New mums like me should be grateful to Kemi Badenoch – but not because she’s talking sense

I didn’t expect to feel grateful to Kemi Badenoch this morning.

The Conservative leadership candidate’s comments – in which she suggested statutory maternity pay had “gone too far”, and that people should take “more personal responsibility” before having children – initially evoked a violent fury made worse by my four-month-old having only allowed me four hours of broken sleep.

After a bit more kip, however, I’ve decided I actually feel oddly thankful to Badenoch – for inadvertently highlighting an issue that’s the bane of many women’s lives: that statutory maternity leave is not just insufficient but insulting, too.

For those who think maternity leave is a year off from work, the brutal fact is it’s a struggle that involves not only welcoming a new child into the world but also making ends meet. Statutory maternity pay is a joke. Starting at 90 per cent of weekly earnings for six weeks, it is then reduced to either £184.03 a week, or 90 per cent of the mother’s weekly earnings, for 33 weeks, whichever is lowest. If you need more time with your newborn, you’re on your own.

I’m writing this on my phone from my bed, napping baby in my arms. When he wakes up, we will head off to our music class, but I should really be sleeping: he has hit the four-month sleep regression and I feel physically and emotionally wrung out by it. But his nap times are my opportunity to make extra money, supplementing my maternity pay so we can afford to go to such classes.

If Badenoch thinks parents – women, in the main – aren’t taking personal responsibility for their incomes while on parental leave, I’d like her to know that in the four months since my son was born, I’ve written in more nap times than I can count; filed an article from A&E while almost hallucinating from the pain of acute tonsillitis; and even typed up some pitches at 2:30am after my son woke and refused to go back to sleep.

I’m hugely fortunate, too, of course, in that, as well as a supportive partner who also brings in a wage, I have something I can do – tapping out some words (often jumbled; I’m tired) while I breastfeed – to earn extra cash; other families aren’t so lucky.

And, while Badenoch has, inevitably, rowed back on her comments, claiming in a post on Twitter/X that “of course” she believed in maternity pay, and it was “the burden of regulation on business” that had gone too far, she has lit a conversational touch paper that I hope continues to blaze.

Because, unfortunately, many businesses – many people, in fact – think as Badenoch seemingly does, that maternity pay is excessive and unnecessary, even though it’s less than half of the national minimum wage.

I’m sure this belief stems from the lack of value placed on the very real work that motherhood entails. It follows, doesn’t it, that if you think maternity leave is all cuddles and coffees (after all, semantically, it’s not far off “annual leave”), you might begrudge a woman £184.03 a week for the privilege. But, while motherhood is, of course, a privilege, it’s also some of the hardest work a woman will take on in her lifetime, not to mention a job she cannot leave no matter how unreasonable or demanding her tiny, screamy boss is.

A friend of mine describes it as like being on call through the night but getting up and working during the day, too. A second said mothers on maternity leave do the work of nannies, childminders, and nursery workers 24/7, but are paid a fraction of their salary.

Another, who has, in the six months since her daughter was born, contracted Covid and broken her arm, highlighted the lack of sick leave, saying: “You just have to power through.”

When asked what her job is, one mother I know who is now back at work has taken to responding “I’m a consultant Monday to Thursday, and then I do unpaid childcare for my toddler on Fridays,” in a power move the level of which I can only aspire to.

The irony, of course, is that the Conservative Party – or, at least, some wings of it – are desperate for women to have more children. But is it any wonder birth rates in the UK are declining when not only is the financial provision for mothers so poor, but the belief so prevalent that motherhood – the mental, emotional and physical labour of it – is of little value?

If the Conservative Party truly wants women to have more babies, a conversation about the fact we are paid so little – both in terms of money and respect – to care for them has to take place. And we should all thank Badenoch for starting it.