Motherhood, Farming, and Invisible Burdens

Would you believe if I told you that childcare and health insurance are some of the of the biggest stressors for farm families? Of course, children bring so much joy. But worrying about their health and well-being sure is not always easy. And today we are going to dive into some new research on how raising children, mediating the farm family, working on the farm, and working an off-farm job can disproportionately affect females’ health and well-being… And stick around till the end for tips on how you can manage that heavy multitude task list…. And if you aren’t raising children, stick around all the same, to hear how you can help alleviate this stress.

Welcome to Talking Total Farmer Health, I’m your host Linda Emanuel. Today, I am excited to welcome back Dr. Florence Becot and, new to this podcast, Dr. Hannah Budge! Recently, they published a research article with Dr. Shoshanah Inwood, in the journal of Agro Medicine. Dr. Becot and Dr. Budge, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thanks so much for having us.

Thank you.

Oh, you're welcome. Doctor Becot, you've been on our podcast before, but just as a refresher, please share a bit about yourself and your job with our audience.

Sure. So, I am Florence Becot. I am a faculty member at Penn State University. And I'm also the lead of the Agricultural Safety and Health program for Penn State. In terms of my background, I'm trained as a rural sociologist, and my work is really focused on farm families, health, well-being, safety, and economic viability.

Nice, nice. Boy, do we need you. And, and Doctor Budge, please introduce yourself.

Hi there. Yes. I am Doctor Hannah Budge. I was, when I worked on this paper, I was a presidential postdoctoral scholar at the Ohio State University. As you can probably tell from my accent, I'm from Scotland originally. I am also a rural sociologist. I did my PhD at Newcastle University, and, right now I'm actually back, helping on my family farm back in the Shetland Islands in Scotland.

Very nice. Nice. Well, welcome, gals, to the podcast. This is going to be a great conversation today. So, recently your research article published in the journal of Agro Medicine, is titled “The Source of All my Joy and All My Stress: Children and childcare as underappreciated sources of stress that affect farm women.” Listeners, this article will be linked in our show notes, so go check it out after you listen to our conversation. So, let's dig in. Tell me what inspired the two of you to focus on childcare and how it impacts farm women's health?

So, I was a postdoctoral scholar when I, helped co-author this paper. It was part of a wider project that Doctor Florence Becot and Doctor Shoshanah Inwood, our other co-author on the paper, part of a five year project that they were working on that was focuses on linking childcare and child farm safety, which I'm sure Doctor Becot will speak a little bit more about. It's a really important topic. I did my PhD looking at how the experience of women in agriculture in the Scottish Islands at Newcastle University previously, and one of the findings there was also looking at how, childcare was a big barrier for them in terms of progressing in the agriculture industry, for instance, getting leadership positions, and how this kind of impacted the farm women's kind of day to day life.

The opportunity came up to work on their project for a year… to kind of look in terms of the US context, in terms of childcare and farms and how that maybe differs from the Scottish context that I'd been looking at for my PhD work as well. And it's been absolutely fascinating, and I've really enjoyed the opportunity on a really important topic that has issues on both sides of the Atlantic that have seen now.

And it's been an interesting thing about this project is how much we are seeing similarities with other countries and my research, my work over the last over ten years has really been about, you know, if we to encapsulate things around the social and economic sustainability of farm families and how can we do to support farm families so that they can stay on the land and operate, or their farm in a way that, you know, allows them to make a living and allows them to have the kinds of life that they are hoping for. And so that has included, you know, childcare, health insurance. We're also really interested in, you know, in aging on the farm. And so for childcare, the, the idea came to is connected to farm safety.

As your listeners might know already, agriculture is one of the most dangerous occupations. And children on farms experience some of the higher rates of injuries and fatalities. And what's important to know is that one, based on, on the research, we know that it is the youngest children, what we call the non-standing or the bystanding non-working children who experience higher prevalence of those injuries and fatalities. And so, one of the recommendations has been around, having supervision of children of the farm work site.

And the idea is it doesn't have to be, you know, when sometimes when we think about childcare, we think about daycare, right? And here for the project, we mean childcare more broadly. We mean, you know, any adult paid or unpaid, that's looking after the children. And then the last thing I'll say about, you know, childcare is my mom actually was a childcare provider for over 30 years. And we, we you know, I was raised in an agricultural community. And so it's interesting too, to see the personal and the and the professional coming together.

Very interesting perspective. And I think those experiences we have growing up somehow carry us into our professional work or our commitments. So, let's talk about this study… Again, the title is “the source of all my joy and all my stress.” Talk about the structure of this study and, and how did you find and choose your participants.

That's a great question, Linda. I can get started. So as Hannah mentioned, this particular article is part of a five year study. And our goal with one part of the study is we wanted to talk with women who raise children on farm, and our goal was really to ask them about, hey, what's the day to day like to raise, you know, around, you know, taking care of the children, working on the farm, working at an off farm job… So yeah, and in terms of how it was structured, we did focus groups, we did 11 focus groups with 68 women. And then after that, we invited them to participate in Photovoice with 33 women. And, and Hannah, would you like to describe Photovoice and how, what kind of method that is?

Yeah. Of course. So, it's a really innovative method in terms of looking at farm safety and childcare on farms. So, the idea behind Photovoice is putting the researcher in the participants’ hands. So, it's a participatory method. So, you have a series of prompts that you ask the participants to go and take photos of, and write a caption to go alongside that photo. Following when they submitted the photos, they were also invited to take part in debrief sessions as well, where then, they, Florence and Shoshanah was then able to discuss their photos. Can ask some more questions about, oh, why did you take this photo? And they're kind of able to then expand on the reason behind they took the photo and the reason behind their captions as well.

I’ve not seen a research article with pictures. And man, do pictures speak louder than words. And so, like the stories that I, I am like fascinated. Those stories that came out as these gals were, were trying to show, showcase their feelings, you know, somehow to put the stress that they're feeling out there so that others can understand. So when you were working on the analysis of the data, as all this data was coming in, was there something that surprised you or were pretty much what you found was what you were already suspecting?

So, it's a mix of both. I think with Shoshanah we expected mental health challenges to come up. Quality of life questions. Before the focus group, we did interviews with 38 key informants. So those are people who work with farmers in a wide range of capacities. So, these are folks who work for extension, Department of Agriculture, you know, wide range. And they kept bringing up, you know, we were asking them about, hey, what do you see around farm families and juggling the children and work? And they were bringing the mental health piece and from other works that we had done, we expected it to come up. I think to us, what was surprising, was how often it came up. And the important thing to note is on purpose, we had decided to not ask about mental health, and there are a couple of reasons for that. First, the study is really about what's the day to day with the children and what could make it easier for you to navigate work, home, children, and keeping the children safe. So, on purpose, we didn't want to veer off from that topic too much. The other piece too, is from a research ethics perspective. Anytime that we do research, Our protocol has to be reviewed at the university. And, and really the review is about making sure that the research will not hurt participants. And hurt means, you know, psychologically, means their reputation, means economics.

Something that really surprised me when I was reading through the focus groups, as well as the photovoice debriefs and the images as well, which is how open and how the women were like, we need to speak about this like, “I am not doing okay. Something needs to happen. I'm not coping.” I think that has, that was the key part, that really surprised me when I was analyzing the data, when we were going through the data and having conversations about it.

Out of 11 focus groups, we had in ten of them, people, you know, out of their own choosing, disclosed that they had expressed depression that included pre and postpartum depression and talked about anxiety. In, in all of the 11 focus groups, they talk about stress and the negative impact of quality of life. At the same time, the thing that was really interesting, and I think it's really important to talk about is how much people love their life. At least the way that they talked about it is, they love being able to raise children on the farm. There is really the idea that they want to instill passion and safety among the children so that they can take over the farm in the future. And so, what was really interesting is it's not like, people love what they do, at least the ones that we talk to, right? We don't talk to everyone. So, it's important to remember. But it's that dichotomy. It's that oppression. It's that tension. And what we saw too, that tension manifests itself in people feeling a lot of guilt.

There is the guilt of, “why am I feeling this way? I shouldn't be sorry.” You know, “I shouldn't feel sorry about myself” or the guilt of “I feel I'm not doing enough for my children.” And then also the sense of isolation where, “I feel alone, like surely it must just be me.” What was really interesting too, about doing the group made up of women, and that was intentional, is that as the conversation was going, more than once, they would say, “I hadn't realized I wasn't the only one. I thought I was alone, I felt isolated.” What those focus groups do, they created a space for women to have those conversations…

Oftentimes when we look at mental health and how we support farmers, you'll see a lot of the framing is around “well, farmers don't like to seek help or they don't like to talk about it.” It's really frequent, but then it's kind of framing farmers that they don't as they don't want to talk. And our experience, even in, as part of other projects, talking on different topics like - people will talk. Not everyone. But if you give people the, this - if you listen and, and really ask because you care and want to learn how you feel, more often than not people will share and they might not share to the same level. But I think too, it's- it's about, you know, how do we maybe not corner people in saying what farmers don't actually talk, they don't actually go to the doctor. And what we found is that it's a lot more complex situation. Oftentimes they don't go to the doctor because it's just too expensive and it's not there.

Yeah, I like where this is going. This is good stuff. So, let's talk about the importance of the study. And we've, we've talked a little bit about it already. And you've intertwined it in our conversation. But, um, why is this study important? Is there something there that we didn't cover in our conversation?

Well, one thing that we've maybe not quite touched on in the conversation yet is one of our other key findings was the kind of the dangerous nature of the farm worksite was really acknowledged by the women in the study as well, because, again, the kind of looking at previous research of some of the previous literature would suggest that they're like, “oh no, if farm farms and farms children are, it's fine. Like we don't mind about the safety aspect.” They're not aware of how it can be dangerous. But in the research then and in the focus groups and photovoice data. Then we found that the women were very aware, like, “yes, we know there's dangers involved.” Like, “sometimes I would rather not have my child in the site, but there's- I don't have any option. I've got these children here. I,” they maybe can't access childcare because they maybe can't afford it. They maybe can't access it if they're in a very like rural area.

And also sometimes if the childcare is not aligned with their values or they don't feel it's the sense of quality that they'd like for their children as well, then for those reasons that they might not be able to access the childcare that they would prefer or maybe afford as well, so that they feel that they have no choice but to have the children on the farm worksite as well. But they were very much aware that sometimes for doing certain tasks that might not be ideal to have the children around.

It is very important. I think the National Children's Center does a great job in talking about children's injuries here in the U.S. And every three days there's a child lost due to some related farm injury or ranch injury. And so, it is a huge worry. I, I am done raising children but now helping with grandchildren and it is on the top of my mind most every day when I know those little ones are around the farm. But let's talk about tips and resources. Are there some that you can share for farm women feeling that that feeling of over being overwhelmed and stressed?

So, I think it's like anything. Right? It's at different levels. So, I think there is the level within the household of, you know, some women did not feel understood by their spouses. So, for women, in terms of the tips and resources, it depends on what people want and feel. I think what we heard was the importance of talking with others about it, confiding in others.

So, when it comes to mental health, it would be, you know, resources connected to mental health. There is information around how do you cope with it. How do you there are resources around, accessing the care of behavioral health provider, if that's what you want. But to be clear, not everyone wants that. We know from other research that we've been working on that around mental health, that farmers don't often feel that they are the problem. They're like, I'm not the one who choose this commodity prices. They're making my life hard. I'm not the one who chooses the weather, so I'm not the one who needs fixing. And I think it's a really important thing to talk about. And so other things too, that we communicate about in Pennsylvania are around, water resources out there. If you experience financial challenges on the farm, what are resources out there to make it easier to access childcare and pay for it. What are resources? If you need to talk with the mediator because you have bills on the farm that are unpaid or you are having challenges with it, and the idea is to put it out there and for people to pick and choose what's helpful or what's not. And to be clear, not everything is going to be helpful for everyone. But I think too, the work that you're doing with this podcast of, of publicly speaking about those topics so that we increase awareness not only in agricultural communities, but also with decision makers, with the ones who are writing the farm bill. So that we think about more holistically and systematically of what does it look like to support agriculture?

You know, when I think back to those years, when, when the house is full and it's busy and, you know, you've got so much going on with kids activities, the farm and, and then I had the off farm work at that time. What are some things family members can do on the farm or in the house to help?

Hannah, you are actively, you are in a farm at the moment helping your sister who is about to have a baby? Right. So, what do you guys do?

Yes. Absolutely. My, so my older sister, my- the family farm is run by my two sisters, and my older sister is pregnant … So some of the things that we're doing to help her is obviously making sure that, we're maybe doing the heavier lifting jobs, making sure that she's staying safe and healthy, that she still is active. But, obviously not, she's not going up the ladders or anything and trying to make sure she's doing the less physical work. But I think something that's really important is, having those kind of honest conversations in the family household, because the household, the farm, household, and farm business is so intertwined and impacts so much in terms of the productivity and even the relationships within the farm household as well. So even though some conversations might be difficult, they might be emotive, being able to have- feel that all the family might all the family household members are feeling supported and heard and listening to each other in terms of how you're feeling, both emotionally and physically as well. And sometimes the farm household can also expand from not even just within the central household, but maybe the further out outside households, for instance, the grandparents or the aunties and uncles as well, that extended family to who might also be working and living on the farm or the farm site too.

So having that space and ability to speak to the family household members and making sure you're all supporting each other and being able to be honest with each other as well is really important, and just even checking in with each other as well, seeing how you're feeling today, do you need anything from us? What can we do to help as well? It’s really, really important. And in terms of that will hopefully kind of create that environment being like, okay, like I am struggling maybe with this childcare or what can we do to help or what can we shift around the different jobs so that people can still take part, but can also someone else can, maybe looking after the children as well? So, I think that's really important.

So Shoshanah received a grant with other colleagues to develop a new type of programs that would talk about how to integrate, integrated childcare and health insurance need in farm business development. And this comes from seeing that there are a lot of trainings out there to support farmers and how to plan for their business, but rarely does that training goes into those household level topics that we've been looking at. So, this new training that is being piloted at the moment, mostly in the Midwest, but we also do a test here in Pennsylvania, it’s really about having new types of resources for farm families. And so some of it are those conversation guides.

And those kitchen tables are a great place to have these conversations, right when we're all sitting for, for just a moment and, and to bring that up. And I'm very curious and excited to see Shoshanah's research work when it comes out of it. Maybe it's just a little cue card. That said, this is the question that we're posing at the table today. And so that that's all great tips, doable things that we can do within our households.

Sure, there's the things that we can all do in the house, no matter what, we should do it. But there is also the reality that over 60% of rural counties in the U.S. are categorized as a childcare desert. What are we going to do about this? Because again, there are folks who do not want kids to go to daycare. But what we've talked to, farm parents, is there are plenty who will use it if it was available. So, what can we do at the community level, state level, federal level, so that there are more resources available so that people can focus on the farming and have options? And for some of them, they might just want, you know, help 1 or 2 days a week during harvest season. That might be all they need. And for others, they need more, it really depends on, on people's situations.

Bringing those community stakeholders to the table is important, conversations as well. I know in our small community we have our school board who's looking into childcare because lots of young teachers are looking for childcare. They want to move to a rural community, but childcare is an issue, and housing. And so, I think pulling in those community stakeholders, whether it's banks, Chamber of Commerce's, healthcare, whoever it is, like, let's put our heads together to see how we can make this happen.

Yeah, healthcare is a big one. I used to work out of a healthcare system, and it was very difficult to get nurses and doctors to come work in a rural area that didn't have childcare.

Yeah, exactly. Right, right. Because they have to live and thrive too.

Mhm.

Okay. Well the future what does the future look like with this research that you found. And, and are you expecting what you found to stay the same. Or you know we always like to be hopeful forecasters. Or do you see anything changing?

We have been having a lot more conversation about what it's like to be a working parent nowadays. And a lot more conversations around, childcare, mental health. And we have, you know, with this project, we've seen so much support from different people that we've been talking to about, you know, yes, it's important we haven't talked about this yet, but both the Farm Bureau and the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Farmers Union have added support for rural childcare access as a priority for the farm bill. And then in June of last year, a bipartisan, bicameral law was introduced to support childcare through the farm bill. And unless the farm bill changes drastically, that support that call for support and availability through rural development is still in there. So we are potentially looking at more, um, resources channeled towards rural areas for childcare. But of course, these things take time, and they are, from what we hear, it's just very complex…

However, I would definitely be hopeful and optimistic about it in the future, and hopefully these conversations are sparking conversations in farm households and making maybe people feel more confident to bring up and say, “okay, I'm not actually feeling confident and I actually am struggling with this.” And that's yeah, I'm, I'm optimistic about it. And I hope for the future that people will speak about more. There'll be more awareness around it. And as Florence said, these types of media, the podcast and everything, hopefully that will help people as well speak about it more in their households. And yeah, I'm hopeful.

You know, we've been doing this research, but it's been popping up in other, other colleagues have been doing research. So there is a study out of the University of Georgia, but they were not specifically focused on childcare, but they were focused on the mental health of farm women. And it's interesting. Their findings are very similar. We have a colleague out of Slovenia, so very different country, Majda Černič Istenič

who looked at very similar questions and found very similar findings. We have colleagues in the United Kingdom who just are about to start a big project looking at the health and wellbeing of farm women. So I think there's definitely more attention to it. And, and I do hope that it will lead to, you know, more broader sets of support for anyone on the farm, because at the moment the support has really been focused on the farmer, um, on the farmers, but maybe not on the ones who are doing, you know, the childcare.

Right, right. Well said. Well put together. Well thank you gals. This has been a great conversation. Is there anything else you'd like to share?

I feel like I've said enough already… But, but I'm thankful, you know, to AgriSafe for making the space to talk about this research and, and really trying to understand, you know, what it's about. So, you know, thank you for that.

Yeah, I would just like to echo that as well. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast and having us on the podcast and able to speak about the research and very grateful for this space.

And speaking on behalf of many farm gals who are doing the work out there on the land, and thank you for your research, your skills, and um, just the commitment to helping us all be healthier and, and more cohesive and just have happier families.

Okay folks, that’s a wrap. Thank you again for tuning in to another episode. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast to hear more from AgriSafe on the health and safety issues impacting agricultural workers. We are always open to new ideas or stories to share on this podcast. So, feel free to connect with us by email at info@agrisafe.org, and title that email “TTFH Podcast.” You can also get our attention by using the hashtag "TTFHpod" on Twitter! To see more from AgriSafe, including webinars and our newsletter, visit www.agrisafe.org.

This episode was created by AgriSafe Network, directed by Laura Siegel, hosted by me, Linda Emanuel, edited by Matt McKinney for ProPodcastingServices.com, and a special big thank you to our guests Dr. Florence Becot and Dr. Hannah Budge.