St James's Place guidance says women in their 40s and 50s who cut hours or pause work to care for ageing parents can suffer the “good daughter penalty”. The hit is not just lost pay; it can also reduce pension contributions, bonuses and pay rises. For readers already balancing work and care, the problem lands inside the years when retirement saving should be building fastest.
59% of unpaid carers in England and Wales were female in the 2021 census, Carers UK said, and people aged 55-59 were the age group most likely to provide unpaid care. That makes the risk especially sharp for women who are still working but less able to keep pension saving at the same pace.
Carers UK and the 2021 census
59% is the share that should stop anyone treating this as a niche issue. The Office for National Statistics census in 2021 showed the imbalance, and that matters because caring responsibilities are most likely to collide with peak earnings and peak pension-building years. St James's Place sovereign wealth departure shares showed how quickly investors can mark down a stock when confidence weakens; retirement saving can also be knocked off course fast when work patterns change.
70% is the probability, from Barclays’ Equity-Gilt study 2024, that UK equities outperform cash over any two-year period. Over any 10-year period, that probability rises to 91%. The practical point for carers is simple: if money has to sit aside for years rather than decades, the trade-off between accessibility and growth needs more attention, not less.
ISA, SIPP and age limits
66 is the current state pension age, rising to 67 by 2028, while private pensions are generally accessible from 55 and rising to 57 from 2028. A stocks and shares ISA can be used to withdraw money tax-free before state pension age, which gives carers a more flexible place to build savings if work interruptions make pension contributions harder to keep up.
£2,880 a year is the limit non-earners can contribute and still receive basic-rate tax relief. For a carer who has stopped working, that gives a way to keep retirement saving going even without earnings, though the contribution level is far below what a full-time worker might otherwise build through workplace pension payments. The risk for women in their 40s and 50s is that even a willing break for care can leave a long-term gap in the fund.
What carers should do first
Five years can be enough time to make the arithmetic change quickly. The first step is to protect any pension saving already in place, then check whether reduced hours are also cutting employer contributions, bonuses or pay rises. If work must fall away, the next step is to redirect what can still be saved into a SIPP or ISA, so the money continues to compound rather than disappear into day-to-day spending.
Women who take on care because they want to help family may still see a substantial hit to their retirement fund. That is the hard part of the “good daughter penalty”: the care is voluntary, but the lost pension growth is not. How large the pension shortfall is for a typical carer is not stated, and that leaves each saver to work out the gap from their own pay, hours and age before the lost years become permanent.
