When my first child was two and a half, I embarked on the daunting process of finding childcare for her two days a week. I was immediately overwhelmed with our fragmented childcare system, and that feeling remains today after two years and my second child engaging in it.
Naturally, I spoke to my mum about it and asked about her experience with childcare when we were kids. I received a response that I often get from my parents, which is a sort of mild bafflement at my confusion and overwhelm. She told me that when we were kids, she simply took us to the local community preschool once we had turned three. End of story.
Following this conversation, I went and looked into community preschools in my area and was surprised by the lack of them. All I found were long daycares and some family daycares, both of which had eye-wateringly long waitlists. Regardless, since I needed care for a two-and-a-half-year-old, and most community preschools only admit children from age three, the point was moot; long daycare was my only option.
Since we first enrolled our daughter, she has now attended three different care centres across her two years in paid childcare. It was only this year that I discovered government preschools, one of which she is now enrolled in. These preschools are available to children the year before they start school. Many of them adjoin a public primary school and this allows a smoother transition to school.
In hindsight, I’m unsurprised that I had not heard of government preschools as I now know that only three exist in Wollongong. One is in Fairy Meadow, one in Koonawarra and one in Kemblawarra, Warrawong. There are also two in Shellharbour and one in Nowra.
These preschool programs are government funded and our experience has been one of professionalism, and a great deal of passion and care from the educators.
Amid a decline in preschool and childcare enrolment, as well as over a decade of decline in education outcomes in NSW, the NSW Labor government has begun building 100 new government preschools throughout the state.
The locations have been chosen in areas with low preschool enrolment and thus with the highest need for government-funded education prior to primary school. As a result, six new preschools will be built across the Illawarra at existing primary schools, including at Berkeley West Public School, Cringila Public School, Hayes Park Public School in Kanahooka, Lake Heights Public School, Lake Illawarra South Public School and Barrack Heights Public School. This initiative is the biggest expansion of public preschools in NSW history, and will double the current number of government preschools. The first preschool opened in October 2024 and the project is set to be completed by 2027.
This is a brilliant initiative and a step in the right direction for providing accessible, quality early childhood education to NSW children…
Annnd here comes the but. Though it’s not really a 'but', more of an 'and'. This is a necessary step forward AND it only solves part of the problem of accessing quality childcare education.
The demand for early childhood education and care continues to rise. Yet in our experience, the government preschools and community preschools we have interacted with only allow students to attend for a limited number of days per week (e.g. two or three days), during school hours and school terms. This means many families either opt out of government and community preschools, and instead enrol in long daycare to fit with parent work schedules, or – like us – they are sending their children to multiple centres to patch together enough care to meet the family’s requirements.
These requirements have vastly changed since my mum’s days of sending the kids to the local preschool at age three. The relative cost of living now, compared to my parents' generation, has ballooned so extremely that single-income households are no longer the norm when it comes to starting a family. It is virtually impossible for most people to afford to live on one income while the primary carer works in the unpaid role of – statistically speaking (let’s be real) – mother. This answers the question of why the demand for childcare has increased, yet there is still a gap when it comes to providing families with affordable childcare options that reflect our current culture.
The government provides subsidies for childcare in an attempt to make it more affordable. The child care subsidy (CCS) is the big one that can be claimed for most families if you meet criteria. The government provides additional funding for your child in care from the age of three with their ‘Start Strong’ program.
Even with both of these subsidies and attendance two days a week at a free government preschool, we still pay several hundred dollars a week in daycare fees to have our kids in care for four days.
When you have a baby in Australia, so long as you are working, one parent is nominated the primary carer (statistically, this is mum) and is entitled to one year of unpaid leave to care for their child.
Now, depending on where you work, you may be entitled to paid leave but this is not guaranteed nor enforced by the government. You are also entitled (so long as you meet the criteria) for government parental leave payments at minimum wage for 20-26 weeks depending on when your baby is born. With all this in mind, most parents are lucky if they can afford for one parent to take a year of leave to care for their newborn.
To be able to access both government subsidies for childcare, the toddler needs to be three, meaning there is at least a two-year gap from when parents are required to return to work to pay for our exorbitant costs of living to when the child turns three. In this gap, parents require childcare but are paying more for it, leading to further financial strain while also navigating the intense early years of parenthood.
This lag in funding tells us that there is a hidden message that the government believes that children should be largely cared for at home until they are three, yet there is a lack of financial support for parents to be able to do this. One of the major hidden privilege disparities of parenthood in our culture is access to unpaid family or community support. We are more isolated from our extended families than ever before in history. For many, if not most families, relying on grandma and grandpa to help is simply not an option; again, hence the rise in demand for paid childcare.
With all this in mind, my mother’s bafflement makes sense, because she never had the pressure of juggling paid employment with caring for her young children. She had her own challenges that cannot be diminished but this particular challenge was not one of them.
The problem here is complex and many-faceted. It stems from misogynistic traditional gender roles, the lack of value placed on unpaid care-taking and short-sighted bandaid government solutions that do nothing to address the underlying prejudices that create these issues.
By trying to even out the gender pay divide, we have simply put more women in the workforce without opening the gate for more men (or non-primary carers) to take up more space in caring roles within the home. Thus, there is currently a childcare vacuum that the long daycare system is trying (and arguably failing) to absorb.
Levelling the pay gap isn’t just about paying women the same wage as men for doing the same job. It is about recognising the historical devaluation of work that has traditionally been dominated by women such as care work (childcare, aged care, disability care, nursing etc), and the historical financial and cultural elevation of male-dominated fields. This is not to mention the ‘child penalty’, a planet-wide phenomenon whereby the birth of a child has a significantly higher impact on the careers of women versus men.
My ideal scenario is this: parents are supported so that both can work part-time and both can care-take their children part-time. An equal distribution of paid and unpaid labour. In addition to this, the provision of universal free or low-cost childcare without an age restriction AND generous paid parental leave for both parents. We should be able to have the choice to return to work (or not) before our kids turn one. And we should be supported so that either parent can make that choice and families are not penalised for the gender wage gap within and across industries.
Tall order? Perhaps not as mythical as you might think.
This is the exact model that exists across Scandinavia and some other parts of Europe. These policies produce high rates of wellbeing in the population and are a result of targeted initiatives to improve work-life balance in these countries. These governments have long recognised the link between population wellbeing and national economic health.
And yes, Australia could afford this if we shifted our tax system to benefit the people living in Australia instead of multi-billion-dollar corporations. Just something to think about as we approach the next federal election…