Georgie Dent, CEO of The Parenthood, will Address the National Press Club on “The mother and father of all problems: Australia can’t afford for raising a family to be unaffordable”.

Australia’s birth rate has hit a record low. For decades, the cost of raising children has been treated as a private problem for individuals to navigate. A social issue, a women’s issue, a lifestyle choice. Georgie Dent argues that era is over.

In this address, the CEO of The Parenthood makes the case that the cost of raising a family now runs through every major economic question facing the country: housing, workforce participation, productivity and long-term prosperity. Drawing on new analysis of how the cost of parenting has changed over the past twenty years, she argues that our economic settings were built for a family structure that is now the exception, and that the falling birth rate is the economy registering the cost.

Care is infrastructure. We build roads, hospitals and schools collectively because the whole country depends on them. Paid parental leave and early childhood education and care are no different: they are what enable parents to raise a family and to provide for one. Left as a private problem, families keep paying the price: in money, careers, stress and the children they choose not to have.

We keep asking whether Australia can afford to support families. Dent’s answer is that the real question is whether Australia can afford not to.

Bio:

Georgie Dent is the CEO of The Parenthood, Australia’s leading independent parent advocacy organisation, representing 85,000 parents and carers. A former lawyer, best-selling author and business journalist, she has spent almost two decades advocating on the policies that decide whether Australian families sink or swim. Under her leadership, The Parenthood has helped win a 15 per cent pay rise for early educators, a three-day guarantee of early learning, and the expansion of paid parental leave to 26 weeks with superannuation.