Raising a child in Australia now costs around $17,800 a year. Two or more? You’re up for $36,500 annually.
And that’s before you count the additional costs mothers pay.
These figures, commissioned by The Parenthood and released at the National Press Club today, show that what it takes to run a family with children has risen 134 per cent over the past two decades.
Is it any wonder parents are strained? Forty-five per cent of Australian parents report moderate psychological distress according to the Parenting Today survey, while 74 per cent of mothers and 57 per cent of fathers feel stressed balancing work and family, according to the National Working Families Survey.
As we know, women typically absorb the costs, through the motherhood penalty, the unpaid care load, and the many, many sacrifices made to somehow balance work and family.
A mother’s earnings decrease an average of 55 per cent in the five years after having a child, according to Treasury figures, while a father’s earnings barely change at all. These are lost earnings that accumulate into financial penalties elsewhere, including later in retirement.
Speaking at the National Press Club today, CEO of The Parenthood Georgie Dent will outline the strain and tension facing families, and the policy changes that could ease it.
“Raising children will always require time, money, patience and compromise. But there is a difference between the inherent work of raising a child and the unnecessary difficulty created by systems designed for another era,” Georgie will say.
“Struggling under these conditions does not mean you are failing.
“No parent can meditate their way out of a childcare desert. Or meal-prep their way out of housing stress. Or time-manage their way into a 25th hour.
“When millions of families face the same obstacles, it’s not a personal failure. It’s a policy failure with profound economic and social consequences.”
With one third of Australia’s workforce having dependent children, Georgie will argue that the ability to earn a living and raise a family belongs at the centre of our economic agenda, and that we need to build the family infrastructure that makes both possible.
The Parenthood has three core policy solutions: a pathway to 52 weeks of paid parental leave; universal early childhood education and care (with fee controls, proper educator wages, and a National ECEC Commission); and family-centred workplaces structured around genuine flexibility, predictable hours, and equal expectations for fathers.
On universal childcare, Georgie will note that “at some point we have to stop topping up the bucket and look at the hole,” with the childcare subsidy costing taxpayers $16.2 billion a year, and families still paying more than $12 billion on top of that.
The Parenthood is advocating for Australia to move deliberately towards a service-funding model for Universal Early Childhood Education and Care, with the bulk of Commonwealth funding paid directly to services through base operating grants. The goal is to fund the service and not the transaction, and to start with a base amount reflecting what high-quality provision actually costs, including more for younger children whose care costs more to deliver, and then equity funding for disability, additional needs and disadvantage.
“Make early education free for low-income families, and keep an income-tested subsidy for hours beyond a universal entitlement, so parents can work the hours they need.
“Invest deliberately to create and sustain services where the market has not, including a stronger public, community and not-for-profit presence. Public money should buy public outcomes. And do it with the states, not around them.”
She also notes that universal cannot mean uniform; while the entitlement is the same, the way it’s delivered can differ to make way for different needs, such as in growing suburbs that may mean larger early learning centres and in farming communities it may mean family day care and flexible in-home care.
So what would a directly funded universal system buy?
Modelling by the Centre for Policy Development estimates it would deliver around $3 billion in additional annual tax revenue and up to $6.9 billion in annual GDP from working parents able to access more work hours under a universal, low-cost system.
“When you count the benefits to children, the Nobel prize-winning economist James Heckman shows that every $1 invested in quality early education returns between $7 and $12 back to society, in present value terms,” Georgie will say.
“If we define universal childcare as a bigger subsidy, we’ll be back here having the same conversation in ten years time.
“If we decide to make it a directly funded system, it will be the best social and economic reform for Australians since Medicare.”
Women absorb the cost
Women continue to bear the costs of the tension between work and family life, not just financially, but also through added stress, distress, and compromise.
“The gap between how work is organised and how children actually live does not close by itself,” Georgie will say in her speech today.
“In every household, somebody absorbs it. And we know a fair bit about who.
“Women’s participation in paid work is at a record high, but the headline rate tells us nothing about the terms.
“Remember the 55 per cent drop in income for mums? Behind that number are hundreds of thousands of compromises. Talent, experience and ambition do not disappear when a woman gives birth. Often, the opportunity to use them does.
“Sometimes it’s discrimination — during pregnancy, during leave, on return.
“Sometimes it’s compromise. Women “choosing” part-time work because every full-time job assumes another adult is handling everything else. Turning down the promotion because they cannot get the care. Going freelance because nothing else fits.
“We call it flexibility. What it usually is, is the maximum a woman can work given everything else we have left her holding.
“It perpetuates an old arrangement: men earn more, women care more.
“For single parents, there is no second adult to absorb anything. Every failure I am describing today lands on single parents and their children first, and hardest.”
We have seen the figures on tension, strain and stress across multiple surveys now. And any parent of young and school-aged children in 2026 likely knows the feeling. The new figures on what it costs to run a family highlight the problem we’re facing: when costs keep climbing, something has to give. And as Georgie and The Parenthood have outlined, Australia has options, and a significant boost in GDP on offer if it takes them.