BBC pays lip service to mothers in work, says Jones after breastfeeding struggle
One Show host says she gave up trying to express milk at work because there were no suitable facilities
ALEX JONES, one of the BBC’S highest-profile female presenters, accused the corporation of failing to provide decent facilities for new mothers.
The presenter of The One Show, who had her first child last year, said the BBC pays lip service to the idea of welcoming mothers back to work.
Worried about losing her job, she returned to work three months after giving birth and had hoped to continue breastfeeding, but “threw in the towel” after finding it impossible to find anywhere she could express milk.
“Companies all say the right things – we’re there, we’re going to support families, we’re going to make it possible for dads to take paternity leave, for mothers to take extended maternity leave, to feed at work – but actually the truth is the facilities still aren’t there.
“They talk a good game but even at the BBC there isn’t a crèche, there isn’t a room where you can express, there isn’t a fridge where you can keep your milk,” Jones told an audience at the Hay Festival, joking that she hoped there were no BBC bosses in the audience. Her son, Teddy, is now 16 months old.
Jones said her boss was “brilliant” but, despite being a father of four, did not understand her needs as a breastfeeding mother.
“I’d say, ‘I need to go and express’. He’d say, ‘Can’t you hang on half an hour while we just watch…’ ‘No, I can’t!’
“It just didn’t work, and so I had to just throw in the towel.”
In fact, there is one nursing mothers’ room at BBC Broadcasting House, but it is in a different part of the building to The One Show studios.
Jones, who has written a book about parenthood, was speaking on stage with Clemency Burton-hill, the Radio 3 presenter, who informed her of the room’s location and said she was a reluctant visitor after the birth of her first child in 2014.
“You have to really know what you’re looking for. You get in there and it’s dark, it’s smelly, it hasn’t been cleaned for a week.
“I used to go there at 9am and there’d be these blokes lying on the sofa having a kip because they’d been working night shifts,” recalled Burton-hill, who now also has an 11-week-old baby. “I’d walk in there with my boobs about to explode, having just got off air … and these blokes would look almost resentful that I’d roused them from their beauty sleep.”
A BBC spokesman said it offers flexible working, job shares and childcare vouchers. It has commissioned Donalda Mackinnon, head of BBC Scotland, to conduct a review examining “what more can be done to support mothers and all women in the workplace”.