FEATURE:
Mother and Child Communion
IN THIS PHOTO: Danish musician Oh Land discussed her experiences of pregnancy and touring with Rolling Stone in 2021
The Reality of Pregnancy, Maternity and Touring
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ONE thing that I wonder…
IN THIS PHOTO: The Go! Team’s Ninja
is whether women in music who become mothers have the flexibility and allowances that others do. Obviously, there are practical issues that cannot be entirely solved. By that, I mean women cannot bring their new child/children on the road with them all the time or, indeed, have them in the studio too. I was inspired to write after Ninja from The Go! Team revealed how she has babies and, rather than staying at home to care for them, she is able to take them on tour – if only for a bit. Of course, there is that responsibility, but many women in music either feel obliged to stay local when it comes to touring so that they can look after their children, or else many women going into the industry worry about motherhood and whether it is going to be compatible with a successful career. This extends into the wider workplace. Many companies, still in 2023, will not hire women who are expecting. Many others are wary about hiring women in general, lest they lose a member of staff for a long period because of pregnancy and motherhood. For women in music, it is tough enough already. Seemingly having to push harder and perform more to get heard and vie for places at festivals, is it difficult or near-impossible to balance motherhood with a busy music career? Ninja was speaking with Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie last weekend about her experiences and how she can take her children to some of The Go! Team’s gigs. Even so, there is the reality that there will be separation because, as you’d expect, it is not possible to take your children everywhere.
IN THIS PHOTO: Venom Prison’s Larissa Stupar/PHOTO CREDIT: Gobinder Jhitta
I suppose experiences differ, but I have been thinking more about equality and women’s rights following the BRITs gender row and how there is still a lack of awareness regarding women in music and their importance. Big labels are signing fewer women than men, and there are definite barriers when it comes to women entering music. From the struggle to get equal rights to sexual harassment still being rife, there is a real danger that so many potentially brilliant artists are leaving the industry early or not coming through at all. I am not sure whether the experience is the same for all women and expectant mothers in music, but I have been compelled by an article from last year. Kerrang! spoke with Venom Prison’s Larissa Stupar, as she called s on the music industry to do better in supporting mothers and pregnant women. The upshot is that, in the case of Stupar, her band had to cancel tour dates in 2022 because she focused on motherhood. She felt too ambitious. There is that pressure to balance two worlds. It is an impossible situation and reality for expectant mothers in music. For Kerrang!, Stupar highlighted the inequality that already exists through the industry – and how there needs to be improvements and structures in place to support expectant mothers in music:
“In the last decade, equality in the workplace, job opportunities and society has been improving slowly. The music industry however, it is still a male-dominated field throughout. Looking at social media and music media outlets, it may appear that gender representation is more or less equal but studies show otherwise. From 2012-2017, out of 600 songs in the Billboard’s end-of-year Hot 100 charts, only 22.4 per cent of the songs were performed by women – and the number of female songwriters was even smaller. These are grim numbers, and we are not even looking at top positions held by women in labels, magazines and booking agencies here. Now I could go on about what has caused this big gender divide and how to fix it, but this is something that has been discussed many times now. Instead, I would like to address how women must navigate through an industry that is dominated by men.
When Venom Prison played our last show of 2019 before the pandemic hit, I did not think that I would be nine weeks pregnant the next time I walked back onstage to play Bloodstock in 2021. Having recently finished recording Erebos in the studio, it was during a practice session that I decided to tell the rest of the band about the news. I, like so many other women in the music industry, feared the way people would react finding out about my pregnancy. For many female musicians, an announcement of future motherhood can be something unpleasant rather than celebratory. When you’re a touring musician it’s not just your band that is affected by that, it’s also the management, record labels, booking agents, PR, your touring crew and anyone else you might be working with.
Even though I felt very supported by my band colleagues, label and management, as everyone was positive and understanding of my situation, I still felt very uncertain about my future as a musician. While a career in the live industry is often more of a lifestyle than work for most up-and-coming musicians, a touring schedule can be very difficult and seem almost impossible for new mothers. Perhaps that is why we don’t see many female musicians in rock and metal who are either expecting or are already parents. This lack of representation is what makes it hard to plan your career, and many are terrified about having to sacrifice looking after a child in order to pursue their musical aspirations and career. I had so many questions but simply nobody to turn to. There is no HR that can step in and help you figure things out; you are left on your own to plan how your career in music is going to go ahead, how you are going to sustain yourself financially during your time off, or how other women in the industry balance touring and parenting.
This is where we need to create awareness. In order to be more inclusive, the industry needs to clue-up on the concept of pregnancy and motherhood. Women are still a minority in the live music industry and that is one of the main reasons these topics are hardly talked about. We need to introduce strategies and arrangements for pregnant musicians and crew. Like in any other industry, we need to learn not to discriminate due to pregnancy, how to respectfully talk about these issues with expecting parents and offer support wherever possible. We need to do better”.
Major artists like Maren Morris have spoken out in the past about how women should not have to choose between motherhood and touring. Bodies like The Musicians’ Union offer advice and guidelines for anyone working with pregnant women. There was a lot of conversation around the subject in 2021. During the pandemic, at a time when it was especially hard to tour and earn money from live gigs, it became especially hard for new mothers and pregnant women to get heard and to balance their careers and motherhood. Now in 2023, there is great visibility and awareness, with some great organisations and bodies offering support and advice. This article from 2021 lists a few. Whilst there is improvements being made, the issue of finding ands affording childcare is difficult. There is an assumption that, once you have a child then your career is over. Are women in music less marketable and supported if they already have a child? Do labels feel they are too much investing in an artist if there is the risk that they have to divide their time or spend far less time on the road? I wanted to come to an interesting article from Rolling Stone from 2021. In a still-male-dominated industry, there is still a bleak reality: many women are still expected to tour when they are thirty-eight weeks pregnant! Some high-profile artists (such as Cardi B) have performed and toured whilst heavily pregnant, but it seems like such a harsh and draconian thing! There are section of the Rolling Stone article that I want to source:
“Whether female artists bring children on the road, ask friends or family watch kids at home, pause their careers, or choose not to have children for the sake of their careers, the decisions in every circumstance are difficult and require endless resilience. This is partly due to the nature of the work, living and dying by erratic tour schedules and unstructured work hours — but it doesn’t help that the vast majority of contemporary record executives, tour managers, or other decision-makers of artist careers are male. Artists from varying backgrounds, success, genre and recognizability agree that there is little support in the industry for female musicians who become mothers.
IN THIS PHOTO: Oh Land/PHOTO CREDIT: Emily Weiss
When Danish musician Oh Land got pregnant five years ago with her first son, Svend, she, like Lynn, worried how it would change her image within the industry. The “youth-focused” music industry can feel totally at odds with parenthood or the idea of mothers, she says: “So I was definitely scared that people will be like, ‘Oh, now she’s done.’” Oh Land toured up until week 38 of her pregnancy. “My pregnancy was very, very easy the first time,” says Oh Land, whose son would kick her belly when she got off stage because he was so accustomed to the noise and movement. “And I think because the pregnancy was so easy it kind of gave me a little bit of a false impression of what it is to be a parent.”
Carly Humphries, former lead singer of the British rock band Battle Lines, has 5-month-old twin boys, Asher and Finn. She realized she needed a break from music after moving to New York to get married to her Brooklyn-based wife. The first difficult decision was to leave her overseas band due to the logistical problems of shuttling back and forth — but what she didn’t anticipate was that the fertility treatments would also force her to quit her new New York-based band, Villainelle, when the physical and emotional toll became too much. “Being two females, we always knew that it would be a journey in this sense,” says Humphries, who after two failed intrauterine inseminations — procedures that involve placing the sperm inside the uterus — moved on to the more demanding in vitro fertilization (a.k.a. IVF). “That’s the one where you are pumped full of all those hormones and it really does send you on this emotional roller coaster.” She eventually underwent a total of three egg retrievals and seven embryo transfers to conceive her two fraternal twin boys — one son that is genetically her wife’s and one son that is genetically hers — with the help of a sperm donor.
IN THIS PHOTO: Suz Slezak, who now tours year-round with two children and husband David Wax (left)/PHOTO CREDIT: Anthony Mulcahy
Road nannies aren’t cheap. According to Shenandoah Davis, CEO of Adventure Nannies, a nanny agency with experience providing services to bands, most nannies are paid around $30 an hour or $300 to $500 a day on a tour, and families are expected to pay for per-diem meals and lodging on top of that. This is a hefty pill to swallow for young bands — which often barely scrape together that same amount per gig. Bands like David Wax Museum lean on their community and fanbase to help find nannies. “We’re not able to pay much and we are clear about that upfront,” says Slezak. “There are so many people who are between things in their life and who are happy to kind of help out in this way — although I think they quickly realize it’s less exotic than they might be imagining.” Lynn points out that there’s no government maternity support for musicians: “I pay for the childcare. I pay for the extra hotel rooms for the nanny, or my mom, whoever’s helping with the baby.”
At the highest level, superstars may request massive caravans and demand full-on nurseries in their tour riders. But most can not afford such luxuries — or take a multi-year break from their careers after having a kid, like Adele did. Beyoncé was once rumored to request rose-scented candles in a nursery for her daughter during her 2013 Super Bowl performance.
On the flip side of this is Stevie Nicks opening up to The Guardian that, in her band’s early days, “if I had not had that abortion, I’m pretty sure there would have been no Fleetwood Mac.”
Early-stage musician mothers travel in vans and are grateful if there’s a crib at the hotel. “You’re lucky sometimes to have a mirror to put on makeup, because venues are still really geared towards men, so to expect them to also be ready to accommodate a breastfeeding mother? I can’t imagine that,” says Lynn.
“When you become a mother, you also become tour manager for your baby,” says Oh Land. “I had to learn to think in different ways. Suddenly, it’s not about getting the top floor hotel room, it’s about getting the hotel room with the stroller access. And maybe you don’t want the late gig, you want the early gig so that you can still tuck your baby in at night. You just have to be great at planning because kids and babies love routines. And I’ve actually become pretty badass at it.”
Artists with kids have to be painfully selective with taking far-flung jobs. “If I get offered a gig in China, and it’s really hard to get there, and the pay is low or something like that, it’s just not worth it,” says Oh Land. “A lot of things I have turned down that when before I had kids I would have just done it and be like, ‘okay, I’ll be jet lagged — and my back will break!’”
Says Lynn: “These days we definitely weigh the cost benefits in a much more severe way. I used to be much more willing to do certain things that were good for exposure, but now it’s just like, no. You got to pay decently and it’s got to be really worth dragging the whole family.”
While parenthood as an artist is a logistically challenging, emotionally strenuous and economically unfavorable uphill battle, it can also be one of the most profoundly meaningful aspects of life, musician mothers say — as transcendent as creating art.
“I chose art because when I am making it is when I feel the most at ease; it’s when I feel like I am aligned with the universe,” says Lynn. “[Parenting] is hard but there’s no deeper love. Your heart has never felt so full and drained at the same time. It’s quite a dichotomy isn’t it?”
Trotter has recalibrated what a successful life looks like, no longer basing it simply on chart rankings. “I am making it,” says Trotter. “I’m with my family every day.”
For Slezak, one of the perks of having a family band is being able to tour together with the kids. “Having kids was something that was always super important to me and I wanted to figure out a way to incorporate kids into whatever job I ended up doing,” says Slezak. “When David and I were getting together, part of our commitment to each other was based on this dream of being able to tour and bring kids along.” She has tried to arrange album releases around the kid’s births, and says she never would have chosen music had she not been able to simultaneously be a mother.
“I wouldn’t have wanted to be in a band if it meant not having kids so the two are so linked. I know it sounds funny, but I feel like the choice to take music seriously and take this band seriously was in part informed by the fact that I felt like it was a career that I could be with my kids during the day and work nights,” says Slezak, who just wrapped her first solo album, which includes a song called Take Me, an anthem about childbirth. “I feel really proud of the flexibility that our family has to sleep on different floors every night and not be stuck in traditional boxes that I feel like a lot of families feel stuck in.”
Humphries, despite taking a break from the rock world, has no regrets about being able to fully focus on her children for the time being. “I feel like I’ve only just started to come out of this fog, like being able to form sentences. It’s just such a special time,” she says.
Another benefit is also unique upbringing it can offer to children: “I had a lot of guilt in the beginning whenever I had to bring my kids to venues where there’s a lot of loud music and you can’t always control a bedtime,” recalls Oh Land. “I just really had to turn that around in my head and understand that I’m also giving them a huge gift — they get to be in this creative environment.” While having kids has certainly limited her personal writing and thinking time, she says, it’s also created new depth for her art. “What part of being a human being and having more stories to write is not appealing to hear about? The whole experience of becoming a parent, you get so many new perspectives on things, you get so many new concerns and worries, so many new joys, love in a whole new way that you haven’t experienced before,” says Oh Land. “There’s just so much more to write about.”
But the artists can’t help but ask if there should be a better way. At the end of the day, a huge chasm separates the epic pregnancy celebrations of established superstars — Katy Perry in her own music video, Cardi B at the BET awards, Beyoncé at the VMAs — from the struggles of up-and-comers who don’t know if their bank accounts, labels, or fledgling fanbases will accept their choice to have a kid. “I felt like my career was my baby,” says Lynn, thinking back to her initial panic in confronting the positive pregnancy tests. “And having a baby would force me to choose or betray my career”.
Because of the sexism and discrimination already evident, one can only imagine the difficult on women’s shoulders when it comes to motherhood. Thinking they have to tour whilst heavily pregnant or spending exorbitant amounts of money on childcare whilst on the road. Of course, motherhood can have a profound impact on songwriting and the creative process. Halsey has written an album around pregnancy and childbirth. 2021’s If I Can't Have Love, I Want Power is a hugely powerful and personal album. This year is especially tricky. So many artists are halting touring due to mental health issues and pressures. After spending the last couple of years under a pandemic, 2022 and this year have been and are going to be ones where there is ‘catching up’ to do. I think one of the reasons why women are being overlooked by award bodies is because they are on the road so much and maybe not releasing as many new songs as male artists. Also, if you are a woman in music and want this big and successful career, do you have to delay motherhood or not consider it at all? Things will continue to move forward as more conversations are had. Since 2021, there has been activation and campaigning. This Musicians’ Union article documents how people like the award-winning engineer Olga FitzRoy are fighting for change and acceptance – better working condition and rights for pregnant women and mothers in the industry:
“When Beyoncé was pregnant with her twins, Rumi and Sir Carter, one of the first things she did once past her first trimester was whip off her clothes and pose as a goddess for a photoshoot to announce her happy news. This depiction of her as mother and artist was a glorious celebration, something every female musician should be able to enjoy if they choose to have a baby – glamorous photoshoot or not.
Sadly, for many female musicians, a pregnancy announcement can be something to fear rather than celebrate. Anecdotally, the MU reports a rise in the number of women seeking advice after negative reactions from bookers, promoters or band members; stories that are backed up by some shocking figures.
An Equality and Human Rights Commission report from 2016 revealed that 77% of women surveyed said they’d experienced discrimination because of their pregnancy, and one in nine mothers felt forced to leave their job – scaled up to the general population, this could amount to 54,000 women out of work simply for becoming mothers.
IN THIS PHOTO: MU member, concert pianist and conductor Jocelyn Freeman was “shocked” when she lost a contract because of her pregnancy
Precarious workplace conditions
The picture is even bleaker in the entertainment sector, particularly once women have given birth. Campaigning group Parents In The Performing Arts reports that “work in the performing arts is precarious, with one in three participants saying that they do not have a formal contract in place… 76% of parents and carers had to turn down work because of childcare responsibilities (even higher for women at 80%); 68% were unable to attend auditions and other opportunities. More freelance workers with caring responsibilities have had to turn down work (85%) than other workers.”
Female musicians facing discrimination in the workplace
MU member, concert pianist and conductor Jocelyn Freeman was “shocked” when she lost a contract because of her pregnancy. She was “super-proud” of the strong relationships she had spent years building with promoters. Sadly, one of those relationships came crashing down when she contacted a promoter five months ahead of a concert to tell him she was pregnant.
“I wrote to him to tell him I was looking forward to the concert and also to say, ‘I’ll be pregnant. I’d like to have someone on standby just in case the baby comes early.’ He wrote back and said, ‘You should not perform.’ At first I didn’t realise why. The threat of losing work was my biggest fear when it came to having children. I’d grown up in an environment where there was still a bit of an attitude that women should stay at home.
“I’m passionate about getting out there and making sure women feel they can have that choice, a rewarding family life and a career, so when the email came through I was in tears. I felt like the choice and control had been taken away. It was my worst fear come true.”
The promoter cited ‘health and safety’ as the reason for the cancellation. On speaking with the MU, Freeman says she was advised that this was an overreaction and not very lawful. She suspects that the promoter may consider pregnant performers to be unreliable.
IN THIS PHOTO: Olga FitzRoy/PHOTO CREDIT: Blake Ezra
Fighting for Shared Parental Leave
Olga FitzRoy, an award-winning engineer, has gathered momentum with her fight to give freelance workers the same rights as employees when it comes to Shared Parental Leave. “I had been lucky enough not to experience serious discrimination or harassment in my professional life, but this all changed when I had my son in 2015,” FitzRoy told Music Week.
“While clients and studios were accommodating and loyal (I breastfed my baby in the control room at Abbey Road while printing a mix – glad those days are behind me!), the government had other ideas. While the £140 a week Maternity Allowance I received was better than nothing, there was no option for me to share my leave equally with my husband. I was restricted to working for only 10 ‘keeping in touch’ (KIT) days while on leave…"
“Introduced by the coalition government in 2015, Shared Parental Leave was supposed to level the playing field when it came to childcare. Yet a huge proportion of the 150,000 people working in music are self-employed, and therefore not eligible.
Although self-employed mothers get Maternity Allowance, self-employed dads cannot claim a single day of paid leave. Many families of musicians, composers, music producers and touring crew are therefore forced to revert to a 1950s stereotype.
FitzRoy has garnered support from high-profile artists such as Coldplay, Keane, Laura Marling and Ed Harcourt who signed an open letter to the prime minister alongside The Musicians’ Union, Ivors Academy and Help Musicians. Former Coronation Street actress turned first Mayor of West Yorkshire Tracy Brabin has picked up the baton and is fighting for a change in Shared Parental Leave in Parliament”.
This year is brand-new, but you do think about women in the industry. With enough discrimination aimed against them and it being harder to be heard and recognised, I was compelled by the topic of expectant motherhood and whether it is something the industry is equipped to handle. It is wonderful there are organisations out there who can help, but there still seems like a way to go. From offering financial support to touring female musicians who need childcare, to labels not discriminating against pregnant women or seeing motherhood as a commercial risk…let’s hope that there are positive steps this year. Maybe the situation is not as bleak as it was a couple of years ago but, still, many women in music either have to choose between a career or motherhood, or else they have to make huge sacrifices and compromises – ones that their male counterparts do not. Making the best and most remarkable music around, it is a disgrace that women are still having to battle and shout to get equal rights and recognition. Discrimination still exists in all corners and areas of the industry, and it seems harder and harder for women in music. It is still so hard for pregnant musicians and new mothers. Not wanting to neglect their children or be part-time mothers, they also do not want to cancel tour dates, time in the studio or face discrimination from labels and even some fans. Here’s hoping that there are more positive steps and news this year, because women in music are…
MORE important than the industry realises.