Going Back to Work After Maternity Leave: Doing the Childcare Sums Honestly

Somewhere around month seven of maternity leave, most people sit down with a calculator and try to work out whether going back to work leaves them better off. The sum feels like it should be simple: salary minus childcare. It is not, and doing it that way is how people talk themselves out of a career for reasons that turn out to be wrong.

Here is how to do it properly, in the right order, with the things people leave out.

Start with take-home pay, not salary

Comparing a gross salary to a childcare bill is comparing two different things. Childcare comes out of money you have already been taxed on, so the only fair comparison is against take-home pay.

Work out your monthly net pay including the pension contribution you will make, because the pension is a real benefit even though it does not reach your bank account. For 2026/27, the Personal Allowance is £12,570, the basic rate is 20% up to £50,270, and employee National Insurance is 8% on earnings between £242 and £967 a week. Scotland has different Income Tax bands.

If you are returning part time, work out the net pay for the actual hours, not a pro-rata guess. Part-time pay often lands entirely inside the Personal Allowance and the National Insurance threshold, which means a much higher proportion of it survives to your bank account than you might expect.

Then work out the real Childcare cost

The headline nursery fee is almost never what you pay. Work through it in this order.

1. The invoice. Get the actual fee schedule for the days you need, including any charges for meals, nappies and consumables.
2. Funded hours. If your child will be 9 months or older, check the term start dates and deadlines, because the entitlement begins at the start of a term rather than on a birthday.
3. Tax-Free Childcare or Universal Credit. Tax-Free Childcare adds £2 for every £8 you pay, up to £500 a quarter. The Universal Credit childcare element covers up to 85% of costs, up to £1,071.09 a month for one child. You cannot have both.
4. The holiday closure. Some nurseries close for a couple of weeks a year and still charge. Some do not charge. It changes the annual figure.

A worked example

A parent returning three days a week on a £34,000 full-time equivalent salary, with a 10 month old going to nursery three days a week at £62 a day.

Run your own version rather than trusting this one. The childcare cost calculator does the childcare half; your payslip or a net pay calculator does the other half.

The things people leave out

Four items regularly get missed from the "is it worth it" sum, and all four favour going back.

Pension contributions. Both yours and your employer's. Missing three years of contributions in your thirties costs a great deal more than three years of contributions, because of the growth those years would have had.

Your National Insurance record. You need a certain number of qualifying years for the full new State Pension. If you are getting Child Benefit for a child under 12 you get National Insurance credits anyway, which is one of the reasons to claim Child Benefit even if the High Income Child Benefit Charge means you elect not to receive the payments.

Career trajectory. The gap does not just cost the salary for the years out. It compounds, because promotions and pay rises come off a base that stopped moving.

The childcare bill is temporary. Full-time nursery fees end when school starts. The salary does not. Comparing a peak-cost year against a permanent income change gives the wrong answer.

Keeping in touch days

You can work up to 10 keeping in touch days during maternity leave without ending your leave or losing Statutory Maternity Pay for that week. They are optional on both sides: your employer cannot make you take them and you cannot insist on them.

They are worth using. A day back before the real return, to see what has changed and meet whoever joined while you were away, takes a lot of the sting out of the first proper week. Agree the pay for them in advance, because there is no statutory rate and practice varies.

Notice, dates and the right to return

If you take your full 52 weeks of maternity leave, you do not have to give notice to return on the expected date. If you want to come back earlier, you must give at least 8 weeks' notice.

Your right to return depends on when you come back. Returning within the first 26 weeks, ordinary maternity leave, you have the right to the same job. Returning during the second 26 weeks, additional maternity leave, you have the right to the same job unless it is not reasonably practicable, in which case you must be offered a suitable alternative on terms no less favourable.

Statutory Maternity Pay is paid for 39 weeks of the 52, so the last 13 weeks are unpaid unless your employer offers more. That is why so many returns happen at around 9 months.

Check your employer's own maternity policy against that table. Enhanced schemes are common, and they often carry a condition that you have to return for a minimum period or repay part of the enhancement, which is worth knowing before you decide on a return date.

Flexible working, and how to ask

Employees have the right to request flexible working. That is a right to a properly considered request, not a right to be granted it, and the difference matters when you write yours.

A request that gets granted usually does three things:

• Names the pattern precisely. "Four days, Monday to Thursday, 9 to 5" beats "some flexibility around childcare".
• Says how the work still gets done. Who covers Fridays, how handovers work, what happens to anything time-critical.
• Offers a trial period. Three months with a review is much easier for a manager to agree to than a permanent change.

Put it in writing, keep a copy, and ask for the outcome in writing too.

Shared Parental Leave

Worth considering before you commit to a return date. Shared Parental Leave lets eligible parents split up to 50 weeks of leave and up to 37 weeks of pay between them. Statutory Shared Parental Pay is £194.32 a week or 90% of average weekly earnings, whichever is lower.

Practically, it can mean one parent returns at 6 months and the other takes the next few months, which delays the start of paid childcare and spreads the career impact across both parents rather than concentrating it on one. The notice requirements are fiddly and both parents' employers need to be told, so start the conversation early.

Give the first month some slack

Settling-in sessions at nursery are usually unpaid or partly paid, but they take time you may need to book off. Nursery colds are relentless in the first term and someone has to be at home for them. Build that into the plan rather than discovering it in week two.

If you can, return mid-week rather than on a Monday. A three-day first week is a considerably gentler landing than a five-day one, and it costs you two days of leave.

For the full picture on how the schemes fit together, see the guide to UK childcare costs, the Tax-Free Childcare article, and the FAQ.