New parents are on the brink of debt as they struggle to navigate the cost-of-living crisis on the current Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP). Pregnant Then Screwed, a charity dedicated to ending the motherhood penalty, has been inundated with messages from parents who are cutting back on food and energy, turning to food banks, and going into debt in a shocking new crisis.
So how have new parents found themselves in such dire circumstances? Currently, SMP is set at just £155.66 per week or 60% of a mother’s average weekly earnings. However, the amount pales compared to what a family needs to keep an infant well. Before the current financial crisis, the Child Poverty Action Group estimated it would cost £295.72 a week to raise a child under one to a socially acceptable living standard. The difference between what is needed and what is given is drastically different.
“We often think that the UK has a great maternity leave offering, especially when we look to America where no woman has a statutory right to paid leave when they have a baby,” said Lauren Fabianski of Pregnant Then Screwed. “In the UK, women can take up to 52 weeks of maternity leave, which is one of the longest periods of leave in the world. However, the pay is so bad that, according to the UCL, we have the least generous parental leave policies in Europe.”
"Women should not have to fight this hard for equality in the workplace."
Under the new energy price cap, gas and electric bills for an average user would account for 31% of the total income of someone on SMP. A huge chunk of a new parent’s income is gone in the blink of an eye. “And that’s before you’ve paid rent, bought any food, bought nappies, milk or any of the other 10,000 things babies and mothers need to survive,” said Fabianski. “Never mind, and heaven forbid, you might want a Netflix subscription or mobile phone, so you have something to keep you going during a 4 am night feed.”
Nearly every day for the last few months, Hayley Alton feels anxious about how she will manage to pay for necessities while living on Statutory Maternity Pay. Her daughter was only born seven weeks ago, and Hayley’s £156 weekly payments have just recently kicked in.
“It is £1000 short each month of what I was making when I was working,” she said. Although Hayley has been budgeting for months, she still feels apprehensive about each pound she spends and is constantly looking for ways to cut down on any “extras” like coffees out, subscriptions, and baby classes with friends.
“But the biggest thing I have been thinking about is how to keep my daughter warm in the winter,” the 30-year-old said. “She is still such a small, growing thing. I need to be able to keep the house warm for her, so one of the things I am thinking about is limiting the rooms we use in the house.” Hayley is planning to allot one of two rooms in the house for heating and keep the radiators off in the other rooms.
“I should’ve accepted myself and been proud of my differences, but I felt that I couldn’t do that in the motherhood space.”
When it comes to food, she is already considering how she can stretch meals and ingredients to make them last longer, eating smaller portions and refusing to let any food go to waste. “When my husband goes to work, I ask him to have ham or cheese in his sandwich, rather than both,” she said.
Instead of making several trips with the car, Hayley and her husband combine journeys to reduce the money they spend on fuel, and Hayley is planning to scour charity shops to find clothes to fit her new post-baby body.
“Statutory Maternity Pay is just a huge reduction for us and a big concern,” Hayley, who already struggles with anxiety, said. “We just break even each month without any ability to save, but if things keep going up, we’ll have to dip into our existing savings. We’re just going a bit into the unknown.”
Fabianski said Pregnant Then Screwed have been inundated with messages from parents who are cutting back on food and energy, turning to food banks, and going into debt.
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In addition to the practical implications, new mothers, whose mental health is already in crisis, are contending with declining mental health in light of the increasing financial pressures.
“Women are not able to access the care that they need following this life-changing experience and waiting lists are through the roof,” added Fabianski. “Adding a cost of living crisis to this will inevitably make things worse.”
Rachel* has been receiving Statutory Maternity Pay since April but is growing increasingly anxious as she considers the winter months ahead with her 8-month-old son and 4-year-old daughter.
When her daughter turned three, Rachel started to save up the money they saved on childcare in preparation for going on maternity leave again with her second child. “I’m the main wage earner in the house and so maternity leave is a stressful time,” the 35-year-old mother said. “We saved really hard and did forward financial planning of what we thought we would need to survive.”
Even though they had saved up beforehand, she hadn’t factored in the rising cost of living. “Our mortgage increased by £200 each month, the monthly energy bill has nearly tripled since this time last year, and food and fuel prices have skyrocketed,” she said. “And my Statutory Maternity Pay wouldn’t even cover half of the mortgage. It’s absolutely useless.”
To pinch pennies, Rachel has avoided journeys that require her to use much fuel and has decided against fun summer activities like soft play and farms. The £75 food bill that used to easily cover all their needs is just about buying all the bare-minimum essentials now.
A traditional five-day week just causes resentment and procrastination.
As the winter draws in, Rachel wonders if she can double up on her son’s night-time sleep bag to keep him warm. “We’ve made the decision that we aren’t going to be able to heat the house at night,” she said.
As they dip into their savings, Rachel just wonders how they are going to get through the next few months while she is still on Statutory Maternity Pay and is planning for what she is going to do when the bills exceed the money they have.
“It all takes a toll on your mental health, when you have these kids of financial worries,” she concluded. "I just never thought with a joint household income that we would ever be in a position where we would have to be talking about money at this level. It's depressing.”
To cope with increased costs, many mothers are going back to work earlier than they had originally anticipated.
“Our most recent survey found that just 29.1% of those who are pregnant or have a child under 12 months old are taking the length of leave that they want to,” said Fabianski.
Jennifer Giles would have loved to have spent the last three months feeding, rocking, and singing to her daughter who was born in January, but instead, she was forced into making the decision to go back to work in July, five months earlier than expected, due to finances.
“I was getting around £650 a month in Statutory Maternity Pay and getting text messages from the bank saying that our balance in my account was low,” the 31-year-old mother said. “So I was having to use savings for everything, even baby milk. It was awful.”
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For the first twelve weeks of her maternity leave, Jennifer lived on the full salary she had been receiving as a sexual health educator. When she started on Statutory Maternity Pay, she was making £1000 less each month.
“I wanted to take her to good baby groups, but I couldn’t afford it,” she said. “But I also stressed about when she needed more baby milk or getting an MOT for the car. “It was awful to rely on borrowing money from my parents to get by.”
As the price of shopping, fuel, gas, and electric started to go up earlier in the year, Jennifer knew the only solution to avoid going into debt was to go back to work earlier than she had planned.
“I was absolutely devasted,” she said, remembering what is felt like to back when her daughter was not even seven-months-old. “I cried for days. It made it worse going back to the office and people asking me why I was back so soon. I didn’t choose to go back that soon – I had to.”
Jennifer is still grieving that her baby didn’t get more time with her mother in her first year of life. “It’s not just about me and how I feel,” Jennifer said. “It’s about my daughter and the fact she doesn’t have her primary caregiver around during the day anymore.”
I wouldn’t take no for an answer. I know my body, and I knew something was very wrong.
The first five years of a child’s life are vitally important to their development and the knock on implications or poverty and debt could have a devastating impact on them and public services if something isn’t done soon, warns Fabianski.
“Long term we need parental leave pay to increase so that families can afford to take time out of work to do the most important job in the world - raise the next generation,” said Fabianski. “In the short term, a new benefit scheme must be established to support those on parental leave as energy prices increase.”
Currently living pay check to pay check, Vanessa Jenkins is already considering that she may have to return to her job earlier than she had anticipated. With a two-year-old in nursery and a 12-week-old at home, Vanessa is doing what she can do reduce her family’s outgoings but feels the only way she can carry on affording childcare for her oldest is to go back to work.
“The prices of everything are just going up and up,” she said. “But our wages and the Statutory Maternity aren’t.”
It isn’t just Vanessa worrying about money. “It causes my partner a lot of anxiety because it’s a huge responsibility on his shoulders at the minute,” she said. “If anything were to happen to his job, it would leave us in a very difficult position because Statutory Maternity Pay doesn’t even cover our childcare costs. It wouldn’t cover the rent or energy, and definitely not things like council tax and food.”
At the moment, Vanessa is planning to return to work when her baby is nine months old, but if the cost of living continues to soar, she’ll have to go back sooner.
“There just doesn’t seem to be much support when it comes to having young children,” she said. “Children are the future and there is just no support for raising them.”
If you want to add your voice to the discussion, Pregnant Then Screwed asks you write to your MP. They have created a simple template email for you to use on their website.
