Australian families are living in work, school and care systems designed for another era.
In most two-parent families these days, both parents are employed, but the work and school systems are set up for a bygone era.
"The maths does not add up," says Kate Harrison Brennan, director of the Sydney Policy Lab at The University of Sydney.
Let's assume there are two parents at home, and both parents work full-time.
We're going to look specifically at parents of primary school-aged children and compare the average work year with the average school year.
The traditional full-time work day is 9am to 5pm or 8 hours. Assuming school finishes at 3:30pm, that's 300 hours per year parents need to find across the 40-week school year.
On average, Australians spend 3.8 hours commuting to work each week, which is about 182 hours per year.
While many Australians are now able to work from home, or work a hybrid arrangement, most Australian workers still commute to work.
While distances are much greater in rural or regional areas, most primary school-aged parents live within 2 kilometres of their school.
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.
Between 1990 and 2025, the proportion of two-parent families in which both partners worked rose from 55 per cent to 71-73 per cent, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics data.