The revolt of the magic pudding: sharing care in Australia

Sharing the care

Recently, Australian academics have been vigorously debating whether policy should provide a greater family allowance for parents or greater public provision of child care. But this is, to some extent, a false debate. Social policy should not force us to choose between more support for family caregivers and support for paid care. Both are needed and the care should be shared around.

Australia offers both modest tax support for childrearing and some publicly provided care. But these expenditures, (or rather, ‘investments’) are too low. Australian mothers assume a disproportionate and unfair share of the costs of raising children. While some might say such specialisation is ‘their choice’, it is a highly constrained choice. Given more options, many mothers would prefer to share both the financial and the time costs of rearing children more equally.

Liberal feminists promote a ‘what’s good for the gander is good for the goose’ strategy in which women adopt a traditionally masculine lifestyle without the support of a full-time homemaker, and the ‘mums stay home’ strategy reinforces a division of labour disadvantages women and impedes fathers’ active participation family care.

The alternative is to modify paid work in ways that make it easier for everyone to combine it with care activities, reducing the standard length of the work week and ensuring more flexible work schedules. Women tend to think in terms of five distinct life stages: schooling, paid employment, family care, more paid employment, and retirement. Men think in similar terms, but with no specific time out for family care. Why not blend all these stages a bit more, making it easier to combine these activities rather than to specialise in one at each stage?

In addition to creating more time for care activities, such a reorganisation would make it easier for young people to combine paid employment with higher education. It would also make it easier for individuals to engage in the kind of lifelong learning necessary to high productivity in an era of rapid technological change.

Many people might be willing to postpone their retirement from paid employment by several years if that paid employment were less stressful and demanding, so some improvement could come even without any reduction in paid work hours. The details of this alternative have yet to be worked out through a combination of rules, tax incentives, and new cultural norms. But some promising inroads are being made in this area.

This will be a difficult and contentious journey. But as we set out on it, with Magic Pudding, we should remember that Bunyip Bluegum, darling little bear that he is, is perfectly capable of helping to cook and replenish the pudding that he likes so much to eat. I urge Australians to participate actively in the process of further developing this vision of a dual earner/dual carer economy.