Whether in parliament or on the doorstep, potholes get more attention than parents. I understand why – families and what constitutes them are a minefield. As someone who has campaigned on a range of controversial issues, including abortion and Brexit, its fighting for mums that has garnered me the most anger – even in the Labour movement.

But this isn’t about how motherhood – or fatherhood – makes you saintly. Its about the consequences for social justice of the absence of a progressive way of talking about parenting.

The gender pay gap is now in reality a motherhood one – as new research shows on average mothers earn 24% less an hour than fathers. During the pandemic parents weren’t just expected to cope with home-schooling, pregnant women were forgotten in the vaccination programme to horrific consequences.

‘Women are judged, whilst men who have children are seen as better employees’

Paternity leave is pitiful – with only a third of eligible men taking even just two weeks off with a new baby. Working from home has become associated with slacking off rather than the empirical evidence flexible working helps retain a productive workforce. It should be a national scandal that black women are four times more likely to die in childbirth than white women.

Whether having children, or choosing not to, women are judged – whilst men who have children are seen as better employees precisely because of it. The only piece of work parliament has done on why so few mothers stand for office, let alone stay in it, is to ban breastfeeding from the chamber – rather than introduce adequate maternity cover.

In WhatsApp groups, cafes and pubs around the country people tell of the stresses of trying to manage work and family life – or the vile things that get said to women about their fertility, the patronising things to men who look after their own children.

The experiences of having children with special educational needs, premature birth, fostering, discrimination and baby loss have shaped powerful campaigns for change – in spite of rather than because of our public discourse.

In three weeks time we’re supposed to be on the cusp of a childcare revolution, but ministers are still ignoring the multiple parents and carers telling them they can’t get a place or that prices are going up because the system is about to crash.

Introducing the ‘Mummafesto’

That’s why I started a podcast to hear these stories – the conversations at the dinner table, the experience of trying to be a parent or deciding not to be or the juggle of managing being at the school play and being in employment – and what they tell us should be on the agenda for the coming general election.

The Mummafesto is a space where instead of telling people to choose between their families and social change, we see them as a fundamental part of it.

In the first episode I talked to Baroness Beeban Kidron, the award winning film director and the founder of the 5rights foundation for child safety online.

Beeban’s story of being only able to work when pregnant because Stephen Spielberg guaranteed he would cover her contrasts with being forced into the office six hours after giving birth to her second. Her shock I too had to working from the maternity ward reflects how even in positions of privilege discrimination against pregnant women endures.

She also covers one of the hottest topics for parent groups – screen time and social media. Her views will no doubt cause controversy for every carer who has valued the peace of putting Bluey on or shared a picture of world book day on their Facebook.

‘Few political strategists have worked out how to talk with parents’

Future guests include Elliot Rae, founder of MusicFootballFatherhood, Baroness Shami Chakrabati, Tulip Siddiq MP, Joeli Brierley, Founder of Pregnant then Screwed, Tinuke Awe, 29, co-founder of Five X More, Baroness Helena Kennedy, DJ Ilana Bird, Broadcaster Jo Elvin and Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia. Each of them from different worlds – all of them changing the conversation around family for the benefit of social change.

For most political strategists, appealing to car drivers seems a no brainer – yet still few have worked out how to talk with parents and why making family life in all its forms the foundation of our offer could mobilise not just votes but equality.

Following the evidence so few mums were able to enter the political process, we set up MotheRED to fundraise for mums to stand for Labour – a group of incredibly diverse candidates, of the fifty five funded already thirteen have been selected.

If they win there will be a bank of Labour MPs who can be counted upon to challenge the absence of a parent led approach – until then, I hope that the Mummafesto will provide a forum for the ideas, concerns and stories of what needs to change when the nursery rings to send a kid home in the middle of a shift.