After Anna Whitehouse and Matt Farquharson had their second daughter, six years ago, they realised something: it is not financially viable to have two young children in the UK. Farquharson has run the numbers. “If you are the most average couple in the UK, living in an average place, with average bills, on average wages, and you add a grand a child a month for childcare, you’re in debt before you’ve even gone to work. You’re in debt just by existing,” he says. At one point, Whitehouse worked out that she was “earning about £5 a month after childcare costs”.
This realisation drove them to start a campaign, Flex Appeal, to push for more flexibility for working parents so they would not be “forced to make a choice between earning a living and having a family”. Blogging as Mother Pukka about the realities of parenthood, Whitehouse had built a large following. Both journalists, the couple – with Farquharson as Papa Pukka – went on to co-write parenting books: Parenting the Sh*t out of Life and Where’s My Happy Ending? They also host the podcasts Dirty Mother Pukka and Where’s My Happy Ending?
