Investing for September: mothers still more likely to front cost of care

September is the time when many parents must make the decision to return to work full-time or part-time, and factor in costs for paying for additional care, pre-school and nursery costs

Childcare costs are growing significantly, and British parents shoulder some of the highest childcare costs in the world: this year, the average price of 25 hours of care a week for a child under two in a nursery is £6,300 per year, a 7% rise since 2017*

It is also still mostly women who make the decision to leave their careers to look after their children

There was a 3.3% drop in the number of fathers who took paternity leave in the 12 months to 31 March 2018, down to 213,500 from 221,000 the year before**

In comparison, the number of women taking maternity leave rose from 661,000 to 662,700, Disappointingly very few parents are taking Shared Parental leave, in fact just 9,200 new parents took part in the scheme in 2017/18

However, women still don’t make their money work hard for them: they choose to save in cash, rather than invest, meaning they fall behind when meeting larger financial commitments.

New analysis from Fidelity has shown that if women had invested in a stocks and shares ISA 15 years ago, they could have enjoyed gains of almost double that of individuals leaving money in cash over the same period