KATIE’S CANDID TAKE ON BEING A MOTHER
BEFORE social media, motherhood was already a minefield but things got a whole lot worse when the likes of Instagram and TikTok came along. All of a sudden, mums were shown posts and videos of the “perfect” way to parent, but one mum from South Wales was having none of it. In fact, with her strong Swansea accent and “activate Karen mode”, she’s taken to social media to show the authentic reality of being a mum.
Katie, who’d rather keep her surname under wraps for the sake of her two children, started posting on TikTok in March 2021 and wasn’t backwards in coming forward with what she really thought. Yes, her house can be messy, she says candidly, and yes, she feeds her kids junk foods sometimes. But that doesn’t make her a sh*t mum, and nor does it make any other struggling mother a sh*t mum.
“Being a sh*t mum is bl**dy fantastic, we just don’t care. If you’re in the sh*t mums club all we care about is supporting each other,” the outspoken mum says in one of her clips. It’s an approach that’s seen her profile – where she goes by the name The Tradie Wife – gain a massive following of mums keen to share their own experiences too.
The 28-year-old Katie, who lives somewhere between Swansea and Llanelli, isn’t sure how she’s racked up nearly 400,000 followers and more than five million likes, but there’s no doubt her “nitty gritty sh*tty side of parenting” and “no filter motherhood” has struck a chord.
“I just started doing it for a laugh,” she said. “Everyone else was doing it but it just kind of blew up.” “The Sh*t Mums Club came about because I got fed up of people getting put down on the internet,” she said.
“You get the Instagram lifestyle which only gives a part of life. Motherhood gets romanticised on social media – the homes are always spotless and kids are always clean. The kids never have runny noses or the remnant of dinner on their T-shirts but that’s not the reality for 80% of us.”
Her reality – living with plumber husband Adam and her two kids aged five and two – is a lot more chaotic, messy and disorganised. But she’s not in the slightest bit bothered. Proudly Welsh and proudly forthright, she said: “We don’t judge each other, we don’t judge what the f*** you do with your kids because what you do in your house is what you do in your house, I don’t f***ing live there so I don’t care.”
There’s no point in “sugar coating” things, she said, adding she gets her candidness from her father. “I just say it like it is, get straight to the point, no messing about,” she said.
She hit the headlines in summer last year after criticising TikTok for banning breastfeeding and calling it “sexual content”.
Her clips – regularly attracting thousands of likes and tens of thousands of views – are refreshingly uncurated and candid.
She explained: “It’s about breaking the stigma for mothers. You are a good mother. Don’t hold yourself up to these impossible standards.”
In one video, she attempts to explain “what your school run outfit says about you”, which she presents from a messy bedroom with clothes stacked up on the bed behind while wearing black leggings, white trainers and a T-shirt.
Hands on hips, she says: “Do you know what this outfit says about me? It says pretending you’ve been working out when in reality you’ve just been folding clothes. Yeah, I like to look like I’m active, but the only thing that’s f****** active is my mental health. No, I’ve just been folding clothes all day. So yeah, next time you see a mum on the school run looking like she’s just popped out of the gym and you think f*** I wish I had time to do that, they’re lying. The only reason we’re wearing them is because they’re f****** comfy. There’s only one place I go running, and that’s away from the kids.”
No one has the right to judge a mum who is “doing her best” just because they might do things differently, she said. She shares parenthood with Adam as much as his work will allow and while she’s on sabbatical from her retail job she had before her children. The couple will celebrate their first wedding anniversary in August.
“You feel guilty about relying on the person who works,” said Katie, whose father and grandfather were both miners.
“I think that’s a lot of the stigma that needs to be broken. It’s got to be teamwork. That’s why I called it Sh*t Mums Club,” she continued.
“It’s a bold statement. Because if you do anything, you can be called a sh*t mum for absolutely anything in society these days. Whether you go vegan or vegetarian or have a full washing basket in the background of your video. There’s no winning in society – people will always have an opinion. I say all sh*t mums are good mums. All mums are good mums. No matter how you’re doing it as long as you’re doing your best.”
She admitted her early dreams were about going into event management and she “never ever thought I’d be doing this”. She added: “I don’t know where this came from. My goal now is to have a Sh*t Mums Club group across the UK. I just need to sort out the details and the logistics about how that will work.”
She said while many dads had hobbies, such as golf or football, many mums “forget” to prioritise themselves.
“Mothers are real people,” she said. “But your identity gets taken away. Once you’re a mum you become a martyr to the kids and you can lose yourself, you forget about self care and the things that make you happy. That’s when you get burnout. But you don’t have to feel guilty. That’s why I want the Sh*t Mums Club to be about the mums, somewhere to have a cuppa and a chat, that’s not too orientated around the kids.”