Join Chine McDonald and Dr Madeleine Pennington for the first episode of their new series, Motherhood vs The Machine. 13/03/2025

Intensive mothering. Parental burnout. The juggle is real. The series opens with a look at the relationship and distinctions between paid work and the unpaid work of mothering; the differences between intellectual and bodily work, and where mothering fit into all this? Is a woman’s place in the home, or the workplace, and what pressures or opportunities arise when mothers are in both?

Chine and Maddy discuss the realities of being pregnant and becoming mothers while working, and speak to experts about how motherhood and work have changed over the centuries, exploring how machines have shaped the experience of working women.

This is a podcast for everyone. All those with questions about what it means to be a person rather than a machine, and exactly where the distinction lies.

Featured in this episode: The Bear Cubs toddler group in London; Lucy Jones, author of Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood; Professor Helen McCarthy of Cambridge University, author of Double Lives: A History of Working Motherhood Dr Charlotte Faircloth, Associate Professor in the Social Research Institute at UCL, and Mary Harrington, contributing editor of Unherd, and author of Feminism Against Progress; speak to Chine at Howthelightgetsin festival; and theologian and writer Laura Fabrycky.

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