The hidden cost of parenthood

“I’m not going back to work.” In the past year, while on maternity leave, I’ve heard this - whispered, awkwardly, in sticky soft plays, over spilled coffee - from three friends. Ambitious, capable women leaving before being pushed, flexible working requests denied; childcare places impossible to find; hundreds of pounds wasted on non-refundable nursery registration fees.

Coming back to my desk just last week, I’ve seen that the story is the same across the UK. Flexible working rights have been strengthened thanks to the Employment Rights Act - but many of these changes won’t come into effect until 2027. For my friends, denied the opportunity to work part-time by their employers, it comes too late.

Paying to work

For those that do return, many are paying to work - with nursery fees outstripping their monthly take-home pay. It costs an average of £148.82 per week to send a child under two to nursery full-time in the UK - and that’s if you qualify for both the Tax-Free Childcare and Free Childcare for Working Parents government schemes. But if, like me, you live in the South-East of England and have two children in a nursery, your monthly bill will easily exceed £2,000. Add that to the nearly-doubled mortgage bill gifted to us by Liz Truss (and my wine bill, just to do this maths each month).

Admittedly, the funded hours have helped. When my daughter first started at nursery in 2024, her bill alone was almost £2,000 a month for four days’ care per week. Coram’s 2026 childcare survey showed that working parents of children under three in England now pay less than half of last year’s cost for a part-time nursery place.

But here’s the catch: the government systems designed to support you can punish you for getting the calculation wrong. Take Tax-Free Childcare and Universal Credit’s childcare element. You can’t have both, and just opening a Tax-Free Childcare account stops your entire Universal Credit claim. Get it wrong and you haven’t just lost a top-up, you’ve lost your entire benefit. Good luck trying to operate the government’s childcare calculator after another broken night’s sleep.

Not just babysitting

Almost a million parents don’t have the chance to do this calculation - because they’re not entitled to help in the first place. Government-funded childcare mostly relies on being in work. If you’re not, you’re not eligible, regardless of your circumstances.

That may be about to change. Education secretary Bridget Phillipson has joined calls for a “universal early years“ offer, arguing that childcare isn’t simply babysitting so parents can go to work, it’s the first rung of a child’s education. Last September, 37% of children starting Reception weren’t judged school-ready. A quarter weren’t yet toilet-trained, and a third were unable to eat and drink independently.

Children who haven’t reached a good level of development by age five are almost three times more likely to be not in education, employment or training 12 years later. Financial support should not be predicated on whether a parent can find enough paid work to qualify - it’s an investment in the next generation.

19 more years

For parents like me who do meet the work requirement, the cost doesn’t end at childcare fees. The ‘motherhood penalty’ continues long after the kids are out of nappies. Last October, the Office for National Statistics released new analysis, showing:

• An average 42% fall in mothers’ earnings five years after the birth of their first child;

• Amounting to a total loss of £65,618 for the first child, and losses of £26,000-£32,000 for subsequent children;

• Women are twice as likely as men to reduce hours for childcare.

My three friends pushed out of work while on maternity leave are not anomalies. The Equality and Human Rights Commission, in research with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, found significant numbers of mothers experienced dismissal, redundancy, pressure to leave or loss of opportunity after having children. A lack of progression in the early years of motherhood compounds across a career - separate research by the IFS found that by the time a first child turns 20, mothers earn about 30% less per hour than similarly educated fathers. This isn’t just driven by discrimination, but by the years of wage progression that part-time work stymies.

Lower earnings and reduced pension contributions from part-time work can spell disaster in the long run. It’s no coincidence that the UK has the second largest gender pension gap in the OECD. To reach the same pension savings as men, women would need to work 19 more years, unless they buy an annuity. Another 19 years of work - by which time I’ll be writing something like this while dodging globs of Weetabix thrown by grandchildren, or even great-grandchildren, rather than my one-year-old.

A historic low

No, this bit isn’t about how I’m writing this in between clearing up puddles of vomit after my son caught a sickness bug during my first week back at work.

Birth rates have fallen to an average of 1.4 children per woman in England and Wales: the lowest level since 1977. (The irony of researching fertility rates in the five minutes’ peace afforded by a nap is not lost on me.) This is a global phenomenon. Fixing our childcare systems and supporting parents who want to work to do so won’t be a magic bullet. But the complexity and cost associated with the early years clearly does not encourage families to have more children.

My three friends haven’t left work by choice - they’ve been priced and pushed out of it. And for every sick-stained shirt I’m hurriedly wiping clean before a Zoom call, there’s another hanging in a wardrobe somewhere, unworn - because the woman who owned it wasn’t given the choice to put it back on.

Julia Meadon is Director of Digital at Best for Britain.