What happens to gender equality when the childcare system meant to support working parents becomes a source of fear?
One night, about two years ago, Jacinda woke her husband and said she wanted to be hit by a bus.
Sleep deprived and in the depths of postpartum depression, parenting had become overwhelming.
"It can feel like you're drowning while you're holding your whole world in your arms," Jacinda says of those first months, being responsible for a tiny new life.
"I look back at the memories and they feel fuzzy," she says. "The colours aren't bright and the warmth and joy of some of those early moments aren't there."
Jacinda's struggle was manifesting physically, too. She had constant migraines and a full-body rash doctors couldn't diagnose.
Her GP suggested a break, but without family nearby to step in, she turned to child care a few months earlier than planned.
Child care for her son had always been part of Jacinda's parenting strategy so she could return to her marketing career when he was about 12 months old. Living in Sydney isn't cheap and Jacinda valued her work.
It's the same story for around 1 million Australian families and about 1.5 million children who attend an approved childcare service. And more and more families are relying on the sector, with 2024 figures showing 50.4 per cent for children aged 0–5 years attend child care, up from 42 per cent in 2015.?
WARNING: This article references abuse in child care and postnatal depression.
Sending a baby or toddler to child care has never been an easy decision for parents. No matter how kind the staff or impressive the facilities, for many there is an ache that remains when saying goodbye to your little one and handing them to a stranger.
Devastating revelations of children being abused and neglected while in the care of the $22 billion childcare industry have taken that decision from difficult to agonising. The feelings of trauma too many families have been left with as they drop their kids to day care cannot be underestimated.
For some, the risk that their child may be exposed to abuse at a centre — no matter how statistically small — presents a new dilemma: A choice between their child's safety, their income, and often — like in Jacinda's case — their wellbeing.
And with women still overwhelmingly the primary carers of young children, experts fear children are not the only ones paying the price of a childcare system under strain.
Is gender equality the next casualty of the childcare crisis?
Child care plans on pause
Jacinda's son ultimately thrived in child care after a challenging start which often meant she was waiting around the corner of the centre "listening to him crying his eyes out".
"If you have a good day care and a supportive educator, they work with you to help make this a kinder transition for the child," she says.
And for the most part, things got better.
"It was probably harder on me than my son to adjust [to child care] but once we found our rhythm I could take my first deep breath," she says. "Like a lot of new mums I also was figuring out who I am again after losing my identity to being a mum. For most of my life career was a big pillar of who I am, so getting that break [while my son was in care] allowed me to put the bricks of my personality back together."
Jacinda's son thrived too: "[He] gets access to activities and educational experiences that I would not be able to provide at home," she says. "We've been fortunate to have fantastic educators who have nurtured his love of learning and he's performing well above his age for vocabulary and speaking."
But she now faces a new challenge: As Jacinda wraps a second round of parental leave after giving birth to her daughter seven months ago, she has paused plans to send her little girl to care.
"We've felt more anxious about sending [our daughter] with all the news coverage we've been seeing about day care," she says.
Jacinda and her partner have felt so conflicted about sending their children to day care they are considering radical change.
"I'm wondering about sacrificing my career, moving my family somewhere cheaper, so I can be home full-time," she says.
The childcare privilege
Questions of privilege constantly circle the childcare industry. Is child care available? Is it affordable? Is it good quality? How many days is optimal? Does your family even have a choice over how often and how long a child is in care?
For those in a partnership, two incomes are often necessary to cope with the cost of living. Most single and solo parents simply have no alternative but to work.
And of course there are also those who, while horrified by reports of abuse, believe their centre is of high standard and safe. Hopefully this cohort represents the majority those using the childcare system.
Yet the reality is we don't actually know how widespread, unsafe or abusive practices are in Australian childcare centres. We do know they are increasing.
Reports of neglect are rising steadily: About seven children go missing from child care each day — a 49 per cent increase in three years.
And differences in the quality of care between for-profit and not-for-profit centres is also clear, with the NFPs consistently registering higher standards on benchmarks used by the Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority.
While some families fear the quality of the care their child receives, others face the opposite problem: They can't find child care at all.
Nearly 6 million Australians — close to one in four — live in a childcare desert. The sector has seen exponential growth as it fights to meet demand, sometimes with corners cut and quality benchmarks bent in order to get a service operating.
It can leave families feeling powerless when childcare shortages mean it's not possible to be picky about the services they use.
When child care fails, women leave the workforce
Those who can afford to have a parent in the home, a role — even in 2025 — that is most often left to women, the reality can be tougher than expected.
Some, like Jacinda, battle feelings of loneliness and isolation, trying to meet the many needs of a young child while missing the social and intellectual engagement of the workplace. For others, negotiating the tears and anxiety that impacts lots of kids in the early weeks of child care, and some for much longer, is emotionally fraught.
However you frame it, mothers risk paying the price when child care fails.
Katherine Berney is passionate about economic and safety equity for women and children. When parents can't trust the childcare system, women's economic equality suffers, says Berney, the executive director of the Working?with?Women Alliance.
Child care emerged in Australia during the late 1800s. Most of it was philanthropic and designed to help poor families when both parents needed to work. Fast-forward some 135 years and the cost of living, as well as feminism that fought for women's equality including the right to embrace education and fulfilling careers, and child care has become a necessity for most families.
But recent figures show women are still overwhelmingly responsible for the care of children. Research shows 40 per cent of families report equal sharing of responsibility, but only 4 per cent reported a man "usually or always" looks after children. Most striking is that just under 80 per cent of single parent families are women.
The quality and safety of the early childhood education system "determine not just children's outcomes, but women's ability to participate fully in work and society," Berney says.
What that means, she argues, is notwithstanding cultural change and the gains of feminism, every time child care fails, women leave the workforce.
"The fear is real," she says. "Child care isn't? just a personal choice or a family expense, it's a cornerstone of gender equality and economic productivity."
Keeping children at home or finding alternative care arrangements, such as a trusted family member, is not an option for many.
"If that is something you desire, but are not in a position to facilitate, there is already a guilt [about sending a child to care]," she believes, and leads to emotions such as "This is not what I wanted" my parenting life to look like.
"And women who do want to work — and love it — are now asking 'Is this what is actually best for my child?'," Berney says. "The primary caregiver can't win."
'Women take the brunt'
In many ways the risks to equality highlighted by the childcare abuse crisis are not new.
Women are more likely to take time out of the workforce for unpaid care work, interrupting paid employment, and resulting in lower earnings and superannuation. Women reduce their paid work hours by about 35 per cent across the first five years after the arrival of children, earning?55 per cent less of their pre-pregnancy wage.
That gap remains high for a decade after the arrival of children.
Jacinda knows if concerns over the risks to her children in day care prompt her to leave her job to care for them full-time, it will cost her in lost superannuation, income and stunted career progression, while the careers of many male counterparts flourish.
"We watch from the sidelines," Jacinda says. "Women sadly take the brunt of the sacrifice of being the default parent."
By comparison, a man's hours of paid work drops only during the first month of parenthood before returning to previous levels.
The impact of that across a lifetime is stark. The average 25-year-old woman today who goes on to have one child can expect to make $2 million less in lifetime earnings compared to the average 25-year-old man who also becomes a parent.
Part of the solution is empowering men to take parental leave. Not only does it lead to greater connection and engagement between fathers and children, it reduces penalties faced by women in the workforce, such as the gender pay gap.
There have been modest improvements — the proportion of primary carer parental leave taken by men has increased 12 per cent over the past seven years. But significant barriers to men taking this leave remain, such as the impact of persistent gender norms.
Leah Ruppaner is a professor of sociology at the University of Melbourne and the founding director of The Future of Work Lab with national awards for her research in gender studies and sociology. Her book Motherlands: How States Push Mothers out of Employment, explores how child care impacts the employment of mothers in the US.
While a growing "tradwife" movement tells women careers are an "optional" pathway they should reconsider, Ruppaner says keeping women in work is crucial.
"Women's incomes are ... critical lifelines to families' day-to-days needs," she says. "But we treat mother's careers like they get to choose."
Some women returning to work may feel it's not worthwhile, she says, when their earnings may be just enough to cover childcare fees. But Ruppanner believes mothers need to think long-term.
"If you can just tread water, just be the average employee [then] short-term there might be an economic loss, or you might break even for a couple of years," she says. "But then what you get back in super, in potential wages and career progression is probably worth taking the hit."
As difficult as it can be to juggle work and raising a young family, Ruppaner says the research demonstrates returning to employment is not just beneficial for women's finances, but in many cases essential to their mental health.
But that calculation takes on a different dimension when the price of work could mean risking a child's safety.
Guilt and the mental load
Women live in a culture that says they're bad mothers if they aren't with their children 24/7, Ruppaner says, and revelations about the childcare system has only added to their guilt and the emotional and cognitive labour that goes with it.
It's exacerbating parents' anxiety too, argues Nicole Highet, a clinical psychologist and founder and director of the Centre for Perinatal Excellence (COPE). She says the childcare crisis will continue to impact the emotional wellbeing of parents.
Even when a service is of high quality, starting child care can be a "highly emotional time" for parents.
"Around one in five news parents have anxiety — and that is increasing," she says.
"There is the guilt that you are leaving your child. You feel like you are abandoning them ... and they are often too young to understand the context," says Highet, who has personal experience of the anxiety this can cause.
Widespread abuse in child care is only intensifying those feelings. Parents no longer just feel guilty for dropping their kids off, they're scared.
Tash felt uneasy: Her fears were real
Tash has sent her five-year-old son to long day care since he was 11 months old. Drop off was a daily struggle. Tash put on a brave face as her son clung to her leg and begged her to stay.
"There's worry in the back of your mind of 'Are they safe?', 'Are they getting enough care and attention?" says Tash, who parents solo by choice. Comments from strangers such as "Why have a child at all if they're going to be at day care more than they are at home?" added to her feelings of guilt.
As a solo mum, work is essential for Tash. "I couldn't afford to not be working," she says. "The cost of living it just too high." And while she would have liked to lean on family for support and reduce her son's days at child care, both her parents work full-time.
Yet her fears turned became reality when her son repeatedly came home with unreported bite marks from another child, suggesting there was no educator keeping watch.
She believes childcare ratios are inadequate. "It's just not possible for one person to supervise that many kids," she says.
Ratios vary slightly across the country, but generally, the educator-to-child ratio for children zero to 24 months old is 1:4, 1:5 between 24 and 36 months, and 1:10 to preschool age.
After working with the day care to get to the bottom of her son's injuries and ensure his ongoing safety, Tash has decided to focus on the positives of early childhood education.
"Day care does really give them skills they'll use in all aspects of life such as independence, social skills, language and motor skills," she says, with a sense of pride in her voice.
And now day care has become an essential part of the village that helps Tash raise her son. "It never gets easier to leave them in the care of a group of rotating strangers," she says. "You just trust that the centre is doing the right thing."
Understanding quality
When psychologist Nicole Highet toured childcare centres to find a place for her daughter, her reaction was visceral. The first centre she went to was too bright and noisy, with cots lining the edges of the room.
"I just remember coming home and saying to my husband, 'I have to give up my career. I can't send her there'," Highet remembers.
Her experience highlights how child care can be good for kids but only if it's done right. The centre she eventually settled on for her daughter was small, personal and had a low staff turnover.
Highet's instincts when searching for her daughter's child care were right on track and go to the heart of the debate over care.
Research into whether paid child care is helpful or harmful for children "comes down to the quality of that care," Highet says.
Sheila Degotardi is dedicated to providing the best experiences for children in early childhood education.
"The community often thinks it's 'just child care', something anybody can do," says the professor and director of the Macquarie University Early Childhood Education Research Centre.
"But when you understand the system, all of what goes on in those first five years, providing high quality early childhood education and care is really complicated and complex, and very specialised," she says.
The good news, as Highet also touched on, is research demonstrates far-reaching benefits for the child when the service is high quality.
"If the quality is high, there is no harm done, and there can be many benefits to those children," says Degotardi. "Across social, cognitive, language development, emotional development, behaviour and so on."
For example, children learn to problem solve, she says, sticking with a task and persisting when things get a bit tricky.
"They also develop high degrees of curiosity," Degotardi says.
But what if the home environment is just as good?
If children are getting everything a childcare service can offer in the home, then the outcomes will be similar whether they attend or not.
But Degotardi says not every family can provide those "rich learning experiences".
"Where we see really great results from high quality early childhood services is for our children who maybe don't have resources at home which can support their development as well as [trained childcare educators] could," she says.
The critical ingredient to a high quality service is the type of interactions children have with educators.
"In a high-quality service, you would see educators sitting at tables, or playing on the floor, and you will see happy and engaged, interested children," Degotardi says, adding educators would likely be long-term employees. Staff retention is a sign working conditions are good.
That doesn't mean you won't see a child crying as well, but Degotardi says "staff should be attending to them."
She acknowledges high quality services aren't always accessible. And with recent traumatic stories of abuse and neglect emerging from the sector, it can be difficult to have faith that quality, nurturing care is still out there at all.
Degotardi urges parents to remember the "horrendous reports" do not represent most childcare centres.
"Those of us who have worked in the sector are as horrified as parents," she says. "And many of us are doing everything we can to present to government what we feel needs to change to minimise the risk."
Jacinda's next steps
For many families the stories of abuse are difficult to overcome. Jacinda's husband has taken a month of unpaid leave to give the couple more time to figure out the next steps for their family.
They've watched many of their friends move in search of a cheaper cost of living, and to be closer to family for care support. Some decide not to have children at all.
"Every year we see the number of friends wanting kids dwindle," Jacinda says.
And while she has seen the benefits of child care for her son, and the village of educators that allowed her to recover from post-natal depression and return to work, she feels cheated.
"We put our trust in daycare centres to help raise our children but inherently know how deeply unfair it is that we no longer have the choice of being able to do it ourselves," she says.
"The system is broken."
Credits
Words: Kellie Scott
Editor: Catherine Taylor
Illustrations: Lindsay Dunbar
