I'm a millennial and I can't afford a child if Tory Kemi cut our meagre statutory maternity pay

For millennials like me, Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP) feels like the only financial certainty in an increasingly unstable future.

When every other financial safety net has either become unattainable or disappeared, calling SMP "excessive" is more than insulting. Without it, how would we even begin to think about having children?

It’s no secret that for many millennials, the idea of starting a family seems financially impossible. In the past, I’ve tried to convince myself there’s always a way to make it work. But as the energy bills hike up and the cost-of-living crisis grinds on, it’s harder and harder to see a path forward.

For many of us, owning a home feels impossible, and now the idea of starting a family is slipping away too.

In a world where childcare costs rival rent payments and inflation is eating away at the bare minimum we earn, SMP is one of the few things allowing us to feel marginally less terrified about starting a family.

We’ve all heard the tired argument, “If you can’t afford kids, don’t have them.” Well, that’s already happening. Due to childcare costs, a third (31.9%) of those who are already parents are unable to afford any more children and following the pandemic, ONS found the total fertility rate (TFR) decreased to 1.49 children per woman in 2022 from 1.55 in 2021.

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Kemi Badenoch must know birth rates are dropping, even former Conservative minister Jacob Rees-Mogg is concerned about it. But calling maternity pay “excessive” is clearly meant to win the votes of the anti-woke, anti-feminist crowd, and the conservative pensioner who has grown up kids and already owns a home.

It feels like the same old story: a woman in power undermining the very systems that lift other women up, all to gain favour.

A friend of mine recently had a baby and had to return to work after just six months because her workplace maternity pay ran out. At six weeks postpartum, she was still recovering from a C-section. As the main breadwinner, if her job hadn’t topped up her SMP, she would have had to return to work almost immediately.

While it covers 90% of your average weekly earnings for the first six weeks, followed by a flat rate of £184.03 per week for up to 33 weeks. Compare that to many European countries where paid maternity leave lasts a full year at full pay, and Badenoch’s remarks feel even more disconnected from reality.

Yet, we’re supposed to believe that SMP is somehow overgenerous. Let’s be real, it’s hardly a golden ticket.

Even for those who have planned to have a family - and spent years saving thousands just to make their dream of a family come true - it's difficult to survive.

Not to mention those who are told they can’t have children, but then find themselves unexpectedly pregnant without any financial preparation. SMP isn’t much but at least it provides a small financial buffer.

This isn’t just another policy debate. It’s about whether we can build any kind of future. We’re already drowning, the last thing we need is for one of the few financial supports we have to be labelled as over-generous.