Here, four mothers talk about the daily challenge of feeding and caring for their children.
Steph Owens, 29, Kent
I have been a single mother since my son was born. Now it’s five. We live in a house together in Kent and I work as an NHS associate – helping to plan and facilitate hospital discharges. I was working in learning disabilities and we had such a drop in caseload due to the pandemic that they couldn’t take me on and made me redundant. This was very difficult. I was unemployed for four months and had to use food banks because universal credit payments just didn’t match my income. There was a sense of shame in it. Almost a feeling that you cannot provide the very basics that you should be able to do for your child. I contacted Single Parent Rights and they indicated the benefits I am entitled to. You see in the comments all the time on social media, people saying things like, “Well don’t have kids if you can’t afford them.” But life is not like that. Circumstances change. You can’t predict the future like that. Doing our weekly shop has gone from £45 to £100 a fortnight just for the two of us I still rely on universal credit even though I work full time now, and I’m really feeling the squeeze. My energy bills and food costs have gone up by around £200 a month. I am absolutely terrified for October when they are going to go even higher. My rent has gone up every three years now, so has my council tax. The cost of gas hit me hard this winter. I use pay as you go so I don’t get a huge bill at the end of the month, but we had to shut it down and turn it off most days. Doing our weekly shop has gone from £45 to around £100 a fortnight just for the two of us. Are many. It has changed what I buy – I tend to go towards my own brand and value ranges, whereas before it wouldn’t have mattered much. However, I found some suppliers very good at negotiating better deals – Sky reduced my bills to the cheapest rate available. The 3% pay rise the government has given NHS workers is simply not making any difference. There is definitely an air of being very underpaid and underappreciated for what we do. It would be nice to be able to live and not live hand to mouth all the time. I haven’t had a holiday since my son was born and he’s never had one – there just isn’t enough time for those kinds of luxuries. When you have a young, active, boisterous boy – they need constant entertainment. I just want to be able to provide days out. The budget doesn’t stretch that far.
Heather Parker, 36, Essex
Heather Parker says she’s feeling “really stressed” about her rent and bills. Photo credit: Heather Parker I am Canadian and have lived in the UK for seven years. I have a five year old daughter and we just moved into permanent housing after years of living in short term places and before that between women’s shelters. The local council moved me from east London to Essex and unfortunately I lost my circle of support. The rent for my new house is around £900 though, and then there are utilities and council tax on top of that. It’s too much and I’m really anxious about it, with the increase in energy bills coming up again in October, and I’m struggling to find a second income to support it. I try to spend no more than £30 a week on groceries, and now it’s summer, we don’t have the heating or lights on at all to save on bills. There are days when I don’t eat that much and I’m hungry because the food goes to her first. I have a hard time sleeping at night because I will be stressed thinking about making enough money and how to split the cost of things due to rising energy bills and inflation. I’m on universal credit. When they got the £20 lift I had to go to a lot of food banks. When I lived in London there were a lot more food banks and it was easier to go to. Now I moved here, found two but you have to sign up to go once a week. I have family back in Canada but they are not allowed to send me money. If they sent me money, it would reduce my benefit support.
Jane Green, 59, Sussex
Jane Green is worried about energy price rises in October. Photo: Jane Green I am disabled with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and medically retired. I used to be an autism education professional but became very ill and had to retire in 2015. I am a single parent to my children aged six and four – they are now both adults and I still look after my eldest who is 30. They are autistic, have ADHD and have dyspraxia. I qualify for Disability Allowance and have a small pension but I am really worried about the energy price rises in October. Because of my condition, I can get very cold or hot and can be stuck in bed or on the couch. Once you get cold or hot, you can’t regulate your temperature, no matter how many clothes you wear. We’re using more and more electricity indoors for cooling in the summer and heating during the winter, and with gas prices also rising, we’re staying indoors more and more. I should cut it down to an hour a day. We also both have food allergies, which means grocery shopping is already expensive. We had to downsize, and it’s embarrassing to talk about. I feel that at my age I should be more solvent. I spend around £120 now on two weeks worth of food when we used to pay around £70 at most. Being disabled is already expensive. If you have health problems and don’t have gas for your car or transportation, you can’t go to outpatient appointments. If you have to buy braces or braces or extra over-the-counter medications, it all adds up. All my spare money goes to medical health. I’m taking Pip [personal independence payment, a government benefit] but it doesn’t go far. When I was a young mother, I was in poverty and often went without, trying to meet their health care needs and provide food. These price increases bring back horrible memories for me – when I felt ashamed because I didn’t know how to handle it. If you haven’t lived hand to mouth, I don’t think you have any idea what it’s like. It gnaws at you every night.
Sarah Gibson, 36, Wiltshire
Sarah Gibson says it’s hard to find accommodation as a single mother. Photo: Adrian Sherratt/The Guardian I lived abroad for about 10 years and returned to the UK when my child turned one in June 2021 to raise him as a single mother. My ex pays half of my kindergarten tuition for me, which has been great, but it’s been a real struggle to make ends meet despite the fact that I earn a pretty good salary and work full-time in communications. Since April, nursery fees have increased by 50p an hour and are now £1,277.50 a month. I used the childcare tax free scheme which gives me 20% off childcare fees up to £2,000 a year but they make it really difficult for anyone who doesn’t have time to fill in and you have to renew the application every three months. Finding accommodation as a single mother is so difficult I lived with my family but recently moved to a new house. Finding accommodation as a single mother is so difficult. Usually, with one-bedroom places, landlords say no to having children live there, and there’s a huge rent increase for a two-bed. This means I had to adopt a different quality of life. I’m lucky enough to have come back from New Zealand with savings from my job there, but since everything went up in April, I’ve been eating it up and can’t save. Unfortunately these savings mean I’m not eligible to apply for universal credit as I’m just over the threshold to qualify. So many contracts tie you in for energy, broadband etc. for more than a year, so you’re stuck if you lose your job – or even if I had to move back in with my parents. Financial insecurity is really scary. I’m dreading the winter when I have to turn on the heating under the housing contract as energy costs go up again in October. Ideally I’d be savvy about where I shop for groceries, but I have a toddler and a full-time job – I don’t want to spend what little free time I have trying to figure out where the cheapest pasta is. The increase in food costs is noticeable, however, and continues to eat into my savings.
