The horrific allegations of child sexual abuse in early learning services have left parents across the country devastated, furious and deeply afraid.
In this moment of national grief and reckoning, the last thing families need is guilt piled on top of their fear and distress. And yet, some are using this crisis to argue that parents (but mostly mums) should just stay home — as if that’s a real or simple choice for most families.
Let’s be clear: for the vast majority of parents, combining work and care isn’t a lifestyle preference — it’s a financial necessity. Many households don’t have the luxury of one income keeping them afloat. Many single parents don’t have the option of staying home.
And many families rely on some form of early childhood education and care not just to survive, but to give their kids the best possible start in life.
So in the face of such horror, the very least we can do is offer parents contextual understanding — not shame. Solidarity — not simplistic generalisations.
One of the most damaging ideas we so often circle back to in debates about parenting and policy is the notion that there’s a single “best” way for families to care for young children. As a country, we’re too often stuck in a binary: either parents — usually mums — stay home full-time, or they “outsource” their responsibilities to early learning services.
That’s a false and damaging paradigm that hurts families, children and communities.
At The Parenthood we campaign for three policies which would – if implemented – create an ecosystem of supportive infrastructure that would give parents genuine choice in the early years and enable children to thrive.
- One year of paid parental leave that is shared between parents at a replacement wage rate.
- Universal access to totally affordable, quality, inclusive early childhood education and care delivered by a professionally paid and supported workforce.
- Family friendly workplaces that value caring.
None of these exist in a vacuum. Having amazing paid parental leave won’t solve the need for early education and care. Great early education and care doesn’t displace the need for paid parental leave.
The vast majority of households need both: adequate, properly paid parental leave and access to affordable, quality early childhood education and care. These two things aren’t mutually exclusive — in fact, they’re complementary pillars of a society that values children and supports families to thrive.
Paid parental leave gives parents time to bond, adjust and care for their babies in those crucial early months. When that leave is designed to enable both parents to share the care, it leads to more equitable caring patterns — which is profoundly beneficial for children, parents and families as a whole.
Quality early childhood education and care, in turn, provides children with rich developmental experiences while also enabling parents to participate in paid work to the extent their household chooses. Both are essential.
And in the wake of this crisis, imagine any more salt in the wound for parents who are already reeling — parents doing their very best to care for and provide for their families — than the suggestion they’re somehow failing their children by needing to use childcare at all. As if fear and trauma aren’t enough, they’re being met with judgement too.
We cannot expect parents to sacrifice financial security because our systems don’t offer real support. And we shouldn’t be shaming families for using early learning services when it is the only — or best — option they have.
Let’s stop judging families for the choices they make — or more often, the choices they’re forced into because of structural failures. Let’s not weaponise care. Let’s not pit mums against mums or families against families.
What parents need is not more guilt. It’s not more noise. It[‘s understanding. In the early years parents need both time and support. Both care and choice. Both adequate and equitable paid parental leave and access to affordable, high quality early childhood education and care.
The lesson from this horror is not that no family should ever use early education and care. It’s that we need urgent and wholesale reform to ensure early childhood education and care services are safe – at a baseline – with qualified and properly supported educators and teachers at the helm. We need a funding system that directly ties taxpayer money with expected outcomes. We need to pursue policies that reflect the real lives of families in this country.
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