Healthy eating for mothers? Getting by on maternity leave during the cost of living crisis.
Maternity Action
Provides info, advice & training on maternity rights in employment, benefits & access to healthcare & influences policy.
By Annah Psarros, Senior Policy Officer
The importance of good nutrition during pregnancy, breastfeeding and early life is indisputable. As the NICE guideline on maternal and child nutrition states, it forms the foundation for the long‐and short‐term health of both mother and baby. However, the cost of living crisis has made it more and more difficult for pregnant women, new mothers and their young children to maintain a healthy diet, as the price of food and other essentials have skyrocketed.
It is becoming more and more difficult for women on maternity leave to cover everyday costs. As only around 13% of women get enhanced maternity pay from their employer, the majority are having to survive on Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP), the basic rate of which is only ￡172.48 per week – the same as Maternity Allowance (MA). The failure to uprate maternity payments also means that they are effectively lower than they were a decade ago: In 2012, the basic rate of SMP equated to 62.5% of a 35-hour week on the National Minimum Wage (in place before the introduction of the National Living Wage in 2016). Today, it is less than half (47%). Compared to women’s median earnings, SMP was 42% in 2012, but is now only 37%. Women are having to cope on just over a third of women’s median earnings on maternity leave, at a time when the basics needed for a new baby are becoming less and less affordable. As an example, research by First Steps Nutrition Trust has revealed that the price of baby formula increased by 22% between March 2021 and April 2023.
49% of women who took part in our most recent cost of living survey told us they had cut down on healthy food during maternity leave due to the high cost of living. One quarter had gone without eating, sometimes for a whole day, in order to feed their children. In consultations with new mothers across the UK, we heard from several who had needed to use food banks for the first time ever during their maternity leave:
‘In the end, despite the fact that I couldn’t afford it, I went onto statutory maternity and got 12 months with the baby. We literally food banked it. We survived that way. We’re not a household that’s low‐income. There are households…I genuinely don’t know how they manage.’
‘The NHS sent an email to everyone saying if you’re struggling then you can get an anonymous referral to a food bank…which is sickening. When the NHS are emailing their own staff to say if you can’t afford food, we don’t mind referring you to a food bank… I had to get a food bank parcel moving towards Christmas. I was mortified and I haven’t told anyone about that actually…’?
These are not isolated incidents. The largest food bank network in the UK, the Trussell Trust, reports that it distributed more food parcels in the year to April 2023 than in any previous year – an increase of 37% from the previous year and the total number of parcels given out more than doubled in the five years between 2018 and 2023.
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So what about the benefits intended to support maternal and child health? Well, the lack of uprating means they are less and less fit for purpose. The Healthy Start scheme, as the name suggests, was introduced in 2006. This scheme is intended to support maternal and child health during pregnancy and the early years by providing additional financial support for low-income families to purchase healthy foods like fruit, vegetables and milk . The Healthy Start voucher has only been uprated twice in 17 years, from ￡2.80 to ￡4.25 – nowhere near in line with inflation. Some of the most vulnerable families in the UK are not eligible for this help – migrant families who have No Recourse to Public Funds can only access Healthy Start if their child under four is a British Citizen.?
In a worrying development, the incidence of severe malnutrition in the UK has doubled in the last ten years, according to a recent Freedom of Information request from the Times Health Commission, which also revealed that 10,896 patients – 312 of them children – were hospitalised with the condition in 2022.
So how can the health and wellbeing of pregnant women and new mothers on maternity leave and the healthy development of their babies and young children be protected against the worst effects of the cost of living crisis?
Read Maternity Action’s views on the way forward, in our new report ‘A perfect storm – pregnancy, new motherhood and the cost of living crisis’. Here you will find our recommendations on how to better support maternal and child health and nutrition, which include:
Find out more about our cost of living campaign and how you can support it, here.