What you need to know about returning to work after maternity leave in 2026
You prepare for the birth. You prepare for the sleepless nights. Nobody prepares you for going back to work as a different person and having to pretend you're not. The focus is all on the baby, as it should be, so work gets pushed to the back of your mind until it can't be anymore, and then it all lands at once. The guilt, the nerves, the excitement, and underneath it all, the real question: who is walking back through that door?!
I know that feeling well, because when my own return date came around, I didn't get the chance to walk back through the door at all. I was made redundant on my first day back, after a flexible working request had been turned down. I didn't know a single thing about my rights going into that, and I have made it my business to know them ever since.
The law has moved a long way since then, even if most people still don't know it.
You can ask for flexible working from your very first day. This is the one that surprises people most. Since April 2024, every employee in England and Wales has had the legal right to request flexible working from day one of employment. You do not need 26 weeks of service. You don't need to wait until you are settled in. You do not even need to be a parent, though it is one of the most common reasons people ask.
That means if you are starting a new role after maternity or paternity leave, or going back to your old one, you can put in a formal request straight away. You get two requests in any 12 month period and your employer has to respond within 2 months. They can only refuse for one of eight specific business reasons and the best news is that from 2027 those refusals will need to meet a proper reasonableness test rather than just ticking a box. This will be a huge change for working parents.
You are also allowed up to 10 keeping in touch days during maternity leave, paid at your normal rate, without it affecting your maternity pay. These are entirely optional. Nobody can force you to work them. But if you want to ease back in gradually, catch up on what has changed, or simply remind yourself what you are walking back into, they are there for you to use on your own terms. These days are a great opportunity to discuss how you would like to return.
Get your head around Tax-Free Childcare before you need it. This one gets missed constantly! For every £8 you pay into a Tax-Free Childcare account, the government adds two, up to £2000 per child per year. Both parents need to be working, and neither can earn over £100k. This will save you a lot of extra cash!
Combined with the funded childcare hours most working parents are now entitled to from when their child is 9 months old, this can make a genuine difference to whether going back to work feels financially worthwhile at all, and yet a third of eligible families still are not using it.
Then we have the identity shift that happens, and it is not a flaw. Here is the part the legislation does not cover. You are not the same person who left. Your priorities have probably changed. Your energy is different. What used to feel manageable might not anymore, and what used to feel important might have shifted entirely. That is not a failure of confidence; it is just true, and pretending otherwise is what makes the return so much harder than it needs to be.
The most useful thing you can do before you go back is get honest with yourself about what has changed, rather than trying to perform the version of you that existed before.
You can still be ambitious, confident, determined but it may look different to before. You need to become your biggest cheerleader.
If you can, ask for a phased return. Have the flexible working conversation early, rather than waiting until you are back and overwhelmed. Find out if your employer has a formal policy on returners, many now do.
Returning to work after maternity leave was never just a logistics problem. It is a legal one, a practical one, and an identity one, all at once. Knowing your rights will not solve all of it. But it is a far better starting point than not knowing.