‘Trolling and stalking… I've lived through it all on social media'

Telegraph

2 days ago

Anna Whitehouse has spent the morning at No 10. Baby Lola, eight months old, came too. Not that she could say anything, but because Whitehouse couldn't get childcare. Some acts, however, are louder than words.
Whitehouse was there to meet Bridget Phillipson, the minister for women and equalities, who had days earlier announced her desire for more young people to have babies.
It was, in a word, triggering for the 43-year-old, who under the pseudonym 'Mother Pukka', has been a lively and relentless mouthpiece for a generation of burnt out, financially drained parents.
Phillipson's foot in mouth statement had prompted Whitehouse to write an excoriating Instagram post to her 438k followers saying as much: 'How on Earth can parents be expected to 'make memories' when the cost of childcare is so painfully high?'
It is a testament to her reach with the parenting demographic that she was quickly invited to air those feelings in person with the Right Hon MP for Houghton and Sunderland South.
And Lola came with, from their home in Hertfordshire. 'Not because I want her here. I mean, it's nice. It's a privilege to have time with your child, but not while you're working; you're doing two jobs at once,' Whitehouse tells me afterwards.
We're in a meeting room at The Telegraph office, having navigated the stairs with a buggy. Lola is understandably tired and fractious, with Whitehouse trying to lull her to sleep.
'We can start though,' she says when I look unsure. The juggle has become her normality, after all.
She should really be on maternity leave. But: 'There's no maternity leave when you're a freelancer,' says Whitehouse.
She can't get Lola into childcare; there's a nursery staff shortage after all. She is on waiting lists. There are no grandparents nearby. Whitehouse's is an all too common situation.
'And so I put that post out, and there was just this deluge of anger, pain, and frustration, but I think the baseline was exhaustion from a generation of parents who have categorically had zero support in terms of childcare.'
Right now she is operating on two hours of sleep. The chit-chat went well, but Whitehouse feels like she's running on 'visceral, maternal, exhausted rage'.
Without meaning to sound reductive, I tell her she looks very well.
'Five layers of sweat and bit of foundation,' Whitehouse deadpans back.
As with any online persona, it can be hard to see past the gloss to reality. Scroll through her feed and it's all perfect eyeliner flick and mama-friendly leopard print. And as is so often the case, she's a lot smaller and more vulnerable in person than whatever Mother Pukka I had in my head.
During our interview she wells up simply talking about how hard it can be to keep the show on the road.
Eleven years have passed since she first quit her job in copywriting as a result of a request for flexible working being turned down. She had asked to arrive 15 minutes earlier so she could leave 15 minutes earlier to make nursery pick-up.
The reason given for the refusal: it might 'open the floodgates' to others seeking flexibility.
And so she went freelance. Whitehouse maintains she never wanted this platform – she'd much rather have had a stable job with flexible hours that works around raising her family – but now she's got it, she's making it work, and not just for herself.
She is the figurehead for a generation of mothers who are also: 'Holding the baby while working to earn the bacon.'
Her mother's generation might have frequently felt unfulfilled by their lack of career opportunities, but, says Whitehouse, her mum has even said to her: 'I think you have it far harder than we did, because roles were defined.'
Now mums do it all.
'We are not in any way wanting it all,' asserts Whitehouse.
'I never wanted it all, but we've ended up doing it all, and that's really what today's meeting at Downing Street was about. The lack of infrastructure for parents.'
She wants to know why no one is talking about the 74,000 mothers every year that are made redundant on maternity leave?
Or the one million women going through menopause who leave or are made redundant because businesses simply don't understand female biology.
Whitehouse calls herself an 'accidental activist'. It definitely wasn't a career intention, she stresses.
It's her second time at No 10 already this year. In April she sat down with Sir Keir Starmer to address the need for flexibility in the workplace.
That she's back again so soon to reiterate the same point doesn't exactly seem reassuring that they are making progress. Whitehouse just seems happy that she's had another opportunity to state her case. After all, she has been grinding out lemonade from the lemons ever since she took to Instagram in 2015.
She and then husband, the writer Matt Farquharson, set up FlexAppeal, a campaign for more flexible working for everyone. The platform she has built is a powerful one; one post criticising Nigel Farage's stance on flexible working garnered 1.4 million views and 58,000 likes. Quite the reach.
Before taking to social media she did try pitching her parenting ideas to publications but says they were met with indifference.
'Now I don't have to do that. I can stand up and know I've reached more people via my own account. It's a brave, new pixelated world,' she says in a way calculated to rattle the cage of hacks like myself.
Working alongside Farquharson, the couple found Instagram-fame as the Pukkas, extolling the virtues of 'teamwork' parenting.
Books such as Parenting The Sh*t Out Of Life and Where's My Happy Ending? followed, as well as a novel, Underbelly. And of course there was also the glamorous red carpet invites, TV pundit appearances and best-dressed lists.
And then in September 2023 Whitehouse announced she and Farquharson were divorcing. Or in Pukka-language, 'kindly untangling', after 17 years together.
The tattoo on her arm saying, 'It's time we danced with the truth' is a result of that period of turbulent transition.
'Some would say midlife crisis, some would say midlife opportunity,' laughs Whitehouse.
To begin with they attempted 'magpie' parenting their two daughters, now aged 12 and eight – a co-parenting arrangement where children remain in the family home, while their parents take turns living there to care for them.
The Whitehouse I meet today is a lot more settled and in the midst of a bumper new life chapter. She and Matt have both since moved on romantically, Whitehouse finding love with Olly Bretton, via the dating app Hinge.
Lola came along in November last year and the pair are marrying later this year. Bretton already had two children of his own, so now Whitehouse has embraced blended family life, parenting five children when it's their turn at once.
I can't help but observe that just as the travails of motherhood might have relented, she's in it deeper than ever.
'I've gone back into the trenches,' admits Whitehouse. 'But on my own terms, and I couldn't be more grateful.'
She describes Lola as the best thing that's ever happened to her. She did wonder if her body would be able to do it. But then, waiting until later in life, past peak biological timing, has become a reality for so many women who first feel they must sort their financial and career foundations.
'It means we're doing it at a slightly more exhausted, biological time in our lives,' states Whitehouse.
The benefit of new motherhood in her forties is that she is approaching it with a lot more wisdom and experience. It's arguably the same with her online life, too. Today she has healthier boundaries around what she shares of her life.
Announcing the split with Farquharson was of course awkward. She was forced to address it after messages from her followers.
'Unfortunately, when we both went on dating apps, I had hundreds of my followers saying, 'Your husband's trying to have an affair'. And so in the end, I ended up having to be open, because it was getting a little bit murky in that sense.'
Still, she insists she doesn't feel like she has to give her audience everything.
'Even saying audience feels a bit uncomfortable, but people have invested in your story and your journey. For better or worse.'
Bretton has minimal online presence himself, but is happy for Whitehouse to share what she thinks is reasonable of their lives. There are endorsements, of course, most notably an advert for Hinge, the Cupid that brought them together. Campaigning doesn't pay the bills.
She refuses to be snotty about the word 'influencer'. For her, it isn't a dirty word, it's an economic reality.
When I ask if she minds being called one, she reminds me that 86 per cent of those who earn money online are women. Why is that?
'Because we're scrabbling together the broken fragments of our jobs and our lives to try and make something that was taken away.'
Yes, she is popular. But she has learnt that it is impossible to please everyone. She appreciates that talking about miscarriage and then later sharing her journey to parenthood with Lola, is bound to alienate somebody.
'I have walked through Instagram fire on many levels, from trolling and stalking to adoration and applauding, I have lived the full 360 degrees of this pixelated new media,' she says.
As such she is fascinated by the recent exposure of the creator of Tattle Life, an online forum of scurrilous celebrity gossip that encouraged trolls to indulge in relentless scrutiny.
The platform inspired the main character of her new novel, Influenced, which follows Alexandra, a menopausal forty-something, failing at work, with a crumbling marriage and distant daughter.
Alexandra finds solace in the online world of likes, finding her voice on Influenza, a platform not dissimilar to Tattle Life.
Whitehouse's view of the women who indulge in online vitriol like that posted on Tattle Life is generously empathetic, given she's been on the receiving end of online hate herself.
'Women are complex. Happy, sad, angry beings who are wonderful daughters one day, terrible friends the next,' she says.
'Influenced is a love story to forgotten women and how they end up turning to places like Tattle Life.'
As someone who frequently uninstalls Instagram for my own mental health, only to be drawn back, frequently for work purposes, I wonder if she feels trapped on the platform, too?
'I don't want to be online,' says Whitehouse honestly.
'But I also want to be with my children, and there's currently no job that facilitates what I can do right now and the earning capacity that I have. This is not my dream job.
'You have to have the hide of a rhino to operate against a backdrop of people telling you your child's hair is awful, or you're clearly one of those mothers that puts their child in a taxi to nursery.'
Of course the good bit is the community of women that champion each other. 'But it can be an incredibly dark place of stalking and harassment.'
Would she ever just stop posting and disappear altogether?
'No, because I think that would be really unfair to everybody who has actually built me up. And I think for every negative comment there's thousands of positives. And that's really the story I'll always tell my daughters, is that you know you're not going to be liked by everyone. You will be judged by some. But what's your purpose?'
On this she is clear. Her current focus is the review on parental leave, and continuing to lobby the Government for changes.
She may have found her way through the world of work and motherhood, and kept body and soul, but it's not a world she wants for her daughters.
'I'm not going to tell my children that 'You too should set up an Instagram account and ride on into the pixelated sunset'.
'But also, I'm going to say to them, 'Your mum scrapped. I really scrapped because it mattered to me being there at school gates at 3.15pm.'
'That's it.'