Million Dollar Mums a Myth?

Costs of raising a family, including childcare has been a hot topic of late and is a real issue families need to think about, given these financial times. Recent figures have shown that the foregone income for a family with three children (lost through one parent taking time off to raise the family), is over a million dollars.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. In Chanel 10’s program THE PROJECT, Emma Walsh, Director of mum@work says mums don’t need to give up their careers to raise a family.  However, she acknowledges it's a real challenge and to make it work, it is a matter of getting the right support, planning in advance and communicating effectively.

“The real concern is childcare costs.  Some parents can find themselves paying out as much as $4000 a month pre-tax; and with a $7000 cap on the Federal Government’s 50% child care rebate, some parents find themselves going backwards fast. Not only is this de-motivating, it’s unsustainable. To avoid this, mums AND dads need to do the sums, plan ahead and ‘think smarter’ about how they can return to work by negotiating better flexible work arrangements with employers. It’s not always easy, but it can be done,” assures Emma Walsh.   

It is worth noting that Australia is well behind other OECD countries in the work flexibility debate. According to Walsh, employers need to be more lateral thinking with their workplace practices, rethink job design and be more adaptive and open to using technology better to deliver more productive outcomes that create a win/win for all.  “They risk losing valuable talent if they don’t adapt. Whilst mums and dads should create a plan for how they’d like to work, they should also consider the business impact and propose some solutions to how the job could be made more flexible – it’s about focusing on what can be done flexibly rather than entirely focusing on the negative. Too many parents - when negotiating flexible work arrangements - are ill-prepared. They should seek out support to plan for the conversation with their employer if they feel a lack of confidence.  When making ‘flexibility’ work the responsibility doesn’t fall entirely on one or the other,” says Walsh.

Statistics show that working dads in this generation want to spend more time with their children and are also experiencing the need for different working conditions. When asked about ‘sharing’ the parenting role with fathers, Walsh acknowledged that there are a lot of dads now stepping up and taking on some or all of the primary caring role, but Australian workplace cultures have been slow to adjust to this fact and more needs to be done to encourage organizations to support working dads with the juggle. 

Walsh believes, “For a lot of mums, it’s about taking the leap and asking for help. A lot of us want to be the ones doing everything; the pick-up, the drop off, pleasing the boss, doing the shopping and the housework and we have to realise we can’t do everything ourselves because we’re not super-human.  We need to discuss and plan with our manager how to work flexibly and share the load with our partners, friends and family, where possible.”

This means effective communication is critically important between employers and mums & dads for the family unit to be able to function well and cope with the many and varied demands of juggling raising children with work.

View the full interview on THE PROJECT (Friday’s episode - 4^th November – segment ‘super mums’)

If you’d like support in your return to work or as a representative from an employer’s perspective, want to know more about how to implement Family Friendly solutions into your organization, contact mums@work.
See our Working Parents Toolkit