a piece of that. think having short paid leave is very isolating because there's not a lot of other women in the same boat as you because people go back to work so quickly. that's part of it. Or even your partner, right? Like the paternal leave, I mean, to have my husband home for six weeks was amazing that we were able to do that. Yes, no, that's huge, right. And we're not even talking about, mean, very small conversations about men at all. We're still thinking about the women. yeah, mean, it's all, it's, there's been a movement in this country to push for a paid leave for a very long time, dating back to World War I. Over 100 years ago, people were trying to get this. And this is around the time that the first countries were, Finland was starting to put in place their policies.
This has been going on for a long time. And in the beginning it was the forces working against it were sort of these cultural ideas about, I mean, they were sort of sexist ideas about women should not be working in the first place. So like, why are we going to create supports for them to leave the home? exactly. White women should not be working. And then there was the racist sort of aspect of it, which was like, well, Black women are expected to work or white woman should not be working in the first place. But again, like there wasn't a lot of initiative at the federal level, the federal government to support those women working. So, you know, sexism, racism. And then once the, you know, seventies came around and it just became impossible, well, for most families, you know, they needed two incomes and so more women were working. So this sort of pressed the issue. And then there was a movement, you know, corporate interests and business lobbies sort of started to agitate against it and say, there was one quote I found like the National Association of Manufacturers, they said, we're not gonna subsidize parenthood. Like they didn't wanna take on the financial burden of paid leave as they saw it. And so that effectively made it impossible or what happened was Congress didn't pass any of these paid leave laws that came up. There were a few of them that came up and they kept sort of not going anywhere.
And then finally the FMLA passed under Clinton, but it wasn't paid and it doesn't apply to everyone. It's only big companies and federal workers. So it leaves out like half the population. But the interesting thing that's happened, I found just in the last couple of decades is that the thinking has sort of changed. And so these companies have realized that actually like paid leave is a great thing for them and that it allows them to attract the best employees and it allows them to retain them. So you see these big tech companies like they were sort of leading the way and it was great. They were saying like we're going to give six months paid leave and they were showing that all their, and it was also to men. So it was like both their female employees were happier and staying and their male employees and everyone and it was great. And then they realized that this was something that was a competitive advantage. I talked to a congressman who was saying like he was trying to get some of these big tech companies on board with backing a federal paid leave policy, but that they were sort of reluctant to do that in some ways because now they had realized like it was something they wanted for themselves and that was so. They want to differentiate themselves. If you're going to choose where to work, they want to be the ones that are offering these great benefits, which by the way, are the benefits that like, they want to differentiate themselves: what women in Finland and Japan already have, but only a select group of American workers get. And so on the other side of this, you have small businesses that can't compete. And so a lot of the paid leave initiatives, like at the state level, there's been a lot of involvement by small business lobbies to get them passed. Like I was looking at Minnesota and it was just really interesting. I talked to a woman there who was saying like, there are a lot of people who want, who would prefer to work at a local coffee shop or something sort of local and interesting, but they can't provide, those places can't provide benefits that like a Target would provide. So they go work for a big company where they're sort of less happy, but that's the deal they have to make. And that's of course a deal that like the woman in Finland and the woman in Japan did not have to make, you know, there's a, it allows a certain amount of professional freedom when you're guaranteed those benefits publicly rather than them being attached to an employer. So in so many ways, you know, these things affect your daily life, just sort of the politics of motherhood. Then you have a shorter pay leave and all the repercussions from that, which I saw with Sarah. So yeah, it's really fascinating, sort of the history of this stuff and how it's happened and also just the amount of advocacy that has gone into it and that it continues to take to get these sort of basic level of supports.
Hunter (33:34)
Stay tuned for more Mindful Mama podcasts right after this break.
Yeah. I mean, I guess for a small business, would need to have the government kind of stepping in, maybe state or federal government stepping in to provide some of that funding for these employees for small businesses. Oh gosh. I will hold that up as a North Star sort of for the future, but things have things have changed a bit, right? Like some things have changed a lot as far as like the role of dads, I think has changed enormously. your book also sheds light on how involved or actually not involved fathers are during that first year. So what did you learn about the policies and the cultural signals that either encourage or discourage dads from stepping in?
Abigail Leonard (35:23)
Yeah, that was another really interesting thread that I didn't know I was going to sort of pull on when I started the book, but it's so clearly important, like the role of fathers. What I learned was that policy really can lead culture in this way. So it doesn't always start from culture. It often starts with you have a sort of more progressive policy. Like in Finland, they didn't always have these very involved fathers that they do today: there were these policies and sort of over generations, the past few generations, it's become very acceptable and sort of aspirational now for men to take paternity leave. the result is like very involved fathers. There's even, there's this phenomenon of latte papas, which I loved. there were these like, you know, it's like these men who are like in cafes with their babies and, you know, they're just, they're seen as sort of like, men want to be them, women want to get to be with them. They're just like these cool dads and they show up now in like romance novels and stuff. And so it's like interesting. They're like desirable for being helpful fathers. And you know, the other ideas that like the more you, you are an active parent, the more proficient you become. a lot of, and that you sort of understand how hard this stuff is. So just sort of anecdotally, that was the sense I got that fathers appreciated this kind of caregiving work because they were actually doing it. But in that case, you did see the policy sort of leading.
So men have paid parental leave as well. Men have paid parental leave. It's shifted a couple of times in the past few years, but they have, I'm trying to remember and it's, I think the, I don't want to get it wrong. I think the couple can take like 10 months or a year, but, they can split it between them. So it's somewhat flexible. Yeah. And you, and you know, usually it's obvious the mother ends up taking more of it, but the father has, or the non-birthing parent has to take some amount or they lose it or some, I should know the specifics, they, because they keep refining it, it sort of changed. But it's that idea is that, yeah, and so then you have these really high rates of men spending time with their kids. I think there was some stuff that it was like they spend more time with their kids than mothers, but in any case, they spend a lot of time and it's just very socially acceptable. And then it was interesting to see like Japan, I mean, I obviously lived in Japan and I saw there's just very, still very defined gender roles in a lot of ways, but there is sort of a younger generation of men there who seem, and this is reflected in like polls and stuff, they want to be more involved. But the policies in a lot of ways, even though they are guaranteed, they're now guaranteed a one year paid leave, which is incredible. But a lot of men, most men weren't taking it and it was because there was sort of this corporate culture, that if you took it, you would fall behind and it just wasn't sort of the way it was done. But men wanted to be more involved and they said this and the country wants men to be more involved, partly because they want to raise the birth rate. But they put in place this policy like a year or two ago that companies had to report how many of the men there were taking the leave available to them and then they would publicly publish those statistics, and so it was sort of a way of like doing this public comparison, public shaming of companies that had low rates or social shame.
And it worked. worked. Like the rates have gone up. I mean, yeah, the shaming worked. It worked. So yeah, I mean, I think all this stuff just shows that like policy really leads culture. if there's like a there's probably an appetite for it there. And this is happening in California, too. I mean, you see a lot of uptake of the availability of paternity leave there. I think it's like the same percentage as Finland. It's just a much shorter leave. So yeah, I mean, all this it's really important that men make use of the time they have and that they're given it.
Hunter:
What was it like for the mother in Kenya and then also Sarah the mother in Utah?
Abigail Leonard:
Yeah, Brian, the father in Utah was like a great dad who wanted to be involved. He is an Amazon delivery driver and he got essentially no paid leave. And so he took a few days off unpaid, but they were thinking about how much it was going to cost the family and stuff. So it was this real negotiation, like how much can he take off? And so he really didn't take very much time. think he maybe took the first week, but maybe not even that much. That was a lot harder and set the stage for Sarah being the primary parent. think that's the other thing it does is if you don't sort of establish that relationship early, just sort of, that's what happens. the interesting thing about that too is that as a delivery driver, he doesn't have the same leave that someone in corporate management at Amazon would have. They have very generous policies. So there's again that two-tiered system and you have some men like him not getting anything and it completely affects family life. It just made everything much more stressful. In Kenya, I don't think there is paternity leave, but there's some momentum to pass it. I think that's right. In Chelsea's case, the father of her child was sort of increasingly less involved as time went on. So he wasn't really around, and so it didn't really apply to him. But again, that just meant it was that much harder for her sort of struggling on her own and a lot of the traditional support systems there have sort of faded over time as people move to the city and away from these sort of networks of care. So yeah, it was really quite hard for her.
Hunter:
Yeah, you point out that the moms are overwhelmed and they're blaming themselves for things that are actually societal failures. How do you think reframing that could change the conversation about motherhood in countries like in these four countries or here in the US?
Abigail Leonard:
Yeah. I think it's really an important thing to realize that you're sort of not operating alone. There's this whole system around you that's either supporting you or it's not. that's like, you know, your family and your community, but it's also your state and federal government, how much support they're providing you makes a huge difference in your life. you know, there's like everything from how safe you feel, like as far as worrying about, I mean, even like the food system or, you know, gun violence, all that stuff are things that we sort of take on personally, this, you know, trying to keep our children safe when that really should be the goal of any functioning society is to keep its children safe. And yeah, I mean, just generally, I saw this when I came from Japan to the US, like how much of a burden American mothers felt without paid leave, without universal childcare, which is another huge one. You know, I mean, just the idea that like there could be publicly subsidized childcare so you wouldn't have to think about it really, you know, the cost of childcare.
Hunter:
Do they have that in Finland? I have a friend who had ended up having a baby and being in the Netherlands and ended up staying, she said, despite the the cost of a $30 roast chicken, because she had like, there were these crash systems where it was completely free childcare from like day one through for however long you needed it. I mean, I was amazed.
Abigail Leonard:
Yeah, no, it's amazing. It's true. It was true in Japan. Like my kids go there and then, and it's from zero, but you know, because you've paid maternity leave, most kids start around one. And the biggest problem is sort of like crowding and the number they need to make more facilities. But Japan's actually, they have been responsive and they have built more. And yeah, in Finland, similarly, like there's universal childcare. Most kids start, I think it's around like one and a half. But in any case, just the cost sort of wasn't the issue. Whereas I saw it really clearly that the cost was the issue for Sarah in the US. She couldn't afford childcare locally, so she asked her parents to care for her daughter, but they lived pretty far away, so it added an hour each way in her commute, and they were also getting older. And so she sort of said to me, like, I don't know if I could actually imagine having another child because, like, could I ask them to care for two? And so maybe I'll wait until the older one gets older. But it's like all of these calculations that American mothers are making and that feel like, okay, well, this is just my burden to bear. Like, I'm going to sort of intellectually solve this problem. It shouldn't be our problem to solve. It's a communal problem, you know, that other countries sort of see it that way and have taken steps. So I think that's such an important thing to remember. you know, it's really not you. You're part of this larger system and if it's failing you, you know, it's important to go advocate for better policies.
Hunter:
Yeah, you can see what's valued by what, where the files of money, right? Like there's a lot of lip service about valuing families, I think in the United States, but you know, are we giving money to education and moms and dads and families and helping families? No, we're not. Ugh, it's so frustrating. Okay. So, you know, you writing this book, it required some deep reporting. You really got to know these four women. I imagine it also in some emotional excavation. And I'm wondering like, how did hearing these stories help you make sense of your own journey into motherhood?
Abigail Leonard:
Yeah, I mean, think, yeah, this work was definitely the product of like a lot of emotion that I had around motherhood. you know, it was hard being in Japan and coming back in that transition, but just motherhood in general is a enormous transformational, you know, event. And so I had my friends who I went through it with, but I think there was something about seeing people in every corner of the globe experiencing similar challenges that was very validating. It was like, this is universally, I mean, it's joyful too. It's incredibly joyful and it's incredibly challenging. And a lot of those things are very common among people everywhere. And so I found it really helpful to see that and also to see that it was a process and following them for that year. I was only barely out of my youngest child's first year. So I was still sort of in it, but seeing how they sort of relaxed over time and it became easier was also like a really powerful reminder that, you know, these things, these things change all the time. and yeah, and I, and just sort of globally then on top of that baseline, that's common remembering that it really does matter sort of where you happen to have a baby as far as what the experience is like. And so like we were talking about just, it can be made much easier if there's more support, if there's more social support, if there's more sort of medical support, all of it just goes such a long way. And so you have this baseline universal biological experience that's happening, layered on top of that is policy. And so it just really made me feel like I had to go out and do something about it. And I think this book is sort of the product of that, really bringing that message to other people that it's really important that we see motherhood as a political enterprise as much as it is a personal one.
Hunter:
Did you discover any groups that you would work with or endorse in the United States that are helping to make policies that are supporting mothers and fathers and families?
Abigail Leonard (47:39)
I've found the Chamber of Mothers to be doing really interesting work and they have chapters in I think most states and they look at all of these issues, paid leave, universal childcare, and they're really trying to sort of organize around them and also create communities. So I think that one is really great. I'm trying to think of other particular support groups, but I would say like definitely look to them and think about joining. Give them a plug- Chamber of Mothers, sounds so it's like, you know, it sounds sort of old fashioned in a like a charming way. I think it might be like a reference to the Chamber of Commerce. it's like, you know, the mother's lobby, but yes.
Hunter:
Well, thank you so much, Abby. This is, your book is fascinating. Her book is “Four Mothers: An Intimate Journey Through the First Year of Parenthood in Four Countries” by Abigail Leonard. It's out wherever books are sold. It's really fascinating. We talked about a lot of the sort of the big things, but some of the details that you have are so, so interesting. Just the way people do things differently. I think those are interesting too. Thank you for. coming on and thank you for doing the work that you did and diving into this and for sharing it with us. I really, really appreciate it.
Abigail Leonard (48:59)
Thank you so much. This was such a great interview. Thank you for all your great questions.
Hunter (49:08)
Hope you enjoyed this episode. So fascinating, isn't it? My God, it makes me so angry that we don't have more support here in the U.S. to hear about the great things they have in other countries. so frustrating.
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