Women today are more educated, more employed and more engaged in childcare than generations before them.
Early one morning, feeling desperate, Katherine went on to her phone and asked ChatGPT how to make her life work.
The children wake between 5.30 and 6am and from that time it is a mad scramble to get them ready to leave for school and daycare by 7am.
Last week the spotlight was thrown on the economic toll of the juggle for today’s parents, with new research showing that the cost for Australian families of raising two or more children has risen to at least $36,500 a year. The cost of keeping a family afloat has increased by 134% in two decades, while household income has only grown by 102% in the same period.
Georgie Dent, the chief executive of The Parenthood says having children reduces the earnings of Australian women by an average of 55% over the first five years and that Australian families now need two incomes to stay afloat.
In a seismic shift for the country’s labour arrangements, both parents working full-time became the most common setup for households with children under 15 in 2024 for the first time.
According to a study conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the most time-stressed group in the country were single mothers of children aged under 15, with 56% saying they were “always or often” moved or pressed for time.
In Australia, men have increased the amount of time they spend caring by half an hour a week over the last 20 years – 5.5 hours a week in 2022, up from five hours in 2002.