The Parenthood

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The Parenthood 📣 Advocating for Aussie families
đŸ’ȘđŸŒ Campaigning for parental leave, better child care & flexible work
⚖ Want stronger support
đŸ“© Join us for change

The Parenthood page is a place where followers can interact with The Parenthood and each other to discuss issues of relevance. We encourage you to share your thoughts as they relate to the topic being discussed. We reserve the right to delete comments that contain obscene, indecent, or profane language; threats or defamatory statements; hate speech directed at race, colour, s*x, s*xual orientation, national origin, ethnicity, age, religion, or disability; or promote or endorse services or products. Content posted on our wall is considered public. Contributors consent to The Parenthood using their content in any manner in perpetuity.

Come behind the scenes with us on a very big day.Our CEO Georgie Dent’s National Press Club address tackled serious ques...
08/10/2026

Come behind the scenes with us on a very big day.

Our CEO Georgie Dent’s National Press Club address tackled serious questions about what it takes to raise a family in Australia: the cost, the care, the work, the pressure and the systems that make family life harder than it needs to be.

But behind the cameras, the speech and policy conversations were the people who make this work possible.

The team, families, supporters and friends who believe Australia can do better for parents and children, and who brought plenty of joy to such a significant day.

Because advocating for change is serious work. But there’s joy in coming together to make it happen.

We are The Parenthood: a national, not-for-profit advocacy group working to make Australia the best place in the world to be a parent.

We’re fighting for:

✔ One year of paid parental leave

✔ High-quality, affordable and accessible early childhood education and care

✔ Family-friendly workplaces

When parents are properly supported, children can thrive and communities are stronger.

What would make raising a family easier for you?

06/10/2026

Raising kids is hard. This hard isn’t inevitable.

At the National Press Club, The Parenthood CEO Georgie Dent made the case for something millions of Australian parents already know: raising children will always require time, money, patience and compromise. But there is a difference between the work of raising a child and the unnecessary difficulty created by systems designed for another era.

Over the last 20 years, the cost of running a family has risen 134%, while the money landing in household bank accounts has risen 102%. Over the same period, childcare has grown from 27% to 33% of the total cost of raising a child.

That gap isn’t parents being bad at budgeting. And struggling to make it all work doesn’t mean you are failing.

As Georgie put it: “No parent can meditate their way out of a childcare desert or meal prep their way out of housing stress or time manage their way into a 25th hour.”

Parents are responsible for raising their children. But the conditions in which they do it are created collectively. When millions of families face the same obstacles, it is a policy failure with profound economic and social consequences.

We are The Parenthood: a national, not-for-profit advocacy group working to make Australia the best place in the world to be a parent.

We’re fighting for:

✔ One year of paid parental leave

✔ High-quality, affordable and accessible early childhood education and care

✔ Family-friendly workplaces

When parents are properly supported, children can thrive and communities are stronger.

Australia cannot afford for raising a family to be unaffordable.

What would make raising a family feel more sustainable for you?

The maths doesn’t work. Every school holiday period, parents are expected to solve the same predictable gap between work...
05/10/2026

The maths doesn’t work. Every school holiday period, parents are expected to solve the same predictable gap between work and care.

Australian employees in full-time and part-time roles typically get four weeks of annual leave. School-aged children get around 12 weeks of school holidays.

Even when parents take leave separately, it often isn’t enough to cover the holidays — let alone leave time for illness, appointments or a break together. Work demands continue as if nothing has changed.

And this isn’t a fringe problem.

ABS data for June 2025 shows 73% of the 2.2 million couple families with children aged 0–14 have both parents employed.

Holiday care can help, but it comes with another equation.

Fees vary between programs, and excursions can add to the daily cost. For families with multiple children, or limited access to programs, the cost and logistics quickly compound.

Then there are the parents who cannot work from home. Nurses, educators, tradies, retail and hospitality workers don’t have the option of joining a meeting while the kids are in the next room.

So families patch it together: annual leave, grandparents, holiday care, altered hours, working around children and screens when there are few other options.

And kids experience that scramble too.

School holidays aren’t a personal failure to plan better. They expose a structural mismatch between what families need and systems built for another time.

Family-friendly workplaces matter because sustainable work and family life require more than parents becoming increasingly skilled at “the juggle”.

We are The Parenthood: a national, not-for-profit advocacy group working to make Australia the best place in the world to be a parent.

We’re fighting for:

✔ One year of paid parental leave

✔ High-quality, affordable and accessible early childhood education and care

✔ Family-friendly workplaces

When parents are properly supported, children can thrive and communities are stronger.

How does your family make the school holiday maths work?

03/10/2026

Parenting maths doesn’t add up: kids get around 12 weeks of school holidays; full-time employees typically get 4 weeks of annual leave. School finishes at 3pm; the working day doesn’t.

ABC analysis found that two parents working full-time with primary-school-aged children need to find an additional 814 hours of care each year, even if they take every week of annual leave separately.

That’s more than 107 full-time working days.

As our CEO Georgie Dent said in her National Press Club address:

“The gap between how work is organised and how children actually live does not close by itself. In every household, somebody absorbs it. And we know a fair bit about who.”

What we call flexibility is too often a woman fitting paid work around everything else she is still expected to carry.

The result is an old pattern that persists: men earn more, women care more.

We are The Parenthood: a national, not-for-profit advocacy group working to make Australia the best place in the world to be a parent.

We’re fighting for:

✔ One year of paid parental leave

✔ High-quality, affordable and accessible early childhood education and care

✔ Family-friendly workplaces

When parents are properly supported, children can thrive and communities are stronger.

What would make work and family life fit together better for you?

The pressure on Australian parents is not confined to work, childcare, household budgets or the endless logistics of fam...
01/10/2026

The pressure on Australian parents is not confined to work, childcare, household budgets or the endless logistics of family life. It takes a toll on relationships too.

As The Parenthood CEO, Georgie Dent put it: “I know how it feels to appear capable while being completely overwhelmed. To love your children fiercely and still struggle to make it all work.”

That struggle matters. Parents should have enough time, support and breathing room to enjoy their families and each other**, rather than spend these years constantly trying to solve** the next impossible equation.

We are The Parenthood: a national, not-for-profit advocacy group working to make Australia the best place in the world to be a parent.

We’re fighting for:

✔ One year of paid parental leave that families can afford to take

✔ High-quality, affordable and accessible early childhood education and care

✔ Family-friendly workplaces

When parents are properly supported, children can thrive and communities are stronger.

Raising a family is personal. Making it possible is national.At the National Press Club, The Parenthood CEO Georgie Dent...
29/09/2026

Raising a family is personal. Making it possible is national.

At the National Press Club, The Parenthood CEO Georgie Dent made the case for something millions of Australian parents already know: raising children will always require time, money, patience and compromise. But it should not be this hard.

The cost of running a family has risen 134%, while the money landing in household bank accounts has risen 102%. Raising one child now costs around $17,800 a year. For two or more, it is more than $36,500.

And parents are running out of more than money.

They are running out of time, attention, space and energy.

This is why Australia needs a pathway to 52 weeks of paid parental leave, moving towards replacement wages. It needs universal, high-quality and affordable early childhood education and care. And it needs family-friendly workplaces that treat caregiving as a normal part of working life.

These are not generous extras.

They are the infrastructure required for a country that depends on parents being able to both raise their families and provide for them.

We are The Parenthood: a national, not-for-profit advocacy group working to make Australia the best place in the world to be a parent.

We’re fighting for:

✔ One year of paid parental leave

✔ High-quality, affordable and accessible early childhood education and care

✔ Family-friendly workplaces

When parents are properly supported, children can thrive and communities are stronger.

Australia cannot afford for raising a family to be unaffordable.

What would make raising a family feel more sustainable for you?

27/09/2026

Families have changed. Our systems haven’t.

Today, 73% of coupled families with children under 15 have both parents in paid work, up from around 58% in 2003. Staying afloat now requires two incomes.

Yet two full-time working parents with primary-school-aged children still need to find an additional 814 hours of care every year to bridge the gap between work and school, even if they take all their annual leave separately.

That’s more than 107 full working days of care that still has to come from somewhere.

In every household, somebody absorbs it.

More often, mums lose income. Dads lose time. Both lose choice.

That’s why the ability to earn a living and raise a family belongs at the centre of Australia’s economic agenda.

We are The Parenthood: a national, not-for-profit advocacy group working to make Australia the best place in the world to be a parent.

We’re fighting for:

✔ One year of paid parental leave

✔ High-quality, affordable and accessible early childhood education and care

✔ Family-friendly workplaces

When parents are properly supported, children can thrive and communities are stronger.

👉 Comment ‘PARENTPOWER’ to join us.

Where does the system need to catch up most for your family?

25/09/2026

This is bigger than the cost-of-living crisis: the economics of raising a family no longer add up.

More work. Less time. Higher costs. And less freedom to choose what’s right for your family. Parents are doing everything right and still wondering how they’re supposed to make family life work.

Over the past 20 years, costs to run a family has risen 134%. Disposable income has risen just 102%.

Raising one child now costs an Australian family around $17,800 a year. For two or more, it’s more than $36,500.

But parenting costs aren’t measured in dollars alone.

Two parents working full time with primary-school-aged children still need to find another 814 hours of care every year, even if they take all their annual leave separately.

As our CEO Georgie Dent told the National Press Club, parents cannot “meditate their way out of a childcare desert meal prep their way out of housing stress or time manage their way into a 25th hour”.

When millions of Australian families face the same pressures, this isn’t about individual parents trying harder. It’s about the conditions in which families are raising their children.

Paid parental leave, affordable and accessible early childhood education and care, and family-friendly workplaces are the infrastructure that can make raising a family and combining work and care more sustainable.

We are The Parenthood: a national, not-for-profit advocacy group working to make Australia the best place in the world to be a parent.

We’re fighting for:

✔ One year of paid parental leave

✔ High-quality, affordable and accessible early childhood education and care

✔ Family-friendly workplaces

When parents are properly supported, children can thrive and communities are stronger.

What would make raising a family more affordable for you?

It shouldn’t be this hard to raise a family.Today, our CEO Georgie Dent will address the National Press Club and make th...
22/09/2026

It shouldn’t be this hard to raise a family.

Today, our CEO Georgie Dent will address the National Press Club and make the case for an Australia where parenthood is affordable and sustainable.

In 2003, 58% of couple families with children had both parents in paid work. By 2025, it was 73%.

Over that same period, what it takes to run a family rose 134%, while the money landing in the bank each week rose only 102%.

Yet the care work itself has not shrunk by a single hour. Babies still wake at night. Meals still need making. Somebody still has to be at the school gate.

Two full-time working parents with primary-school-aged children must find at least 814 hours of care every year just to bridge the gap between work and school.

“The way families live and work has changed, but our expectations of parents, and the policies built around them, have not,” Georgie says.

Today, Georgie will call for:

✔ A full year of paid parental leave families can afford to take

✔ Affordable, accessible and high-quality early childhood education and care

✔ Workplaces that recognise the reality of care

Raising a family is personal. Making it possible is national.

Watch Georgie live from 12.30pm AEST on ABC iview.

What would make raising your family more sustainable?

Parents have known the maths doesn’t add up for years. Now the numbers are in: at least 814 hours parents have to find e...
22/09/2026

Parents have known the maths doesn’t add up for years. Now the numbers are in: at least 814 hours parents have to find every year, with mums still carrying most of the load.

ABC’s Story Lab crunched the numbers with experts including our CEO and tomorrow, she’s taking this conversation to for her National Press Club address.

Tune in live on ABC iview tomorrow from 12.30pm AEST.

This isn’t a work-life balance problem. It’s a policy failure, and it needs a policy response.

Read the full story via the link in our bio.

Comment “PARENTPOWER” and we’ll show you how to join The Parenthood.

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375 Wickham Tce
Melbourne
4000

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