Australian families are living in work, school and care systems designed for another era.
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families → live → era
And the math ain't mathing.
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math → mathe → ?
When it comes to working and being a modern-day parent, the juggle is real.
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juggle → come → ?
If we look back to family life in the 1960s, or even the 1990s, so much has changed.
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much → look → 1960s
In most two-parent families these days, both parents are employed, but the work and school systems are largely set up for a bygone era.
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systems → employ → era
"The maths does not add up," says Kate Harrison Brennan, director of the Sydney Policy Lab at The University of Sydney.
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Brennan → add → Sydney
To help us put the numbers in context and talk about real solutions, alongside Dr Harrison Brennan we've enlisted these experts:
- Elizabeth Hill from The University of Sydney Department of Political Economy
- Georgie Dent, CEO of advocacy organisation The Parenthood
- Lyndall Strazdins from the ANU National Centre of Epidemiology and Population Health
- Rowena Ditzell, lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney
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we → help → Sydney
So with the introductions out of the way, let's do some rough sums.
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's → let → sums
Parents can feel like there aren't enough hours in the day.
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Parents → feel → day
And when you stop to work out just how much overlap there is between the hours that your children need you, and the hours that you're expected to devote to work, it's easy to see why.
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it → stop → work
We know that every family arrangement is different.
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arrangement → know → ?
Let's assume there are two parents at home, and both parents work full-time.
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parents → let → home
We're going to look specifically at parents of primary school-aged children and compare the average work year with the average school year.
7.5 hours per week
Is the gap between the full-time work week and average primary school hours.
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hours → go → week
Read moreSchool often starts about 9am and finishes between 3pm and 3:30pm.
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moreSchool → read → pm
Assuming school finishes at 3:30pm, that's 300 hours per year parents need to find across the 40-week school year.
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parents → assume → year
"What becomes immediately obvious for any parent in the first week of their child being at school is that suddenly there is a cliff when you get to 2 something in the afternoon … and kids need to get picked up," Dr Harrison Brennan says.
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Brennan → become → afternoon
After-school care is often relied upon to cover the gap, but that's if parents can afford it.
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parents → rely → it
It gets expensive if you have multiple children.
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you → get → children
And many people don't have access to it at all.
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people → have → it
"I'd say you're part of a lucky one in five in Australia," Dr Harrison Brennan says.
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Brennan → say → Australia
"
"The gap between care and work, and school hours and work hours, isn't an inconvenience; it's a structural tax that parents, most often mums, pay every single day," says The Parenthood CEO Georgie Dent.
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Dent → pay → that
On average, Australians spend 3.8 hours commuting to work each week, which is about 182 hours per year.
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which → spend → year
While many Australians are now able to work from home, or work a hybrid arrangement, most Australian workers still commute to work.
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workers → work → work
"For those who work at a distance from their workplace and from their school drop-off, the degree of difficulty in completing that task every day, five days a week, for four terms a year is really, really high," Professor Hill says.
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Hill → work → terms
The COVID-19 pandemic did make working from home much more common.
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working → make → home
It's one of the things that's made the workplace happier for many women, Dr Strazdins says.
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Strazdins → make → women
"They're finding that time by cutting back on a commute from work, from home and dovetailing tasks a bit better," she says.
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she → find → tasks
"I think the ferocity with which we embrace work from home and protected it when it looked like it was going to be threatened speaks to how desperate families are to find every last minute because they need them.
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they → think → them
"
But when you throw in the difference between the workday and school day, the commute time makes a lot of work completely inaccessible to many Australians.
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lot → throw → Australians
"Once you factor in things like the time at which children can be dropped at school and what that's like for a young child in early primary years when they are dropped at school leads to whether that's actually even a solution for parents to be able to drop off when the school gates open," Dr Harrison Brennan says.
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Brennan → factor → school
As soon as you get out into some of the kind of commuter suburbs, it makes actually commuting into a job in the city or somewhere else in a metropolitan city just not even a thing for families."
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commuting → get → families
While distances are much greater in rural or regional areas, most (78 per cent) primary school-aged parents live within 2 kilometres of their school.
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parents → age → school
But if we're conservative and allow 10 minutes for each drop-off and pick-up, which realistically, doesn't also account for the time it takes to get everyone out of the house, settle the kids at school and get back, that's roughly 1.7 hours per week.
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that → allow → week
Professor Hill says for workers who work a "typical" workday of 9am-5pm or 8am-6pm, the school pick-up is a real problem.
"
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up → say → 9am-5pm
It's a hard stop, and it typically happens when you're kind of reaching peak productivity in your working day."
It's hard to get the exact figures on how many activities children do and how much time parents spend attending them, but increasingly Australian families are feeling the pressure to enrol their kids in sports, arts, swimming and tutoring.
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families → happen → sports
The last Australian Bureau of Statistics survey into children's participation in cultural and leisure activities found 35 per cent of kids aged 5 to 14 did a cultural activity outside of school hours.
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cent → find → hours
About 60 per cent did an organised sport and spent about 5 hours a fortnight training or playing outside of school hours.
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cent → do → hours
Let's be conservative and allow 1 hour of the working week for dropping off and attending extracurricular activities, (even though it's likely to be more for most families).
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it → let → families
Often this involves working parents coming up with creative solutions like carpooling, working from the sidelines or logging back on when the children are in bed.
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children → involve → bed
Professor Hill says some parents feel penalised for accessing flexibility for this.
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parents → say → this
…and 95 more, not listed.
The Aporia