To think maternity pay should be better funded?

[iguano88]

I saw this post earlier this week.

We are expecting our first baby. As it stands we won’t be able to comfortably afford a second: finances of maternity leave, childcare, mortgages rates, everything.

Surely people will start to choose to have no kids or just have one, because of the financial barriers. If everyone does this there are going to be huge consequences population wise down the line. If people are employed I am not sure why they are not entitled to better pay while they are on leave.

You could go on long term sick and get full pay for 6 months and half pay for 6 months, why should that be any better than maternity pay? I just don’t understand.

You don't know any state school teachers then? 🙄

I had one kid and took six months off

I saved up beforehand to pay myself the loss of earning

Too many couples spunk tens of thousands on their weddings

We live in a fucked up world nowadays

Er, no you didn't, you consistently supported policies to make further education unaffordable and defund education up to 18. Gen X has nothing like the same political power, they are a tiny generation and did not have the same financial advantages, on account of Boomers taking advantage of every policy that benefited them and then immediately doing everything possible to reverse those policies.

Nobody is making you have a baby op.

It really shouldn’t be seen as a luxury. It should be automatic to be able to have a year off (if desired) with full pay. Women need their bodies to heal , to be able to recover and it would be beneficial in terms of health further down the line not to have an exhausted burnt out workforce. Beneficial to children too for that first year to have a primary caregiver again if that is what the parents want instead of nursery.

It seems to be becoming more and more important to work in the private sector with a good benefits package.

I had enhanced maternity with DC1 and it was great, I took a year off, the shortfall between when my enhanced maternity ended and I went back to work (a year later) was manageable. With DC2 I hadn’t been in my role long enough, so I was on SMP. If DP wasn’t a very high earner, I’d definitely have had to go back to work soon after DC2 was born, even though he was born with complicated health problems. I really don’t know how people manage.

I also think the importance of private healthcare at the moment cannot be understated, and I get that through work too.

Isn't it ? I got unexpectedly pregnant at 27, I saved 1/3 of my take home pay for 6 months, if both parents did that then that would go somewhere towards funding Mat leave. A similar amount was needed for childcare afterwards anyway. Who really thinks having children will leave their disposable income untouched ?

Really confuses me how women talk about mat pay as if there's not another adult in the household.

YABU OP because you are up in the rarefied atmosphere with your pay and lifestyle.

Most women do not get enhanced mat pay, and most people do not get enhanced sick pay.

I think there is definitely a broader conversation to be had around what financial support the state should give parents, given our plummeting birth rate.

It shouldn’t be that working families struggle to afford a couple of kids.

I find it particularly peculiar that having multiple children is now the preserve of the very poor (little or no work, no need for childcare, live in cheap area) and the very rich (who can fund it easily) - while the vast majority of people in between / dual income households agonise over the affordability of even one.

I find Mumsnet generally seems to support the idea that having children should be a financial struggle, for reasons which are never made clear.

Yes, my husband and I are both in well paid jobs (household income ~£70k), he has an older child who we see as often as we can and pay maintenance for, and we have one child together. I've worked out that when taking into account child benefit coming in (for little one) and maintenance payments going out (for big one) the basic essential costs work out at about £6k per child. This is not including holidays, days out, luxuries like eating out, and big ticket items you might only buy once, such as car seat or pram. We can just about afford that, but if we had a second together, we'd need a bigger house that would tip our mortgage into the unaffordable category, we'd need to start again paying for childcare (little one is approaching school start age) plus the time I'd be on SMP before that time,, and all those luxuries which we currently enjoy in moderation alongside the essential costs, would be gone.

A few years ago, I would have thought a couple with a combined income of £70k would be living a brilliant lifestyle, able to have as many kids as they wanted and plenty of holidays, but now, I find that frequently we're just about managing to maintain a middle-class-ish lifestyle.

I personally think maternity pay is ok. My husband earns an average income but with me contributing £300 from maternity pay we will be comfortable and around £400 will be plenty for my personal expenses.

It is more the childcare fees compared to other countries I find extortionate.

If only those who could definitely afford it had children the birth rate would drop dramatically and we'd have even more problems than we do now with how to pay for the elderly.