Mr Slummy Mummy
The husbands behind the ‘bad mothers’
When Simon Hooper found his twin 16-month-old daughters rifling through the bathroom bin a couple of weeks ago, sucking on old toothpaste tubes and grabbing fistfuls of hair, tampons and tissues, he thought nothing of sharing this scene of domestic chaos on his Instagram account. A few minutes later, 30,604 people had worked themselves into a frenzy, firing him messages about about how “completely adorable” his children were, offering helpful advice on how to keep bins out of toddlers’ reach and generally sympathising with the exhausting rollercoaster that raising twins can be.
From the volume of interest his photo generated, you would assume Hooper was some minor celebrity. In fact, he is one of a growing band of “Instadads” – so-called because they use the social media site to post (often hilarious) real-life snaps of their broods. But these men share more than just a tendency to over-share.
They may be stars in their own right now, but all were once known as “Instagram widowers”. For months they sat back as their wives became social media stars for sharing their parenting highs and lows online and, it has been suggested this week, attempting to prove they are the worst mums ever. The slummiest mummies, supposedly.
Where did all this leave the dads? Wanting a piece of the action themselves, it seems. The Hoopers – or “Father of Daughters” and “Mother of Daughters” as they are known on Instagram (they have four girls: Anya, Marnie, Ottilie and Delilah, between the ages of 16 months and nine) – believe talking openly about their failings is important as it helps the enormous number of fellow parents who follow them.
Hooper’s wife, Clemmie, a part-time midwife, is anything but slummy. A glance at her Instagram page reveals a carefully curated array of well dressed infants and well groomed, happylooking women.
Simon is proud of the way she has inspired so many of the mums who follow her with her honest approach, freely admitting when she’s had a bit of “an adult headache”.
He says he joined the fray because he wanted to “cut through the sugar coating” of family life you often see on social media. He certainly does this: his account is a riot of messy rooms, half-drunk baby bottles and small children sprawled, piled and crammed into every space. It’s family life in all its full-on, never-get-a-moment-toyourself glory. (Simon himself appears in many of the pictures, pulling his comic ‘What am I supposed to do about this?’ grimace.)
“It’s not all walks on the beach, going on holiday and music recitals – I wanted to talk about the mundane parts of life, because actually that’s where I think the funny bits lie,” he says.
That, and some healthy competition with his wife to see if he could beat her 40,000 followers.
“I was watching Clemmie over her shoulder in the evenings tapping away on Instagram and talking to other mums about parenting, but they were missing half of the parenting team in the conversation. I just thought, ‘well, why can’t I do that?’ Because it’s the dad’s voice that seems to be missing.
“Men mainly seem to use Instagram to post pictures of nice cars or holidays; they don’t really engage in the family discussion online and I thought maybe I could.”
Infuriatingly for Clemmie, Simon (or “FoD” as he’s known to his fans) now has more than double his wife’s followers: 640,000 compared with her 305,000. Now that he’s proved his point, why does he continue to do it, especially when the women are so regularly slated, for being “smug” or “slummy”?
“The girls get it harder,” he tells me. “Some of the infighting I see on their social media comments is extraordinary.”
He believes that while the pressure on young parents grows ever greater, one of the best ways to combat the inevitable stress of this is to encourage openness. By sharing the challenges of raising four children, he hopes others might feel a little less alone in their own parenting struggles. Though getting blokes to open up to a bunch of strangers has proved no mean feat.
“Originally my aim was to engage with dads,” he says. “I wanted dads to have a little network like the mums did. What’s actually happened is that 90 per cent of my followers are women. But 10 per cent are men, and that’s still 64,000, which is great.”
Hooper, a 34-year-old management consultant, believes the role of dads is fundamentally changing, with men now feeling just as torn as women when it comes to balancing their career with family life. But unlike women, who are often more likely to share their anxieties with friends (or, as his wife does, on social media), men don’t always have the same outlets. “What hat I’mI m trying to do is get people to understandnderstand that you can do it all,”,” he says. “Yes it’s a struggle, le, but there are ways aroundd it.”
Fellow Instagrammer nstagrammer Matt Farquarson arson – or “Papa Pukka” a” as he is known (his wife, Anna, Whitehouse, e, is “Mother Pukka” online) ne) – says he has been surprised by y how much the experience of sharing his life as a dad on social media has changed his outlook.
“I think it’s made me more open and honest about ut things,” he says. “Anna has always been like that but I don’t tend to be as naturally open about things like feelings. If it’s taught me anything, it’s that there’s no harm in that.”
Farquarson, who has a three-yearold daughter, Mae, and another baby on the way, joined Instagram after watching his wife Anna’s account reach such dizzying heights that she has made it into a business (her incredibly successful blog provides news and comment pieces on all aspects of family life, for “people who happen to be parents”).
Engaging with harassed parents has, he says, helped him navigate life as a new dad. “I think with this generation of parents there seems to be a higher level of expectation. You go back a generation or two, and as long as they spoke nicely and didn’t have scurvy, you were considered to be doing a good job, but the expectations now are different.”
There is, however, a downside to all this over-sharing: hundreds of thousands of strangers have now seen countless pictures of these people’s children and their homes. Do they worry about this?
Ben Telford, a father of two fantastically naughty sons – Woody, two, and Bertie, four, is on Instagram, but hasn’t turned his account into a parenting brand as the others have because he doesn’t want to overexpose the kids. His wife, who is also called Clemmie (or “Peckham Mamma” as she is known), posts daily updates to her 40,000 followers.
“I’m sure with Clem’s followers I could create an a account and do that, but I don’td want to. Because Clemmie’sCle on it quite a bit, I try notn to put too much of the kids on mine, because you’ve just got to be slightly careful, I think.t Not that I’m knocking anyone else doing that.”
Their l life online looks joyous and aspirational, for al all its “warts-andall” o openness.
“W “We definitely don don’t live a perfect life, by any means. My b business went bank bankrupt, we faced finan financial ruin, and she hasha posted about that,” s says Telford. “It’s all real,r it’s not a facade o of happiness. We’re really happy,ha but it’s hard work. I think that’s why peoplepeopl relate.”