Rebecca* was doubled over in pain, lying on the small mattress in her childhood bedroom. Her mum sat opposite her, trying to soothe her by suggesting they sing High School Musical songs – in a bid to distract Rebecca from the ongoing cramps in her abdomen. “I didn’t expect it to hurt so much,” Rebecca recalls to Cosmopolitan UK. “I felt like I was being stabbed.”
Rebecca was not a sick child fighting off a stomach bug, but a 25-year-old woman going through an at-home abortion. She realised she was pregnant shortly after she landed her dream role as a trainee solicitor in Liverpool, but with her meagre annual salary of £17,500, childcare would have simply been unaffordable on top of rent and bills.
“A nursery place in Liverpool would have been around £700 a month,” Rebecca explains. “Having a baby just wasn’t an option. I would have had to rely on foodbanks. I also didn’t want to put a pause on a job I had grafted all throughout university for.”
There’s many reasons people choose to have abortions – both practical and personal – but the recent cost-of-living crisis coupled with the eye-watering cost of childcare in the UK has led to this specific financial incentive for increased terminations.
New Department of Health figures show abortion numbers in England and Wales have hit a record high in 2023, with 277,970 abortions carried out in 2023 — up from 251,377 the year prior and 185,331 a decade earlier. More than half (54%) of women who had a termination said they already had children.
In March 2024, research by charity Pregnant Then Screwed found that 40% of women in Scotland have also terminated a pregnancy, with childcare cited as the ‘primary reason’ behind the decision.
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Is it any wonder? The UK has one of the most expensive nursery systems in the world, with recent estimates suggesting the average cost of a full-time nursery place at over £12,000 a year in England and Scotland, rising to more than £14,000 in Wales — with availability also becoming increasingly limited in many areas. In contrast, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) puts the average pre-tax annual salary in the UK at £28,000 – which would result in nursery fees eating up almost half the average person’s annual income.
The cost of childcare is now so severe that Joeli Brearley, Founder of Pregnant Then Screwed, has described having children in the UK as “financial suicide”.
“With childcare fees outstripping the cost of housing for more than two-thirds of families, almost half of families are borrowing money to pay their childcare bills,” previously Brearley told Cosmopolitan UK. “Worryingly, the cost of childcare continues to price parents out of growing their family and they are making the life-changing decision not to have more children due to the ever-spiralling cost.
“Being a parent is tough enough, but when having more children means sacrificing your income, it becomes impossible. If we aren’t careful, becoming a parent will be a luxury item, and the economy can’t afford to pay that price."
And it’s not just the young and freshly qualified like Rebecca who find themselves being priced out of parenthood. Corporate high-flyer Ariella* built herself a successful career in her twenties, and now earns way above the national average in her thirties, with her income clocking in at around £70,000. Her husband is also fortunate to hold a white-collar job with a six-figure salary (which disqualifies them from the 30 hours of 'free' childcare per week offered by the government's Free Childcare for Working Parents scheme – which does not cover additional fees added by nurseries, for the likes of nappies or snacks).
Despite her household income, Ariella found herself having a termination recently as she was unable to financially justify another child. At the time, the businesswoman and her husband were paying an eye-watering £4,000 a month in nursery fees for her two children under five – and that’s not including all the additional costs they have for clothes, food, household bills or their £2,600 a month mortgage on their two-bedroom house in South London.
“We certainly weren’t trying, and when I discovered I was pregnant, I thought ‘oh shit’,” Ariella explains to Cosmopolitan UK. “There was a part of me that thought it would have been nice to have a third child – but if I’m being honest with myself, it would have been so selfish to have another baby.” The cost of childcare on her first two children meant Ariella would not have been able to afford maternity leave.
Statutory maternity pay (SMP) in the UK remains low and is only paid for 39 of the 52 weeks of maternity leave employees are legally entitled to take. For the first six weeks after birth, women receive 90% of their average weekly earnings before tax, after which pay drops to a flat statutory rate of £184.03 a week (or 90% of earnings if lower) for the remaining 33 weeks. The final 13 weeks of maternity leave are unpaid unless an employer offers enhanced provision.
And while shared parental leave was introduced in 2015, equal parental leave is still far from the norm. Statutory shared parental pay is set at the same low weekly rate, uptake remains limited, and few employers offer enhanced policies — meaning mothers continue to shoulder the bulk of both childcare and the financial hit that comes with it.
Ariella acknowledges childcare would be cheaper if they chose to move away from London – the family previously relocated to south of the River Thames as nursery prices tipped to over £5,000 for two young children in North London. But both she and her husband are reluctant; the community they have fostered for themselves and their family – not to mention their entire livelihoods – are in the capital. “A lot of mums I know have now gone freelance or are self-employed, as it gives them flexibility to work around their kids,” Ariella says. “Or they’ve joined forces to try and afford nanny shares, which are slightly cheaper.
“I know lots of women who’d love to have another child, but they just can’t – even if they choose to give up their careers to look after a baby full time. The whole system is completely broken.”
Erica*, also in her thirties, finds herself in a similar situation. As the main breadwinner, paying nursery fees for two young boys, she cannot afford to take time off her job as a consultant for maternity leave. “Even when I had my first son, I couldn’t take the full leave,” she explains to Cosmopolitan UK. “I only had ten months and had to rely on my mum to look after my son when I returned to work. My parents also had to step in when I had my second child – we could only really afford a part-time nursery with two kids at that point. Grandparents are filling the childcare gap that the government should do more to plug.”
Erica was living in the Midlands at the time, so her parents could babysit. However, with the family having now moved away, relying on the nursery of Nan and Granddad is no longer an option.
While Erica would have been happy to have a third child, should circumstances have been different (she’s one of three siblings herself), she had no qualms about terminating her unexpected pregnancy. “I just saw it as having a very long period,” she explains. “I couldn’t think of that as a baby. I just thought about how having that child would have taken away from the experiences I could give my children that are already here.”
For Ariella, the abortion was emotionally harder to process. “I do not regret it and fully believe that abortion should be fully legalised across the UK,” she explains. “But after having carried two children, I felt differently about the procedure.”
Meanwhile, Rebecca found her abortion so traumatic, she has since decided she no longer wants children. “The moment I got pregnant, I knew I didn’t want children. I’m glad I had the procedure, because things with my former partner didn’t work out and I’m now with someone else, who also doesn’t want children.”
For Rebecca, the financial challenges of parenting – the cost of raising a child to 18 now sits at around £260,000 for couples and £290,000 for lone parents – have been enough to change her life plan. “I don’t think I can do that financially. I think I’d rather have a dog.”
Having to have the abortion has also cemented this thinking process. “This experience was so awful, I’ve decided that I want to get my tubes tied.”
So what can be done to ensure women who do want children can do so without being financially ruined by childcare costs? Further investment from the government is clearly essential, says PTS’s Brearley: “When you invest in mothers you invest in the economy, but without affordable childcare mothers will continue to quit their jobs or reduce their hours to be able to afford to have children.”
Western European countries have more robust maternity and childcare funding. Sweden, for example, offers 480 days – the equivalent of 1.3 years – at 80% pay. Meanwhile, the Dutch government is planning a scheme that would cover 95% of childcare expenses for all working parents by 2025. And beyond individual finances, improving access to childcare could play a major role in gender equality. A report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) found that if female employees worked as much in full-time roles as male counterparts, the gap would reduce by a third.
Ariella agrees that the responsibility of childcare should be shared equally with fathers, calling for stronger paternity leave. “In the years I’ve been on maternity leave, my husband’s salary has doubled,” Ariella explains. “Women should be empowered to have the same higher earning potential – but we’re currently not, because we’re forced to juggle childcare.” In Sweden, parents can transfer up to 150 days of their leave entitlement to the other parent, which allows men the opportunity to bond with the children they helped create. It’s a far cry from the UK, which offers just two weeks of Statutory Paternity Leave.
“There’s clear evidence that this works,” Erica says. “It’s a conscious choice that the government is not investing enough in childcare. It’s clearly not a priority for them to allow women the choice to return to work. It’s like they want us to return to being 1950’s housewives.”
While abortion care is healthcare, and women should be free to choose whether and when they have children, it’s clear that for many, the decision is out of their hands and their bank balances (or nursery fees) are choosing for them.
“There is rarely one isolated reason why people need or choose abortion, but we do hear more and more from our clients that financial pressures play a part in their decision,” Louise McCudden, UK head of external affairs at MSI Reproductive Choices tells Cosmopolitan UK. “Even before the pandemic and the economic pressures that followed, 45% of pregnancies were unplanned and met with feelings of ambivalence.
“It’s no surprise that with the cost-of- living crisis showing no sign of easing up, many people feel it is simply impossible to have children. The dream of having children should not be out of reach due to financial barriers.”
Sadly, for too many, it seems this is exactly what is happening.
* Names have been changed
Kimberley Bond is a Multiplatform Writer for Harper’s Bazaar, focusing on the arts, culture, careers and lifestyle. She previously worked as a Features Writer for Cosmopolitan UK, and has bylines at The Telegraph, The Independent and British Vogue among countless others.
