Dear Ms Badenoch: Mums Aren’t the Burden – The System Is!

Kemi Badenoch, the shadow communities secretary, has been trying to row back from her statements about maternity pay putting her emphasis on the burden of regulation on small businesses instead.

I am sure you can see me rolling up my sleeves and hear me saying, ‘Let me at her, let me at her!’ I am going to take just two of her statements and get firmly hoisted on my high horse.

1. “Maternity pay varies, depending on who you work for. But statutory maternity pay is a function of tax, tax comes from people who are working. We’re taking from one group of people and giving to another. This, in my view, is excessive.’’

Did she forget that maternity pay is a function of those women who work and that you can’t get said pay if you are not working? Also, businesses do claim the statutory pay back from the government so that cannot be their excuse for going bust.? So who exactly are these women taking from when they have been working and contributing and will continue to contribute when we come back into the workplace? Where exactly is the excess in this?

I spend my time going round workplaces telling them to watch out for unconscious biases against women and then, a government minister, who is a woman and should know better just spews out such madness. Words actually fail me! Working mothers have enough to deal with without anyone suggesting that they are taking from another group of people because they had the temerity to have a child.

1. “We need to have more personal responsibility. There was a time when there wasn’t any maternity pay and people were having more babies.”

Well that time, Ms Badendoch is not a time anyone aspires to go back to as children were sent up chimneys and mines to die!

These people that you are preaching personal responsibility to, are these the same self-respecting individuals who already have a job so qualify for maternity pay? Does this group of people strike you as a bunch of freeloaders who want another group to subside them?

If we need to get started on personal responsibility, if parents don’t take it on themselves, at huge personal and financial sacrifice to have children, who do you think will be paying your pensions when we are all old??

The responsibility of having the next generation should not be down to personal sacrifice. This should be of strategic importance to every nation otherwise where is the next generation of workers and innovators going to come from? How is the economy going to be sustained when everyone is old? Yes, it is the personal choice of individuals to have children but by God, do they need all the support they can get!

Rather than harping on about the current maternity pay which is one of the lowest in the OECD (shame on us), we should be looking at innovative ways of keeping parents supported and engaged in the workplace. Parents are not scroungers and they cannot be blamed for the unsustainability of small businesses. By all means deregulate what you need to make it easier on business but please leave our paltry maternity pay alone.

P.S

If you are a working mother and struggling with the juggle, I coach women like you are out of overwhelm. Reach out here for a chat.