'Broken': Depressing reality Aussie families can no longer ignore as generation of mums admit to being burnt-out

How are women expected to hold down a full-time career while parenting in a world that hasn't caught up? With not enough hours in the day to do both, we are witnessing the rise of the ultimate burnt-out generation of mums.

It is an issue that was reignited this week, and one that The Parenthood's chief executive Georgie Dent is passionate about changing after admitting the current system is "broken".

Working mums do not have enough hours in the day.

The lawyer turned journalist and best-selling author is an advocate for parental leave, access to quality early childhood education and family-friendly workplaces.

She told nine.com.au this week that Australian households had changed significantly over the past two decades, while cost of living, especially in relation to housing, had risen sharply since 2020, yet society was not keeping up.

"It is now very rare for a parent not to be engaged in the paid workforce," Dent said.

"More parents than ever are in paid work, and a lot of that is out of sheer economic necessity. Yet so many of our systems, from schools to workplaces to early childhood education and care, to paid parental leave – all of these systems still reflect the outdated idea that there is a parent at home to readily absorb the care and domestic load of raising a family."

The catalyst for Dent's comment was a post on the ABC Lifestyle Instagram page beginning with a series of slides starting with, "Working mums: The math ain't mathing".

The post pointed out that while standard school hours in Australia totalled around six hours a day, the normal working day is eight to nine hours, without the commute.

Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows women make up 38 to 39 per cent of Australia's full-time workforce, while about 73 per cent of Australian households with children aged 0-14 now contain two working parents – up from 60 per cent in 2005.

Yet while most workers get four weeks' annual leave, school holidays stretch for 12 weeks a year or more.

Then there is the time taken up by extra-curricular activities, which further eat into parents' workdays.

Mother driving her young son to school in a car.

Meanwhile, women globally spend 2.5 hours more a day on unpaid work in the home than men – here in Australia it is about one hour and 19 minutes a day – which begs the question: How are mothers juggling it all?

It led ABC Lifestyle to ask: "What are your secrets to juggling work with drop-off and pick-up and the extracurricular activities. How do you manage school holidays? How do workplace and education systems need to change to support working mums? We'd love to hear from you".

Women took to the comments in droves, and they weren't happy.

"I would love the end of this article/caption to say 'How do we change this? What needs to shift in our society?' Rather than 'How do you do it?'!" wrote one.

"We aren't. We are all completely burnt out," said another.

"We're not, we have no tips, the system is broken and we're too exhausted to do the advocacy needed to change the system," was another comment.

"We don't – we have quiet, existential breakdowns, periodically throughout the year. Waiting for the next bit of downtime, break or offer of help," said another.

"Tips? Srsly? Ummm how about we dismantle patriarchy. There's a tip for you," wrote another commenter.

"Talk about working parents and what needs to change in society and the workplace rather than asking mums for tips as to how they juggle everything."

Dent told nine.com.au that she found the comments from stressed out mums heartbreaking.

Georgie Dent says the system is failing working mums

"I think the ferocious response to that post is very telling. I think that it does speak to the incredible burden and weight that so many working parents, and particularly working mums are holding," she said.

"That is what we hear every single day. Parents are desperately wondering what they are doing wrong, when they're doing nothing wrong. They are not failing. The system is failing them.

"We hear all the time that families trying to raise their families and provide for their families feels near impossible.

"We know that fewer people have got a village around them that can help, and we know that raising children is an enormous undertaking. It is demanding, and exhausting and intense and beautiful, but it requires a lot. It requires patience, it requires time, it requires resources and all of these things are stretched.

"We cannot expect families to keep patching over these gaps."

Dent said Australia's economy and society was currently running on "the invisible labour of parents – particularly mums".

While she said many would refer to this as a work-life balance problem, it was actually "an abject policy failure".

"The Parenthood exists to do the advocacy around the system because we recognise that the system is broken," Dent said.

"This is not an individual problem that individual parents are trying to navigate. This is a structural problem, and structural problems need structural solutions."

She called out Australia's paid parental leave policy, which she said was still woefully inadequate, especially when compared with the rest of the developed world.

The Australian government-funded Paid Parental Leave (PPL) scheme was introduced on January 1, 2011, and gave parents up to 18 weeks' pay at the national minimum wage following the birth or adoption of a child.

However, while Dent said this was meant to be a "starting point", it remained largely unchanged for the next decade.

She praised changes that will come in on July 1, which will see PPL entitlements increase to 26 weeks and include superannuation, but said there was still a long way to go.

"We have to be realistic that Australia lags the developed world in our provision of Paid Parental Leave. In the OECD, the average length of Paid Parental Leave is 53 weeks, and in most of those countries it is paid at a replacement wage rate and not at the minimum wage," she said.

"We would like 52 weeks, ideally shared between parents."

She also wants Australia to finally introduce policy offering high-quality early childhood education and care that is available, affordable and accessible" to all families.

"We have got a patchwork early education and care system," she said, adding the childcare subsidy had not delivered on its objectives.

She also hoped Prime Minister Anthony Albanese would make good on his promise, dating back to when he was opposition leader, to make "universal early childcare education and care a reality".

"There is work to be done to move us towards that objective."

Dent believes it also makes sense to utilise existing school premises, especially in rural and regional areas, for both childcare and before and after-school care, the latter to address the difference between the average school day and work day.

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