Recent government approaches to childcare funding have been simple rather than innovative. Improvements in affordability have been short lived, with benefits quickly absorbed through higher costs charged to families. The result is an ongoing game of catch up between government and service providers with families stuck in the middle. Since 2001, the proportion of Australian

Australian women suffer a ‘wage penalty’ when they return to work after having a child, according to new research by the Australia Institute. In the first year back at work, women can expect to earn around four per cent less per hour on average than they would if they had not had a child, the

Examines the experience of Australian women during recent recessions in order to construct a framework within which the policy response to the current recession can be assessed and improved. The recessions of the early 1980s and the early 1990s are examined and compared with the brief experience so far of the present recession.

In responding to the release of the recent Productivity Commission (PC) draft report into paid parental leave, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd stated: ‘This Australian Government believes the time has come to bite the bullet on this and we intend to do so’. He did not however commit to addressing the issue before the 2009 Federal

Our submission supports a minimum of 26 weeks paid leave. This would be funded through a mix of employment related and government transfer payments to families. The government transfers would be available to working and non-working families while employment related entitlements would apply to working women and men.

Concerns have been raised about the quality of care provided by corporate chain child care centres (see Australia Institute Discussion Paper 84). ABC Learning Centres is the largest corporate child care chain in Australia, providing more than 20 per cent of all long day care places. This paper reports the results of interviews carried out

Recent public debate about the child care system in Australia has focused primarily on the availability and affordability of child care. This paper considers an aspect of child care that has received much less attention, that of the quality of the care provided. Results from a national survey of long day care centre staff suggest

A study of the attitudes of teenagers showing that the gender wars are set to continue into the next generation with boys and girls making conflicting plans about who will do the housework and look after the children.

Unpublished ABS data shows that 23,000 Australian children from low and middle income families are being priced out of child care:12,000 children from low income families and 11,000 children from middle income families miss out on child care because of cost, and they are more likely to experience developmental disabilities as a result.

Examines the perspective of young people about their parents’ paid and unpaid work, its implications for their lives and the links between work and consumption.

Shifting social and economic conditions have both intensified the obstacles to, and created new possibilities for, involved fathering and more sophisticated strategies are needed on the part of the community and government to enable men to capitalise on these recent possibilities.

Throughout the Western world, the changing nature of families has led to a highly charged debate and when commentators talk of how families have changed they usually compare family structures now to those of the 1950s and 1960s. Families are changing, but for reasons far more complex than declining moral values and rising selfish individualism.