The reviews are coming in for Meghan's podcast 'Confessions of a Female Founder'ions of a

[LaBarruci]

Not listened to the first in Meghan's podcast series, a conversation with the founder of Bumble, Whitney Wolfe Heard, but the Mail has collated all the press reviews so far, with links. The Guardian, Telegraph and i-Paper are unanimous: the podcast is cloyingly dreadful.

The reviews for Meghan Markle's latest podcast are in! Two stars for Confessions of a Female Founder https://mol.im/a/14584193 via https://dailym.ai/android

And I will stand by my post which used the exact words of PH print in Spare relating to her MC.

Different people feel differently about this and I'm not interested in criticising others choices.

But when you describe yourself as being unable to tolerate being a different room from your children but then also leave them in a different country for days or weeks it's obviously a self aggrandising lie

I did see the point being made that the podcast was about women not having to choose between being an "at home "mum or a "work " mum and there should be a middle path which yes I agree with.

However this " women's talk" along the lines they had does reinforce in many minds rightly or wrongly that women cannot be taken seriously in the workplace, that when the crunch comes it is more likely that it will be a woman than a man who will take time off etc because of children. That is one thing but to start talking about miscarriages, menopause , periods etc can be highly detrimental to women's causes in the workplace.

I am old enough to have had to battle to wear trousers in the workplace ! I vividly remember the attempts to block David Steel's Abortion Bill of 1967 and the attempt to repeal it in 1974.

There needs to be a balanced and sensible middle road with all of this and Meghan's " girl talk" is detrimental as well as insulting to women who HAVE to work and HAVE to get on with it and not have the option of playing at being a company flounder founder.

Are there podcasts for business men on how they balance work and children?

I expect not.

It's inherently sexist to frame this as a women's issue.

Also I don't believe their message that with balance you can do both fully. In reality something has to give, compromises have to be made and you need to be comfortable with the compromise you choose.
Maybe you choose not to give 100% to your business at this point.
Or maybe you accept that other's will need to fill in for some parenting duties as you won't always be available.

Women have been sold this nonsense that they can have it all if only they try hard enough and are amazing enough for decades now. It's an insidious lie which has led to women burnt out and miserable.

Honest conversations about the hard choices for mothers would be much more helpful honest and refreshing.

once again she's 20years behind the zeitgeist with her 2000s vibe.

Who goes off into different rooms from their children and then looks at photos of them?

This is all no surprise. She constantly aims and misses every target 😂. Poor Megan, she’s just not particularly good at anything. Very mediocre person at best.

Oh god I hear you! I used to have an amazing memory and I now stumble with words! I am happy to acknowledge the effects of menopause, don't get me wrong, but not in a large group setting. You clearly have a position of influence that others don't have. This woman chose entirely the wrong setting and it was embarrassing for everyone.

I was sitting in on a training session (ironically same trainer, pre-perimenopause). It was for an entire service in our organisation. An older man asked how he should respond to a woman coming to him citing menopause for her struggles in work. He was told he should refer her to a woman of a similar grade to him. The head of service (a woman!! and not a young woman either!) then got stuck in and whined about how our menopause policy just gave women an excuse and they would just abuse it!! I was agog! I was only sitting in and it wasn't my place to say anything but I was shocked! My then manager (HR) weighed in and basically said she had coped through it so every woman should!!!

Trust me, if there was any way I could have spoken up, I would have because I was so angry. I fed it back but I don't think anyone cared.

I'm 62 and haven't had a period since maybe 45, but I still have symptoms, like forgetfulness. I can't remember names for instance and it's so frustrating. I despair!

I'm so sorry you haven't been blessed with children and I sincerely hope you have been able to make your peace with that.

I have 3 adult children and honestly sometimes I wish I had just stuck with cats! 😁

I never left my children when they were little apart from going into hospital to have the next one and I cried my eyes out each time! The eldest was probably in secondary school the first time I went to a friend for a weekend and to see Beyonce!

I'm probably unusual though.

And they left both children for weeks when they were in the UK and the Queen died.

She doesn't have a single authentic bone in her body, does she?

Harry, what have you done?!!

I was quite surprised about that . I thought that a nanny and/ or Doria would bring them over .

Well.. they aren’t safe you see…

But they would have been staying in fully protected Frogmore ??

There is nowhere safe in the UK as far as Harry’s concerned . He’s completely paranoid.

She seems to adopt a lot of different personas and cosplay different roles of what she thinks is expected - but without any true understanding because they are not authentic but a role she is playing.

Some of them seem to conflict with each other but the press don't call out the contradictions.

She seemed to attract Harry by being the "boho" philanthropist and Diana 2.0 - convinced him that she loved camping trips to Africa and charity work. But that seemed forgotten as soon as the marriage certificate was signed and she never visited Harry's "beloved" Sentebale projects in 7 years.

Then she was the royal "modernizer" who would whip the RF into 21st century shape through "American" workplace practices, not following dress codes, ignoring the hierarchy and establishing the Sussex Royal website to merch her products. But after 72 appearances it all got too much that they took an extended break for a couple of months and never returned.

There was a brief "we're just an ordinary couple" phase - "I'm Meghan", "just call me Harry" and we chose not to have titles for our kids. It seems to have gone out of the window with the recent title merching and "don't call me Markle - I'm Duchess Meghan Sussex"

Then there was the media mogul who would be the new Oprah by producing and appearing in a whole range of programming and podcasts and becoming a billionaire. The US companies threw $millions at them although there have been few successes. (I'm a bit disappointed that she didn't make the "Miss Havisham as a feminist icon" drama that was in pre-production a few years' ago as it sounded hilarious.)

There is also the ongoing - "we are traditional royals" u-turn with faux royal tours to Nigeria, Colombia and a speech at the UN.

The latest persona seems to be tradwife/lady of the manor - where she tries to convince us that she hosts gracious garden parties in floaty dresses while making up crap, sorry crepe packet mixes with the kids and smearing them with runny jam and pot-pourri sprinkles.

The constant reinvention must be exhausting .....

Some parents will leave their children to have nights or holidays away, some parents won’t. There are lots of threads on mumsnet discussing this. I think that as long as you have someone who you trust, that the children are comfortable being around, it can do parents good to have some time to themselves. When it’s due to work commitments, there is often very little choice.

I wouldn’t judge how another woman thinks/feels about the miscarriage she had. It’s very personal.

I am going to repeat it again, some of the previous comments on MM ' s miscarriage were dismissive and insensitive towards pregnancy loss. Being on a parenting website, I thought it was only fair to report it. Obviously we will have people deflecting and trying to lie about it (I am not surprised). I will however continue to highlight it, as I believe pregnancy loss to be too serious of an issue to be made fun of. I also believe that every woman has the right to process it as she sees fit. I am not going to tell another woman what specific wording she should use to describe her own miscarriage.

It doesn’t matter what subject Markle is ostensibly discussing, in whatever medium, as she will always turn the ‘conversation’ back to herself.
The guests are irrelevant and only there to utter platitudes to MM at regular intervals.
She also uses her media vehicles as a way of getting back at critics/non-fans/The Royal Family/other of her multiple ‘enemies’.

There may well be more boring people on this planet, but thankfully we haven’t been exposed to them.

Thank goodness things have moved on from when you started in the workplace. Women are impacted by things such as pregnancy, miscarriage, periods, endometriosis, menopause etc. Although many women will breeze through them, unfortunately others struggle and there should be an awareness of it. For example, many women experiencing peri menopause/menopause give up work due to their symptoms. A friend of mine is going through it at the moment but thankfully she works for a large global company who are great with things like this so she doesnt feel under pressure. They’ve made some adjustments for her and she can manage it. None of this ‘just get on with it’ bullshit. Some women can’t just get on with it’ as their symptoms are overwhelming.

"I am not going to tell another woman what specific wording she should use to describe her own miscarriage."
Well, luckily you won't need to as Meghan took the initiative of lifting someone else's specific words about their own miscarriage.

The way she talks about her DC there is always a sense that someone else 'whoever' is actually looking after them and she can choose whether to go and interact with them . Unlike most working mothers.

But when you describe yourself as being unable to tolerate being a different room from your children ...

WTF, so her kids are in a different room while she scrolls photos of them endlessly. Where does she come up with this inane stuff? its such an obvious lie. More than likely a conflab of things she read or heard elsewhere and thought, 'oh that sounds touching, might keep that in my little black book of quotes for a later date to showcase how wonderful a mom I think I am'.

She seems to be living her life as if she is in one of those scripted stage sets she said she grew up on. The melodrama and emotionally charged recounting of normal life situations, the overdramatic descriptive lines, as if she is repeating the lines of a script she has just learned.

Everything about her is so outlandish and fake.

I also think pregnancy loss is too serious an issue to be made fun of, but you’ve yet to point out where that has happened on this thread.

How do you feel about exaggerating an early stage pregnancy for dramatic effect, implying that you lost something big enough for your husband to carry, and bury? Speaking as yet another sufferer here of miscarriage I find that deplorable, utterly deplorable.

Please let's not go into these morbid details, my goodness!