I was very moved to read your article. I am a personal trainer who specialises in new mothers and those who require weight loss surgery. There is nothing to forgive yourself for. The first thing I have to get people to do is accept themselves for who and what they are.

If it’s OK with you I would like to show your article to my clients. I have joined your mailing list because I want my target market to see how to make money writing for medium.com

Many couples in the UK cannot afford to have more children. When you go on maternity leave your income halves. Minimum wage is £7.83 per hour for those over 25. Let’s assume you work for 40 hours per week. That equates to £313.20 per week. After tax and national insurance that works out at £274.38.

Childcare per child is £45 per child per day. Assuming you work for 5 days that works out at £225 per week. Hence a mother who returned to work would take home £274.38-£225= £49.38 per week.

That works out at £1.23 per hour over a 40 hour week.

Many people are on zero hour contracts so they don’t know one week to the next if they have work. Inflation is 3%. Wage rises if you are lucky are 1%. Hence your wages are worth less and less. Hence many people cannot afford to have kids.

Worse still many people can’t afford to put anything into a private pension. So they retire on the state pension of £113 per week- around 40% of what they were struggling to live on to start with. Hence so many pensioners work in supermarkets.

So what is the answer? Multiple sources of income.

I am a fitness trainer and I get all my ladies on at least 3 legal sources of income on top of their wage.

We really should talk!