Interview with Mother Pukka – AKA Anna Whitehouse

The inspirational Anna Whitehouse aka Mother Pukka is a Mum of two, soon to be three girls, a writer, podcast host, campaigner for flexible working and founder of Flex Appeal.

Anna is formidable in her pursuit for equality in the workplace, fuelled by her passion to ensure that her girls, or any girls, don’t face a future where you can have your career snatched away from you just because you dared to have a baby; sadly this is something that Anna experienced first hand.

Mother Pukka Images © BROOD Magazine Limited

At what point in your career did you first become a parent? And how did you find that transition?

Anna: “I first became a parent just as my career was really taking off. I think this happens with a lot of women actually; you’re at that junction where your career is going like this, [Anna gestures an upward movement] and then suddenly you have a baby [she meets and connects the other hand] and it kind of cuts you off a bit. And this is not because of a lack of your own enthusiasm, your own experience or your own brilliance, but because of the ceiling that the world of discrimination puts upon us mothers. So yeah, my eldest came along as I was rising [up], I then just hit a complete wall.”

Where did your inspiration for ‘Mother Pukka’ come from?

Anna: “Mother Pukka came from a really primal, visceral, maternal, angry place. That’s why it was quite blue at first. It was Mother something else! [She laughs] So it was watered down and became Mother Pukka. But initially, it came from a place of just ‘hacked-off-ness’. I’d seen so many baby magazines and so many articles that were aimed at parents, all of them talking about what nipple teat to have and what ‘bugaboo’ to get, and what nappy changing bag worked, but no one was talking about the motherhood penalty. No one was talking about the lack of flexible working for parents. No one was talking about the quiet swathes of women who are disappearing from the workforce just because they assumed that’s what needed to happen because of the status quo. And so Mother Pukka came from this place of frustration that I’d had my flexible working request denied for really vague reasons.”

“Like ‘it would open the floodgates for other people to have flexible working!?’ And I was like, I’m sorry, let’s open the floodgates because people are drowning behind them! Specifically mothers – 54,000 mothers every year are discriminated against. So, yeah, that’s where it [Mother Pukka] came from.”

You’ve recently posted, I’m not sorry, where you mentioned that when you returned to work after having your first two children, you returned almost ‘smaller’ and quite apologetic. How different will the experience be for you this time around? Do you feel stronger than you did previously?

Anna: “I’m just not taking it anymore, you know. [Anna talks passionately] I think things have and are changing; it’s not a case of employers changing things, I think women are changing things because we’re 50% of the population and we’re just saying ‘No!’. We’re saying, ‘No, call my daughter’s father as well as me when she’s in nursery!’ (And that’s nothing against the amazing key workers who work with our children.) But the expectation, the bulk of childcare, is still strapped firmly to female shoulders. It’s not that we’re fighting some revolution. It’s evolution. That’s the difference. And I think people see that, with the work I do, the work the ‘Pregnant Then Screwed’ group does, the work that the Fawcett Society does – all these amazing organisations shine a light on this. People say to me ‘Oh my God, this is big what you’re all doing!’ and I’m like, no, it’s what it should have been there in the first place! That’s what equality is. It’s rebalancing a system that is structured and built for women, specifically mothers to fail. So I am not apologising anymore for a system that is set up for me, for my daughters, for my daughter’s-daughter’s to fail. It’s not my fault. It’s not your fault. And it needs fixing!”

Is it that personal experience that inspired you to start Flex Appeal?

Anna: “I think when I started speaking about the other side of the motherhood story, which wasn’t just about what maternity bag to buy or, ‘how to pack your hospital bag.’ It was about the real-time frustrations around giving up, not just work, but your purpose, of yourself, the expectation that you just step back. I decided, actually, do you know what this needs? Governmental change. This needs structural change. So that is when I launched Flex Appeal, which was our lobbying body/platform/organisation for the exhausted women in the street shouting, ‘I don’t care what you want to call me [for being me]!’ It’s that drive to change not just the narrative, but legislation. I just thought, there’s no way through this unless legislation changes for men and women. And I think that’s the big point here. This isn’t just about mums. This is about parents! It’s about dads who are just desperately frustrated that their employer won’t enable them to work flexibly because it’s seen as a ‘her-in-doors’ job still.”

“I say, the unconscious bias, but it’s a conscious bias that sits right there. So I needed a campaign to hook this on. That would have me, my little daughter at the time, my second daughter, and maybe this one now [she points to her unborn child] knocking on the doors of Whitehall and just saying, what are you doing about the 54,000 women every year that are locked out of the workforce for daring to have a baby? Like, that’s a ridiculous amount. And that doesn’t even include gagging orders, NDAs, etc., so you could probably quadruple that number you know.”

After 10 years of campaigning, how are you feeling now that it was recently announced the government has decided to start the ball rolling?

Anna: “Yeah. Three babies, one decade, and one campaign [she laughs]. I will say the proof is in the pudding because there’ve been so many governmental, political promises and until it actually happens, I don’t and I won’t believe it. So in some ways I’m taking it with a pinch of salt.”

“It’s quite monumental, but until flexible working is by default, that it is just assumed across the board instead of fought for, the onus is still on the employees. Until that structure changes, I won’t see any level of success. But what I would love to see, before that time is don’t wait for the laws to change if you’re an employer. Don’t take the stick approach, take the carrot approach. Why aren’t you thinking about how you can retain this brilliant talent? You’re not doing us a favour. We’re great. We’re talented. You’re cutting us out at our prime when we know so much and then you have to get somebody else in and train them up. So it’s about businesses too really. I want to see cultural change. For example, a dad messaged me and told me that he had put his flexible request in and it was rejected on the basis that they said, ‘Can’t your ‘missus’ do that?’ That was in 2023? [She sighs in disbelief] ‘You know what, No. His ‘missus’ might be working elsewhere, or might be a brain surgeon. The assumption that ‘her-in-doors,’ ‘the mum’, the ‘primary caregiver’ should automatically pick up that childcare slack is so inherently wrong. Let’s unite the two sides of the procreation coin. It takes two to tango.”

What has been the most challenging time in your life since having to juggle both work and parenthood?

Anna: “I think this is probably something every one of your readers has gone through. Regardless of whether you work in an office or stay at home… everyone’s a full-time mum because even when you’re working, you’re still carrying the weight of parenting at the same time. The administration of that parenting. When that moment happens where your child says ‘Mummy, why are you on your phone?’ and you’re caught between everything you need to do and just being with your child. My daughter initially said to me, ‘Mummy, sometimes I think you don’t like me very much when you’re on the phone.’ And it broke me. It’s trying to mentally balance the love I have for them, knowing that my heart is with them, but my head is with my mortgage, safety, and security. In all of that loss of self, you find yourself. Looking at my two little girls and thinking, ‘I get to be your mother, I get to be your parent.’ But yes, all that extra pressure remains the most challenging job Mother Nature could ever bestow.”

And to end on a high note, what has been the highlight of your career so far?

Anna: “I think the highlight of my career is actually moments with my two girls. Reclaiming time with them — that’s my success story. Sitting on the sofa on a Sunday morning in our PJs whilst they eat Cheerios… those are the moments you live for. On a tangible level, it would be changing the law on flexible working with the bill that came into effect in April. I did that because I’m not letting my little girls go through what I went through. We’re changing the structure of the world that has written us, as little girls, off!”